Presidents Day - Who were the best ones?
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My pick has to be Theodore Roosevelt for placing 240 million acres of wild lands under federal protection (although his critics at the time screamed of executive overreach).
He also busted up monopolies, rooted out corruption, and pushed through the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. To top it off, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War. But nobody is perfect and he was also a staunch imperialist, firm believer in the Monroe Doctrine, and bought into the whole "white man's burden" bullshit.
Honorable mention to Jimmy Carter. Truly a honest and decent person. Don't find too many people like that in politics. He also negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, something like no other president has been able to accomplish since when it comes to Middle East politics.
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Grant
Grant
I'm now fairly well convinced on the qualities that count - in the face of existential crisis and the most fundamental rights of all citizens - he's right up there with Washington. I think one of the major reasons "history" has pushed him to the sidelines is that for nearly 100 years, our nation collectively "dropped the ball" after he fought tooth and nail while on a tightrope to do the "right thing" in the spirit of Jefferson's preamble to the Declaration of Independence. We never ran with it & even allowed our nation to backslide into darkness until the 1960's. We're only slowly coming to terms with the full scope and impact of our nation's history on this front; that is still haunting us to this very day! It's interesting to consider the "convenience" of allowing his reputation to diminish over the years as a sort of sociological form of cognitive dissonance.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/rethinking-president-ulysses-gran...
For the eight years of Grant’s presidency, however, the Klan and its ilk met the one man in America with both the moral and political authority to fight them tooth and nail. Despite bending over backwards to respect the separation of state and federal spheres of authority, and even after losing the House in his second midterm election in 1874, Grant never stopped trying to protect black southerners — and specifically their right to vote.
Grant supported and oversaw the ratification of the 15th Amendment, pushed through new civil rights and anti-Klan legislation, marshalled military force to put down threats to the freedmen, and presided over more than a thousand federal prosecutions that decimated the Klan. One of the enduring legacies of Grant’s presidency was the creation of the Department of Justice, founded to carry out the breaking of the Klan. While the Supreme Court eviscerated some of the Grant-era civil-rights acts, he left behind both a constitutional guarantee of the ballot and the federal machinery to protect it, to await the return of federal will to act.
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There's no question TR was
There's no question TR was enormously effective on the conservation front without any peers who held the office of the POTUS & that can't be understated enough.
I'd also go along with Carter for the reason you've alluded to. In fact, it's that same sense of "higher selfless purpose" that I also believe Grant had internalized and was able to effectively channel. Likewise, I think Carter will also likely be "rehabilitated" in future years (if we make it) ... especially once the larger pattern of the devolvement of the GOP over the past 40+ years has been revealed more soberly by history in so far as how Carter conveniently became an almost "iconified" scapegoat.
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Teddy loved killing some
Teddy loved killing some Indians as well as being all in with imperialism.
Thanks for the parks though...
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https://twitter.com/GOP
https://twitter.com/GOP/status/1097531186224816128
"Just in time for the holidays"
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Lincoln
Lincoln
Washington
Jefferson
FDR
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Jimmy Carter for best former
Jimmy Carter for best former Potus. His actions are humbling.
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FDR! Everyone since(except
FDR! Everyone since(except maybe JC) has been owned by the one percent.
JC was one of best people to be our President, not a very good President.
Teddy had some great points and some not so.
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(No subject)
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Which one(full term) killed
Which one(full term) killed the fewest people?
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>>>>Which one(full term)
>>>>Which one(full term) killed the fewest people?
Carter. Aside from the failed Iran Hostage rescue mission, I can't recall any armed conflict the country was involved in during his administration.
Every president in the 19th Century presided over some aspect of the Indian Wars and the early 20th Century presidents up through FDR, were involved in the various colonial expeditions in the Philippines and Latin America. FDR had WWII and Truman the Korean War. There were no full blown wars under Ike's administration, but it was at the height of the Cold War and he instituted various covert shenanigans in Guatemala, Vietnam, and other places. Same with JFK. Johnson and Nixon had Vietnam on their hands. Ford didn't have any foreign conflicts aside from the Mayaguez incident, but he wasn't full term. Reagan deployed the military into combat zones in Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, and the Persian Gulf and engaged in all sorts of nefarious covert operations in Central America. Bush I had Panama and the First Gulf War. Clinton sent troops into Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Bush II was responsible for Iraq and Afghanistan, while Obama bombed Libya, ramped up the war in Afghanistan, and went after ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Trump has continued Bush II and Obama's "War on Terror" in various places in the world.
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I believe Lincoln had the
I believe Lincoln had the largest number of American deaths, followed by FDR...