Who's the most "Under-rated" Republican President (20th Century)

[WI_DEM]

Poll question: Who's the most "Under-rated" Republican President (20th Century)

[baba]

1. Nixon was practically a socialist

compared to some of those other guys.

[Melodybe]

3. Nixon!#@!@# Are you kidding me?

I am so sick of republicans trying to whitewash Nixon.

He did one thing that I consider good, he started the EPA.

That's it, opening up trade with China is such a joke. I am so glad that we started doing business with the world's worst human right's violater.

He was a racist and a cheater, he is fucking overrated as far as I am concerned.

Teddy Roosevelt was a republican that Lincoln would be proud of.

I demand that people quit voting for Nixon, we can thank him for all the Nazi's in power now.

NIXON!!! WTF!

[bunkerbuster1]

5. Teddy Roosevelt--decent enough man, but underrated?

He's been every Democrat's favorite Republican for years.

[Zynx]

11. Teddy was a horrible human being.

He also wasn't nearly as liberal as he let on.

[ArtVandaley]

19. Trustbuster

We need progressives like Teddy to go after big business today.

[Zynx]

65. He didn't bust many trusts. Taft busted more than Teddy.

[genius]

28. For a Republican, he was very liberal.

[MemphisTiger]

16. C'mon he created the National Parks

[AndyTiedye]

9. Let Us Not Forget Nixon's "Secret Plan" to End the War

:nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke::nuke:

[XemaSab]

45. Nixon's record

Created the EPA, and signed:

The Clean Air Act
The Clean Water Act
The Endangered Species Act
The National Environmental Policy Act

Basically the four most important pieces of environmental legislation ever enacted. And the republicans have been trying to dismantle all these things since.

(PS Reagan, as governor, signed the California Environmental Quality Act, which is California's big environmental law, and possibly the toughest in the nation. But he's still a jerk.)

[XemaSab]

76. *PLUS*

He banned DDT

[youngred]

62. Nixon was more liberal than most of today's dems

crook, bastard, and awful President. But I'd take him over Ray-Gun and Bushie any day

[Radical Activist]

21. Except that he had socialists harassed

by the FBI, CIA and the rest of the government. Left wing leaders had a hard time under Nixon. It was a deliberate campaign to destroy the left in this nation and that had a lot to do with why the Republicans started winning with Reagan.

[baba]

23. In terms of progressive ideas

as compared to the rest of them. I'm thinking of his idea to guarantee a minimum income for every American, for instance. I'm no fan of Nixon, I just think that some of his ideas were pretty radical compared to other Republicans.

[American Tragedy]

51. Nixon was domestically a bit liberal. He'd be virtually unelectable now

just on that basis.

Despite his verbal attacks on the New Deal and Great Society, he largely expanded the welfare state and most of those progressive initiatives. He later called Reagan's economic policies excessively uncompassionate and hard on the poor and disabled.

Mind you, the guy was still scum and caused irreparable damage to the office and to the country, but we should view his presidency realistically. He was not right-wing in every single respect.

[genius]

26. Only by comparison with Bush. He was terrible. TR won a Nobel Peace Pr

TR broke up the monopolies and sided with labor and the environment. He and Lincoln were the best Republicans and the only decent ones. The Repubs wanted to get rid of TR so they gave him what they thought was a powerless position: VP.

[Logansquare]

46. A bit of an exaggeration, but he did establish the EPA

He also opened up diplomacy with China, and actually *went* there to meet with Mao, an unheard of development since the Communists took over. His administration is credited by many historians with the first national affirmative action program, the "Philadelphia Plan" for building trades.
He was also a paranoid, vicious politician who would stop at nothing to suppress public dissent against the Vietnam war. Watergate and Vietnam greatly overshadow his positive accomplishments, as they should.

[WI_DEM]

2. Richard Nixon, both the most under-rated and over-rated GOP

President. Under-rated because domestically he did try and push a great deal of progressive legislation. Also, while Watergate was certainly a major scandal, I think it pales in comparison to Iran/Contra and the Bushco scandals. Over-rated because everybody says that he had such a great foreign policy. Actually LBJ would have been the first president to go to Moscow if not for the Russian invasion of Chezcoslavakia in late 1968. Also, The China initiative was begun under Johnson and completed under Carter.

