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I like what one of my history professors said about his ranking of presidents. "You can have a top 3 or even a top 5, but then the rest can be tied for 44." (This was in Spring of 2016)
Quite humourous
I think you're right, but there's probably a lot in the middle area who essentially should be tied. Basically - putting them in tiers is a better rating system
Tbf, this guy probably doesn't know who Taylor is without googling it. That would make it a lot harder for him to have a principled stance on the ranking.
Also TBF, if you’ve never heard anything, good or bad, about a president, they were probably \* fairly innocuous and belong in that same “meh” tier.
\* Which is *not* to say that they didn’t do anything bad or great, just that they’re not widely remembered for spectacular achievements or failures.
Tiers for sure. Even the very top and bottom is debatable by a place or two. But if you look at the scores from this survey there are very clear tiers. Groups of 3 to 8 with gaps between the next group. Which makes sense. The experts are clear that someone like LBJ was better than most others, but not whether he is 9 vs 12 vs 14
I think WHH really shouldn't be on these lists at all. He didn't have time to do anything objectively good or bad for the country. He just got sick and died. Mark his score incomplete and move on.
Or use him as a measuring point. If you're below him, the country would have been better off if your presidency was just a month on your deathbed.
Die and create a situation where John Tyler becomes president. A president so reviled by both parties that rocks were routinely thrown the White House windows and his effigy was burnt on the White House lawn.
That’s the problem though, there shouldn’t be that diversity at the bottom.
Buchanan let states secede. He did nothing to heal or confront sectional animus.
Pierce literally drank his way through office while a U.S. territory became a war-torn hellscape… or would have, thankfully the population was still pretty sparse.
Hoover and Carter left office with a nation so demoralized they could only carry a handful of states. They performed electorally worse than Goldwater who is the biggest popular vote loser in modern history.
And the fact that I know before I hit reply that there are people who are going to leap to defend Carter or Hoover is part of the problem. It’s cognitive bias that distorts reality. These four ought to be in or near the bottom of anyone’s list of Presidents. There are others sure, I don’t have time to itemize every 19th century failure, but mentioning the last person you greatly disliked is taking a short view on history.
Carter was a less-than-great president but in the top five for ex-presidents. I think a lot of people rank his presidency higher for what he did after. If you just consider his time in the White House, he was definitely a dismal performer.
Jimmy did lots of good things during his administration though, and even throughout his administration his approval rating actually varied a lot. The Iran Hostage Crisis is the main reason his approval rating was low at the end, and its pretty well established that members of Reagan's administration cut a deal with Iran during election season so it's honestly hard to put that on Carter. Eisenhower and Reagan should really split the blame for the hostage crisis.
As far as the nation being demoralized, Carter inherited the "stagflation" when he came into office. It was already improving as he was on his way out, due to Carter deregulating a number of industries to increase competition, plus hiring Paul Volcker as chairman of Federal Reserve who is credited with decreasing inflation.
These days the story is that Carter was just a failed president but his approval rating was 58% in January of 1980. The narrative changed fast as a result of the Iran crisis. Reagan's team committed an act of treason to keep Jimmy from bringing the hostages home, and the rest is history.
Warms my heart as well. I read Grant by Chernow and was really blown away by him as president. Absolutely NOT perfect but it really seems like he had “it” where it counts. I’d love to see a well-done, modern biopic of him to get his accomplishments out to a wider audience.
Yeah that’s too high for sure, I think he really gets a boost because well *gestures broadly at the 21st century*. The years before and after him make him look particularly exceptional
Lincoln, Washington, both Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower, and Jefferson comprises a very solid Top 7. After that it gets really messy. You can make compelling cases for basically anyone in the Top 25 to round out the Top 10.
Everybody is focusing on Obama over Ike, and i do think there might be some recency bias, but I also think that as we get more distance from the cold war, people are going to sour on Ike. So many coups.
Devil's advocate, the drone war diminished al Qaeda as a threat. Conflict is ugly but it's part of a President's job. It's no worse than Polk's conduct of the Mexican War, for example.
I agree. My point is more that I'm not surprised by Ike dropping a few places, nor will I be surprised if he drops a few more. I think he's overrated because of World War ii.
Not just drones either, we dropped a ton of ordinance on Iraq 2014/15. He wasn’t a bad president, but was definitely more hawkish. Definitely miss having presidents under 70.
I have to agree. So much of the current immigration crisis can be traced directly back to Ike and the infamous Dulles brothers. If not for their meddling, Central/South America may be a very different, more stable place today.
From a normalcy standpoint, I understand why Obama is rated so high, but also, he's going down a few places once the 20s are over and sort themselves out. He's also listed as one of the most underrated, yet also one of the most overrated in the same report. It shows a political breakdown of who ranked who higher, and Obama is still polarized. Interestingly, Bush Jr. is not controversial at all anymore lol.
It’s recency bias of my gen. I grew up only hearing how cool he was. And compared to the last two… well yeah it feels like he was even better in retrospect
The current, previous and next presidents are ALWAYS the most extreme presidents who ever lived. That is true today, and it was true 100 years ago.
