Which President do think had the greatest impact on America and why? I'm curious if anyone can pick just one. ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 01:23 PM coldfuse George Washington gets my vote. Stepping down after two terms rather than becoming King (yes - there was support for this), he set the tone for leading our nation under its Constitution. We could use another George like him! ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 02:50 PM AMoore
quote:Originally posted by coldfuse: George Washington gets my vote. Stepping down after two terms rather than becoming King (yes - there was support for this), he set the tone for leading our nation under its Constitution. We could use another George like him!
I'll second that! Another with an enormous impact was Lyndon Johnson. Under Johnson, we learned not to trust our elected leaders -- a lesson some seem to have forgotten, although it's been reinforced by several presidents since. Certainly Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush Sr. have contributed.
Alan Moore ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 04:19 PM FredPuli So why is not Franklin D Roosevelt your greatest president or most influential president? Washington should be in a separate category really; you can only start a nation once ! So, all right he was president, then is not FDR your second greatest or most influential president ?
It is such a shame that George Washington was not 'king' as George I of the United States; that way, as I have noted here before, you would now have another George III to be loving or hating Smile ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 07:33 PM frankvan George W. Bush, gets my vote. He has launched the first unnecessary war, against a country that posed no threat, and left the Army 'stretched to the breaking point' according to a report by the Army War College. He has cost us our friends and former allies, destroyed our prestige and credibility, and created the biggest deficits in history. Americans travelling abroad in recent years are trying to pass themselves off as Canadians for fear of being held responsible for a national leader the majority of us never voted for in the first place. Were you thinking of beneficial impact, perhaps?? Wink ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 07:57 PM Cptinsjs
quote:Originally posted by frankvan: George W. Bush, gets my vote. He has launched the first unnecessary war, against a country that posed no threat, and left the Army 'stretched to the breaking point' according to a report by the Army War College. He has cost us our friends and former allies, destroyed our prestige and credibility, and created the biggest deficits in history. Americans travelling abroad in recent years are trying to pass themselves off as Canadians for fear of being held responsible for a national leader the majority of us never voted for in the first place. Were you thinking of beneficial impact, perhaps?? Wink
I'll vote for Lincoln. If it hadn't been for him, the US would have split apart.
Second would be FDR. His actions during the depression era because he created jobs by the thousands. ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 09:32 PM coldfuse Lest the truth be forgotten:
Depression Era Unemployment ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 09:43 PM coldfuse I guess I'd get raked over the coals for saying anything negative about JFK. Then again, Vietnam wasn't officially a war and we never did have that little nuclear exchange he toyed around with. ****************************************************** 01-25-04, 10:04 PM Kelleygirl Love your post, Frank, but you did miss one thing -- the only president since Herbert Hoover to have such a negative job loss. ****************************************************** 01-26-04, 08:11 AM Jelp01 I'd go with Abe Lincoln. He put our country back together, something his namby-pamby predecessors (do the names Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan do anything for you???I didn't think so! Big Grin) were not able or even capable of doing.
And, Coldfuse, thanks for the link regarding unemployment during the Depression.
[This message was edited by Jelp01 on 01-26-04 at 08:23 AM.] ****************************************************** 01-26-04, 09:42 AM wlmwallace Abe Lincoln has my vote.
Frankvan, I didn't say positive or negative, however, I did say past and President Bush is not in the past yet... Looking like a good run though with Kerry up in the polls. Maybe both parties will start talking about the real issues instead of boom-a-rang in the back politics. ****************************************************** 01-26-04, 03:01 PM FredPuli You mean to tell us that which of them has the guy who is better at hockey is not an issue? Blimey! Big Grin ****************************************************** 01-26-04, 06:59 PM frankvan
quote:Originally posted by wlmwallace: Abe Lincoln has my vote.
Frankvan, I didn't say positive or negative, however, I did say past and President Bush is not in the past yet...
Sorry. Wishful thinking on my part[i] Wink ****************************************************** 01-26-04, 08:33 PM AMoore
quote:Originally posted by Jelp01: I'd go with Abe Lincoln. He put our country back together, something his namby-pamby predecessors (do the names Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan do anything for you???I didn't think so! Big Grin) were not able or even capable of doing. - snip -
Well, there was Calvin Coolidge. I don't know whether he ever actually did anything as President, he's mostly famous for never having said anything. "Silent Cal" they called him. It would be an improvement over lots of politicians I can think of -- on both sides of the aisle.
Alan Moore ****************************************************** 01-26-04, 11:10 PM DorianGreyed Thanks for the link, Fuse. That certainly flies in the face of anecdotal evidence. Since my father told me that most of the young men in our neighborhood worked for some government program, I have to wonder if they were included as workers or unemployed in that chart. (I am sure that my neighborhood was not unique.)