[Zynx]

7. Also, the China relationship is biting us in the ass now economically.

[Lone Pawn]

31. That's not even close to Nixon's fault.

It's not Nixon's fault that trade's biting us in the ass now--blame Reagan and Bush for hyperinflating our deficit and our Congress for letting it happen. That's like blaming Henry Ford personally because you crashed your car into your mailbox.

[bunkerbuster1]

4. Taft. Barely remembered today, but he

initiated 80 anti-trust suits, and was a Unitarian.

Works for me.

[elshiva]

10. Only two adequate R presidents

Eisenhower was the Real War President cos he knew what the frig he was doing half the time.
TR was a Real Steward of the land with the park services.

They were the only decent repub presidents.
Nixon was a total ass pirate, liar, and racist.
Coolidge Reagan, G.H. Bush, W. Bush slept and vacationed through the presidencies and could give a flying fig for the American people.

[bunkerbuster1]

14. Nixon, the "ass pirate?"

what a visual.

As truly harmful racists go, I think Nixon couldn't hold a candle to Woodrow Wilson.

Anyway, do you have a beef with Taft or not? (You replied to my message, but didn't mention him in yours, hence the question.)

[norml]

25. Agreed, Eisenhower, and TR were great Presidents, and great men.

Ford wasn't too bad, except for pardoning Nixon, and for some of those in Ford's administration. And welcome to DU, elshiva!

[Lone Pawn]

33. But neither Eisenhower nor TR are "underrated."

TR's on Mount Rushmore, and Ike is, well, universally liked.

[norml]

60. That's true, so I'll give my vote to Ford, for being the most under rated.

Not only is he under rated, Ford barely even gets mentioned as having been a President.

[Zynx]

6. Ford.

Those who are saying Nixon are out of their minds. To say "Well, if you ignore Watergate..." is ridiculous. Even if you do, how was anything else he did that good? Opening up China? That's biting us in the ass now with the trade problems. Domestic policy? Sure, he threw a bone or two to the liberals, but not much as far as I see it. You also ignore the fact that he overthrew democracies and killed hundreds of thousands of people in Camodia and Vietnam. You know, other than the Holocaust and World War II, Hitler wasn't all that bad either. :eyes:

Ford was one of the few presidents who did precisely what he needed to do. He served his mission.

[MrBenchley]

17. Don't forget

China wouldn't have had to be "opened up" if Nixon and the rest of the GOP hadn't been such fucking idiots....it's hard to say it's a mighty accomplsihment to suddenly notice that one of the largest countries on earth exists.

About the only thing he did domestically that was any good was the EPA...and after the Cuyahoga river caught on fire in Cleveland one day, that was inevitable.

[Lone Pawn]

30. Pretty damn big accomplishment

when nobody else did. I don't recall the Dems all wanting normalized relations with China. Nixon undid the policy that had existed towards China since 1949: a policy that the Dems had all upheld.

[MrBenchley]

36. You have a very faulty memory...

It wasn't the Democrats who were screaming "Who lost China?" and purging the State Department.

[Lone Pawn]

58. And it was the Dems who refused to talk to the Red Chinese for two decades

despite the fact that they were in power in the White House and Congress. And it was the Dems who insisted to the United Nations that ROC-Taiwan was the government of China, not PRC.

[Zynx]

64. Why should we have had normalized relations with Mao?

[davhill]

66. Now they own much of our debt

And have taken many of our jobs. Maybe it would have been better to leave them unrecognized.

[Zynx]

67. Exactly my point. We made a deal with the "devil".

The Communist Chinese government is a loathsome regime that employs horrible labor practices in order to outcompete the rest of the world. In my opinion, it is morally bankrupt to do what we are doing and we are paying the price for it with good American jobs leaving our shores. This is Nixon's fault.

[Lone Pawn]

8. Nixon's practically demonized by the public.

Watergate's got nothin' on Iran-Contra or Gulf of Tonkin or Bushco's War. All sides did political espionage--hell, what the Kennedys did to get Jack into office was far more damaging than simple abuse of power. You have to take it in perspective. Nixon abused power. And I suppose if you ignore FDR's Pearl Harbor LIHOP, constitutional abuse and attempts to stack the supreme court, Truman's nuking Nagasaki after the Japanese began working towards surrender, Kennedy's voter fraud, LBJ's lying the nation into Vietnam, Reagan's selling weapons to Iran to fund terrorists, Bush I conspiring to elevate oil prices, and Bush II lying the nation into Iraq, then, yes, Nixon was certainly the most horrific abuser of presidential power. Not saying it's good, but I am saying that it's also something endemic to the office.

