Most Overrated President

[maveric]

I've been in heated discusions with wingnuts at work about Reagan's deification. Most of them say that FDR and JFK were the overrated.
IMO Reagan is the most overrated prez in US history.

[DenverDem]

1. After THIS week, what other choice is there?

Revisionist history gone sociopathological.

[DNA]

2. I'm with you

but the deification of Reagan started long before this week.

[DenverDem]

4. Indeed,

but it's pathological orgiastic climax is this week.

[maveric]

6. I asked these people HOW Reagan was a great prez...

And some of them said "He just was".

[mountainvue]

11. That's what

some of the callers on Randi's show were saying. She had a great show today.

[Scoopie]

17. Well, now, I see your point

but I think Gee Dub, just by the sheer fact that this unlearned, uncurious, mealy-mouthed idiot can even BECOME president, earns him the honors of most overrated.
;)

[Kanary]

3. BOTH King Ronnie and King Georgie

[JHBowden]

5. It has gotta be Bush II.

While Reagan could pretend to be the loveable national grandpa, Dubya is extra-strength dumb and can do nothing to hide it. People talk about Dubya's "leadership" and "determination" after he struggles with the teleprompter during speeches, and I literally wonder if I have watched the same thing.

[Ready4Change]

7. Other: Carter

Sorry about this. But I think Carter has been far better as an ex-President than he was as President in office. I was young during his term, but my recollection was that the economy was out of his control, as was foreign policy. He had a few good ideas, but those two major features were so troubling he couldn't make any progress.

I'm interested in counter-points to this opinion, BTW. As I say, I was young then, so my impressions might be flawed.

[robbedvoter]

8. Uh, and who overrated him? He actually reduced the deficit

and as I watched all the numbers - he reversed all the GOP trends before. Not by much, but set things in the right direction. And got slammed for it.

[maveric]

12. I've never heard Carter rated "high".

Both dems and repugs I know rate him as "mediocre".

[DenverDem]

24. Bullshit.

See below.

[DNA]

15. I think the opposite is true.

Carter has been underrated as a president because of the propaganda after his presidency and the ascendancy of the rabid right.

[DenverDem]

23. Carter was sabataged by the CIA and the beginnings of the nazi revolution.

The CIA knew that the embassy in Tehran was going to be overrun, but LIHOP because Carter was heroically trying to reign in their out of control black ops excesses.

The power elite bankers were also monkeying with the economy to screw Carter over and got OPEC to blow the price of gas through the roof to make sure that he was on the ropes. They were repayed by being allowed to steal billions from the Savings and Loans and with complete deregulation of business ethics leading to Enron et al.

Then bushler sr made a treasonous deal with the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election in '80 to ensure that raygun could take over and begin dismantling America.

If we had listened to Carter's courageous and completely correct assesment of the energy situation and had started to develop alternatives in the 70's we would not be in the disasterous position we are in now, but the petrocons ran him out and we wasted nearly thiry years sucking the dwindling teat of the petroleum culture so the power elitests could continue to profiteer on the world's addiction to fossil fuels.

Carter was a great and courageous president who was lucky not to be assassinated physically, only his character was assassinated to justify the prevaricating con-servative overthrow of Constitutional America.

[Art_from_Ark]

28. Excellent summary about Carter

And yes, he was promoting alternative energies-- big time. For example, during his term, you could install your own windmill, and sell any excess power to local the power company. Reagan and his petrocons dumped that idea in a big hurry. Just like they dumjped Carter's human rights campaign, and so many other of his progressive ideas.

[Ready4Change]

29. Thanks for responses.

I was off in that he's not generally been highly rated. Can't say I'm convinced he's underrated, but I'll look over the comments and keep them in mind as I review things.

I do totally agree regarding his attempts to drive alternative power research. We'd be in much better shape now if we weren't so dependant on foriegn oil.

Thanks all.

[Yupster]

31. I don't think Carter is rated highly

enough to be overrated.

I rate him between bad and mediocre.

He acted like the job was too much for him.