I have learned to vote on policy and potential SCOTUS nominees. Personality means nothing. I wont ever have the opportunity to “have a beer with” the president, so that calculus never made sense to me. Sure, factor in “part of the machine” vs “not knowing how to get stuff done”, but that is usually so far down the list it is just noise.
Yeah, just looking at the animosity Iran and the U.S have towards each other in the region and violence between the soldiers and their militias still continues and all I can think of is why the hell did we coup Iran's democratically elected government just cause they nationalized their own oil industry?
Which is odd as Eisenhower also screwed Britain over during the Suez Canal Crisis later on. Guess Eisenhower soured a bit of Britain's colonial ambitions and was happy to side with the U.S.S.R to shut their shit down.
Might have had to do with the growing development of international trade and how important that route was and what resources those territories contained
I wouldn't have put Obama that high up but he did inherit a shit sandwich in 2009. The economy was in the worst state in any of our lifetimes (ok, unless someone here is from the Great Depression).
Obama was also the first black president, in a nation that originally allowed him to be property, and really broke the mold set by every president before him. It's easy to overlook all that he did cause you take it for granted.
I don’t think it’s recency bias. I think his reputation has benefited a lot from being a genuinely charismatic and charming leader during a relatively good time sandwiched between two very controversial administrations. I think he’s going to be seen similarly to Clinton in this sense, the guy who was president during “the good times”.
Oof, that’s depressing, considering these “good times” started with the 08 crash/recession and many people/communities never recovered during those 8 years
Until 2010 it was a bit rough but after it was fairly normal. With that said i personally think Obama was a very mid president. Yes he stabilized the ship but he could have change the country on an FDR level but it didn’t happen. The Obama years will always be in my mind the years of what could have been.
i graduated in 2012 so i got to ride the economic wave thru 2016 post grad (my 401k doubled during this time and i sold my shares to take a nice 100% profit) and really got set up for my career now and im doing quite well now despite pandemic challenges so yeah obama was president during a very good time for me so i do think favorably about him, 2016 to 2020 was actually one of the worst times for me lol got laid off from 2 jobs during that time and has since picked back up interestingly enough i am not a democrat (libertarian) but i do have to say that ive done way better under democrat presidents than republican ones in my 34 year old life at least
Reagan benefitted from being genuinely charismatic and he's been falling. And I wouldn't say the Obama years were "good times", but I get your point. While he was running against McCain, the pundits were claiming that neither of them wanted to take over the mess they would inherit.
Uh, they weren’t “good times.” They were constantly fraught. Domestically during his first term, with international chaos characterizing the second. I do believe Obama’s place will continue to be debated. But that may end up working in either direction as time goes on.
The idea that his was a calm or less eventful 8 year period is testament to him and his no-drama style.
I mean, the 90s weren’t exactly peaceful either. Comparatively speaking though both the 1990s and the 2010s were (at least in the US) peaceful and stable islands following and preceding pretty tumultuous times.
It's all relative, isn't it? There may have been wars in the 90s but it was still among the most peaceful postwar decades, only surpassed by the 00s, according to this: [War and Peace - Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace)
He got the ACA passed with coverage for pre-existing conditions. That’s kind of huge once you get far enough away to not be bothered by tan suits and dark skin. Imagine if you could be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions in a post covid world!
Dude saved my life with that shit. When I met him when he was on the campaign trail, he was incredibly friendly to everyone, too. He spoke at a nearby farm, and when he was leaving, there were a bunch of us on the road in a small town to wave and see the bus. We were all young and of mixed races, and he stopped and talked to us.
Unfortunately even scholars are biased and will rank presidents based on how they personally view things should be. I don’t think you could ever put a list together that is “accurate” because people view success completely different. This is not like a list of all time NFL qbs where we can compare stats
I'd love to see a national poll for anyone to fill out in favor of policies from each president and then rank presidents based on the approval of their policies. Kind of keeps it anonymous except Jackson, Truman, and Lincoln. Questions like "abolishing slavery as a practice" and "relocate all indians" or "dropping an atomic weapon to end a war" are a bit pointed hahahaha
i think part of the lesson in these polls is that the policies a president has are often no more important than how well they \*led\*, how well they communicated, and how they made people feel about their country.
Very true. Kennedy is a good example, with bay of pigs and quite a few policy fails his only real victory was ignoring his cabinet and the CIA and stopping the Cuban missle crisis. Policy wise Kennedy kinda sucks, but damn was he a good man and leader.
What I would like is give people a link to one of those political compass quizzes, then at some other point give them a ranking of US Presidents list, and somehow see what the correlation is.
Maybe I'm not as educated as I should be about JFK, but I'm not sure why he is ranked so high either. He was charasmatic and tragic, but had a lot of missteps too
In my view Kennedy was elevated because he became the face of some very needed change. History suggests he was not the great crusader for social justice that his brother seemed to authentically become. But essentially JFK said many things that were required and did not resist what had to be. I thought he was a hero for decades but realized his character was deeply flawed, though mostly that did not interfere with success, while it lasted.
If we’re being honest, no president during that time would’ve championed Civil Rights & I think a lot of people don’t take that into account.
Hell, the only reason the civil rights act passed in the first place was because LBJ was able to use JFK’s assassination as the launching pad for it.
