Who is the Greatest President in your life time and why?

[Surrealistik]

Eisenhower IMO was the #1 president in my lifetime. As a matter of fact CSPAN which had the most
effective critique of all the president rates Ike as #5 of all time only behind those on Mt. Rushmore.

I also believe Nixon along with his right hand man Kissinger was the greatest foreign policy president
in my lifetime.

Nixon and Kissinger are the two men most responsible for the rise of the CCP and communist China, normalizing trade with the country in exchange for virtually nothing; an absolute foreign policy disaster that they apparently lacked the foresight to recognize, naively (or disingenuously, if one believes that they were merely looking for a way to make US corporate tapping cheap Chinese labour palatable for Joe Public) opining that economic integration would beget political liberalization as opposed to merely enriching and thus entrenching the CCP with a police state far worse and more sophisticated than the most depraved Orwellian nightmare.

 

[slick]

Nixon and Kissinger are the two men most responsible for the rise of the CCP and communist China, normalizing trade with the country in exchange for virtually nothing; an absolute foreign policy disaster that they apparently lacked the foresight to recognize, naively (or disingenuously, if one believes that they were merely looking for a way to make US corporate tapping cheap Chinese labour palatable for Joe Public) opining that economic integration would beget political liberalization as opposed to merely enriching and thus entrenching the CCP with a police state far worse and more sophisticated than the most depraved Orwellian nightmare.

Why do the leftwing politicians and voters who support them even in this day and age hate Nixon so?

As a freshman congressman, he had exposed the wartime treason of liberal icon Alger Hiss. He had filleted Adlai Stevenson. Defeated in 1960 by JFK, after an unprecedented turnout from Mayor Richard Daley’s graveyard wards, and quitting politics after losing the governorship of California, Nixon had resurrected his ruined career, united his shattered party, and come back to capture the presidency.

Then He succeeded where liberalism’s best and brightest had failed. He ended the Vietnam War with honor, brought all our troops and POWs home, opened up China, negotiated historic arms agreements with Moscow, ended the draft, desegregated southern schools, enacted the 18-year-old vote, created the EPA, OSHA and National Cancer Institute, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with a 61% landslide.

Even as Watergate broke, he ordered the airlift that saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War, for which Golda Meir called him the best friend Israel ever had.

His enemies were beside themselves with rage and resentment.

Nixon’s great failing was in not realizing that in the city to which we came in 1969, he was not dealing with garden variety snakes, but with vipers.

 

[Surrealistik]

Why do the leftwing politicians and voters who support them even in this day and age hate Nixon so?

As a freshman congressman, he had exposed the wartime treason of liberal icon Alger Hiss. He had filleted Adlai Stevenson. Defeated in 1960 by JFK, after an unprecedented turnout from Mayor Richard Daley’s graveyard wards, and quitting politics after losing the governorship of California, Nixon had resurrected his ruined career, united his shattered party, and come back to capture the presidency.

Then He succeeded where liberalism’s best and brightest had failed. He ended the Vietnam War with honor, brought all our troops and POWs home, opened up China, negotiated historic arms agreements with Moscow, ended the draft, desegregated southern schools, enacted the 18-year-old vote, created the EPA, OSHA and National Cancer Institute, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with a 61% landslide.

Even as Watergate broke, he ordered the airlift that saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War, for which Golda Meir called him the best friend Israel ever had.

His enemies were beside themselves with rage and resentment.

Nixon’s great failing was in not realizing that in the city to which we came in 1969, he was not dealing with garden variety snakes, but with vipers.

First of all, ending the Vietnam War with honour is a bit of a stretch given he sought to and did prolong it for political advantage: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/

Opening up and normalizing trade with China wasn't an accomplishment, it was one of the most deleterious foreign policy blunders ever made by an American President as we've come to so clearly see, likely motivated by the greed and pressure of US corporations who looked at that exceedingly cheap labour pool with dollar signs in their eyes given the then strength and high relative expense of domestic labour.

Honestly the infamous Watergate scandal was among his tamer missteps by a large margin.

What good Nixon achieved, which I can acknowledge, was easily overshadowed by him laying the essential foundations for our greatest modern enemy.

 

[Antiwar]

It's more than that, but even so, since Republicans are always saying that the Democrat run cities are failing etc and blaming the democratic leaders of those places for those problems shouldn't Republicans Al's be giving those democratic leaders credit for producing 70% of US GDP?

Or do you all want to have it both ways?

You all seem to be saying democrats are responsible for all the bad stuff in those places but none of the good stuff?