And he did have decent domestic policy, and, though he didn't start the ball rolling, he did bring about detante, did get Moscow to agree to arms reduction, and did open China to the west--as trade has increased with China, their human rights situation has steadily improved. It's not Nixon's fault that trade's biting us in the ass now--blame Reagan and Bush for hyperinflating our deficit and our Congress for letting it happen. That's like blaming Henry Ford personally because you crashed your car into your mailbox.

[madrchsod]

12. hoover

then nixon. hoover was a brillant man but his failure to act at the start of the depression tainted his place in history. nixon did some outstanding things- his watergate problems would`nt get a mention now on cable news. he would have never been investigated.

[yellowdogintexas]

13. TR definitely, is my favorite Rep pres and we share the same

birthday too.

Besides if he were alive today he would be a Democrat.
In fact, if he were alive today he would be President. (assuming of course that he wasn't 150 years old LOL beat you to it)

[MrBenchley]

15. Hard to say somebody on Mt. Rushmore is under-rated, though

He's the only one there that I admire in any way, and the onyl one you can point to who really accomplished anything as president (Eisenhower was a great general but really not much of a president).

Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and Nixon already rank among the country's worst ever.

[yellowdogintexas]

18. no kidding!

People don't talk as much about TR as they do FDR anymore but I think both are great.

Ike may have been a better president than we all think, after all he did appoint Earl Warren and a few other interesting people to the SCOTUS
he just wasn't flamboyant, showy, selfserving etc. more low key.
so in that regard, he is under rated.

or a crook, or a sneak, or a religious fanatic, or an actor,
I could go on.

now mind you, my mom voted for Stevenson both times......

[MrBenchley]

24. Eisenhower is the pick of the litter after TR

but it's hard to rank him even in the top 20 as president.

Taft too was in the middle of the pack and that's about it.

You know, while running (unsuccessfully) in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was shot on the campaign trail. He suffered only a flesh wound and didn't miss a beat....his speech a few minutes later began "It's hard to kill a bull moose...."

As I recall, he stampeded the Republican convention by arriving on the floor with a brass band playing behind him. He got the vice presidential nod even though the party bosses didn't want him. And when the news came that McKinley had been killed, the corrupt Republican kingmaker Mark Hanna cried out in public "Oh no! That damned cowboy is president."

[Wisc Badger]

34. No it is quite easy to rank Ike in the top 20

Presidents. Remember that he was able to bring the Korean conflict to an acceptable end.

The best thing he did is back up the SCOTUS Brown decision in Little Rock.

He may have had misgivings but he deployed troops to enforce the Supreme Court and by extension the Constitution.

(One Remembers a Democrat President I hold in minimum high regard; Andrew Jackson stating that "Mr. Marshall has made his decision now let him enforce it." regarding the force march of Native Americans from Florida to Oklahoma).

Ike is one of the true under-appreciated Presidents.

[MrBenchley]

37. Sez you....

What's with this "Democrat president" crap?

Eisenhower did next to nothing when Joe McCarthy ran wild; in fact, he encouraged him at the outset of McCarthyism. He overthrew democracies in Iran and Guatemala. His postmaster general publicly boasted Ike was "getting rid of eggheads"...He was the one who sold a huge chunk of the country the domno theory and the need to jump into Viet Nam after the French got kicked out...

[Wisc Badger]

39. Good Points

I had forgotten about McCarthy; and his backing of the French for Vietnam (However if you check your history it was Truman who gave the French a blank check and loads of surplus equipment to retake Indo-China in the late 40's. I blame Truman first and formost for getting us involved in Vietnam, he should have told the French to F*&^ off).

[MrBenchley]

40. But it was Eisenhower

who launched the CIA's "Tom Dooley" campaign and pushed the "domino theory"...

[American Tragedy]

53. To be fair, Ike opposed McCarthy privately from the beginning

but for some time it was politically virtually impossible for anyone to oppose McCarthy, as the Kennedys too discovered. Eisenhower said that he believed that if he gave McCarthy enough rope he would surely hang himself, and that proved to be true.

