Who's your favorite U.S president, Veeky Forums?

JFK really let the presidency go to his head.

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Not doing anything wrong doesn't make you perfect?

>Passed the Sedition act
Got us into WW1

>Does pretty much everything wrong except for aiding France against the eternal teuton
>"nothing wrong".

who was the one that rivaled jfk and bill in sexual escapades?

Tear me apart

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>implying you're smart enough to understand how literally everything he did contributed towards making the US THE major world power in the wake of WWI

Trump.

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Silent Cal was best president.

youtube.com/watch?v=S3GT9UN7nDo

his only fuck up was Vietnam.

Be/a/st already

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>tfw President TJ didn't play any games when the Barbary Pirates attacked American ships.
>tfw American leaders are now pussies in the face of Muslim aggression.

I defy you to name a better president.

>i dont want to be president
>i want to go back home
>why the fuck did Harding hire this Hoover prick
>I wish I had some chickens

I'm so eager to see how history will treat Trump. It'll be strange to see him in textbooks.

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this post made me proud of liking Coolidge.

Good choice familia

James Madison

Wrote the "Federalist Papers" the greatest propaganda I have ever seen since the French Encyclopédie.

Essential in the drafting of the constitution and the bill of rights, that's pretty cool.

His wife was Machiavelli in a skirt, quite easily the greatest 1st lady of all time, making a duo of political dynamite.

Successfully ran the nation during the war of 1812 despite Washington D.C. being burned to the ground and the U.S. being a country of poor former colonists and rogues that did not even have it's own currency till the 1850s (not to distract from Jackson's awesomeness in the Battle of New Orleans, the only think I have ever respected him for outside of his advocacy of expanded suffrage).

Unironically the best post WW2 president, though a large part of that is due to Kissinger.

I can't do it.

>America was once a great and sprawling empire...

>laid down the foundations for ww2

Literally the dark knight

youtube.com/watch?v=oL7PSlUuWPs

>Got us into WW1

He did everything to keep us out for the majority of the war. Germany started torpedoing our ships and offered mexico half our land if they invaded us. Not to mention the republicans and congress were pushing for war for years.

lol, Wilson did not have the influence on post war europe that you seem to think. He actually wanted less harsh treatment towards germany and economic aid to build it's economy. It was the europeans who wanted to destroy germany and then proceeded to do nothing when Hitler came to power and ignored all sanctions.

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[spoiler]He did okay. The modern age means everything he ever did was under far greater scrutiny than prior presidents.[/spoiler]

Probably about as impartial a depiction as frontline did on him

As in they'll go into great detail about the shitty stuff he did, while ignoring times like when he wrote a kid dying from cancer a check for like $1mil

>People will focus on the negatives
something something sherlock

>tried to appear Progressive and idealist
>actually a huge racist and even helped enforce and strengthen segregation
>locked people up for protesting and tried to slide it under the rug

Why was he carrying a knife?

he wanted to push his visions for the the league of nations so he capitulated on nearly every measure made against Germany in the hopes that his program would be passed. He essentially let the European nations fuck Germany in exchange for creating his ineffectual little U.N. grandpa rather than trying to get a fair deal for all of the involved parties.

Also did anyone forget that Wilson was a eugenicist who wanted to shrink ethnic minorities with special heath programs? that's kinda dickish, even by the standards of his time.

>tried to appear Progressive and idealist
He didn't 'try to' he was

>actually a huge racist
Wilson's racial views were typical of southerners at the time.

>locked people up for protesting and tried to slide it under the rug
Par for the course when it comes to war time behavior by presidents.

I think it's a little unfair to blame Wilson for letting the Europeans fuck over Germany. He entered the war with a year left and live on another fucking continent, it's not like he had a huge amount of bargaining power during the peace talks.

If you could show me where Lincoln or Roosevelt passed Alien and Sedition Acts, that would be great.

FDR interned the Japanese, of whom many were US citizens.

Lincoln repealed Habeas Corpus and jailed a few newspaper editors

>repealed

I meant 'suspended'

>letting the fucking capitol be burnt

>fucked the lower classes over with a more expensive heath care that you get fined for not having it or another heath care plan. those who actually could afford it now have to go through roughly 4-6 months of bureaucracy to get a heart surgery, rather than 4-6 weeks that it used to take, I have 3 relatives that could have died because of this bullshit.
> Increased the national debt by $9 trillion, more than any other president, with next to nothing to show for it.
>Failed to prop up new governments in Iraq with military aid, leading to a power vacuum that would lead to the creation of ISIS.
>Helped to destroy net neutrality by having the internet labeled as a common carrier, which means that the federal government can now regulate how much bandwidth you get rather than the quality of plan you get from your internet provider. "Obamanet".
>Continued the age old practice of "Too Big to Fail" helping to ensure that several corporate oligarchies remain on top, ensuring the destruction of thousands of smaller businesses in the process.
>The constant race baiting and minority pandering (in regards to political movements) of his administration helped lead to social instability and racially motivated violence that has not been seen since the 1960s. I would not place the whole of the blame on him however.

