Who's the greatest President between 1945-2000?

[CubsFan1982]

Poll question: Who's the greatest President between 1945-2000?

In honor of Presidents' Day, and because I'm a history major and I like it, so there, tell me who you consider to be the greatest American President since WWII to the end of the 20th century. I would have to pick Truman because he won the Cold War with policies such as the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, the Berlin Airlift, etc. Who do you pick?

[Fenris]

1. Lyndon Johnson

Our most liberal president in terms of domestic social programs - more liberal than FDR even.

[Maddy McCall]

3. I second that.

[demosincebirth]

4. Yup, he pushed through the Civil Rights bills and I believe the

medicare bills.

[Maddy McCall]

6. And so much more...

Head Start, Medicaid, pro-environment policies (roadless wilderness areas), Higher Education Act, HUD, AFDC, Food Stamp Act, Job Corp, Open Housing Act, appointed first black cabinet member in history, and so, so, so, much more.

And then Clinton helped Republicans start knocking chips in the Great Society when he implemented Welfare Reform.

[Seabiscuit]

14. ...all of which were JFK bills, which Johnson inherited.

JFK would have presented them had he not been assassinated. They weren't Johnsons's idea.

[Maddy McCall]

16. I don't agree.

It took the summer of '64 to make the CRAs viable. And the other "Great Society" programs were absolutely LBJ's, not JFK's. JFK was a centrist. LBJ was a liberal of the first ilk.

[NNadir]

23. Kennedy had a very diffident record on Civil Rights.

Kennedy has to be the most over-rated President of the twentieth century. Johnson certainly failed at undoing many of Kennedy's screw-ups, and he made a mess of Kennedy's bungled adventure in Vietnam, but if for nothing else, Johnson should be remembered for the courage of the Civil Rights act.

It would have never happened without Johnson.

Chrissake's, when King gave the "I have a dream speech," Kennedy sat on his sybartic ass three blocks away and watched the whole thing on television wondering to himself if any of it might make him look bad.

[Seabiscuit]

33. Well, it wasn't Johnson who sent federal troops to Ole Miss

See: http://www.jfklibrary.org/meredith/jm.html

After Mississippi Governor Barnett defied a Supreme Court order and used state troopers to block James Meredith's enrollment in college at "Ole Miss" JFK sent federal troops on September 30, 1962, which escorted James Meredith into the building so he could enroll. Thanks to JFK's actions, James Meredith attended his first class at Ole Miss the next day, October 1, 1962.

And read my other post about Vietnam before falesly accusing JFK of a "bungled adventure in Vietnam".

Your blurb about JFK wondering if MLK might make him look bad is pure garbaaaage.

Please get your history straight before bashing JFK.

[Seabiscuit]

26. Sorry, but you're both wrong.

JFK created the civil rights legislation that Johnson introduced to Congress after JFK died. It was Johnson's tribute to JFK.

Some people also think JFK began the Vietnam War by sending "advisors" there. The fact is, Eisenhower committed our troops and advisors while the French were there before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu and withdrew, leaving American forces and advisors there. Then the Eisenhower administration took advantage of the "demilitarized zone" and fostered a puppet government in Saigon run by a Japanese tyrant named Diem, and pretended there was such a thing as "South Vietnam".

JFK inherited that mess. He was already withdrawing the advisors from Vietnam when he was assassinated, and he was assassinated in part because he had a definite timetable for withdrawing every last advisor.

I was 18 when JFK was assassinated.

[CubsFan1982]

27. In all fairness...

Politically, Kennedy never would have been able to push civil rights the way Johnson could. Kennedy was and would have been seen as a Yankee pushing equality on the South - shades of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Johnson, however, the prototypical good ol' boy, could come at it as a fellow Southerner and make it more palatable for the southern Democrats to swallow. There's nothing a Southerner resents more than a Northerner telling him how to live - look at Edwards' reaction to Dean's Confederate flag comment.

I give credit to both men - Kennedy for finally coming around towards the end of his life to make more of a commitment to civil rights, and to Johnson for getting it done.

[Seabiscuit]

29. I like your posts, but I don't think you were around back then - you're

merely speculating.

[CubsFan1982]

31. Sorry, no.

If you look at history (this is my career, I eat, sleep, and breathe this shit), you'll see that whenever the North has tried to push something on the South, it's led to crisis. Start with Hamilton and the First Bank of the US. Jefferson and his friends had a fucking conniption, saying the Constitution didn't allow it, and boom! you have the first constitutional crisis. Same goes for the Nullification crisis of the 1830's, the whole middle third of the 19th century, Reconstruction, integration, voting rights, the whole nine yards. The North tried to push it, the South had a fit. The only reason the civil rights bills passed was because Johnson could approach it from the point of view of the South saying "look, I know how you feel about this issue, but we've got to get this part of our history behind us, it's holding us back". Kennedy NEVER could have done that. But like I said, towards the end of his life, Kennedy had come around full circle - hence the civil rights legislation he wrote and proposed. It was his death and Johnson's skills that got the legislation passed.

