Opinion Rank the US presidents from best to worst From 1981 until now.
- Thread starter Steve-French
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The same numbers were for every country in the world in 2020. With many countries fairing worse off.
You think Indians are blaming deaths on Nath Kovind?
You think Brazilians are blaming deaths on Bolsanaro?
You think Mexicans are blaming deaths on Obrador?
You know who all those people blame?.... CHINA. Imagine that???
But by all means... keep forgetting to mention China in your walls of texts. Your social credit score reflects nicely.
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tbh they all kinda suck, but for a foreign observer they are kinda like this
reagan - feel good president for a part of the population, had some wacky ideas and probably half his time in office he was too strung out to even know his name
bush sr - crypto-bureaucrat old boy club member that was probably more intellectually competent than the rest but a wet bag in terms of charisma. his tenure was probably a pentagon-secret services tenure
clinton - probably the top president out of the 7, had some shitty international events to deal with and benefitted from a rather ok time economically. absolute garbage human being though, would have fucked and probably did even a chair if you put a dress on it.
bush jr - funny gool ol' texas boy shtick, can't imagine how that worked since he was as posh new englander as it comes, dumb as shit, there wasn't a crisis come his way he didn't fuck up, now suprisingly has a good image among lefties, how the fuck does that work, oh, he said some bad things about trump, nevermind
obama - feel good president for the other half of the country, didn't do much outside what the circle that got him elected wanted, a wall street president mostly, i put him lower than bush sr or clinton, so he's probably third
trump - meme president, completely unprepared, greatest contribution was to completely and probably irrevocably break the mind of the lefties who will probably be howling loons for decades to come.
biden - silly to say too early to tell. guy is probably even more decrepit than reagan was in his late days. i can't look at him as a president, because a president has free will. biden is just a signing robot for whatever document is put before him.
so a final score from an outside observer is like
1.clinton
2.bush sr
3.obama
4.reagan
5. trump
6.bush jr
7. biden
5 and 6 could be interchangeable, but at least donny was a bit more lucky that bush jr, and that matters. for dubya nothing seemed to work.
reagan - feel good president for a part of the population, had some wacky ideas and probably half his time in office he was too strung out to even know his name
bush sr - crypto-bureaucrat old boy club member that was probably more intellectually competent than the rest but a wet bag in terms of charisma. his tenure was probably a pentagon-secret services tenure
clinton - probably the top president out of the 7, had some shitty international events to deal with and benefitted from a rather ok time economically. absolute garbage human being though, would have fucked and probably did even a chair if you put a dress on it.
bush jr - funny gool ol' texas boy shtick, can't imagine how that worked since he was as posh new englander as it comes, dumb as shit, there wasn't a crisis come his way he didn't fuck up, now suprisingly has a good image among lefties, how the fuck does that work, oh, he said some bad things about trump, nevermind
obama - feel good president for the other half of the country, didn't do much outside what the circle that got him elected wanted, a wall street president mostly, i put him lower than bush sr or clinton, so he's probably third
trump - meme president, completely unprepared, greatest contribution was to completely and probably irrevocably break the mind of the lefties who will probably be howling loons for decades to come.
biden - silly to say too early to tell. guy is probably even more decrepit than reagan was in his late days. i can't look at him as a president, because a president has free will. biden is just a signing robot for whatever document is put before him.
so a final score from an outside observer is like
1.clinton
2.bush sr
3.obama
4.reagan
5. trump
6.bush jr
7. biden
5 and 6 could be interchangeable, but at least donny was a bit more lucky that bush jr, and that matters. for dubya nothing seemed to work.
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It's funny how you quoted the entire thing word for word, yet Trump doesn't once mention bleach in the actual quote. You just latched onto that narrative that the news told you, and you're perpetuating that narrative, seemingly without notice.