Regarding Kennedy, I generally agree with what you imply, that he really did little, other than enlarge the food stamp program after seeing coal miners in W. Virginia and what they were paid and what they had to eat. I have read that he had second thoughts about Vietnam, and may have scaled down things. but that is, of course, conjecture. More than anything else, Kennedy created a mood of hope and adventure, one that made us think we really could have a paradise on Earth. So much for that idea. The nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union was not confined to Kennedy, however. Every President from Truman through Reagan was just a step or two away from that. Had the government only listened to all that it was saying about communism, all that could have been avoided. I remember as a child in the 50s reading and hearing that communism couldn't work, and that was from the government. Even Nixon, who probably knew more about communism and foreign relations that any other US President, said, in his later years, that he knew communism would fall from within from its own weight. Afghanistan and modern communications hastened its fate more than anything else. ****************************************************** 01-27-04, 01:40 AM AMoore
quote:Originally posted by Doriangreyed:
Regarding Kennedy, I generally agree with what you imply, that he really did little, other than enlarge the food stamp program after seeing coal miners in W. Virginia and what they were paid and what they had to eat. I have read that he had second thoughts about Vietnam, and may have scaled down things. but that is, of course, conjecture. More than anything else, Kennedy created a mood of hope and adventure, one that made us think we really could have a paradise on Earth. So much for that idea. The nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union was not confined to Kennedy, however.
Kennedy presided over the worst crisis in the nuclear arena, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since there haven't been any comparable ones, before or since, the best one can say is that we survived it, so he could have done much worse. I vividly recall even now, the nervousness of my parents generation during that period. It gave me nightmares for weeks -- I was in high school at the time. On the other hand, once the crisis was over, he didn't just go to sleep. In the short time he had left before his assassination, he managed to negotiate the "hot line" -- an always open line of communications between the Kremlin and the Pentagon (it was supposed to link to the White House, but was never put all the way through) for use in a crisis, and the Limited Test Ban treaty which put an end to above ground nuclear bomb testing, and to the steady growth in radioactive fallout which was already a serious health hazard in places downwind from the Nevada and New Mexico test sites. There were, I believe some other arms control measures negotiated at that time as well, but I don't recall the details now.
Alan Moore ****************************************************** 01-27-04, 01:19 PM DorianGreyed Alan -Regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis - This was not the only time we were 'eyeball to eyeball' with the Soviet Union, and may not have been the closest we came to an actual war. It was, however, the most public. I can recall several sumbarine stand-offs, and at least one in which the Soviets fired a torpedo at a US sub. Nikita Sergeyevich Krushchev had great faith in his system, and felt that the US would back down in Cuba. (His oft quoted statement, "We will bury you" was not a threat of direct action, but a statement that Communism would outlast Capitalism. Rarely is the rest of the quote heard. "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!" He later said "I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.") Most, if not all, of the other incidents only came to suface (nice pun here) much later. I suspect that some of the Military historians in AnswerPool.com will know more about these than I do, and know if there were even more incidents. Regarding Kennedy - You are right about treaties, but there were moves in that direction before he took office. If you recall, the U2 incident had an effect on one of them. The Russians had claimed that they had shot down a spy plane, and the US denied that the plane was spying, claiming that it was just a plane that had gone off course. Then Khrushchev produced ample proof in photoghraphs taken [i]by the plane's camera of Russian military installations, Eisenhower was forced to admit that he had indeed authorized the flights. This effectively ended the Summit meeting in Paris in May of 1960. ****************************************************** 01-27-04, 03:04 PM wlmwallace I continue to learn from the post here at AP. Thanks for all the info guys and gals! ****************************************************** 01-27-04, 08:53 PM coldfuse The manner in which I broached the Kennedy subject aside, we may never know if he would have been a truly great President on account of his actions. But oh, how he inspired us! Like him or not, Reagan did the same for a country suffering from "the blues."
Some men are simply right for their time. Though my verdict on "dubya" is still out, we may well need somebody to give us a "shot in the arm" when his work is finished. Bush Sr. was a fine but uninspiring public servant, and I think we abided Clinton while sitting fat dumb and happy during an economy expanding on little of substance during the nineties. A galvanizing force in the Oval Office may be overdue. ****************************************************** 01-27-04, 09:22 PM juanruiz JFK's canonization following his assassination, and Jackie's invention of the Camelot myth aside, he really was not a particularly effective president. Many talk about the Bush-Gore results; few seem to remember that Kennedy won a very close race, thanks in part to King Richard literally getting the dead to vote in Chicago and Lyndon's machine in Texas. Once in office, despite the fact that he had a Democratic Congress, he was unable to push his agenda through, many of his initiatives dying in committee. He appointed his brother Attorney General, despite many other more qualified candidates. And, his trip to Dallas that fateful November was to heal deep rifts in the Democratic Party there, a city where a month before Adlai Stevenson had been spat upon. Historians have speculated that if the Republicans had fielded a competitive candidate (certainly not Goldwater), Kennedy would have been a one-term president, based on the inefficacy of his administration. ****************************************************** 01-27-04, 09:23 PM AMoore
quote:Originally posted by Doriangreyed: Alan -Regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis - This was not the only time we were 'eyeball to eyeball' with the Soviet Union, and may not have been the closest we came to an actual war. It was, however, the most public. I can recall several sumbarine stand-offs, and at least one in which the Soviets fired a torpedo at a US sub. Nikita Sergeyevich Krushchev had great faith in his system, and felt that the US would back down in Cuba. (His oft quoted statement, "We will bury you" was not a threat of direct action, but a statement that Communism would outlast Capitalism. Rarely is the rest of the quote heard. "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"
Yes, there have been some other "close shaves" as well, when NORAD thought it had detected a surprise attack developing. This happened several times over the years, for various reasons, and was the inspiration for the novel (and subsequent film) "Fail-Safe", and, indirectly for "Dr. Strangelove." As an adult, I've seldom slept as well as I did the night Bush Sr. ordered the Strategic Air Command to stand down.