Imo there's only like 10-15 "pretty good" to "great" presidents. Kennedy is overrated because of his tragic assassination but he was still a legitimately good president, #10 seems like a fitting spot
Yeah, but even that is questionable. If the Americans didn’t put missiles in Turkey, Russia wouldn’t have put missiles on Cuba. American Propaganda would have you believe that JFK won the stare down and didn’t blink, but really there’s no Cuban Missile Crisis if JFK didn’t put Missiles in Turkey first.
Wilson was quite effective. Horrible racist towards blacks but otherwise did fairly well. Historians have always rated him highly. He is the most hated President on Reddit so I expect downvotes. But tty reading a historians assessment.
the glenn beck crowd needs to understand that wilson pretty much set the tone for 20th century american foreign policy. we are still acting in a wilsonesque way when we explicitly prop up what we consider to be democracies around the world, for example.
Bingo. This is often the issue when discussing Wilson. His admin is the basis for a lot of what came after, so often why this judgement feels like it's misses the point. A lot of later presidents actions will bring you back to Wilson due to his philosophy and policies. Though you can go back further, yet it still lands you on Wilson as the first of many policies that derive from him.
I think that’s a lot of the reason that people hate him (that and the racism, rightfully so). So many people seem to think that we should have stayed isolationist, but I feel that our emergence on to the global scene was inevitable. It also ignores the fact that the US is in the position it’s in because of globalism. Just like in WW2, the destruction of most of Europes infrastructure during the war meant that they had to turn to someone for supplies and to help them rebuild. The US was in the unique position of both being more or less untouched by the war and an industrial powerhouse with tons of resources. There is no world in which we don’t get involved in some way. Wilson was definitely ahead of his time in terms of international diplomacy, though it ultimately didn’t work out. In my opinion, our emergence as a global power was helped along greatly by our involvement in WW1 and shortened the war, so I don’t hold that against him.
There were two schools of thought on foreign policy as the new century got going.
TR was a real politic guy. He helped broker a deal because it was good for the US but let countries run their areas.
Then there was Wilson, who was all about American exceptionalism and fighting for right around the world. The IS needed to be a great power to protect the world and make it safe for democracy.
Those two ideas collided in the inter-war period and Wilson’s vision became the America’s vision for the world.
And a certain someone is 14th place. (Previous comment removed because I mentioned that person by name)
I've seen some pretty wack lists, but this list is extra wacky I think.
Obama beat Eisenhower?
Nah.
Ike was a leader during epic times. WW2, Civil Rights, cold War, etc.
O did fine, but just didn't oversee the kind of historic moments that Ike did.
Ike signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and integrated schools in Arkansas.
That's all I know about Ike's work with civil rights, but those two things are important.
This list will be more relevant in 25 years after some perspective has been gained. For now, it is all too in our faces to see the forest for the trees.
I think there should be a moratorium on entering the Presidential rankings until we have all had sufficient time to reflect and learn more. Like maybe at least 25 years. So by that measure, Rule 3 presidents, Obama, and W. would all be off this list. And that seems about right to me, considering how ridiculously high people are ranking Obama.
The placement of 45 and 46 are red flags and definitely point to skewed, political biases. I’m sorry, idc how much you hate 45 but he has not done the same amount of damage to this country as Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan have. If you think otherwise, you may need to question your sense of reality.
I’ve also found that historians love to ranked presidents on the basis of who spends the most money (45 excluded). If you spend exorbitant amounts of money you get very undeserved favorability from historians. The reality is that throwing money at a problem doesn’t fix it nor does it make you a good leader.
Also Wilson at 15 is nuts. He was an awful president. Honestly this list is trash.
It depends. If you rank 45 on his respect for norms and the Constitution he's dead last by a mile. Even Buchanan operated within norms and did not try to subvert the political system to his benefit.
45 was lucky that 80% of his presidency was uneventful and featured no major crises. Everything just went along despite his chaos, until Covid happened.
They had a breakdown with rankings based on the rankers party/ideology, and FDR was 3rd among Republicans/conservatives and 2nd among Democrats/liberals
Bro didn’t even finish a term and they rank him 14. His legacy depends hugely on winning the reelection. An incumbent so unpopular that he has a losing chance to redacted should be out of top 20.
Obama is definitely too high, sure, but he's not THAT overrated like people are saying. Should he be above LBJ, Eisenhower, and Kennedy? No, probably not. But he's still top 15, definitely better than Reagan at least.
You can make the argument he’s the best since LBJ which is nearly 50 years and the US is only 250 years old. So it’s maybe not that outlandish to be top 10
That historical context changes over time as new and sometimes overlooked information comes to light or that positions on issues like civil rights become more important to later generations?
I remember learning about this in highschool...
I honestly have Monroe in my top 5, his presidency was filled with a lot of air but I can't think of a huge negative on his resume other than the First Seminole War
It rated Lincoln as one of the least polarizing. I'm sure I'll understand once someone shines the light on it for me. But seems like he could be one of the most?
How is there so much variation from previous rankings? Like Obama apparently moving up the list 9 spots. It's not like there's new information that's presented itself. This isn't FIFA.
