Rank the Democratic Presidents since FDR.

[argonaut]

In the same vein as the thread on Republican Presidents.

We've got:

Harry Truman (1945 - 1953)
John F. Kennedy (1961 - 1963)
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963 - 1969)
Jimmy Carter (1977 - 1981)
Bill Clinton (1993 - 2001)

I've decided not to include Obama, since it's early in his administration. That said, I think he's better to date than, at least, Clinton and Carter, given his HCR victory.

Here's my personal ranking:

1) Harry Truman: Great man, tried to provide universal healthcare, had actual, y'know, integrity. Ended World War II, kicked Tom Dewey's ass, the buck stopped with him.
2) John F. Kennedy: Had vision, started the push for Civil Rights, the space race, planned to get out of Vietnam. Bay of Pigs was not his fault.
3) Lyndon Johnson: Passed Great Society, Civil Rights, completed most of Kenendy's work. Unfortunately, also stepped up Vietnam conflict.
4) Bill Clinton: Competent President generally. However, deregulated banks and embarassed the Democratic Party politically with his personal scandals. Gore would have been better.
5) Jimmy Carter: It does a disservice to Carter to rank him last. He had principles, and restored dignity to the White House after Watergate. Stood up to Hill Democrats, but this was his undoing - he couldn't work with Congress. Malaise speech was laudably honest, but probably hurt him politically.

[demosincebirth]

1. LBJ. Truman, Kennedy, BC, JC

[treestar]

2. Carter, Clinton, Kennedy, Truman, Johnson

[Oregone]

10. LOL. Almost my opposite

[Zynx]

3. I would make one quibble which is that I would put LBJ ahead of JFK.

LBJ's substantive achievements in domestic policy probably could not have been achieved by JFK and they far outweigh his decisions in Vietnam, in my judgement. Otherwise, I agree with the list.

[IndianaGreen]

4. Truman was the last President that was accessible to the American people

Truman used to take his daily walk outside Blair House with just only one Secret Service agent in tow. An assassination attempt by Puerto Rican extremists put an end to that. Ever since, American Presidents have been living inside a security bubble.

LBJ could have been our greatest President since FDR. Indeed, his legislative achievements still stand today as a monument to his legacy. Unfortunately, Vietnam was a war of choice for LBJ. He could have walked away from it, instead he chose to escalate the war. Vietnam brought down his Presidency. Let that be a warning to future Presidents.

My ranking is, without taking away the points I raised about LBJ:

LBJ
Truman
JFK
Carter
Clinton

[Old Codger]

28. HST

He actually walked down the street during campaigns and shook hands, I got to do that when I was in about 3rd grade

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Hmm.

Obama
Clinton
Carter
Truman
Johnson
Kennedy

[jwirr]

6. Truman, JFK, Jimmy Carter, LBJ and Bill Clinton.

[craigmatic]

7. LBJ, Obama, Truman, JFK, Carter, and Clinton

LBJ because of his legislative record helping poor people. Obama is a close second because of health care. Truman had the fair deal but didn't do much domestically but he did contain the USSR. JFK was mostly image but tried to get some liberal programs passed but he didn't have a mandate. Carter was the last of the openly social liberal democratic presidents but he didn't have much legislative success domestically. Clinton was the best repub president we ever had and he ultimately weakened the economy with deregulation.

[IndianaGreen]

8. I think Obama would have ordered an air strike over Cuba in 1962

Kennedy rejected the advice of his military chiefs that wanted him to bomb Soviet missile sites in Cuba.

We are here today because of John F. Kennedy!

[craigmatic]

15. To the contrary I think Obama would've done the exact same thing

on the Cuban missile issue. But the development of the crisis was in part of JFK's own fault because the bay of pigs made the Cubans seek protection from further invasion by the US. JFK's own illness made Kruschev not take him seriously after their meeting. Also where was JFK's domestic agenda? He really didn't have one. He even went so far as to tell Nixon, "Who really gives a shit if the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25 in comparison to the bay of pigs?" according to the book An Unfinished Life. My point is that Kennedy cared little for those less fortunate than himself. He wasn't a real liberal and believed it was better to be tough than smart going in. He also didn't know what he would do about Vietnam or civil right. It was LBJ who did everything.

[IndianaGreen]

16. Obama's record tells me otherwise

Unlike Kennedy who was a true war hero, Obama has been too differential to the Pentagon brass, accepting their assumptions as if they were Gospel truth.

Just prior to his assassination, President Kennedy decided to disengage the US from Vietnam.

Obama could have chosen to disengage from the losing war in Afghanistan, instead he repeated the same mistake LBJ did with Vietnam.

