Obama ranked 7th greatest president

anonymoose said:
Trump is second worst in my lifetime behind LBJ. Good that LBJ did the civil rights act but doesn’t come close to making up for the years of needless death and destruction of the VN war.
Besides civil rights would’ve evolved on its own eventually anyway.
Edit: third worst behind GWB. I just don’t see how one can be worse than starting a senseless war behind false pretenses. At least WIN your war.
Click to expand...
A lot of Johnson's achievements are an extension of Kennedy's big plans for the nation. The 'Kennedy tax cuts' never came to fruition when he was alive.

Johnson was definitely on the wrong side of history re. Vietnam. Second to the Iraq debacle which was waged for monetary gain for Cheney's cronies and cost well over a trillion dollars. Especially when you factor in the TBI cases we are inundated with.

I don't believe civil rights would have just happened. It needed to be rammed through, so Johnson gets credit for that.

You make a good point, though. I never would have thought of Johnson as being so low, but Vietnam was just too big to ignore.
 
Doc Dutch said:
Agreed LBJ fucked up, but the Cold War was a shit show. The only thing good about it was that it wasn't a Hot War with the Soviets, PRC and the US emptying their nuclear arsenals at each other à la "On the Beach".
Click to expand...
It was a strange time in our history, and the dream that the world can end Communism is now laughable.

Which makes Iraq much worse, as we had history to reflect on at that point.

Especially given Schwartzkopf's very accurate warning against trying to expand the scope of the military actions.
 
anonymoose said:
But you can’t blame anyone in particular for starting the Cold War unnecessarily and under false pretenses.
LBJ, GWB for sure.
Click to expand...
Standing against the Soviets, like against the Nazis, was the right thing to do. There were costs in both American blood and American treasure. Like the Ukraine and Israeli conflicts, I prefer the US limit it to only American treasure. If spent wisely, we'd never have to stop the assholes with American blood.
 
Doc Dutch said:
Standing against the Soviets, like against the Nazis, was the right thing to do. There were costs in both American blood and American treasure. Like the Ukraine and Israeli conflicts, I prefer the US limit it to only American treasure. If spent wisely, we'd never have to stop the assholes with American blood.
Click to expand...
Agreed
 
Althea said:
It was a strange time in our history, and the dream that the world can end Communism is now laughable.

Which makes Iraq much worse, as we had history to reflect on at that point.

Especially given Schwartzkopf's very accurate warning against trying to expand the scope of the military actions.
Click to expand...
I'm currently enjoying watching the movie "Oppenheimer". I'd already known a lot of the history, both his and the Cold War in general. Like modern international situations, there's a lot of guesswork going on. Some smarter than others, some dumber. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, GW's invasion of Iraq and Putin's invasion of Ukraine rank among the dumber guesses. They thought they could get away with it and they were wrong, at great cost to them and their respective nations.
 
anonymoose said:
It did end. The dream that the world would adopt democracy is laughable.
Click to expand...
LOL. Pretty sure Communism is alive and well.

Yes...the 'Arab Spring' was a horrible idea, that yielded horrible results.

Primitive cultures simply cannot get along. They should remain in regional tribes without the need for a central govt. that will never be able to rein in the zealots.
 
Doc Dutch said:
I'm currently enjoying watching the movie "Oppenheimer". I'd already known a lot of the history, both his and the Cold War in general. Like modern international situations, there's a lot of guesswork going on. Some smarter than others, some dumber. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, GW's invasion of Iraq and Putin's invasion of Ukraine rank among the dumber guesses. They thought they could get away with it and they were wrong, at great cost to them and their respective nations.
Click to expand...
It looks like Putin will indeed succeed in Ukraine. Unless the latter can hold out until Jan. '25 which is doubtful. It also appears that he's deluded enough to continue to wage war against the world.

I find the concept of his new satellite killing rockets fascinating.
 
Doc Dutch said:
I'm currently enjoying watching the movie "Oppenheimer". I'd already known a lot of the history, both his and the Cold War in general. Like modern international situations, there's a lot of guesswork going on. Some smarter than others, some dumber. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, GW's invasion of Iraq and Putin's invasion of Ukraine rank among the dumber guesses. They thought they could get away with it and they were wrong, at great cost to them and their respective nations.
Click to expand...

The Manhattan project was neither the largest, nor the most expensive, that the US undertook in WW 2. JFK was the most dangerous president of the Cold War and LBJ the most incompetent.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
List the source. I've seen a number of those lists over the years from various "academics" and it's pretty easy to see they put little thought into them, making them pretty much worthless other than being their opinion as they clearly didn't base their evaluations on any sort of ranking criteria.
Click to expand...

I've posted the source in this thread multiple times. It is also linked in the OP article.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Thanks for that. I looked up the survey. It's nothing but an opinion poll.

http://www.brandonrottinghaus.com/u...1/presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf

This was the polling base:

Respondents included current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics, as well as scholars who had recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic presses. 525 respondents were invited to participate, and 154 usable responses were received, yielding a 29.3% response rate.1

The respondents did not have to use any set of criteria, and each was free to use any method they chose. That makes it an opinion poll, not some statistical measure. That pretty much makes the whole thing rubbish.
Click to expand...

Of course it's an opinion poll. Any time you seek to rate members of a group, you are giving an opinion. Geeze. Sports writers do it all the time with athletes, but you don't cry about *that,* do you?

This survey is a compilation of the learned opinions of highly-educated scholars who have published their research in "scholarly journals or academic presses," per your own quote. These aren't tobacco-chewing rednecks or random truck drivers or Starbucks baristas or office paper-pushers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top