[Darranar]

9. Ronald Reagan. n/t

[Eurobabe]

10. 43 doesn't count, he was installed.

[NavajoRug]

13. JFK was definitely the most overrated . . .

. . . though not necessarily through any fault of his own. He served for less than three years, and the list of his actual accomplishments (as opposed to the ones that are attributed to him but actually occurred under Lyndon Johnson) is very short.

[DNA]

14. There's some truth to what you say

but JFK's overratedness has been compensated by all the negative gossip surrounding him and the entire Kennedy clan, whereas RR has been deified to the point that the reality of his presidency has been totally lost. With Reagan there are no checks and balances to the propaganda.

[NavajoRug]

16. Those are good points . . .

In my opinion, questions like this don't really apply to a president who hasn't been out of office for at least 25 years. It takes a long time for all the propaganda to recede into the background, and for a president's record to be seen in the proper historical context.

Part of the problem with "all the negative gossip" surrounding JFK was that most of it was true, along with a lot of other things that weren't publicized at the time.

[ibegurpard]

18. I would say Reagan but JFK would be next on my list.

I would be very, very curious to see how history would have treated him had he not been assassinated.

[NavajoRug]

20. That's an excellent question . . .

I often wonder about that. Some historians speculate that he would not have been re-elected in 1964.

This sounds cruel, but in some cases I think a person's untimely death enhances their legacy by leaving all the "what if" questions in our minds -- instead of having us watch them fade into obscurity and die at an old age.

[Yupster]

32. Against Goldwater?

I think his reelection was pretty assured.

Goldwater was just out of the mainstream for the east, and that's where the electoral votes were back then.

[NavajoRug]

37. Who knows if Goldwater would have been the GOP . . .

. . . nominee against JFK?

[Yupster]

39. Really the only other guy in the race

was Henry Cabot Lodge, and he was more a regional candidate. Rockefeller entered late as the "stop Goldwater candidate", but it was pretty much wrapped up by then.

[polmaven]

38. I agree to a point,

but probably for different reasons. I simply feel JFK didn't have time to become a truly great president (or be a truly horrid one, for that matter).

[ibegurpard]

40. Right

It's not necessarily that I feel he is undeserving of the lionization, it's that I think a lot of it comes from the whole martyr thing... One reason that I am EXTREMELY glad that the Reagan assassination failed.

[DenverDem]

25. JFK energized America

and made us think that we could do good things in the world.

He was assassinated by the cabal now in power who want us to think that torture is a good thing and that we somehow have a divine right to rule the world and anyone who stands in the way of that should be slaughtered.

[NavajoRug]

26. Based on everything I've heard about JFK's . . .

. . . assassination, I get more convinced by the day that Castro was behind his assassination. This is not a big secret in the U.S. government; in fact, it is the reason why the U.S. will never lift the Cuban embargo while Castro is alive.

Regardless of who was behind the assassination, there is one very, very disturbing aspect of JFK's tenure in office that makes him closer to the current cabal in the White House than anyone likes to admit. Under his administration, for the first time in history, the U.S. had an undisguised policy of targeting foreign heads of state (Castro and Diem are two cases in point) for assassination simply because "we didn't like them."

[Selwynn]

19. I absolutely think Regan was overrated.

[Zynx]

21. Teddy Roosevelt. He should not be #4 or #5 like he usually is.

[CalebHayes]

22. Although he turned down being King of America he did own 200 slaves...

and dared to talk about freedom. you know who I'm talking about

[physioex]

36. You can't look at these men in the same context as today...

Was slavery cruel and terrible? Ofcourse, but that was the way things were. Some of the African tribes are to be held responsible since they sold their prisoners from tribal feuds. What the founding fathers did was truly marvelous even if their work was incomplete in the sense that it did not give the slaves the same rights, the foundation was layed...

[Hippo_Tron]

27. Al Gore

We keep saying how great he is but yet he hasn't done any presidential duties since being elected. Hell, he hasn't even kicked off his re-election campaign.

[stavka]

30. George Washington

He was pretty cool compared to the Kings of his day...but, the guy was really not much of a leader in peace. Glad he turned down that whole king thing though.

