Who was the greatest president ever, Veeky Forums...

>Bill Clinton
I think Clinton was one of the worse presidents, or even a middling one at best, from a historical perspective. After the USSR fell, the US was the top dog and could basically do anything it wanted short of invading random places. Instead of buckling down on the next problems that we were obviously going to face in the next century, he bought into the rose-colored spectacles of Fukuyama's "end of history" remarks. He began half-assedly going around and trying to force the world into the American government and economic systems of democracy and capitalism. Instead of seeing the USSR as a fallen empire, he and many others saw it as a fallen ideology that only left one to reign supreme.

Yes, he may have had a good relationship with Congress and helped create a surplus, but that surplus was the result of patchwork that would begin unraveling during his successor's (who was an even worse president than Clinton IMO) administration and play a large role in the 2007-2008 recession. These deals he made not set the financial markets on a collision course with disaster, but also destroyed the future of social security and started the process of kicking that can down the road until we're all screwed.

While Bill Clinton wasn't malevolent in his visions of the world, he was certainly naive and didn't take the steps necessary to true promote American interests at home and abroad. He suffered from the same dilemma that Woodrow Wilson did some 80 years before him, believing the end of a large conflict would usher in an era of total world peace and cooperation without realizing that there were more cultural, economic, and governmental differences between regions and countries than just communism vs. capitalism or authoritarianism vs. democracy.

He wasn't the worst, but he is severely overrated in modern times.

>it was just overblown by the media

Imagine being so Republican that you're defending watergate 40 years later lmao

>commit crime
>get convicted of crime
>apologists cry that this was unfair until the end of time

Neocons are literally niggers.

Clinton

>trade policy lead to manufacturing leaving the USA for mexico and china.
>banking and investing deregulation lead to the 2008 collapse
>created the sub prime mortgage bubble that lead to the 2008 collapse.
>WACO
>assault weapons ban
>banned importation of russian surplus firearms.
>supporting and walking all over Yeltsin. lead to putin and his desire for revenge against the west.
>trade center bombing. then let Osama go free because clinton didn't want to send cia/special forces after him.
>was impeached for lying about a blow job.even though he beat it. it still lead to a reactionary movement that got Bush Jr elected.
>his "balance budget" was just borrowing from social security.

Lincoln, FDR and Reagan were probably the most influential presidents long term wise.

I don't know who you can say was the greatest, especially among the most recent ones, Nixon was the most powerful president, Kennedy was barely the president, Clinton was the centrist-economic boom president, Obama and Bush the terrible foreign policy presidents etc.

How about you stop whitesplaining??
Obama was easily the greatest leader this country has ever seen. Sorry your racism blinds you from seeing this obvious fact

It was a crime. I was just comparing it to much worse criminals who got off unscathed, simply because there wasn't such a media pressure.

Tier list the post FDR presidents. Hard mode: Explain why you tiered them the way you did.

>because there wasn't such a media pressure
>FOX news is the biggest media outlet on earth

FDR is a fucking blight on this country.

>FOX news alone trumps CNN, MSNBC, ABC, Washington Post, NYT, etc

Policies aside, President Obama is going to be remembered terribly in the future. Yeah, you got your first black (not even fully black) president and he kept the bottom from falling out of the world economy by kicking the can down the road (good, I guess?), but he grossly expanded the powers of the executive branch.

The executive branch is getting closer and closer to being vulnerable to someone taking dictatorial powers in the US. It's all nice and great when your liberal policies get passed while sidestepping a conservative Congress, but what happens when someone who you highly disagree with takes over and has those same expanded powers? Trump has barely even used Congress, passing most of his goals through executive orders, and you see liberals having aneurysms around the country.

Imagine if a real strongman took over with those increased powers, thanks to George W. Bush and Barack Obama. There is a reason the Founding Fathers wanted a limited executive branch, and it seems like our political ignoring are forgetting this in favor of short-term goals.

Lemme try. In descending order of quality:

Immediate post war presidents that were pretty good at their job tier:

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy

Tragically flawed but brilliant tier:

LBJ, Nixon, Reagan

Centrists pretending to be progressives tier:

Clinton, Obama

Cucked by circumstances beyond their control tier:

Ford, Carter, George HW Bush

Didn't screw up as badly as tragically flawed tier, but didn't have any accomplishments nearly as good either:

George W Bush

Omitted from the list because current events go to /pol/ tier:

Donald Trump

LBJ

>vietnam war
>modern welfare state
>gun control act
>change of immigration laws that is turning the USA into a hispanic nation. when before the USA only allowed in europeans in significant numbers.

the only flawed good thing was the civil rights legislation.

>modern welfare state
>bad

>create massive housing projects in the 70s.
>fill them full of poor people on welfare
>instant ghettos
>drugs and gangs
>public institutions and businesses in the area fail or leave.
>fathers and mothers arrested in mass and thrown in prison.
>kids growing up in broken homes
>drugs and gangs
>repeat

not to mention that once you start a benefit. you can never cut or reform it. as the party that doesn't want to cut it, will go "muh women and children". then use that to gain votes.

