Underrated Presidents

[censusdata]

Bush 1!!!

He finished "Reagan's" defeat of the Soviet Union without a drop of blood shed and paved the way for "Clinton's" economic success in the late 90s

[Fred314X]

I don't know why I didn't think of the man until now, but one of the most seriously underrated Presidents we ever had was Chester Alan Arthur.

The man would never have been President at all if not for the fact that he was Vice President when James Garfield was assassinated. And he never would have been Vice President except for a desire to balance the ticket in 1880 with someone from the Northeast. Arthur was seen as a Tammany Hall politician, easy to manage.

The big issue of the day was civil service reform, as a solution to political patronage (which was the reason Garfield was assassinated, having turned down a very disaffected job seeker). Arthur, because of his background, was viewed as very unlikely to do anything about signing the civil service bill. But completely against expectations--and in one of the more selfless moves a President has ever made, since it meant the end of his political career--Arthur signed the bill in 1883.

So never mind any other candidates proposed for this thread. Chester Arthur deserves the gold medal.

[Sandpointian]

Originally Posted by djmilf

Just a couple of observations/opinions....

It is my understanding that the Monroe Doctrine was actually created by Monroe's Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, and that Monroe pretty much just rubber-stamped it. Is there anything else that in your opinion recommends Monroe?

I find it interesting that you would include Andrew Jackson as under-rated. I believe most historians would rank Jackson in a second tier of presidents, the first tier containing Washington and Lincoln and the second tier containing (in no particular order) Jefferson, Jackson and FDR.

Hi,
When we move to the category of "underrated", it is a bit about squeezing water from rock.

I jotted down a list without much thinking, but allow me a response.

On Eisenhower, I disagree completely. Overreaching Presidents, while well-intentioned, can create a big problem after the fact or lead us to diverge from a path that may seem impossible to get back to. On both counts FDR and LBJ would fit the bill. Together, both led to a massive increase in size of the welfare state and the federal bureaucracy. In my book, the President is one who does not seek the limelight 24/7 as Bill Clinton did nor one who wought to expand federal power, as many have. Rather, it is to keep the political economy balanced between state rights and federal control. I think Eisenhower did this quite well.

Jackson--again, the exercise was not to list the first two tiers, but to consider underrated Presidents. I think the Jackson Presidency represented a big struggle between states rights and the federal government. Without Jackson, we would have likely had a central bank established in the 1830s, 70+ years before the Fed. I think that had there been one, I wonder if the US would have been as dynamic as it became in the 19th century or whether the US would have become a place for dreamers. Certainly from a scholarly perspective the Jackson Presidency was far more interesting than many others. But note my opinion is my own. I really don;t care what most historians have said (what then would be the purpose of this thread?!)

From what I gather, Monroe and JQ Adams saw eye to eye. While JQA authored the document, he wrote it for the sitting President of the US, who then had the balls to make it policy.

Imperfect choices...but that is what one goes down the list!
PNK

[djmilf]

Sandpointian, thank you for your response.

Point taken on the Monroe Doctrine. While Adams was the author, Monroe was staking his presidency, and the nation, on the principle.

Regarding Eisenhower, I don't believe that I questioned your assessment of his presidency. However, you may be responding to another poster.

I respectfully disagree with your assessment of Jackson. Where you see a president who represented a struggle between states rights and the federal government, I see a president who represented a struggle between eastern power elites and the common man. I do consider Jackson to have been flawed but still one of the most important presidents of the United States; this is why I questioned why you would feel that he was under-rated.

[markg91359]

I'll offer some observations about some selections of "underrated presidents".

1. Bush 1. I tend to agree he was underrated. He did a much better job with the first Iraq War than his son has done. He knew when to quit.

2. He did his part to make sure dictators like Manuel Noriega (Panama) and Ferdinand Marcos (Phillipines) ended their reign. Most of all he did it without involving the USA in any civil wars.

I give him high marks for the way he handled foreign policy.

My problem with Bush 1 is that he failed to grasp that the end of the Cold War marked an entirely new era for the country. He did little about the recession the USA fell into in 1991-1992. The public reacted angrily and he was voted out of office.

Nixon, also an underrated President. His initiatives with the Soviet Union and China enhanced the position of the USA considerably. I felt he took too long to do it. However, he also ended the war in Vietnam. He may have been a conservative, but he was not rigid or doctrinaire. He used wage and price controls when necessary to deal with inflation. He was quoted saying the famous lines "We are all Keynesians now".

Unfortunately, few men in public office have ever had the paranoid and malicious nature that Richard Nixon had. He truly believed everyone was out to get him. He may not have been aware of the Watergate break in, but he certainly was aware of many illegal dirty tricks being done by his cohorts. He created an "enemies list" to keep track of and attempt to punish those who opposed him. His misuse of executive power was legendary. The White House tapes prove he conspired to commit the crime of obstruction of justice. He resigned to avoid certain impeachment and conviction.