And I don't think that he ever intended on seeing the military take over and continue down the tragic path that France began. Neither did the Kennedy administration, though they maintained the relatively modest American presence there.

For that matter, even Johnson convinced himself that the escalation would be limited and temporary, as he drew us further and further into the abyss. It's like the story of Brer Rabbit and the tar baby, which I used to hear often when I was a little girl.

Dammit, the road to hell sometimes really is paved in good intentions. Great people make equally spectacular mistakes - there are no classically perfect heroes in our world. I'm not excusing it, just saying that I understand the rationale and I see how it happens.

[MrBenchley]

72. And perhaps if he had done so publicly

McCarthy wouldn't have ruined the lives of so many innocent people with his lies...

"I don't think that he ever intended on seeing the military take over and continue down the tragic path that France began."
Whether he did or not, if he hadn't peddled the Viet Nam mess so earnestly and sincerely, perhaps it wouldn't have become the clusterfuck it became. His salesmanship shares a big part of the blame, in my opinion.

And Ike did not see anything wrong with what he used to blandly call "destabilization"...

"Great people make equally spectacular mistakes"
Yeah, and Ike was a GREAT general...but I don't see him as anything but a mediocre president in the middle of the pack...

[Radical Activist]

20. Ford

I think he was actually a decent man. He got us out of Vietnam, finally, and tried to get the nation back to normal.

I can't understand anyone choosing Nixon after the way he abused his powers as President. That was the closest this nation has ever come to being a monarchy but Bush will rival that.

[XemaSab]

44. Considering that...

Nixon previously held the title of Worst President Ever, yet many of the things he did were very greenie, so I think labelling him "Most Underrated" is okay.

Doesn't mean he wasn't in many ways a terrible president, but he wasn't the president of unmitigated evil, unlike the Chimp.

[American Tragedy]

56. I have nothing against Ford. I primarily just felt kinda sorry for him

I think he's basically a good guy. His pardon of Nixon was hard to swallow, but IMO he really thought he was doing the right thing, and he did wind up paying for it with the destruction of his political career. It's forgivable. Unlike the Chimp, who has done far worse and has only been rewarded for his actions.

[Cheswick2.0]

22. Eisenhower

he gave us the number one most important statement about our government. His warning about the Military Industrial complex was one both parties should have headed and neither one did.

[mcscajun]

27. That's my pick as well...for the same reason (n/t)

*

[Lone Pawn]

32. I agree he was a good president, but he's commonly regarded as such.

n/t

[NewJeffCT]

35. Ike also gave us Earl Warren on the Court

Something that Republicans will never forgive him for, and for which most Democrats are eternally grateful for.

Ike wasn't perfect, but I think TR is already highly respected & thought of by many.

[Zynx]

68. And Brennan too.

He may have unknowingly appointed such liberal justices, but he made America a better place nonetheless.

[dogman]

50. The same reason here.

I grew up hearing him described as the do nothing President. Seems like a blessing now.

[Bleacher Creature]

29. Underrated: Nixon, Best: TR n/t

Anyone who thinks that either Teddy Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln would be a Republican today is kidding themselves. Putting aside their personal attitudes toward race and ethnicity (which was largely a function of when they lived), they were both the epitome of what a Democrat is today.

[Bleacher Creature]

38. Just out of curiosity?

Who voted for G.W. Bush?????

[cyn2]

41. I can't believe GWB* got 3 votes

How can this man possibly be "Under-rated".

Any word said about the man (including calling him a man) over-rates him.

[mattclearing]

49. I made it four. See my reasoning below.

eom

[Lone Pawn]

59. It is possible we hate him just a tad more than he deserves, technically

making him "underrated."

I find that logic difficult to believe, though, because half the nation f'ing worships him.

[cyn2]

42. You forgot G. H. W. Bush.

[catbert836]

43. Both Roosevelt and Nixon

Nixon was probably the most liberal president we've had in the last 40 years, and TR was the best Republican president aside from Abe Lincoln.

[mattclearing]

47. Never thought I'd say these words, but...

I voted for Dubya. He has been the most effective President since FDR at getting his way. Boy does that piss me off.