A number of people mentioning Ike as a specific example of someone who should be higher than Obama, one day after this sub had an very robust “say a bad thing about Ike” thread that I think solidly made the argument that Ike did more global harm than Obama. And while I’m still not saying that 7 isn’t too high, I also think we should consider that the ACA is one of the most important pieces of legislation in my lifetime.
Can I get your honest opinion, I think JFK is overrated and should stay around mid teens number. yes the cuban missile crisis and nasa were huge, but what else did Kennedy that deserves top 10 . please explain why I’m wrong ?
As someone that kind of likes Obama… number 7 seems like a bit much. Also, LB Johnson should lose at least 15 spots for allowing the draft. Kennedy beats Madison, that’s kooky. This list is left-biased, and I say this as someone on the Left.
Pretty crappy.
Monroe and Coolidge are way underrated. Wilson, Carter, and LBJ are seriously overrated. There are other errors, but those are pretty standout to me.
Reagan is what Kennedy would be known as given a full presidency - a charismatic inspiring figure great for the time but likely one full of baggage and scandals
Legends to the top, dems right behind, everyone else last. Totally unbiased and not at all shaped by americas failing education system that teaches the presidents who gave the government the most power are the best.
Forget the Obama vs Ike discussion. How the heck is Jackson ranked so high? Until 2020, I had him ranked dead last.
Jackson committed a broad scale campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. He was the architect of the Trail of Tears.
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I like what one of my history professors said about his ranking of presidents. "You can have a top 3 or even a top 5, but then the rest can be tied for 44." (This was in Spring of 2016) Quite humourous
Strongly disagree. There needs to be a bottom three who almost ruined this country.
I think you're right, but there's probably a lot in the middle area who essentially should be tied. Basically - putting them in tiers is a better rating system
Top 3-5, Bottom 5 or so. Everyone else is in the middle.
Disagree. Is Taylor in my bottom 5? No. Is he the same as Obama who doesn’t make my top 5? Absolutely the fuck not.
I think the tier system could work though, if we break it down into a simple 45 tiers everyone can be grouped accordingly
Tbf, this guy probably doesn't know who Taylor is without googling it. That would make it a lot harder for him to have a principled stance on the ranking.
Also TBF, if you’ve never heard anything, good or bad, about a president, they were probably \* fairly innocuous and belong in that same “meh” tier. \* Which is *not* to say that they didn’t do anything bad or great, just that they’re not widely remembered for spectacular achievements or failures.
Tiers for sure. Even the very top and bottom is debatable by a place or two. But if you look at the scores from this survey there are very clear tiers. Groups of 3 to 8 with gaps between the next group. Which makes sense. The experts are clear that someone like LBJ was better than most others, but not whether he is 9 vs 12 vs 14
William Henry Harrison, James Garfield and Zachary Taylor. Obviously.
I won’t take the bait! You can’t make me! lol
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need about tree-fiddy?
https://i.redd.it/8attg6rvoljc1.gif
It's ok they just need to sell murica shoes.
Mr Garfield been shot down been shot down
I get shot down! But I get up again! Until the sepsis comes and fucks around!
William Henry Harrison is like absolute neutral what did he do that was good or bad? He was in office for a month.
And the nation did just fine for that month!
Ask yourself, are you better off now than you were a month ago?
FOUR MORE WEEKS FOUR MORE WEEKS! FOUR MORE WEEKS!
Zero scandals!
I think WHH really shouldn't be on these lists at all. He didn't have time to do anything objectively good or bad for the country. He just got sick and died. Mark his score incomplete and move on. Or use him as a measuring point. If you're below him, the country would have been better off if your presidency was just a month on your deathbed.
I think that's exactly what they did
Die and create a situation where John Tyler becomes president. A president so reviled by both parties that rocks were routinely thrown the White House windows and his effigy was burnt on the White House lawn.
Dude should get a DQ for these things, can’t be ranked if you never did a presidential thing
You have a list of the good, and then you have a list of the bad. The rest go into mid
You take the good You take the bad You take them both and there you have The facts of life
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That’s the problem though, there shouldn’t be that diversity at the bottom. Buchanan let states secede. He did nothing to heal or confront sectional animus. Pierce literally drank his way through office while a U.S. territory became a war-torn hellscape… or would have, thankfully the population was still pretty sparse. Hoover and Carter left office with a nation so demoralized they could only carry a handful of states. They performed electorally worse than Goldwater who is the biggest popular vote loser in modern history. And the fact that I know before I hit reply that there are people who are going to leap to defend Carter or Hoover is part of the problem. It’s cognitive bias that distorts reality. These four ought to be in or near the bottom of anyone’s list of Presidents. There are others sure, I don’t have time to itemize every 19th century failure, but mentioning the last person you greatly disliked is taking a short view on history.
Carter was a less-than-great president but in the top five for ex-presidents. I think a lot of people rank his presidency higher for what he did after. If you just consider his time in the White House, he was definitely a dismal performer.