[Seabiscuit]

34. See my post about James Meredith. JFK was pro-active on civil rights

in the south in 1962, over a year before he was assassinated, and just 18 months into his administration. That was something he and Bobby did on their own without any help from Johnson.

I disagree that JFK "never could have done that" re: getting his civil rights bills through Congress. Sure, Johnson was perceived as a southerner, but it's pure speculation that only he, and not JFK could have accomplished getting the civil rights legislation passed. Had JFK lived, Johnson never would have been President, and although JFK probably would have used Johnson's influence in Congress, JFK would, IMO, certainly have pushed and prevailed re: the civil rights bills. Of course, we're both in the realm of speculation here, because JFK didn't live long enough.

[NNadir]

32. Sorry, but this is mythology.

Kennedy stumbled into things. His incompetence at the Vienna summit with N. Khruschev resulted in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis because Khruschev couldn't believe that such a twit could be taken seriously.

Kennedy's father and his brother were dedicated cold warriors - for chrissake's Bobby Kennedy named Joseph McCarthy (yes THAT Joesph McCarthy) god-father to his first child. The ONLY Democratic senator not to vote for McCarthy's censure was - yes - John F. Kennedy. One of Kennedy's closest personal friends, to the extent that such a self-serving and dishonest person had friends, was none other than his 1960 opponent, Richard M. Nixon.

Kennedy made his run for President in 1960 based on a cold warrior's (wrong and completely dishonest) claim of a nonexistent "missile gap."

His dalliances with women gave the blackmailer J. Edgar Hoover free reign to supress civil liberties and to engage in extraconstituional oppression and suppression of Civil Rights.

Kennedy repeatedly tried to quash the March on Washington because of concern that any failure on his part to crush it would cost him southern votes.

Kennedy was a loser and a disgrace to liberalism. His entire legacy is dependent on specious and insupportable claims about what he planned. Zero is based on what he actually accomplished.

Although she very reluctantly campaigned for him, Eleanor Roosevelt despised him, the whole family, in fact. Given that Mrs. Roosevelt has to have been one of the greatest spirits of the twentieth century, this probably says all you need to know about John F. Kennedy.

[Seabiscuit]

35. I don't know why you hate JFK so much, but what a pile of distortions!

e.g. Eleanor Roosevelt had an ongoing feud with JFK's father (mostly about foreign policy), but NOT with JFK!

I could go on and on and address and prove wrong every one of your vile smears of JFK, but what a monumental waste of time!

It certainly wouldn't change your mind, which is obviously made up, as you fill your posts with such venomous emotion.

[NNadir]

36. This is from the site for Mrs. Roosevelt's personal papers.

From the historical background section:

"Eleanor Roosevelt opposed Kennedy's nomination in 1956 because she thought he avoided taking a stand on the Senate censure of Joseph McCarthy and on enforcing civil rights legislation and court decrees. While she detested Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee, she refused to campaign for Kennedy until the final days of the 1960 campaign."

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/erpintrob.xml

I would defy you to "go on and on" and prove anything I said to be wrong, but you're right, it wouldn't make any difference. My mind IS very much made up, because I read history.

Kennedy was a fraud.

[Seabiscuit]

39. "Kennedy was a fraud"... OK, end of discussion. You're irrational.

[NNadir]

41. Whatever. I hate to mix religion and politics. I stand by the statement.

[Sean Reynolds]

38. It would have all came out if Kennedy hadn't been killed.

He probably would have won a second term, only because he was obsessed with curbing civil rights to reap the benefits of southern voting. But in his second term, the civil rights movement would have paralyzed his ability to lead the nation. Kennedy was an average president at best and a complete failure at worst.

If he had been elected to a second term, the civil rights movement would have faltered and probably would have been set back a decade or two. Not only that, but the whole 'Great Society' would never have been created and the gap between the rich and poor, which was widening by the 1960s, would have expanded to unbelievable proportions.

We only idolize Kennedy because he got his head blown off. People actually believe he was a martyr of sorts for freedom.

Which wasn't the case.

He is only known as a great because it's pretty blasphemous to speak ill of a man that was assassinated. In reality if he had done his two terms and died of old age, we'd all have a different opinion of him.