>"He did okay."

U WOT M8?

when a country of relative bumpkins went up against the master of the known world, I think it reflects well on a leader who is able to have only one city burn down.

Euphoric fedorable Bumpkin related

>Wilson's racial views were typical of Southerners
Maybe so, but that doesn't make it right or acceptable, especially when husband platform is based largely on social reform.

As for the Progressivism part... he was very reluctant to support the 19th Amendment, and some of the protesters he had arrested were suffragists.

>bunmkins defeat empire in sea despite inept president, still manage to lose on home ground.

>basing your views of the past with modern social norms.

The Progressive movement is what started the transition to modern social norms. If he had the same views as the status-quo in 1912 he can't exactly be considered a true progressive.

>teddy's progressisivm
>norms
Pick 1

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And in the end, America didn't even join the League.
>Hopes and dreams cock-blocked as you lay bed-ridden and beginning the slow descent to death via stroke.
What a bummer.

The War of 1812 was one of those few wars that every side had a legit case for having won it.
Except the Injuns. They lost 1812, big fucking time.

>Passed the Sedition act
Read up what was going on in the country at the time that was passed or read Empire of Liberty because Wood devotes a good chunk of one of his chapters to the Alien and Sedition Acts and the mindset that led to them being passed.

TL;DR France had been in a revolutionary fervor for a long time, the Republicans were advocating very extreme anti-federal government bullshit and you had a lot of foreigners coming into the country sympathetic with those views as they would get into publishing and most newspapers at the time were Republican with only a handful being Federalist. There was a very real and legitimate fear that foreigners were coming into the country bringing extreme revolutionary ideals that they would then use (through their press and the compliant Republican party) to topple the entire country or act as agents for the French. The thing is that many of the Republican congressmen at the time agreed with these as the biggest proponents in their party of all of this were the muckraker journalists (again, with a lot of them being foreigners).

Adams is a pretty mediocre President though in that he stayed away from his duties for long periods of time and at the end of his term undercut his own party by secretly sending an envoy to France during the Quasi-War which gave the advantage to the Republicans. But the Alien and Sedition Acts made complete sense at the time (and I don't think are even that bad now) and are not a reason as to why he wasn't great.

Madison is like Jefferson in that he's seen as a "great president" for all the things he never actually did as President. He gets credit for realizing that shuttering the military and navy and taxes was a retarded idea that left us with no ability to fight the war and no money to pay for it though.

Also his vetoing of the anti-racism law Japan proposed so they would be treated as equals with the other big nations of the time because he needed Southern votes to pass American entry into the League of Nations which failed anyway leaving a toothless multinational conglomeration AND a powerful rising nation that absolutely hated the United States.

Cleveland

He is the best president since Eisenhower imo. Not perfect, but he brought America back from the stagflation ashes like a phoenix.

Probably like Reagan, one side championing him like a god and the other side utterly repulsed.

Polk.

[spoiler]We should have annexed more of Mexico.[/spoiler]

Polk was a relatively poor politician (compared to other presidents that is) & a middling executive. It took no great man to do what he did. He was gifted the democratic nomination as a compromise between the deal makers within the party, not because of his own merit & guile.

His main accomplishment was throwing the US into an unnecessary war against a much weaker foe for the base motivation of laying claim to their land by conquest. The revision of the tariff required no great political wrangling since the Democrats had firm control of both houses at the time and he capitulated on the Oregon deal. He was a southern partisan that was hardly popular in his own time that won ONE fluke election by a narrow margin and his wanton lust for land was one of the biggest factors in upsetting the perilous balance between Slave & Free that would ultimately end in the bloodiest conflict in US history.

Polkfags are almost always pseuds who pride themselves on knowing more about history than their highschool classmates but haven't actually read a biography on ANY president so when they hear 'Polk accomplished everything in only one term' they think 'wow this guy must have been really great!' without even realizing that Polk was dying by the end of his one term and wouldn't have been able to serve a second term even if the Democrat party let him run again.

Came to post this

>be Teddy
>on the way to a speech
>some faggot with a pistol comes up and shoots me
>how cute
>people tell me to go to the hospital
>fuck that, go to speech anyway
>had a manuscript the size of Willam Howard Taft in my pocket, looks like it slowed the bullet
>people at speech also tell me to go to the hospital
>tell them to fuck off, keep speaking
>speak for 90 minutes
>mfw no serious injuries were sustained

>TFW This was the only time he was ever depressed in his life

Feels bad man

Teddy Roosevelt used that part of American history and it was what fueled him to be so focused on making a large army and Navy.

>Teddy's last words were "Put out the light" before he died in his sleep
POETRY!