Kind of lame don't you think?

Plus, do you think it is a coincidence that all of America's powerhouse economic engines happen to be in places with a long history of being run by democrats?

With respect:

I'm not conservative nor a Democrat.

I doubt all 20 are "Democrat run."

 

[Tigerace117]

Ok, the civil war started by communists was brutal, so what?

No, the civil war was started by the terrorists we supported, who proceeded to murder vast numbers of innocent people while failing miserably when it came to actual fighting.

 

[NolanVoyd]

With respect:

I'm not conservative nor a Democrat.

I doubt all 20 are "Democrat run."

Yet 70% of America's GDP comes from counties that vote democrat.

 

[Tigerace117]

Ok so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.

That doesn’t disprove what I wrote.

Why? Germany was originally many different states and splitting Germany into the states extent preunification should’ve been done post world war 2 anyway, there shouldn’t be a single German state more powerful than France and Poland

In fact, it was a minor miracle that things didn’t turn into a bloodbath, and Bush the Elder deserves lots of credit for that.

Well over a century ago. Arguing that artificially carving the country up further, without even the boogeyman of communism to “justify” such actions, would have worked is nonsensical.

Gee, that’s on France and Poland then.

 

[Tigerace117]

Carter was terrible because he equated good dictatorships like the one in Chile headed by hero General Pinochet with bad ones like Pol Pot who were much worse. Dictatorship to stop communism is an affirmative good

Pinochet literally sponsored a Nazi thug (who was also child rapist) for years, in return for the man running one of his torture camps.

Paul Schäfer - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And that’s not even getting into the numerous innocent people his regime murdered.

Calling him a “hero” is a joke.

 

[Antiwar]

Yet 70% of America's GDP comes from counties that vote democrat.

With respect:

The correlation is very likely population density. Then there's location

It's an elitist attitude, similar to conservatives acting like they work more than anyone else, as if working more and GDP density are good things.

I saw that map of the GDP densest places and I saw massive inequality, and neoliberal economics.

 

[MamboDervish]

Joe Lieberman set the Democratic Party back a decade for stone walling real health reform. A shame. But, I’ll take it. It’s an improvement over what we had

And no surprise. All politics is local, and Joe Lieberman represented Connecticut, the Insurance Capitol of the universe.

 

[slick]

First of all, ending the Vietnam War with honour is a bit of a stretch given he sought to and did prolong it for political advantage: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/

Opening up and normalizing trade with China wasn't an accomplishment, it was one of the most deleterious foreign policy blunders ever made by an American President as we've come to so clearly see, likely motivated by the greed and pressure of US corporations who looked at that exceedingly cheap labour pool with dollar signs in their eyes given the then strength and high relative expense of domestic labour.

Honestly the infamous Watergate scandal was among his tamer missteps by a large margin.

What good Nixon achieved, which I can acknowledge, was easily overshadowed by him laying the essential foundations for our greatest modern enemy.

Up to recent times Nixon opening up China was generally considered a major successful accomplishment.
Now that after 50 years or so of administrations allowed China to become our major adversary I get your drift.

Richard Nixon was hardly a role model, overall; he was a devious president who encouraged
illegal actions by his subordinates. But he was a clever strategist never more so than
in the opening to China that culminated in his February 1972 visit to Beijing. Yet even Nixon,
the practiced hypocrite, might not dare to buck conformity today.

looking back, to see how carefully Nixon prepared the way. In April 1971, he approved
a trip to China by the U.S. national pingpong team, announced a plan to ease travel
and trade restrictions, and said that one of his long-term goals was the normalization
of relations with China. The Chinese responded that spring, through Pakistan, that
Nixon himself would be welcome in Beijing. Nixon initially sent Kissinger instead,
on a July 1971 secret mission that was facilitated by the Pakistanis. According to
Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose, Kissinger sent a one-word coded message that his
mission had succeeded: "Eureka."

Nixon departed on his own journey to Beijing on Feb. 17, 1972. His words to Mao Zedong,
quoted by Ambrose, are a testimonial to the value of changing course when it's advantageous
to do so: You are one who sees when an opportunity comes, and then knows that you must
seize the hour and seize the day, Nixon said, paraphrasing Maos own words. The statement was just as true of Nixon.
Before leaving China on Feb. 28, Nixon said at a banquet in his honor: This was the week
that changed the world. That was a bit of Nixonian amour-propre, but he was right.