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Wow, you honestly do not think that Brazilians are not blaming Bolsanaro for how he's handled the pandemic? Are you really this obtuse about international affairs that you'd really make a comment like this? You seriously do not think that the head of a country deserves any kind of blame for mismanagement of a pandemic that comes into being during their term in office? Are you even aware of how absolutely insane and illogical this sounds? The country was clearly worse off after Trump's term than it was when he first came into office. This is pretty much indisputable and this is why he was a bad POTUS.
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Deficits aren't really an important measure of anything in isolation, but note that the impact that presidents have on them are generally very small, don't begin with them entering office, and don't end with them leaving office (note, for example, that Reagan's tax cuts weren't repealed in 1989). It is crazy to attribute surpluses in the '90s to anything Reagan did, but Clinton's main role in them was in pushing back against Republicans who wanted to use inevitable surpluses to justify another tax cut for rich people. Small tax hike also likely contributed.
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This is no too far off me.
Clinton
Obama
Bush Sr
Reagan
Biden (Agree still too early and he could well move up)
Bush Jr
Trump
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Strange for someone who remembers the 90s (though I was a kid for most of them) to see Clinton get so much love here. I think he was OK, not great, in reality, but I remember him being incredibly hated by the right and leftists.
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Trump's ability to make the forgotten, white misanthrope class feel heard and empowered more than makes up for his lack of policy achievements.
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I wonder what the real argument for people who think he wasn't terrible is, though. Massively corrupt and unpopular one-term president who left office with fewer jobs than he started with and whose only major legislative accomplishment was another tax cut for rich people. I think people who say he wasn't one of the worst ever are partly just trying to express contempt for rational analysis.
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Clinton
Bush Sr
Biden
Trump
Obama
Bush Jr
Reagan
Bush Sr
Biden
Trump
Obama
Bush Jr
Reagan
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Couldn't stand him at the time, although honestly it was more about his plastic facile charisma that reminded me of a used car salesman than his focus on domestic politics and trade liberalisation.
Retrospectively, in comparison to later presidents, he looks much better.
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My post was only half in jest. I think it is even more clear today than during his term that the key to Trump's appeal from his base was his ability to make hatred and contempt and vulgarity and cruelty an "acceptable" part of the political discourse.
Last week I drove past a group of people standing on a corner, during the day on a Saturday and one of them was holding a "Fuck Joe Biden" sign. Just down the block there was a stand set up selling Trump merchandise (including that sign). The tables were mobbed.
I still remember when displaying the word "Fuck" in the presence of children would have been condemned in no uncertain terms by virtually every conservative in America.
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Same. I think every president gets a little more hate than they deserve while they are in office, and a good amount of the hate for Clinton at the time had to do with the Lewinsky sandal, which had no bearing on actual policy. Now when people look back at the 1990s, they see a time of prosperity in the US.
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1. Reagan
2. Obama
3. Bush Sr.
4. Clinton
5. Biden (so far)
6. Bush Jr.
7. Trump
Reagan ended the Soviet Block and freed the East Germans (among others). I get that there was a hell of a lot else going on that lead to all of that, and I get that Reagan was a senile old man with some odd political philosophy, but I'm not at all convinced that the cold war fizzles out nearly so effectively and non-violently without Reagan's presidency.
Obama was just a smooth character all around, and he took over a shit show and made it work again, well enough to continue functioning fairly effectively after he was gone in the midst of a total clown show. He also got Bin Laden (this was likely a "right place, right time" thing) and moved the healthcare stalemate forward (which, in my mind, was a "right person for the job" thing). Admittedly, Obamacare is messy, but it's something and given the political environment there's been a whole lot of nothing from everyone else.
Bush Sr was nothing special, because he never got that second term. But there's little question that he got voted out prematurely because of Ross Perot, and it feels like he might have done better if given more time.
Clinton is a bad person, and while he had some political victories and policy successes, he also helped set the table for 9/11 and, yes, the 2007 financial collapse. The only reason he gets to be this high is because everyone below him is such a bad president.