This is the only correct answer
>be grover cleveland
>only president to be elected in 2 non-consecutive terms
All other presidents btfo

Other historians who support other presidents are also btfo

You cannot refute this

JQA

grover cleveland spanked me on 2 non-consecutive occasions

t. benjamin harrison

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Polk is the best President.

1. Only President to deliver all of their campaign promises
2. Won the Mexican-American war, which lead to the most significant territorial expansion since the Louisiana Purchase.
3. Literally did it all in one term. He didn't even run again because he accomplished everything he set out to do.

Taft and the good Bush were also great one term presidents.

>history books
This to me is literally the most depressing thing about Trump. He's a complete fucking joke and has permanently tainted the office just by stepping foot into it. I don't care about the politics in this sense either, just the fact that some smug, no-nothing faggot clown with his shit eating grin is going to be next to men like Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln, etc. The president is suppose to represent the best of us, a master of philosophy, leadership, and prudence, and then comes some reality tv monkey who spends all night shitposting on Twitter like a fucking 13 year old, a man who is borderline retarded, a man who makes GWB sound like Hemingway, to represent this country at this moment in time. The historical embarrassment is something we'll never recover from or get back, even if we manage to bury every law he signed.

Arthur's pretty underrated IMO. Generally did good things, didn't ruin or divide the country in any real way, helped bring respectability back to the office after a few shitty (Johnson), weak (Hayes) or scandal-plagued (Grant) presidents. Guy managed to earn Twain's admiration too which I doubt was any small feat.

>HW Bush
>broke campaign promises
>started a bunch of wars in Central America
>first Gulf War
>signed NAFTA
>great
u wot m8?

No, Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into effect, Herbert Walker Bush was the one who originally pushed for it but did not get it passed.

He did sign the Immigration Act of 1990 though which, for as much as people like to bitch about 1965, is when a lot of immigration really started ramping up in the US and created shit like the H-1B visa that's been used to fuck over American workers.

Arthur needs more respect. He surprised everyone with the amount of integrity he showed while in office, and implemented Civil Service reform to fight corruption. The Republican Party rewarded him by refusing to nominate him for a second term.

His NAFTA and immigration acts were literally the best part of his presidency

He's an honorary pres in my book.
Got kicked out of France for being a player.

Actual presidents,
Historic: Cleveland
Modern: Harding
Recent: Obama

Ronald Reagan was an actor who performed with a monkey and Dubbya thought the word Brazilian was a number.

Lyndon B Johnson also got his dick out 24/7

Fair to say the highest role in the land has been degraded already

Eisenhower is the greatest president, the only other one who comes close is Washington.

I challenge you all to find a single president who could beat Teddy in a fistfight
>inb4 Jackson

T H I S

dude will give you a mother fuckin 8 pack at the end of the day bro

FDR

He only made a token effort at getting the nomination. He didn't really want it because he was wracked by illness by the end of his term and died not long after leaving office. Arthur was very popular though and probably would've beaten Cleveland had he been healthy enough to run again considering Cleveland only just barely beat Blaine (and then Cleveland lost against Harrison due to outright voter fraud on the Republican's part).

The Pendleton Act was something that got rolling under Garfield as well and it's really sad to think we lost a potentially top tier president due to a crazy person. He was an incredibly smart guy who managed to teach himself military tactics and became a pretty effective commander during the Civil War. Taught himself economics after becoming buddies with Salmon P. Chase and was pretty accurate in his predictions of things like market crashes and such. Great organizer who excelled in making Rosecrans' army run smoothly and cutting chaff and increasing efficiency in the government while head of Appropriations. Rather incorruptible, his biggest problem was that he could trust friends easily but not anywhere near the degree of Grant. Managed to out-politic Conkling and his machine at the height of their power and kick them out of politics for good as well.

I'd also throw McKinley in the list of underrated/overlooked Presidents. I don't think Teddy would've had as good a Presidency without the groundwork and solid footing McKinley's laid.

Yeah, McKinley definitely should be more well known. Although the groundwork was begun decades earlier, it wasn't until his administration that the US became (and was respected as) a world power.

If we're discussing underrated Presidents, I'd like to add Monroe to the list. He was one of the most popular presidents of all time, and his administration was during one of the most prosperous (barring a bit of economic turbulence) and unifying periods in our history. Although the Monroe Doctrine had only a minuscule effect (and basically had to be propped up by the Royal Navy) when first implemented, it became a cornerstone of US foreign policy in the decades to come, and is still relevant today.

Already.

>President "TJ" send a handful of ships to defend freight from brown pirates
>Modern American leaders spend billions of dollars, have military assets all over the globe, and regularly drop bombs in a dozen sovereign nations

He'll be Jackson 2.0 except without the "Nullification Crisis, military service, or being genuine about populist his rhetoric" parts...in other words a shitty president