[American Tragedy]

48. Eisenhower, easily. Let me explain why.

As I said in a post earlier today, Ike did several things that I admire, which are magnified by the fact he was juxtaposed on the opposite side of the aisle. I researched him expecting to find a cold reactionary and was very surprised. Nothing pleases me more than to be proven wrong in my negative judgment of a person's character.

On a personal level, he was a fine person, not as brutally brilliant as Patton or as dramatic as MacArthur, but far better loved by his troops, because he valued more than merely military victory.

As a general, he was one prominent military officer who discouraged the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguing that it was pointlessly punitive to do it to an already broken nation, and not worth the American ego-trip of an 'unconditional surrender'. I believe he was right.

He was a genuine internationalist who respected other countries and cultures, as evinced in his proclamations here and abroad.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

He was one of the only presidents in the modern era with the guts to actually pursue cuts in the irrationally bloated military budget, all in the midst of Cold War arms-race paranoia. He's best known for identifying the military-industrial complex, foreshadowing a world in which financial interests dictate foreign policy. But even greater was his statement to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

He respected the separation of powers and state and local authorities, which is why he was such a passive president. Granted, this was unfortunate for the latent civil rights movement, for which his administration is justly criticized. However, he sincerely believed that at that particular time, merely changing the laws would not alter the mindset and social climate in the South, which was volatile and dangerous.

He didn't enter the office with an agenda and he didn't try to fight the legislature, which follows the Federalist ideal of the American president. Sometimes this made him justifiably appear weak, but his strategy often worked in his favor, too. He despised McCarthy from the beginning, but knew that it was infeasible to openly oppose him, so he 'gave him enough rope in hopes that he would hang himself', which McCarthy reliably did.

Finally, he appreciated the horror of war, and despite misgivings from both Democrats and Republicans, he drew a rapid armistice in Korea in a way that spared America's reputation and ceased the needless destruction of thousands of lives. It wasn't an end to our trouble with Korea, but it was the better of several unhappy outcomes. I only wish that his vice-president had followed his lead in the following decade with Vietnam - tens of thousands of Americans might still be alive.

My grandparents all voted for Stevenson, and I would have as well, but in the end we could have done far worse than Ike.

[FarLeftRage]

52. None of them!

A rePIG is a rePUKKKE and I have no use for ANY of them...

[quaoar]

54. What about William McKinley?

He was a warmonger just like Dubya.

[American Tragedy]

57. He certainly deserves more infamy than he gets today

I don't think he is underrated.

[amazona]

55. nixon

The others were all over-rated. I'm not saying Nixon was any great shakes, mind you, but clearly if all others are over-rated beyond their performance it only leaves the under-rated man to be the "most" under-rated.

[EndElectoral]

61. Who the Hell could answer Nixon? Lots of Freepers around!

[EndElectoral]

63. Nixon opens trade with China while they supply arms to North Vietnam!

Gimme a friggin break!

[Lone Pawn]

69. The question isn't "best," it's "underrated."

Nixon was a middling president, considering the good with the bad, but he gets a demonic reputation.

Eisenhower was a good president, but has an excellent reputation.

Therefore Nixon, I believe, is the more underrated of the two.

[donheld]

70. Why is William Jefferson Clinton left off this list?

:shrug:

[Hello_Kitty]

74. Thank you! n/t

[bunkerbuster1]

75. heh. What to make of DLC Clinton, huh?

I come and go with Billy-Jeff. Whenever I'm pissed at him, I think back to that interview he had with Peter Jennings and get back in his corner.

When I was listening, I typed a few notes in anticipation of posting something about it, but never did... these were lines that stuck out:

"Give me an example of where I disgraced the public."

"The way you repeated every sleazy little thing they leaked."

"I thought I lived in a country that believed in the rule of law."

"Yes, I failed once. and I sure paid for it."

"I was being applauded by the whole world at the United nations, that's when you were showing grand jury testimony."

[Yupster]

71. Hey - someone else voted

with me for Hoover. How about that.

I've always had great respect for him.

[bunkerbuster1]

73. Nobody's joined me for Taft, dammit!

what's wrong with you people? is it because he was fat?

Agree that Hoover is probably underrated, and unjustly demonized, though. And Truman sure thought a lot of the man...

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hoover/book.htm