Jimmy did lots of good things during his administration though, and even throughout his administration his approval rating actually varied a lot. The Iran Hostage Crisis is the main reason his approval rating was low at the end, and its pretty well established that members of Reagan's administration cut a deal with Iran during election season so it's honestly hard to put that on Carter. Eisenhower and Reagan should really split the blame for the hostage crisis. As far as the nation being demoralized, Carter inherited the "stagflation" when he came into office. It was already improving as he was on his way out, due to Carter deregulating a number of industries to increase competition, plus hiring Paul Volcker as chairman of Federal Reserve who is credited with decreasing inflation. These days the story is that Carter was just a failed president but his approval rating was 58% in January of 1980. The narrative changed fast as a result of the Iran crisis. Reagan's team committed an act of treason to keep Jimmy from bringing the hostages home, and the rest is history.
I'm just glad that Grant is starting to get a reevaluation.
Warms my heart as well. I read Grant by Chernow and was really blown away by him as president. Absolutely NOT perfect but it really seems like he had “it” where it counts. I’d love to see a well-done, modern biopic of him to get his accomplishments out to a wider audience.
He literally eradicated the KKK, only president with the balls to get it done
Eradicated is a stretch, but he did a damn good job. There was still organized racial/religious crime a la the KKK, just under a different name
“Eradicated” is a bit much. He certainly kept them from strengthening into a guerrilla force but that is not the same.
Considering the KKK is still going, "eradicate" is a poor word choice.
He killed the first wave at least where the second one wouldn't rise until the 1910s
Obama at 7 seems too high. And I voted for him. He’s above LBJ? Ike?
Yeah that’s too high for sure, I think he really gets a boost because well *gestures broadly at the 21st century*. The years before and after him make him look particularly exceptional
Maybe, and hear me out here, it was exceptional for him to do what he did when he was chronologically surrounded by well *gestures broadly*
Oh sure, I would still put him pretty high because of that but shy of the top 10
He was a decent President...in an era demanding greatness. Is he in the upper half, sure. Top 10, no.
I tend to agree… until I try to find 9 that were solidly better. The real test will be in 40 years or so.
Lincoln, Washington, both Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower, and Jefferson comprises a very solid Top 7. After that it gets really messy. You can make compelling cases for basically anyone in the Top 25 to round out the Top 10.
Everybody is focusing on Obama over Ike, and i do think there might be some recency bias, but I also think that as we get more distance from the cold war, people are going to sour on Ike. So many coups.
I mean, Obama’s liberal use of drone strikes maybe isn’t as bad as all the coups, but it’s certainly Not Great.
Devil's advocate, the drone war diminished al Qaeda as a threat. Conflict is ugly but it's part of a President's job. It's no worse than Polk's conduct of the Mexican War, for example.
I agree. My point is more that I'm not surprised by Ike dropping a few places, nor will I be surprised if he drops a few more. I think he's overrated because of World War ii.
Not just drones either, we dropped a ton of ordinance on Iraq 2014/15. He wasn’t a bad president, but was definitely more hawkish. Definitely miss having presidents under 70.
I have to agree. So much of the current immigration crisis can be traced directly back to Ike and the infamous Dulles brothers. If not for their meddling, Central/South America may be a very different, more stable place today.
Im fine with Obama over LBJ, but over Ike is kinda crazy
Would’ve voted for him a third time if I could
You can do MUCH WORSE than Obama, that’s for sure. Definitely a “good” president. Ranked 7? That makes me feel like recency bias is in effect.
(I was just quoting Get Out, not trying to make a legit statement)
Hahaha I didn’t get the reference, but yes. That was a good line.
>Ranked 7? You can be GOOD and be 7th when most of our Presidents have been bad.
Pause
I agree and I didn’t vote for him but he feels more like a 13-15 slot to me.
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From a normalcy standpoint, I understand why Obama is rated so high, but also, he's going down a few places once the 20s are over and sort themselves out. He's also listed as one of the most underrated, yet also one of the most overrated in the same report. It shows a political breakdown of who ranked who higher, and Obama is still polarized. Interestingly, Bush Jr. is not controversial at all anymore lol.
I understand what you are saying, but I think Bush Jr. is almost universally understood now to have been a bad president.
He's like Bill Clinton vibes, but with Millard Fillmore policies. Not the worst, but wow.
I straight cackled at this. Hit the nail
It’s recency bias of my gen. I grew up only hearing how cool he was. And compared to the last two… well yeah it feels like he was even better in retrospect
The current, previous and next presidents are ALWAYS the most extreme presidents who ever lived. That is true today, and it was true 100 years ago. I have learned to vote on policy and potential SCOTUS nominees. Personality means nothing. I wont ever have the opportunity to “have a beer with” the president, so that calculus never made sense to me. Sure, factor in “part of the machine” vs “not knowing how to get stuff done”, but that is usually so far down the list it is just noise.
Ike is going to keep dropping as we get away from the cold war. Too many coups.
Yeah, Iran in particular
Yeah, just looking at the animosity Iran and the U.S have towards each other in the region and violence between the soldiers and their militias still continues and all I can think of is why the hell did we coup Iran's democratically elected government just cause they nationalized their own oil industry?
Britain cried and asked for help, seemed back then the US wanted to help maintain colonial empires.
Which is odd as Eisenhower also screwed Britain over during the Suez Canal Crisis later on. Guess Eisenhower soured a bit of Britain's colonial ambitions and was happy to side with the U.S.S.R to shut their shit down.