[craigmatic]

19. That's just incorrect. 2 weeks before the assasination JFK allowed for Ngo to be killed

in Vietnam. From that moment on we owned that country. Obama wouldn't have bombed cuba because despite the Afganistan situation he's very strategic in his thinking and I think he would've backed away from an attack that would've brought about an end to life as we know it. In Afganistan he's actually trying to do what bush refused to do which is to catch bin laden.

[IndianaGreen]

21. That was never part of the plan!

Kennedy was as shocked as everyone else!

Truth be told, I didn't shed any tears for Diem, a Catholic puppet put in power by the US in 1954.

[craigmatic]

23. Oh come on. JFK knew because the generals consulted him before the coup.

JFK didn't say "no" and they killed Ngo and his brother. At that point the repub red baiters would've goated him into escalating Vietnam and he would've had to go or look weak going into the '64 election if he hadn't been assasinated. I think he would've went in out of peer pressure eventually just because he sent in the most "advisors" of all his predecessors before the war really kicked off.

[IndianaGreen]

25. The advisors in South Vietnam were strictly in non-combat positions

Their role change after LBJ became President.

[craigmatic]

27. That's what their job title said but do you really think that they didn't try to shoot

at the communists when there was a fire fight? It's been well documented that the south vietnamese ran. There were US casualties in Vietnam before LBJ even took office.

[IndianaGreen]

30. Shooting in self-defense was always allowed

There were US casualties in Vietnam since the 1950s.

[craigmatic]

31. You just said they were non combat last time I checked shooting was combat.

The probably shot when it wasn't self defense too.

[IndianaGreen]

32. When someone is shooting at you, normal reaction is to shoot back

Combat operations meant to actually go with the ARVN in their military operations and fire your weapon.

Being in a village as part of a team, helping villagers in all manner of things, and then being shot by the VC does not constitute combat operations.

[craigmatic]

33. Maybe so but they helped ARVN go on the offensive. Just like the USSR helped the North Koreans in

the Korean war. I don't buy the official story and there's always an exception to the rule.

[ClarkUSA]

24. "Obama has been too differential to the Pentagon brass"? Um, he rejected Gen. McChrystal's advice...

... on Afghanistan, which called for a 10 year, 80,000 troop surge that Hillary also pushed for.

<<Obama has been too differential to the Pentagon brass, accepting their assumptions as if they were Gospel truth.>>

Since he pointedly rejected Gen. McChrystal's advice, it seems you are wrong. Again.

[IndianaGreen]

26. Obama: I'm looking forward to returning to Afghanistan many times in the years to come.

"I'm looking forward," he told the troops, "to returning to Afghanistan many times in the years to come."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/04

[ClarkUSA]

34. So what? Did you forget about the July 2011 timeline for Afghanistan withdrawal?

Granted, it's conditions-based, but nevertheless, it is clear that President Obama ignored "the Gospel truth" and rejected Hillary's/Gen. McChrystal's 10 year 80,000 troop surge advice for Afghanistan.

[IndianaGreen]

35. 'Conditions-based' is a loophole big enough to fly a jumbo jet throught it

We have been in Afghanistan for 9 years already!

[ClarkUSA]

37. "Conditions-based" is realistic. So far, the timeline is still on schedule.

<<We have been in Afghanistan for 9 years already!>>

So what? President Obama has been in office for less than 15 months and he's already created respectable timelines to end both BushCo wars responsibly.

BTW, the Iraq war withdrawal is going as planned and its timeline is conditions-based, too.

[Oregone]

18. His Afghan escalation really hammers that point home

He knows how to tell his military advisers to go to hell, yes. :)

:sarcasm:


Its tough to disagree with some of your views on JFK. I grew up being told he was the greatest president ever, but more and more, I grow confused by what he actually did. I just don't know how to rank him compared to someone like Clinton though.

[IndianaGreen]

22. JFK did not have the CIA bring Al Qaeda Chechens to fight in Kosovo

And he did not play in part in the anti-Aristide coup in Haiti.

[vaberella]

42. Let's just say some of us Haitians were happy Aristide is out! n/t

[CTyankee]

44. A couple of years ago I read "The Missile Crisis" by Elie Abel and

was extremely impressed with JFK's style of working on the crisis. He brought in ALL of the players, mostly outside of his cabinet, but with Bobby being discussion leader. I know that Abel wrote this only a few years after the crisis and that there are quibbles that he might be overly impressed with the Kennedy's (esp. in the wake of JFK's assassination). But I was pretty impressed...

