Has there ever been a Republican worthy of the American presidency in the last hundred years?

[milestogo]

[elleng]

1. eisenhower

[senseandsensibility]

3. OMG

I was just going to post that!

[alwaysinasnit]

6. You beat me to it.

[elleng]

11. and I remember my family's disappointment, hoping for Stevenson!

my first political experience.

[alwaysinasnit]

14. ...

[elleng]

15. and followed by Army/McCarthy hearings!

watched some of those after school.

[republianmushroom]

9. Yup

[bullimiami]

23. Yup he's the last.

[alwaysinasnit]

2. Maybe Eisenhower???

[ProudMNDemocrat]

4. Besides DDE?

Maybe GHWB. But that is pushing it.

[scipan]

30. "thousand points of light" but that was like instead of government

help.

I'd have to say he didn't care much about helping people, but he did try to couch it in faux empathy.

Maybe he was the turning point. Reagan was an out and out asshole.

[JHB]

45. GHWB gave the last wheezing gasp of Republican fiscal responsibility by signing...

...the (feeble) 1990 tax hike.

And conservatives, including those who count as "reasonable" by today's standards, crucified him for it.

[snowybirdie]

5. Yes

Dwight Eisenhower comes to mind.. He was a real gentleman who built the interstate highway system.

[Elessar Zappa]

7. Eisenhower.

That’s it.

[VMA131Marine]

8. Sure ...

Eisenhower … but he would not be a Republican by the standards of the party today.

[Scottie Mom]

10. Eisenhower...although he did have a mistress...

...but he was a decent president. A raving liberal compared to today's GQPs.

[John1956PA]

12. . .

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[RANDYWILDMAN]

27. This the current party would not OWN Ike

in any way sense and they may have taken him out in this day and age

[Xavier Breath]

13. I'll say Ike as well.

Of course, were he alive today, he'd be outright rejected by the looney bin Rethug party and would likely be considered more like a Democrat.

[Wednesdays]

16. There were a handful of liberal Republicans in Congress and governorships

in the 60's and early 70's. They might qualify.

An extinct species, now.

[Itchinjim]

17. Ike.

[treestar]

18. fitting in the last 100:

Coolidge (1923-29)
Hoover
Eisenhower
Nixon
Ford
Reagan
GHWB
Dubya
TFG


Coolidge maybe OK, and Eisenhower. The rest - unworthy.

[bullimiami]

25. Ford wasn't awful. Nothing to crow about but decent enough.

[Retrograde]

19. Hoover was good before he became president

Organizing relief programs in Europe and the early Soviet Union, strengthening the Commerce department, trying to bring equitable relief aid to the Mississippi Valley after the floods of 1927 (the president at the time Coolidge, couldn't be bothered). He was also good in the late 40s when he worked with Truman to reorganize parts of the government. He just wasn't the right person for the job in 1929.

(I feel that I have to put in a good word for him, since he lived in my town for a while. He also translated a cornerstone Latin text on mining, De Re Metallica, into English, along with his wife, an early STEM graduate)

[hedda_foil]

22. Hoover got stuck with the depression, starting less than 7 months into office.

He would have been ok if he hadn't been left holding the bag.

[MyNameIsJonas]

34. Yes but he utterly failed in his response to the Great Depression.

[ITAL]

37. Hoover didn't know how to tackle the Depression

But it's also true that FDR's Administration got several ideas from him, just massively expanded. I think Hoover was on the right track with a lot of things, he just couldn't contemplate how massive a response the government needed at the time.

https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-herbert-hoover-new-deal

[hedda_foil]

38. True. But FDR was sui generis.

[moondust]

20. Ike was worthy but he wasn't perfect.

Eisenhower approves coup in Iran, Aug. 19, 1953

[Hekate]

36. JFK wasn't perfect, either. Nobody is....

Last edited Thu Aug 24, 2023, 11:27 PM - Edit history (1)

A late friend of mine spent at least part of the Vietnam War at the White House switchboard. He did have some funny stories. Late one night when Jackie was out of town there was a rather frightened call from the family quarters: a young woman whispered that she couldn’t find her blouse. I have absolutely no idea what happened after that, altho I hope she grabbed one of JFK’s shirts from the closet before skedaddling.

Personally, I remember the terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I was among the many thousands of young people who kept a fat packet from the Peace Corps in my desk for many years.