Biden is Gawd awful... so far. Took over a clown show, and made everything worse... so far. Everything. Covid. Partisanship. The border crises. Everything. So far. And that's the only reason he gets ranked above Bush Jr and Trump. Because he still has some time.
Bush Jr I actually like better than this. He did some good things with the Latin community, put some good pandemic policy in place (that was later undone by Obama and Trump, unfortunately) and seemed to genuinly want to work across the isle. Speaking of which... Iraq. 'Nuff said.
Don't even with Trump. Policy-wise? Not nearly as bad as people make him out to be. Some good policy on education and opportunity for black people. A wall on a border doesn't seem like anything weird or particularly racist to me. And otherwise pretty standard conservative leaning governance. But the president is everyone's president. A huge part of his job is to set a tone. The tone he set was Monday Night Rawesque. Which, until Covid and BLM, I would have argued was off-putting but not enough to put him below Bush Jr and Iraq... but people died. A lot of them. People are still dying because not getting vaccinated or masking or social distancing has become a political stance aligning you with Trump. And say what you will about BLM burning businesses to the ground (which they did, and which I've said plenty about), the Confederate Flag marching through the Capital Building is a disgusting look, and him cheering it all on from the White House (which he absolutely did), is enough in itself to put him firmly at the bottom of this list.
2. Obama
3. Bush Sr.
4. Clinton
5. Biden (so far)
6. Bush Jr.
7. Trump
Reagan ended the Soviet Block and freed the East Germans (among others). I get that there was a hell of a lot else going on that lead to all of that, and I get that Reagan was a senile old man with some odd political philosophy, but I'm not at all convinced that the cold war fizzles out nearly so effectively and non-violently without Reagan's presidency.
Obama was just a smooth character all around, and he took over a shit show and made it work again, well enough to continue functioning fairly effectively after he was gone in the midst of a total clown show. He also got Bin Laden (this was likely a "right place, right time" thing) and moved the healthcare stalemate forward (which, in my mind, was a "right person for the job" thing). Admittedly, Obamacare is messy, but it's something and given the political environment there's been a whole lot of nothing from everyone else.
Bush Sr was nothing special, because he never got that second term. But there's little question that he got voted out prematurely because of Ross Perot, and it feels like he might have done better if given more time.
Clinton is a bad person, and while he had some political victories and policy successes, he also helped set the table for 9/11 and, yes, the 2007 financial collapse. The only reason he gets to be this high is because everyone below him is such a bad president.
Biden is Gawd awful... so far. Took over a clown show, and made everything worse... so far. Everything. Covid. Partisanship. The border crises. Everything. So far. And that's the only reason he gets ranked above Bush Jr and Trump. Because he still has some time.
Bush Jr I actually like better than this. He did some good things with the Latin community, put some good pandemic policy in place (that was later undone by Obama and Trump, unfortunately) and seemed to genuinly want to work across the isle. Speaking of which... Iraq. 'Nuff said.
Don't even with Trump. Policy-wise? Not nearly as bad as people make him out to be. Some good policy on education and opportunity for black people. A wall on a border doesn't seem like anything weird or particularly racist to me. And otherwise pretty standard conservative leaning governance. But the president is everyone's president. A huge part of his job is to set a tone. The tone he set was Monday Night Rawesque. Which, until Covid and BLM, I would have argued was off-putting but not enough to put him below Bush Jr and Iraq... but people died. A lot of them. People are still dying because not getting vaccinated or masking or social distancing has become a political stance aligning you with Trump. And say what you will about BLM burning businesses to the ground (which they did, and which I've said plenty about), the Confederate Flag marching through the Capital Building is a disgusting look, and him cheering it all on from the White House (which he absolutely did), is enough in itself to put him firmly at the bottom of this list.
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People get to better digest someones legacy and probably more importantly, they see someone else they despise even more and think "damn, maybe he wasn't so bad looking back at it"
Clinton is a great example and as loathed GWB was, with Trump, people finally saw that he was a good, honorable man, even if they believe his presidency was a catastrophe.