Great presidential decisions are often ones that escape the boundaries of what a leader
may have said in the past, or what his political advisers recommend, or what the conventional
wisdom of the day seems to supports. That was true of Nixon in China, Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis,
Roosevelt in the Great Depression, Lincoln in the Civil War.

American domestic realities are proving to be a major restraint on the U.S. pursuing
the kind of robust, proactive foreign policy needed to contain two major near-peer
and/or outright peer competitors Russia & Chuna. The only way to do so is to employ
the type of creative diplomacy that has not been seen in Washington D.C. since Richard Nixon left the White House.

 

[NolanVoyd]

With respect:

The correlation is very likely population density. Then there's location

It's an elitist attitude, similar to conservatives acting like they work more than anyone else, as if working more and GDP density are good things.

I saw that map of the GDP densest places and I saw massive inequality, and neoliberal economics.

Doesn't change the fact that 70% of US GDP comes from counties run by democrats.

Then there is this.

• Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents
• Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)
• Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)
• Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents
• The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations

Want A Better Economy? History Says Vote Democrat!

Which party will be better for U.S. economy? Some historical facts on the economy worth reviewing.

www.forbes.com

 

[EMNofSeattle]

P

In fact, it was a minor miracle that things didn’t turn into a bloodbath, and Bush the Elder deserves lots of credit for that.

Well over a century ago. Arguing that artificially carving the country up further, without even the boogeyman of communism to “justify” such actions, would have worked is nonsensical.

The Donbas Rus And Crimeans would like to have a word with you. The entire nation of Ukraine is an artificial construction. And now America has decided we need to impose massive hardships on American citizens, so that the Ruthenians can control this artificial country. It would’ve been better just to carve this stuff up back in 1990 and be done with it.

Gee, that’s on France and Poland then.

It’s on the world really. Germany should’ve been divided into like 10 countries after World War II. And also, in addition to dividing them into 10 countries we should’ve knocked down all their industry and made them a permanent pastoral society. Germany should’ve been brought so low that mothers in Bolivia could shied their children that they were lucky they weren’t born in Germany.

 

[Surrealistik]

Up to recent times Nixon opening up China was generally considered a major successful accomplishment.
Now that after 50 years or so of administrations allowed China to become our major adversary I get your drift.

Richard Nixon was hardly a role model, overall; he was a devious president who encouraged
illegal actions by his subordinates. But he was a clever strategist never more so than
in the opening to China that culminated in his February 1972 visit to Beijing. Yet even Nixon,
the practiced hypocrite, might not dare to buck conformity today.

looking back, to see how carefully Nixon prepared the way. In April 1971, he approved
a trip to China by the U.S. national pingpong team, announced a plan to ease travel
and trade restrictions, and said that one of his long-term goals was the normalization
of relations with China. The Chinese responded that spring, through Pakistan, that
Nixon himself would be welcome in Beijing. Nixon initially sent Kissinger instead,
on a July 1971 secret mission that was facilitated by the Pakistanis. According to
Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose, Kissinger sent a one-word coded message that his
mission had succeeded: "Eureka."

Nixon departed on his own journey to Beijing on Feb. 17, 1972. His words to Mao Zedong,
quoted by Ambrose, are a testimonial to the value of changing course when it's advantageous
to do so: You are one who sees when an opportunity comes, and then knows that you must
seize the hour and seize the day, Nixon said, paraphrasing Maos own words. The statement was just as true of Nixon.
Before leaving China on Feb. 28, Nixon said at a banquet in his honor: This was the week
that changed the world. That was a bit of Nixonian amour-propre, but he was right.

Great presidential decisions are often ones that escape the boundaries of what a leader
may have said in the past, or what his political advisers recommend, or what the conventional
wisdom of the day seems to supports. That was true of Nixon in China, Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis,
Roosevelt in the Great Depression, Lincoln in the Civil War.

American domestic realities are proving to be a major restraint on the U.S. pursuing
the kind of robust, proactive foreign policy needed to contain two major near-peer
and/or outright peer competitors Russia & Chuna. The only way to do so is to employ
the type of creative diplomacy that has not been seen in Washington D.C. since Richard Nixon left the White House.

Nixon and Kissinger's commitment to liberalize trade with China betrays a deep naivety, lack of foresight, a Machiavellian willingness to throw American workers under the bus for the sake of the country's corporate elite, or some combination thereof; no matter which poison you pick among these, it is bitter and unflattering indeed; there are no good options here. Adding further insult to injury, he extracted no real and material concessions from the Chinese whatsoever.