I’m too old now to care if he had lovers, casual or otherwise. He had a wife and he had a priest — he was answerable to them as long as he did not also break secular law. Trump is a serial sexual assaulter — that breaks the laws of this land.

[moondust]

43. True.

Though some missteps are much more consequential than others. The Cuban Crisis was scary but it turned out well at the time, though I've always wondered if it may have later been one of the underlying motives for the actions of former wannabe Soviet citizen Lee Harvey Oswald.



Trysts happen. I hadn't heard of that one. There were rumors of a JFK/Marilyn Monroe affair.

[Autumn]

21. Dwight D. Eisenhower

[haele]

24. Hoover's problem was that he believed that reasonable capitalism could save the country

He dabbled with socialism, but all his advisors were bankers and industrialists. He started some of the New Deal policies, but he just couldn't put his foot on the gas to raise taxes and goose the economy with serious government spending. Roosevelt leveraged a lot of his policies to get the economy stabilized.

Truman depended on Hoover to save Europe from starvation and Stalin's takeover after WWII while working aid packages through Congress. Hoover was critical in helping the Marshall Plan to work.

So, he was a better ex-president than he was a president.

Haele

[Mark.b2]

26. No. And each one is progressively worse...

I already hate the next one, and he's probably still in high school!

[prodigitalson]

28. Ike

basically to the left of any Dem since LBJ (with the possible exeption of Biden) economically.

[Conjuay]

29. Ike.

[electric_blue68]

31. Eisenhower, for the most part

From what I've learned.
I was only 7 when JFK was elected.

[sinkingfeeling]

32. Ike!

[Hekate]

33. Dwight D. Eisenhower. I was a small white child when he forcibly integrated Southern schools...

The sight on the evening news of children my age being screamed at by grown women was something I never forgot.

I was too young to know he was a hero of the war that ended before I was born — I only had my child’s eye view (and my mother’s explanations) in my life then.

So yes, he was a good man and a good president. I liked Ike.

Someone brought up his mistress. I think consensual canoodling should only matter to his wife and his pastor, and the rest of us should myob.

[ArnoldLayne]

35. Eisenhower

[leftstreet]

39. Nixon was pretty progressive

But people meltdown if you mention him

[Hekate]

41. Those of us who were sentient at the time he was president have damn good cause for wrath

He was a twisted crook. It took me 50 years to see him as a case study in Greek tragedy — but he was still a twisted crook and he harmed our democracy, setting the stage for Republicans who came after him.

[leftstreet]

44. OSHA, EPA, Basic Income

And given the illegal war crimes of the Bush regime, Watergate looks like shoplifting to me

I hear you, but I'm just sayin

[Hekate]

50. Greek tragedy. So much potential -- so much of a grad school in crime for young men

Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney among others. It always shocks me when some miscreant in a later admin turns out to have gotten a start with Nixon.

You missed mentioning Nixon’s Southern Strategy, too.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

48. LOL

No, he wasn't. He rarely took the liberal side of anything. And sometimes, when he seemed to support it...he didn't. Instead, he would do things for the politics of vengeance.

Title IX is one of those things. He was against it, but had access rights for women tossed in to create a firestorm that conservatives could capitalize on later. And that worked.

[LudwigPastorius]

49. I'll give him the EPA, rapprochement with China, and the SALT treaty but...

Nixon sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks (dragging the war and American deaths on), the secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia (killing half a million innocents), and of course the Watergate break in and cover up more than outweigh any good he did.

Nixon was an evil, mean, drunken crook who fucked this country.

[Hekate]

51. All of what you said, plus never forget the Southern Strategy, either.

[leftstreet]

52. The southern strategy took longer. See Jimmy Carter

His win proved it was shaky

Nixon's people set the stage for it (actually Goldwater started it) but Reagan would absolutely dog-whistle it right out of the gate

[Brother Buzz]

40. Pete McCloskey totally gets my vote

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

42. Ike, of course. Sort of.

Some other old school r's before they all lost their minds, but could have been excellent presidential material:

Millicent Fenwick

Nelson Rockefeller

Margaret Chase Smith

Lowell Weicker

[JanMichael]

46. Maybe Nancy Landon Kassebaum?

Longtime Senator.

Worthy of the presidency? Probably better than most repukes.

[JHB]

47. Ike. Notheastern liberal Republicans outmaneuvered conservatives...

...at the 1952 GOP convention and put Ike on the ticket instead of Taft. Taft supporters were salivating at the chance to roll back the New Deal, but that wasn't going to happen under Eisenhower.