Thank you for recalling the context of the Khrushev quotation. The press here seldom trouble to mention that it was a typically morbid slavic idiom, and that he meant it in the same sense that in the normal course of events, children bury their parents, as opposed to the other way around. And, just as I credited Kennedy for the limited test ban and the hot line, Khrushev deserves equal credit for those advances -- just as it takes to to quarrel, it takes two to make an agreement.
Alan Moore ****************************************************** 01-28-04, 12:33 AM DorianGreyed While making sure I had his exact words, I ran across two items about Krushchev that I found intesesting, and another that clearly shows how little some in the West realize about world affairs.
""I worked," Nikita Khrushchev once commented late in his life, "at a factory owned by Germans, at pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. "There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever their nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that kept me alive. So I became a Communist."
Another was a discussion in which one participant, in response to another's saying how Kennedy was a great leader in keeping the world safe, said, "You have it wrong. Kennedy was ready to send the missiles. It was Krushchev that took the action that prevented a war." Of course, Nikita, probably accurately, felt that his missile defense was inadequate to stop US missiles, but that certainly does not change the fact that it was his backing down that prevented a war. The Cuban Missile Crisis, coupled with growing dissatisfaction with his crude ways, that ended Nikita's role in Soviet politics shortly after.
The third was a discussion about why business in Russia at the time of Krushchev's youth was run by foreigners. "In the late 19th century, when the locomotive of Russian industrialization began to build up steam, it was largely under foreign control and funding. There were few qualms about capitalists, or about low wages - how could there be in a country that didnít (sic) emancipate its serfs until the 1860s?" (emphasis mine) Alexander II, known as the Tsar Liberator, freed Russia's 20 million serfs in 1861. When did the US free ALL of the slaves, and how many were freed? (While serfs were not slaves, they were bound to the land, and couldn't leave regardless of who owned the land. Beating serfs was not uncommon.) Alexander also made substantial reforms in education, the government, the judiciary, and the military. (In anticipation of JR's next comment ( Big Grin ), I will now stipulate that his freeing the serfs did not result is significant changes for their financial state, They remained literally dirt poor, living on poor dirt.)
Fuse, trust me in that not all American saw Reagan's time in office as you do, just as I am sure that all Americans did not see Kennedy's as I previously stated. I suspect that historians will soon write about Kennedy in a more objective light, and in 20 years or so, will do the same for Reagan. Sometimes, one has to wait for the emotions to fade, and the smoke to clear.
(Please forgive me for any typos. I am typing with gloves on. My furnace has been out for days and it is about 35F ... inside the house.)] ****************************************************** 01-28-04, 12:44 AM DorianGreyed One more comment - I want to thank all of you for this discussion. Far too many threads about anything political are filled with one-sided, venomous opinions and sophomoric name calling, with people on both sides (OK, all three or more- That should make JohnGalt happy.) merely spouting their side of an issue with little real exchange of ideas. I find this thread a joy to read and in which to participate. ****************************************************** 01-28-04, 10:24 AM wlmwallace DG, I agree with you. Even though people have something to contribute,they avoid posting because of the venomous opinions. ****************************************************** 01-28-04, 01:21 PM frankvan
quote:Originally posted by wlmwallace: DG, I agree with you. Even though people have something to contribute,they avoid posting because of the venomous opinions.
An even more common reason to avoid posting is that a thread is allowed to go on to four or five or more pages. Having something to contribute but not having the time to read through pages of argument, one is forced to avoid making any comment. As to being venomous, hey! Some of us are just cantankerous ! At my age, I feel entitled. Wink ****************************************************** 01-28-04, 03:24 PM Jelp01 Another President I think had an impact was William Henry Harrison. He died one month into his term, and was sick most of it. He wasn't President long enough to do any damage to the country. Wink
[This message was edited by Jelp01 on 01-28-04 at 03:52 PM.] ****************************************************** 01-28-04, 04:40 PM FredPuli Poor Coolidge.Here, in Britain, he is quite one of the most famous of all US presidents because of the noted exchange between Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker :
He : Calvin Coolidge died. She: How did they know ?
He then, reputedly, added a punchline which anthologists, biographers and reporters soon found that editors would not publish then . A bit vulgar, though expressed in proper language, certainly disrespectful to the dead man, it is a good line though .As it is so well known to all of us on AP, serious students as we are of such political commentary, I need not repeat it.... need I....?
This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,
