Would It Be Fair To Say That FDR, Clinton and Reagan...

[THUNDER HANDS]

Were the best liberal, moderate and conservative presidents of the 20th Century?

If you think of "best" as meaning, did the most of any president for his ideology.

FDR was liberal, and you know what he did.

Clinton was a moderate, and we just lived through him. Now, one could say that JFK was a moderate, and he was better than Clinton, but he wasn't president for as long as Clinton was. That counts.

And Reagan, though despised here, was probably a better president than Herbert Hoover and I'm not counting Nixon here because Nixon, by today's standards, would be a moderate Republican.

So, what do you think. Fair assessment, or am I misplacing somebody?

[FlashHarry]

1. I'll take Eisenhower over Reagan any day. N/T

[JohnKleeb]

2. so would I Harry but Ike was no conservative he was a moderate

[FlashHarry]

5. True. I thought I could slip that one by, since he was GOP!

Caught me!

[Snow]

3. What about Ike? I'd count him as conservative, and even with

his flaws, esp not standing up to McCarthy, far better than Reagan.

[THUNDER HANDS]

4. he was moderate

by today's standards. Alas, a lot of people who 30 years ago would have been considered conservatives are now moderates. Who knows, by 2030 Clinton could be considered a flaming liberal.

[rucky]

6. Why wait 'til 2030?

www.freerepublic.com


:puke:

[Snow]

8. Okay, then, Ford, dammit!

Anybody but Reagan. Taft, even!

[Faygo Kid]

21. Ford was a moderate, too

Can you imagine anybody as centrist as Gerald Ford going anywhere in today's GOP? He was a raving leftist compared to today. Kinda liked the guy. So shoot me.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

7. Reagan: popular? yes A good president? no

[THUNDER HANDS]

11. well, from a poll numbers standpoint

He wasn't all that popular. Never got above 65%, but never got below 40% - pretty much the same as Clinton, except Clinton did get into the 70's.

He wasn't a great president, not a good one either. But like I said, better than Hoover.

[Goldmund]

9. I can't dig on Reagan

Look at the long-term effects of his presidency. I have this quasi-theory that the march of what is today called "neoconservatism" started with the assasination of JFK. It's a big, sweeping generalization, I know -- but still, I think that there is enough consistency in the rightist forces in the US since the mid-60s -- and not enough in common with the Right before then -- that history a few hundred years from now will view them under a single, overarching, umbrella.

Well, Nixon's defeat threatened to stop them in their tracks. He became the face of the Right for a while. They laid back for a few years and refined their propaganda, and then came Reagan, lifted by the wave of endless smearing of Carter (and no matter how hard you try, you won't convince me he was a bad president) and Iran-contra, and succesfully managed to put a new face on the image of neocons; he re-opened the door for them. That was his main mission -- to put some whip-cream and a cherry on top of the neocon image. His policies were just as savage, he was just as corrupt, just as reactionary; but he delivered a prettier package.

To make a long story short: no Reagan, no *.

[AP]

10. The last good conservative was TR. Best moderate: JFK, Best: FDR

just my opinion.

[THUNDER HANDS]

14. conservative does not necessarily mean Republican

TR was moderate by today's standards, which we have to use because conservatism has grown and evolved into something it wasn't back in the beginning of the 20th century.

[AP]

17. TR was a conservative. He only looked progressive when you compared him to

the Hannah/McKinley fascists.

TR only regulated the markets so that they could truly be free. Get the picture?

And his foreign policy was most definitely conservative.

[charlie]

16. I was wondering if anyone

was going to mention neither-fish-nor-fowl Teddy. The conservatives claim him, the neo-cons love his strongarm internationalism, but neither would abide his domestic progressivism. Strange brew, that one.

[mlawson]

12. A good US prez does not decorate SS graves,

support RW thugs in Latin America, cut housing spending by 75%, wink and nod at the religious wrong, etc etc.

[sandnsea]

13. Nixon was better than Reagan

At least he passed the Clean Air Act. He also made it mandatory for food stamps to be implemented nationwide. Despite all that was bad about Nixon, the little good he did was a hell of alot more than the nothing good from Reagan.

[THUNDER HANDS]

15. Nixon is also a moderate

based on what he did while in office. On balance, he was moderate compared to Reagan and Hoover and Bush II.

[AP]

18. Nixon had contempt for about 99% of the US Constitution. Not a good thing

if you're sworn to uphold it.

However, he did favor higher minimum wage, protections for workers in the workplace, environmental protections, and a few other decent things, which, many say, was the product of his childhood; his father worked in a factory making streetcars and moved the family to CA for a better life. Maybe if his father had moved the family to Vietnam, Nixon wouldn't have been such a genocidal, imperialist maniac.

But, you know, the only way a guy like that is going to reach the top of the Republican party is if he's a closet authoritarian.

[sandnsea]

20. Then we haven't had a liberal

If people are comparing JFK, Clinton and Nixon as all cut from the same cloth, then FDR is the moderate and Reagan is just right wing extremism.

[Wetzelbill]

19. sounds right to me... in particular I'll comment on Reagan

Look at our foreign policy right now. The Reagan mafia are current stalwarts in Bush's PNAC groups. Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc. These guys are all at their best when confronted by a looming powerful enemy -Communism-, so much so that they were lost during the Clinton years because they had nobody to fight. Now they created Terrorism as the big enemy and have run with it. In fact, the concept of Terror, for our practical purposes, was a propaganda myth created by the Reagan-Thatcher administrations to further hard-right agendas. The current version of 'Terror' fighters are Cold War holdovers still clinging to the Reaganite version of domestic and foreign policies. This includes the incorporation of supply-side economics and the obliteration of Keynesian government. Also of note is Reagan as a presence. He was largely a public figure and not a policy maker at all. He was simply the face of an administration that effectively ran without him. Now who does that sound like? GWB? Nah....

Reagan was a terrible president, but he was an election winning machine and, far and away, the most influential in pushing the new Neo-Con type of leadership. He ushered in the evolution to what has become the PNAC led government we have today. Again, he was not the best Republican president by any stretch of the imagination, but he did the most in bringing to light his cabals agenda and that's very evident today.