Who is the best president in your lifetime?

[Johonny]

26. It would have been nice had congress listen to him

He generally gets knocked for not being able to "work" with congress the way LBJ could. Which is true but I'm too young for LBJ. The thing is his congress seemed much more able to work with Reagan than the liberal ideas Carter had. Also the things they could pass were mostly deregulation ideas that while not all negative were the least liberal of Carters. Had the liberals in congress believe more in Carter we might have gotten prison reform, mental health reform, energy reform etc... but Kennedy and the lot were too busy playing power grab games. Obama and Clinton were much better than Carter at working with congress, but I'm not sure passing the heritage foundations moderate ideas is exactly going to warm over a lot of people. On civil rights Obama and Clinton seems to have the edge in productivity however many might feel he traded leadership on those issues for a rather sour economic ideas. I think it's going to be a trade off to being right but not influential, versus being able to compromise and be less right but perhaps more productive.