I'm glad the guy got his head blown off, at least Johnson became president and actually did some movement not only in the form of civil rights, but in the poverty movement.

[Seabiscuit]

42. If it weren't for your hammer and sickle I might mistake you for a KKKer.

"I'm glad the guy got his head blown off..." pretty much says it all about you and your fanatically insane posturing about one of the best Presidents this country has ever known.

[LSdemocrat]

8. However, the tragedy of Vietnam destroyed the liberal coalition

and eventually led to ascention of conservatism.

The blame for this, in my opinion, lies squarely on LBJ's shoulders. Not only did the issue of Vietnam shatter the Democratic consensus, it also diverted federal funding from liberal social programs, ultimately limiting their effectiveness and allowing later conservatives to win in campaigns against those very underfunded programs.

[Maddy McCall]

17. It was not just the Vietnam war. Much of what destroyed the "liberal...

coalition" happened because of domestic inequity.

But if we want to talk about what LBJ inherited, then we can say that he inherited Vietnam from JFK.

[Osamasux]

20. and we can say JFK inherited Vietnam from Ike.

LBJ owned the Gulf of Tonkin lies and the escalation it allowed. Therefore he owned the worst of Vietnam.

[LSdemocrat]

22. After the Tonkin Gulf resolution, the Vietnam war was Johnson's.

What Johnson inherited from Kennedy were a bunch of advisors aiding the South Vietnamese. Kennedy did not put US prestige on the line in Vietnam. By escalating the war, Johnson did precisely that.

The Vietnam War both created disillusionment on the left and sapped funding from Johnson's domestic agenda, leading to the "domestic inequity" you refer to.

[sir_captain]

18. Another vote of agreement

If not for Vietnam, I believe LBJ would be in the Lincoln/FDR pantheon--at least for me, anyway.

[CO Liberal]

24. I Voted for LBJ...

...because he was the most effective at getting legislation passed. As a former Senate Majority Leader, he knew how the system worked and to to make it work to his advantage.

[Blue_In_AK]

30. If LBJ just hadn't had that pesky war to deal with... n/t

[Dave Sund]

2. Truman

[rwenos]

7. Truman

America became a super power under Truman. He had the hard calls to make: dropping the atom bomb; passing and implementing the Marshall Plan (in the face of violent RW opposition -- they called it the "Marshall Giveway"); revolutions in China and Eastern Europe; dealing with Joe McCarty; Chinese invasion of North Korea. Trouble everywhere, no easy choices.

[KitchenWitch]

9. Welcome to DU

[LSdemocrat]

12. I think the Roosevelt-Truman era was the greatest in US history

Accomplishments:

-Saving the US from fascism in the 1930's
-Reforming capitalism with the New Deal
-Saving the world from fascism in WWII
-Transforming the US into a world superpower
-Saved Turkey, Western Europe, Japan, and S. Korea from communism through the Marshall plan, which also earned the US decades worth of goodwill
-Integration of the armed forces
-Assertion of civilian control over the armed forces

[CubsFan1982]

5. OK, who're the wise guys that voted for Ford and Reagan?

:P

[KitchenWitch]

10. I can conceive a Ford vote, but Reagan

Ford came into the administration during an awful time, and really tried to heal the country. He did not accomplish that, but at least he tried.

[The Sheik]

11. Alan Keyes.

[KitchenWitch]

13. yah, best prez that never got elected!

[BikeWriter]

37. Your vote don't count. You're gone. Hee hee hee!

[saltpoint]

15. Voted JFK --

-- because of the psychological impact of having a young president following eight years of droozy Dwight.

His political impact was minimal, granted, but the psychological impact was considerable. He was a culturally significant leader at a time when Americans were patting themselves on the back with a we-won-the-war-goody-for-us attitude, and buying crap at Sears when they should have been reading Allen Ginsberg and listening to a lot more jazz.

Two other people here tonight vote this way: 1 for Truman and 1 for Bill Clinton.

[Osamasux]

21. JFK really got to show his stuff during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It's a shame he didn't get the other seven years he earned to really write his place in history.

[Maddy McCall]

19. By the way, you need to drop the period after the S in HST's name.

S was his middle name. It stood for nothing. Therefore, no period, because it isn't abbreviating anything.

:-)

[CubsFan1982]

25. Actually, it can be spelled with a period or without.

Here's a cool link that answers that little dillemma. :D

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/speriod.htm

[Blue_In_AK]

28. Harry S Truman

"The buck stops here." How refreshing.

ed. to remove the . after S -- okay, I did not know that.

[WI_DEM]

40. I don't think we have had a truly great president since FDR

and very few great presidents period. Of the men on this list, Harry Truman was the one near great president.