Poverty fell during the great society though.

The increased poverty reduction from the great society only started to stagnate during the oil crisis in the 70s.

Winston Churchill

welfare doesn't reduce poverty, it subsidizes it. economic growth and labor shortage reduces poverty.

>black death
>new world colonialism
>industrialism
>ww2 killing working age males or destroying competing industry.
these things reduced poverty. not Bread and Circuses.

>welfare doesn't reduce poverty, it subsidizes it

This is a hypothesis that you can actually test.

It isn't true. As it turns out, having a poor, sick, uneducated workforce is bad for a country.

>Nixon
>Neocon
Why do you insist on talking about things you don't know about

Let's play a game

Was the phrase neocons used to describe

A: Nixon

B: Modern day Nixon apologists

how are they measuring poverty?

standard of living, or economic mobility?

you can subsidize standard of living and people won't feel or look poor. yet they are still stuck being a wage cuck and unemployment will affect them greatly.

>Neocons
You don't know what this word means.

Literally neither.

Anti-poverty measures effect both.

America has lower economic mobility than just about anywhere in Europe.

Kennedy was great in terms of efficiency, but he's famous because of the Cuban Missile Crisis and getting shot. So I'll go with Andrew Jackson; he handled the country very well, and went up against some really powerful people to do so.

Although Nixon was pretty good too. Modern Presidents do far worse stuff than he did, but it's legal, so no one cares. It's quite strange how people conflate the law with morality.

Ending the gold standard puts Nixon down as one of the worst president in my opinion. He ruined this nations economy by chaining us to a bubble economy. Clinton would do his own economic damage with stupid trade deals and deregulated Wall Street in manners which led directly to the 2008 crash.

Curious though, OP, why would you say Nixon is the "greatest president ever" since your criteria doesn't seem to include economic policy, for which you chose two of the worst.

>the media never covered hillary clinton
Go back to /r/The_Donald. Are you joking? Every fucking day during the election, we had to hear about the goddamn emails. Yeah, trump might have gotten more negative coverage, but that was his plan: to get a growing base of voters who already disliked mainstream media. Even with clinton trying to cover up her bullshit, the media still relentlessly continued the email conversation. I'm not trying to diminish what she did, but if you think the media never covered her negatively, you have read to many trumpfag talking points.

>idiot libertarian crying about "muh gold" post 99999

Not a libertarian. You should study the effects of killing Breton Woods.

>Successful madman theory
>Ping-pong diplomacy
>Friends with China
>Leaves Vietnam
>Goes off gold standard
>Détente
>EPA
and the list goes on

>Fiat money is a worthless spook, unlike my magic shiny metal that has INTRINSIC, OBJECTIVE WORTH

Bill Clinton furthered the economical collapse set in motion by Reagan and like him was basically a corporate-run slave

...

You post that like its an ironic meme but you're just telling the truth right there.

Reagan was definitely influential, but not in the good way. He's probably the most destructive president ever.

>economic policies leading to complete collapse of american economy
>corporate slave like all succeeding presidents up to Obama
>Iran-Contra affair
>completely torn apart racial relations in the US which still hasn't recovered
>sold out the working class by shipping their jobs overseas

Reagan's legacy is Obama, the current economy, Black Lives Matter and the Rust Belt

No president is perfect, or can really fit into the generic term of "greatest" they all have their faults. Some will be terrible at foreign policy but good on the home front, others will be the opposite. Eisenhower was probably the "greatest" president. He was well suited for an executive office, due to his exemplary military career. Unlike Grant, he was suited for negotiation and approached politics from a calmer angle and had very little corruption.

Building the interstate system alone is one of the smartest decisions of any presidency, it turned the US into a legitimate superpower. He also governed over a relatively peaceful and prosperous time, before the craziness of the 60's and the stagnation of the 70's hit. Yes, the cold war escalated during his presidency, but it would have grown regardless of who was elected. Warning the populace about the industrial military complex in his farewell address took major balls as well.

It's sort of hard to just talk about presidents from a potential perspective, because in many ways, it's historical circumstances that define the presidency. it's how the president reacts to war, economic downturn, civil rights, etc. If you equate it to sports, Bo Jackson was one of the greatest athletic freaks in history, but he got hurt and never showed off his true career. Meanwhile, Baseball's most hallowed player, Babe Ruth, was a fat, womanizing, alcoholic, smoker who could barely run around the bases. Potential isn't really indicative to success. The presidency is a reactionary office where every president, yes even guys like Dubya and Obama, have had their good moments. the sole exception to this would be Harrison.

this

>inherited a broken country in the midst of the worst economic crises of modern history and through his own force of will transformed the economic, political and social landscape of America leaving behind a vigorous optimistic nation that was unparalleled in power and prosperity
>a blight
hmm....

The interstate killed public transportation and left thousands of small towns that depended on itinerant traffic to wither and rot as they were bypassed by the new interstate and frankly scarred much of the American countryside.