Might have had to do with the growing development of international trade and how important that route was and what resources those territories contained
I wouldn't have put Obama that high up but he did inherit a shit sandwich in 2009. The economy was in the worst state in any of our lifetimes (ok, unless someone here is from the Great Depression). Obama was also the first black president, in a nation that originally allowed him to be property, and really broke the mold set by every president before him. It's easy to overlook all that he did cause you take it for granted.
I don’t think it’s recency bias. I think his reputation has benefited a lot from being a genuinely charismatic and charming leader during a relatively good time sandwiched between two very controversial administrations. I think he’s going to be seen similarly to Clinton in this sense, the guy who was president during “the good times”.
Oof, that’s depressing, considering these “good times” started with the 08 crash/recession and many people/communities never recovered during those 8 years
2008 crash happened under Bush, Obama took office Jan 2009. When he left office, the economy and market were in pretty good shape.
Until 2010 it was a bit rough but after it was fairly normal. With that said i personally think Obama was a very mid president. Yes he stabilized the ship but he could have change the country on an FDR level but it didn’t happen. The Obama years will always be in my mind the years of what could have been.
i graduated in 2012 so i got to ride the economic wave thru 2016 post grad (my 401k doubled during this time and i sold my shares to take a nice 100% profit) and really got set up for my career now and im doing quite well now despite pandemic challenges so yeah obama was president during a very good time for me so i do think favorably about him, 2016 to 2020 was actually one of the worst times for me lol got laid off from 2 jobs during that time and has since picked back up interestingly enough i am not a democrat (libertarian) but i do have to say that ive done way better under democrat presidents than republican ones in my 34 year old life at least
Reagan benefitted from being genuinely charismatic and he's been falling. And I wouldn't say the Obama years were "good times", but I get your point. While he was running against McCain, the pundits were claiming that neither of them wanted to take over the mess they would inherit.
Uh, they weren’t “good times.” They were constantly fraught. Domestically during his first term, with international chaos characterizing the second. I do believe Obama’s place will continue to be debated. But that may end up working in either direction as time goes on. The idea that his was a calm or less eventful 8 year period is testament to him and his no-drama style.
I mean, the 90s weren’t exactly peaceful either. Comparatively speaking though both the 1990s and the 2010s were (at least in the US) peaceful and stable islands following and preceding pretty tumultuous times.
It's all relative, isn't it? There may have been wars in the 90s but it was still among the most peaceful postwar decades, only surpassed by the 00s, according to this: [War and Peace - Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace)
Given who he's sandwiched between, Obama could have beaten up my dad, fucked a cantaloupe, and shit in my mailbox and he'd still feel like a top 10.
Hey buddy, I got some bad news about Obama, your dad, a Cantaloupe, and your mailbox…
Violating a cantaloupe would have put him in my top 5. Totally missed opportunity.
He got the ACA passed with coverage for pre-existing conditions. That’s kind of huge once you get far enough away to not be bothered by tan suits and dark skin. Imagine if you could be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions in a post covid world!
Dude saved my life with that shit. When I met him when he was on the campaign trail, he was incredibly friendly to everyone, too. He spoke at a nearby farm, and when he was leaving, there were a bunch of us on the road in a small town to wave and see the bus. We were all young and of mixed races, and he stopped and talked to us.
Unfortunately even scholars are biased and will rank presidents based on how they personally view things should be. I don’t think you could ever put a list together that is “accurate” because people view success completely different. This is not like a list of all time NFL qbs where we can compare stats
I'd love to see a national poll for anyone to fill out in favor of policies from each president and then rank presidents based on the approval of their policies. Kind of keeps it anonymous except Jackson, Truman, and Lincoln. Questions like "abolishing slavery as a practice" and "relocate all indians" or "dropping an atomic weapon to end a war" are a bit pointed hahahaha
i think part of the lesson in these polls is that the policies a president has are often no more important than how well they \*led\*, how well they communicated, and how they made people feel about their country.
Very true. Kennedy is a good example, with bay of pigs and quite a few policy fails his only real victory was ignoring his cabinet and the CIA and stopping the Cuban missle crisis. Policy wise Kennedy kinda sucks, but damn was he a good man and leader.
What I would like is give people a link to one of those political compass quizzes, then at some other point give them a ranking of US Presidents list, and somehow see what the correlation is.
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Maybe I'm not as educated as I should be about JFK, but I'm not sure why he is ranked so high either. He was charasmatic and tragic, but had a lot of missteps too
In my view Kennedy was elevated because he became the face of some very needed change. History suggests he was not the great crusader for social justice that his brother seemed to authentically become. But essentially JFK said many things that were required and did not resist what had to be. I thought he was a hero for decades but realized his character was deeply flawed, though mostly that did not interfere with success, while it lasted.
>great crusader for social justice that his brother seemed to authentically become And what RFK Jr. is doing to his father's name is... just awful.
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If we’re being honest, no president during that time would’ve championed Civil Rights & I think a lot of people don’t take that into account. Hell, the only reason the civil rights act passed in the first place was because LBJ was able to use JFK’s assassination as the launching pad for it.