Moreover, while neoliberals and free trade advocates of all stripes that were amoral or who otherwise drank their own insipid Koolaide may have imagined that it was a major successful accomplishment, that a peaceful democratic transition away from CCP was always just around the corner despite compelling and ever mounting evidence to the contrary (even after decades of further entrenchment, including the Tiananmen Square Massacre that should have disenchanted even the most delusional neoliberal), other more clever and realistic analysts, scholars and intellectuals understood that all such trade normalization ultimately did was enrich and thereby empower and entrench the Chinese communist party. As if to confirm this, the CCP conspicuously and openly leaned into economic growth as a fundamental stabilizer of the regime, both in terms of soft power (social covenants in trading political freedom for economic prosperity) and in affording the means and technology to engineer ever more sophisticated surveillance states; again things these intellectuals understood and correctly anticipated before Nixon's disastrous and frankly stupid policies on China were even enacted.

This was not a great decision or achievement; it was not 4 dimensional chess. It was explicitly the opposite: a foreign policy blunder of epic and glaring proportions that will resonate for the ages, and does so now far more loudly than ever before.

 

[Tigerace117]

P

The Donbas Rus And Crimeans would like to have a word with you. The entire nation of Ukraine is an artificial construction. And now America has decided we need to impose massive hardships on American citizens, so that the Ruthenians can control this artificial country. It would’ve been better just to carve this stuff up back in 1990 and be done with it.

It’s on the world really. Germany should’ve been divided into like 10 countries after World War II. And also, in addition to dividing them into 10 countries we should’ve knocked down all their industry and made them a permanent pastoral society. Germany should’ve been brought so low that mothers in Bolivia could shied their children that they were lucky they weren’t born in Germany.

.
Except nobody knew in 1990 that anyone would decide the area would be worth fighting over, so “carving it up” preemptively would have been ridiculous.

All of which would have been seen as totally artificial and lasted only as long as Western troops were willing to use lethal force to prevent them from unifying.

In other words, you want the Morgenthau Plan. Which was a colossally bad idea and near single handed prolonged the war, and thankfully was never implemented.

Stalin would have laughed his ass off if we’d tried. You’d have people fleeing TO East Germany. That’s how bad the plan was.

 

[Antiwar]

Doesn't change the fact that 70% of US GDP comes from counties run by democrats.

Then there is this.

• Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents
• Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declined under Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)
• Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)
• Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents
• The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations

With respect:

The environment is more important in the era I'm surviving in. Both dominant political parties are there to perpetuate the status quo of wealth and power based on domination and destruction.

The next thing they both support is nuclear weapons and US militarism.

 

[NolanVoyd]

With respect:

The environment is more important in the era I'm surviving in.

Well then the democrats are the far better party for you.

 

[PIPEWRENCH]

I would have to say Eisenhower in my lifetime. I think we need projects like the highway system being started today. Unfortunately we start a lot of great projects with potential only to see the next president stop it and start anew never accomplishing anything but throwing away our tax dollars anymore.

 

[EMNofSeattle]

.
Except nobody knew in 1990 that anyone would decide the area would be worth fighting over, so “carving it up” preemptively would have been ridiculous.

I don’t think that is true at all.

All of which would have been seen as totally artificial and lasted only as long as Western troops were willing to use lethal force to prevent them from unifying.

There is no Ukrainian nation to unify. It’s a desperate geographical area of several ethnicities that slightly favors one of them, the Ruthenians.

In other words, you want the Morgenthau Plan. Which was a colossally bad idea and near single handed prolonged the war, and thankfully was never implemented.

After we disarmed them there was literally nothing they could’ve done about it. Maybe they could find another failed Austrian art student, but without any heavy industry to speak of they could never have been a threat again of any kind.

Stalin would have laughed his ass off if we’d tried. You’d have people fleeing TO East Germany. That’s how bad the plan was.

As if he would’ve been given a choice in the matter.

 

[EMNofSeattle]

I would have to say Eisenhower in my lifetime. I think we need projects like the highway system being started today. Unfortunately we start a lot of great projects with potential only to see the next president stop it and start anew never accomplishing anything but throwing away our tax dollars anymore.

The interstate highway system was a terrible idea. It created large amounts of suburban sprawl, led to a breakdown in communities, and led to a destruction of America efficient rail net work.

 

[Tigerace117]

I don’t think that is true at all.

There is no Ukrainian nation to unify. It’s a desperate geographical area of several ethnicities that slightly favors one of them, the Ruthenians.

