Reply #27: I rank him higher than Kennedy [View All]

[Zomby Woof]

The most overrated Democrat of all the presidents. Don't get me started on that huckster and charlatan. Only Howard Dean invokes more disgust in me than any Democrat in recent history.

As for FDR - he was great in some ways - rallying the nation during the Depression and willing to experiment, and for his steadfastness in WW2 - and not so good, even worse than Clinton in others. The internment of Japanese-Americans, and his refusal to support anti-lynching laws, or his lame attempt to pack the Supreme Court - not exactly sainthood material.

Some of the things Clinton gets maligned for, like welfare reform, were needed, and not conservative, just common sense. As for his failures, I consider NAFTA a well-meaning mistake, costly as it was. But unlike why the GOP supported it, Clinton's idealism and ability to compromise betrayed him. But I do not think his motives were "selling out" or kowtowing to corporate greed. He really did want it to help workers here and abroad. It IS true that old-style protectionism is a dinosaur; it's just the way free trade has been rigged falsely as a cure-all to it that lured many Democrats to support it.

LBJ - would have been the best of the 20th century if not for Kennedy leaving him Vietnam, and his blind determination to follow through with it. His civil rights advances were simply the best since Reconstruction and the post-Civil War amendments. We still benefit from these advances today.

Truman - his attacks on union strikers was the worst anti-labor action by any Democrat since Grover Cleveland. And his creation of the NSA and other arms of the modern police state we live in makes Truman a kind of godfather of the neocons. Truman was once the president I wanted to admire most, but I have so many reservations about him that I barely rank him above FDR.

Carter - the most honorable and moral man to occupy the Oval Office since Lincoln or John Quincy Adams. I DO admire him more than anyone in this post. But his presidency - other than the Camp David accords, addressing energy issues (creating ANWR too), and the Panama Canal Treaty (pissed off the GOP didn't it?), was sadly disappointing. Although he did not deserve to lose to the excrecably criminal Reagan... So many lost opportunities for Carter. But he tried his best and he was honest. We may never have anyone like that in the office again.

So maybe McGraw DID do his homework. Clinton could have been a lot better, but so could have the others so iconically held up by most here.