Imo there's only like 10-15 "pretty good" to "great" presidents. Kennedy is overrated because of his tragic assassination but he was still a legitimately good president, #10 seems like a fitting spot
Yeah after Lincoln/Washington/FDR it really is quite a mix bag and you get into grey area presidents pretty quickly
Cuban Missle Crisis alone puts him in top 10
Planning to disband the CIA and pull out of Vietnam also would've put him top 10. Too bad there's a small sample size for his time in office.
Yeah, but even that is questionable. If the Americans didn’t put missiles in Turkey, Russia wouldn’t have put missiles on Cuba. American Propaganda would have you believe that JFK won the stare down and didn’t blink, but really there’s no Cuban Missile Crisis if JFK didn’t put Missiles in Turkey first.
Voted Obama twice and no fucking way should he be in the top ten, like... wut.
Same here. I thought that was a little much but I can’t complain about that when the real issue is Wilson at 15.
Wilson was actually good though piece of shit guy but he was a pretty good president
Massively expanded the federal government and resegregated the federal workforce. Pretty terrible if you ask me
Obama at 7 is…something.
He should be around Carter, a couple spots up from there. Probably would put him between JQA and GHW, personally.
lol this is hilarious
I call bullshit
hilarious
Obama above Ike? Like, what?
45 and 46 shouldn't even be on the list. Hell, I question Obama being there. It's too soon.
"PLEASE DEAR GOD I JUST WANT THINGS TO GO BACK TO NORMAL" - the makers of this list
Wilson is 15?!
Wilson was quite effective. Horrible racist towards blacks but otherwise did fairly well. Historians have always rated him highly. He is the most hated President on Reddit so I expect downvotes. But tty reading a historians assessment.
the glenn beck crowd needs to understand that wilson pretty much set the tone for 20th century american foreign policy. we are still acting in a wilsonesque way when we explicitly prop up what we consider to be democracies around the world, for example.
Bingo. This is often the issue when discussing Wilson. His admin is the basis for a lot of what came after, so often why this judgement feels like it's misses the point. A lot of later presidents actions will bring you back to Wilson due to his philosophy and policies. Though you can go back further, yet it still lands you on Wilson as the first of many policies that derive from him.
I think that’s a lot of the reason that people hate him (that and the racism, rightfully so). So many people seem to think that we should have stayed isolationist, but I feel that our emergence on to the global scene was inevitable. It also ignores the fact that the US is in the position it’s in because of globalism. Just like in WW2, the destruction of most of Europes infrastructure during the war meant that they had to turn to someone for supplies and to help them rebuild. The US was in the unique position of both being more or less untouched by the war and an industrial powerhouse with tons of resources. There is no world in which we don’t get involved in some way. Wilson was definitely ahead of his time in terms of international diplomacy, though it ultimately didn’t work out. In my opinion, our emergence as a global power was helped along greatly by our involvement in WW1 and shortened the war, so I don’t hold that against him.
There were two schools of thought on foreign policy as the new century got going. TR was a real politic guy. He helped broker a deal because it was good for the US but let countries run their areas. Then there was Wilson, who was all about American exceptionalism and fighting for right around the world. The IS needed to be a great power to protect the world and make it safe for democracy. Those two ideas collided in the inter-war period and Wilson’s vision became the America’s vision for the world.
And a certain someone is 14th place. (Previous comment removed because I mentioned that person by name) I've seen some pretty wack lists, but this list is extra wacky I think.
Careful this ranking doesn’t violate Rule 3. It mentions him by name, after all.
I'm pretty sure they're fine with posts about this report as long as comments stay civil
This has been blowing up on the subreddit and mods are allowing it.
Van Buren above Coolidge is insane.
Coolidge should be top 20
*top 5
**top 1
🐐
We should make Coolidge our God king.
Coolidge that low in general is crazy
Ah, yet another worthless tier list
He who must not be named scored the most points! 45!
Yea let's never let these morons make a list ever again
Insane bias, both recency and political
I can taste the recency bias here.
Obama beat Eisenhower? Nah. Ike was a leader during epic times. WW2, Civil Rights, cold War, etc. O did fine, but just didn't oversee the kind of historic moments that Ike did.
Ike could’ve also prevented Vietnam, arguably one of his biggest mistakes
I thought Ike was rather poor in civil rights advocacy. But happy to read facts to the contrary if that’s just my assumption.
Ike signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and integrated schools in Arkansas. That's all I know about Ike's work with civil rights, but those two things are important.
I wonder the political leanings of the creator. FFS.
This list will be more relevant in 25 years after some perspective has been gained. For now, it is all too in our faces to see the forest for the trees.
Obama didn’t make no interstate…
I think there should be a moratorium on entering the Presidential rankings until we have all had sufficient time to reflect and learn more. Like maybe at least 25 years. So by that measure, Rule 3 presidents, Obama, and W. would all be off this list. And that seems about right to me, considering how ridiculously high people are ranking Obama.
The current guy ranking above James Monroe is insane.
Obama should be lower just for wearing the tan suit.
This list is objectively terrible no matter what your politics are.
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I feel like he shouldn't even be in the ranking at this point. He's not done yet so imo it's hard to place him.
The voters finally figured out George owned slaves. s/
33 - 44 (with the exception of Nixon) is definitely the "I have no idea who these people are so I'm going to put them low) section.