[Oregone]

9. Truman/Johnson.... Carter/Kennedy/Clinton

Erm...the last 3 are a toss up. Truman/Johnson

[IndianaGreen]

12. Kennedy is head and shoulders over Carter and Clinton

Let's not forget that Kennedy, after being burned by Bay of Pigs, did not trust his military or intelligence services. Kennedy rejected the advice given to him by the Joint Chiefs (and SAC chief Curtis LeMay) to bomb Soviet missile sites in Cuba.

Were it not for Kennedy, none of us would be alive today!

[Oregone]

13. "after being burned by Bay of Pigs"

...

I don't know. It was a different time I guess. I understand he evolved while in office too. Its tough to get over a few things though, mostly military/defense related.

Regardless, its sad to be either ambivalent or disapproving of more than half of the last 5 Democratic Presidents. Definitely a few in there that were less than something to get excited about.

[liberal N proud]

11. Why not include Obama

Many here and elsewhere have Obama all washed up.


:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

[Oregone]

14. No one has any kind of real perspective to judge his presidency and its longer term effects by

Its silly to proclaim him the worse or best Democratic president thus far, though it may be reasonable to suggest thus far he will be neither.

[IndianaGreen]

17. The Democratic Party of today is not the one from our parents and grandparents

Democratic politicians of today could have easily passed themselves as Republicans of the early 1960s.

[TygrBright]

20. Carter, Johnson, Truman, Kennedy, Clinton. n/t

[Milo_Bloom]

29. Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter

I don't include Clinton, since he was pretty much a republican.

[Pryderi]

36. Johnson, Truman, Clinton, Carter, Kennedy

[saltpoint]

38. Great discussion question, and a difficult one to answer.

I rank Clinton the worst of the batch. Kind of a wobbly Cabinet. Just too conservative a Democrat for me to whoop it up for. He represented a considerable stride forward from Southern Democratic Governors of the preceding generation, but I"m not a Clinton Democrat.

Carter's was a troubled presidency. I rank him next to last because his decency was not enough to govern. I wish it had been. After he left office Jimmy Carter showed the world how a high-profile political celebrity might apply that celebrity to good causes. The Foundation and the work with Habitat, etc. -- all are outstanding.

For legislation as the sole gauge, Lyndon Johnson rates the highest, IMO, but he was torn to bits over the war in Southeast Asia and did not know where to turn. He did not always get the best advice, either, and when he might have gotten a little, he wasn't sure it was sound. People who came of political age during the Vietnam years plainly remember how they felt about Johnson and Humphrey and Gene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Despite tension between the two camps I loved both McCarthy and Kennedy and felt Johnson had little choice but to resign in March '68, as he did. When Robert Kennedy was murdered, many of us felt completely outnumbered.

Truman is a tough, smart soul who was under-appreciated. But a lot of Democrats have a great deal of abiding affection for him, and IMO, properly so. He didn't run from a scuffle and there was a bedrock integrity to him. I rate him second.

An Irish church official offered in his eulogy for John Kennedy the observation that he would be horribly missed because so much of what we admire in a human being was inhabited by Kennedy. The happy father of young children playing on the summer grass with them despite significant physical pain. The dignity of an extremely capable and intelligent First Lady. The command of human speech and an ability to be one of its most potent delivery systems. Those early tapes of the president and his Attorney General brother trying to persuade recalcitrant and overtly racist Southern governors to permit black kids to go to public schools, to dissolve the racial divide in segregated cities. The high honor the arts held in the Kennedy White House. Hyannisport sea gulls and two lovely children and much else. "Whose nose wasn't pressed against that candy store window?" Robert MacNeill wrote. So I rate Kennedy first, who served the least number of years, but whose imprint was so vivid.

1 Kennedy
2 Truman
3 Johnson
4 Carter
5 Clinton

[Drunken Irishman]

39. If we're going to include Kennedy, we can include Pres. Obama.

Kennedy was president for only three years. Pres. Obama has been president less, of course, but he's done enough to at least give us an idea where he could end up.

But I'll do it anyway. :D

W/O Obama:

1. Truman
2. Johnson
3. Kennedy
4. Clinton
5. Carter

I hated ranking Carter so low, but you can't deny history. Though what he struggled with was not his doing, he gets the brunt of the blame because it happened on his watch. Kind of like the head coach who takes over a team when all their stars decide to hang it up (think Tim Floyd with the Chicago Bulls when Jordan, Pippen, Rodman and Jackson left after 1998).

Your assessment of Carter is pretty spot on. Good guy, but just didn't have what it takes to be President.

[OhioBlue]

40. mine:

1. JFK
2. Truman
3. LBJ
4. Clinton
5. Carter

[BlueIdaho]

41. Kennedy, Johnson, Truman & Carter tied for third, Clinton fifth place. nt.

[Pryderi]

43. JFK wasn't president long enough to qualify as best of the list provided. n/t