>neocon
Guess how I know you're from reddit

>muh broken window fallacy

I don't think you're using that correctly.

Surprised nobody mentioned Teddy Roosevelt yet. He didnt rule in any specifically crucial period of the US but still left a huge legacy.

small towns that depend on itinerant traffic = window maker
forcing people to use outdated technology = breaking a window

not an argument

Nixon is a fairly good answer, watergate aside.

I'd say Ike.

watergate wasn't even a crime

FDR didn't save the American economy, WW2 did. His Keynesian economic model actually made the Depression longer.

The american economy grew on average around 6% from 1934 to 1939 you stinky liar.

>hating keynesianism
Jew spotted

E-mails are irrelevant though, for Benghazi she should've hanged.

>JFK
>Truman
>Coolidge
>Reagan
>Monroe
>Jackson
>Jefferson
>Teddy Roosevelt
>Clinton
>Washington
Everyone else was meh or shit tier

>JFK not shit

...

Dude literally caused an economic crisis

>for Benghazi she should've hanged.

She literally, unironically did nothing wrong there.

No he didn't.

t. CRT

You know the election is over, right?

> implying any of these things are both bad and his fault

Carter gets shit on for it, but literally no one could have stopped OPEC from being a dick. I find he is unfairly blamed for the oil price as a circumstance out of his control.

>Bill Clinton
I don't understand if the economic marvels under his leadership were due to him or if he just lucked out with the Dotcom bubble which ended after his term.
What about him plotting to ruin someone's life and kill him?
nbcnews.com/id/39157420/ns/politics/t/nixon-plot-against-newspaper-columnist-detailed/

>Coolidge
He did not give a shit about preventing what would happen in the 1929 since he was for the "laissez faire" of Adam Smith's economic model.

Him

>Jefferson
>Reagan
>Kennedy
>Great

agreed

absolutely this

It most certainly wasn't Coolidge that caused the crisis of 1929.
It was the federal reserve's loose monetary policy that was the cause of it. It ain't the market to blame, boyo.

Nixon wasn't that great in actuality desu. Unemployment was pretty high under him even before the 1973 oil crisis, as was inflation, and his NEP of 1971 and abandoning of the gold standard was a bad move.

Drumpf

>good at their job tier
>Truman
And yet he had the lowest approval rating if any president ever

He was the hero we needed.

>Truman
Why is it so many people think this short fuck was such a good president if nobody fucking liked him when he was president?

He was a hero for starting the cold war? What was so heroic about that?

>first president to have to deal with nuclear weapons
>first president to have to deal with an enemy that also had nuclear weapons
>first president to get briefings from the CIA
>first president to attend meetings of the National Security Council
>did well at these things despite starting off as a literally who only a few years earlier and suddenly becoming the most powerful human being who ever lived
>first president to take serious action on civil rights since the 1870s
>makes tankies mad
>makes weebs mad
>makes the GOP mad
>called for a meeting with Vyacheslav Molotov and just swore at him for ten minutes
>fired Douglas MacArthur

All around, I feel that he was a very underrated leader.

>for starting the cold war
>Truman made the Soviets break all of their agreements and blockade Berlin

>first president to have to deal with nuclear weapons
>first president to have to deal with an enemy that also had nuclear weapons
And you think this is a good thing?

>did well at these things despite starting off as a literally who only a few years earlier and suddenly becoming the most powerful human being who ever lived
Looks like someone doesn't know about the shady shit that happened in the 1944 vice presidential candidate election.

>Thinking showboating to the Soviets was more important than having good relations with them.
Oh yeah a great way to begin relations with Stalin was to threaten him by showing off new bombs

>And you think this is a good thing?

Yes.

He managed to create modern American nuclear policy.

It is in large part thanks to Truman that no nuclear war happened.

>keeping the Soviets from annexing parts of the Middle East is a bad thing

The red army didn't leave a place if they had half a chance not to.

mods, ban aNyone who mentioned 43, Obummer, or Drumpf

You can apply these to presidents before and after him
Almost like they do mostly the same things... like they are all shit
Really makin noodle caboodle

He actually did though, it's just underrated.
He fucked up monopolies hard.

President Fidel Castro.

...I don't think you are qualified to comment on this topic, user

He was weak and his reforms for government spending ended being total failures on a national level.
He wasn't very good even if you disregard things that were ostensibly out of his control

How dumb can one person be?

>Reagan
>brilliant
How?

He foresaw that the USSR was weak and that confrontation would push it into collapse.

This was actually directly contrary to the foreign policy orthodoxy of the time, that the USSR was more or less stable and accommodation was the best policy.

I think that literally everything else Reagan did was cancer, but his decision to deliberately escalate the Cold War was one of the most important, and successful policies that any US president has ever taken.

Got it.

his ideas didn't fucking work. only the rest of the industrialized world killing them selves made the USA the power that it is now.

FDR was some rich man son. that had all his positions of power handed to him. He co opted socialist/marxist ideas to secure control of the country for the rich elites that be belonged to.