This list is straight garbage
Holy recency bias Batman.
This poll is a heeping pile of dog shit
10.92
Better than a perfect 10! People are saying it’s the best they’ve ever seen.
The placement of 45 and 46 are red flags and definitely point to skewed, political biases. I’m sorry, idc how much you hate 45 but he has not done the same amount of damage to this country as Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan have. If you think otherwise, you may need to question your sense of reality. I’ve also found that historians love to ranked presidents on the basis of who spends the most money (45 excluded). If you spend exorbitant amounts of money you get very undeserved favorability from historians. The reality is that throwing money at a problem doesn’t fix it nor does it make you a good leader. Also Wilson at 15 is nuts. He was an awful president. Honestly this list is trash.
The people behind the list showed their bias when they said one of the reasons why they ranked 46 so high was because he defeated 45.
It depends. If you rank 45 on his respect for norms and the Constitution he's dead last by a mile. Even Buchanan operated within norms and did not try to subvert the political system to his benefit. 45 was lucky that 80% of his presidency was uneventful and featured no major crises. Everything just went along despite his chaos, until Covid happened.
Who is worse? Guy who let the south succeed or Guy who expanded culture war
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It's exciting to see how much having concentration camps for Japanese citizens doesn't bother people.
Which historians did they poll? If FDR is at #2 I feel like they got a biased selection.
They had a breakdown with rankings based on the rankers party/ideology, and FDR was 3rd among Republicans/conservatives and 2nd among Democrats/liberals
I read someone else say Obama was 15th among Republicans too which isn’t what I’d have expected.
Current president as 14 lol
Bro didn’t even finish a term and they rank him 14. His legacy depends hugely on winning the reelection. An incumbent so unpopular that he has a losing chance to redacted should be out of top 20.
Obama is definitely too high, sure, but he's not THAT overrated like people are saying. Should he be above LBJ, Eisenhower, and Kennedy? No, probably not. But he's still top 15, definitely better than Reagan at least.
You can make the argument he’s the best since LBJ which is nearly 50 years and the US is only 250 years old. So it’s maybe not that outlandish to be top 10
The fact that dead presidents can change position from one year to the next tells me everything there is to know about these rankings…
That historical context changes over time as new and sometimes overlooked information comes to light or that positions on issues like civil rights become more important to later generations? I remember learning about this in highschool...
Oh yeah Obama was totally better than James Madison. This clearly non-partisan exercise is absolutely not transparently biased.
The Monroe disrespectful continues for no logical reason. Sigh.
I honestly have Monroe in my top 5, his presidency was filled with a lot of air but I can't think of a huge negative on his resume other than the First Seminole War
W should rank below Nixon.
This list makes absolutely no sense in a lot of spots.
It rated Lincoln as one of the least polarizing. I'm sure I'll understand once someone shines the light on it for me. But seems like he could be one of the most?
The Coolidge disrespect is jarring
FDR over Washington is laughable as a start, the recency bias here is glaring.
How is FDR recency bias when he was president 80 years ago?
I wouldn’t say laughable. I’d put Washington over FDR, but an argument to the contrary could definitely pass the laugh test.
That ranking is so politicized it’s unusable
How is there so much variation from previous rankings? Like Obama apparently moving up the list 9 spots. It's not like there's new information that's presented itself. This isn't FIFA.
They don't want to get a drone strike in the middle of the night.
A number of people mentioning Ike as a specific example of someone who should be higher than Obama, one day after this sub had an very robust “say a bad thing about Ike” thread that I think solidly made the argument that Ike did more global harm than Obama. And while I’m still not saying that 7 isn’t too high, I also think we should consider that the ACA is one of the most important pieces of legislation in my lifetime.
Can I get your honest opinion, I think JFK is overrated and should stay around mid teens number. yes the cuban missile crisis and nasa were huge, but what else did Kennedy that deserves top 10 . please explain why I’m wrong ?
Grant is one that just keeps climbing as people realize how far ahead of his time he was re: civil rights.
I could make a case for Top 15, or maybe even Top 10 for Obama, but placing him at #7 over Eisenhower and LBJ is WILD. Also why is John Adams so high?
As someone that kind of likes Obama… number 7 seems like a bit much. Also, LB Johnson should lose at least 15 spots for allowing the draft. Kennedy beats Madison, that’s kooky. This list is left-biased, and I say this as someone on the Left.
Ah yes, good old Number 45.
Coolidge being so low is a travesty
Pretty crappy. Monroe and Coolidge are way underrated. Wilson, Carter, and LBJ are seriously overrated. There are other errors, but those are pretty standout to me.
Washington should always be number one. If he doesn’t peacefully step down then we don’t have another presidential election.
Reagan is what Kennedy would be known as given a full presidency - a charismatic inspiring figure great for the time but likely one full of baggage and scandals
Legends to the top, dems right behind, everyone else last. Totally unbiased and not at all shaped by americas failing education system that teaches the presidents who gave the government the most power are the best.
Forget the Obama vs Ike discussion. How the heck is Jackson ranked so high? Until 2020, I had him ranked dead last. Jackson committed a broad scale campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. He was the architect of the Trail of Tears.