[Yupster]

33. I went with Lincoln

He made some of the worst blunders any president ever made.

[physioex]

35. Please finish your statement....You left everyone hanging..

I thought Linclon was a great man. Possibly his flaw came from not having military experiece. But he was able to rally the north against the confederacy. Yes this country paid a terrible price in human suffering but the republic was kept in tact. Didn't he also sign the Emancipation Proclaimation??

[Yupster]

41. Really don't want to start a big debate on Lincoln

I've stated my views before.

To sum, my complaints against Lincoln are ...

* in the decades before the Civil War, both political parties recognized how divided the country was and took careful steps to not worsen the situation. For instance each presidential candidate regardless of party picked a VP candidate from the opposite region. Even in 1860 when the Dems broke into a northern candidate (Douglas) and a southern candidate (Breckinridge), they each found VP's to run from the other region. Breckinridge had to go to Oregon, a state for all of one year to find a northerner who would run with him, but he found him. Douglas found a VP from Georgia. Lincoln campaigned as a regional candidate and completely ignored the southern and border states. That flew right into their belief that once he was elected, they would be ignored or worse.

* Back then the president-elect period was four months long. I think Lincoln handled his pre-inauguration period awfully. By December, S Carolina had seceeded, but that was all. The best known politicians in the south had decided to stay in Washington at great risk to their political futures to serve on Senator Crittendem's senate committee to try to come to some compromise that would keep the southern states in the union. While senators Davis, Benjamin and Toombs were putting their careers on the line to try to save the Union, and Republican Senator Seward was trying to keep the group together, the effort was doomed, because Lincoln refused to meet with the group, or even give instructions to Seward on what the Republicans could propose.

Popular opinion in states like Mississippi and Louisiana was probably a lost cause, and only the intervention of top politicians like Davis or Benjamin could have kept those states in the union. However, popular opinion in the larger southern states, Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina was more evenly split. In Fact Tennessee had a popular vote as to whether to call a secession convention or not, and the call failed narrowly keeping Tennessee in the union.

I think Lincoln should have spent his time either negotiating with southerners of good faith like Davis and Benjamin, or at least touring the pro-union regions of the border states. He could have at least offered top cabinet jobs to key southern moderates. Instead he spent his time holding rallies in the great cities of the north while six more states ended up seceeding.

* Even after being inaugurated, it was not a lost cause though. Without Tennessee, Virginia and N Carolina, the Confederacy would not have the population base or industry to field a credible army. The Confederacy knew this and sent their brightest stars to those states to lobby them out of the union. Anti-secessionist who became Confederate VP Alexander Hamilton Stevens was sent to Richmond to lobby for Virginia's secession. How did Lincoln respond? He called forth the militia and ordered each state to provide a required number of regiments for the invasion of the south. Brilliant strategy. He forced the border states to make up their minds which side they were on, and Virginia, N Carolina and Tennessee seceeded soon after. Tennessee had another vote to secede and this time the voters passed it overwhelmingly. Quite the diplomat that Abe, and his soldiers would regret those states leaving and taking with them Generals Lee, Jackson, AP Hill, JEB Stuart, Johnston, Ewell, and Forrest. North Carolina lost more men in the war than any other state.

* Then of course there are the Constitutional abuses. The president calling forth the militia. Arresting the members of the Maryland legislature, throwing the former Governor of Ohio out of the country, suspending Habeus Corpus, shutting down newspapers, and what about the Emancipation Proclamation? Owning slaves was not just a right, it was a Constitutionally guaranteed Right. Sure makes it easier to amend the Constitution when the president can do it himself with the stroke of a pen.

Anyway, those are some of the reasons that I think Lincoln is wildly overrated.

[Zero Gravitas]

34. Got to be Emperor Dumbass

While the national circle-jerk over Reagan is nauseous, there is one "president" who can make even Reagan look good... With all this "appointed by God" & "War President" & "Great Leader" bullshit and the complete disaster this administration has been on all levels, I have to say that Dumbass Dubya is even more overrated than St. Ronnie.