After we disarmed them there was literally nothing they could’ve done about it. Maybe they could find another failed Austrian art student, but without any heavy industry to speak of they could never have been a threat again of any kind.

As if he would’ve been given a choice in the matter.

You not believing it doesn’t change the facts.

Likewise, YOU not seeing it as a nation doesn’t change the fact that that’s what it is.

Gee bud, unless you are going to have US troops firing into crowds of peaceful protesters demanding reunification there’s nothing the US could do to stop it. None of your “ten different states” would be seen as having any legitimacy whatsoever by the common people, and when that happens a state is automatically doomed.

Oh, he certainly wouldn’t have agreed to follow your plan, especially when it became obvious how laughably stupid it was.

In one fell swoop you’d make East Germany the dominant German nation.

Truly a brilliant plan

 

[slick]

Nixon and Kissinger's commitment to liberalize trade with China betrays a deep naivety, lack of foresight, a Machiavellian willingness to throw American workers under the bus for the sake of the country's corporate elite, or some combination thereof; no matter which poison you pick among these, it is bitter and unflattering indeed; there are no good options here. Adding further insult to injury, he extracted no real and material concessions from the Chinese whatsoever.

Moreover, while neoliberals and free trade advocates of all stripes that were amoral or who otherwise drank their own insipid Koolaide that a peaceful democratic transition away from CCP was always just around the corner despite compelling and ever mounting evidence to the contrary (even after decades of further entrenchment, including the Tiananmen Square Massacre that should have disenchanted even the most delusional neoliberal), imagined that it was a major successful accomplishment, other more clever and realistic analysts, scholars and intellectuals understood that all such trade normalization ultimately did was enrich and thereby empower and entrench the Chinese communist party. As if to confirm this, the CCP conspicuously and openly leaned into economic growth as a fundamental stabilizer of the regime, both in terms of soft power (social covenants in trading political freedom for economic prosperity) and in affording the means and technology to engineer ever more sophisticated surveillance states; again things these intellectuals understood and correctly anticipated before Nixon's disastrous and frankly stupid policies on China were even enacted.

This was not a great decision or achievement; it was not 4 dimensional chess. It was explicitly the opposite: a foreign policy blunder of epic and glaring proportions that will resonate for the ages, and does so now far more loudly than ever before.

I agree that the globalists of the last 50 years allowed our huge industrial dominance to simply vanish. Not even someone as keen on foreign policy as Nixon could have seen that coming. Decades of “free trade absolutism” by America’s elites, “where we unilaterally disarm while our opponent commits economic warfare against us,” have undermined American national security, decimated the U.S. manufacturing base, and betrayed middle and working class Americans.

That was Trump's most powerful talking point & even Sanders on the left felt the same way. Blaming Nixon
for the frailty of administrations afterwards belies historical evidence.

I can see why the left hates Trump he played the left like a Stradivarius, but why some such as you to this day
try to minimize the wealth of Nixon's foreign policy expertise is baffling! Nixon was an enlightened conservative
who threw bones to the elites like ending the draft, desegregating southern schools, enacting the 18-year-old vote, creating the EPA, OSHA and National Cancer Institute. I think he also allowed Washington DC to receive 3 electoral
votes which they utilized to get the 3 of the 17 electoral against him in 1972 during Nixon's huge plurality the most in American presidential history of 18 million votes!

Here's an idea: You stick to your version of Nixon & I'll stick to mine!
Even CSPAN which conpartmentizes rating the presidents into cubbyholes rates Nixon in the top quarter
of all in foreign policy while his over all rating I recall was around 27 out of 45 rated.

 

[PIPEWRENCH]

The interstate highway system was a terrible idea. It created large amounts of suburban sprawl, led to a breakdown in communities, and led to a destruction of America efficient rail net work.

I will agree we need a new rail system. It was the truckers unions and the fact that our rail system like the postal system just couldn't keep up with changing times. I would love to see a new rail system for freight started. Clearly trucks moving freight is extremely inefficient.
It is also time to start a new high speed mass transit system as well. I can drive from NE PA to DC in 5 hours. By plane it cost more and takes longer not including renting a car when I get there. Our train and air travel has turned into a nightmare.

 

[HikerGuy83]

Reagan.

I'd take more of people like him and less of those like Obama and Biden.

Clinton was O.K.

My portfolio has soared under the GOP.

Under Obama and Biden, it has suffered.

 

[Antiwar]

Well then the democrats are the far better party for you.

With respect:

The Republican Lite Party is not for me.