Nixon presents a split portrait of both accomplishment and criminal wrongdoing that is hard to reconcile.

Someone mentioned Herbert Hoover. I do agree that Hoover unfairly bore the blame for most of the Great Depression. He was in office all of one year when the Depression began. He actually did some things which presaged the New Deal. He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to loan money to sound businesses which were crippled by the Depression. Unfortunately, he did not move very quickly and he was quick to seize on any positive economic news (there was little) as proof that the Depression was ending. Also, he had very little gift for communicating with people and seemed to regard addressing the masses of the US population as an act that was beneath him.

Eisenhower was a good President. I think he was really a democrat (a conservative one) in disguise. He continued virtually every federal program established by the New Deal. He nominated Earl Warren to the Supreme Court (a very liberal chief justice). He signed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 which provided massive federal funding to create the huge network of interstate highways that we have. He warned the public of the power of the "military industrial complex" in his farewell speech as he left office. Finally, he began negotiations with Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev which lead to a major thaw in the Cold War. I think anyone who was President during this era would have been considered a great or near great President though.

[cpg35223]

Originally Posted by markg91359

I'll offer some observations about some selections of "underrated presidents".

1. Bush 1. I tend to agree he was underrated. He did a much better job with the first Iraq War than his son has done. He knew when to quit.

2. He did his part to make sure dictators like Manuel Noriega (Panama) and Ferdinand Marcos (Phillipines) ended their reign. Most of all he did it without involving the USA in any civil wars.

I give him high marks for the way he handled foreign policy.

My problem with Bush 1 is that he failed to grasp that the end of the Cold War marked an entirely new era for the country. He did little about the recession the USA fell into in 1991-1992. The public reacted angrily and he was voted out of office.

Nixon, also an underrated President. His initiatives with the Soviet Union and China enhanced the position of the USA considerably. I felt he took too long to do it. However, he also ended the war in Vietnam. He may have been a conservative, but he was not rigid or doctrinaire. He used wage and price controls when necessary to deal with inflation. He was quoted saying the famous lines "We are all Keynesians now".

Unfortunately, few men in public office have ever had the paranoid and malicious nature that Richard Nixon had. He truly believed everyone was out to get him. He may not have been aware of the Watergate break in, but he certainly was aware of many illegal dirty tricks being done by his cohorts. He created an "enemies list" to keep track of and attempt to punish those who opposed him. His misuse of executive power was legendary. The White House tapes prove he conspired to commit the crime of obstruction of justice. He resigned to avoid certain impeachment and conviction.

Nixon presents a split portrait of both accomplishment and criminal wrongdoing that is hard to reconcile.

Someone mentioned Herbert Hoover. I do agree that Hoover unfairly bore the blame for most of the Great Depression. He was in office all of one year when the Depression began. He actually did some things which presaged the New Deal. He created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to loan money to sound businesses which were crippled by the Depression. Unfortunately, he did not move very quickly and he was quick to seize on any positive economic news (there was little) as proof that the Depression was ending. Also, he had very little gift for communicating with people and seemed to regard addressing the masses of the US population as an act that was beneath him.

Eisenhower was a good President. I think he was really a democrat (a conservative one) in disguise. He continued virtually every federal program established by the New Deal. He nominated Earl Warren to the Supreme Court (a very liberal chief justice). He signed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 which provided massive federal funding to create the huge network of interstate highways that we have. He warned the public of the power of the "military industrial complex" in his farewell speech as he left office. Finally, he began negotiations with Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev which lead to a major thaw in the Cold War. I think anyone who was President during this era would have been considered a great or near great President though.

Well, I would agree with you on the subject of Hoover. I don't think he was a great president per se, but the events were already in motion by the time he took the oath of office.

One of the great fallacies is that the Stock Market Crash caused The Great Depression. In truth, the Great Depression caused the Stock Market Crash. For the true cause of the Great Depression was the popping of the credit bubble brought on by the Federal Reserve that had mushroomed throughout the 1920s, causing wildly overvalued assets to plummet overnight. Then the Federal Reserve tightened credit--An incredibly boneheaded move even if you're a monetarist.

I think Hoover's worst step, however, was the backing and ultimate signing of the Hawley Smoot Tariff Act, probably one of the stupidest bits of legislation ever. Hoover signed it into law, over the strident objections of literally hundreds of prominent economists. It just eviscerated U.S. trade when we needed it the most. Trade protection almost always has the opposite effect of what is intended. For example, in the early 1920s, American farmers could sell a bushel of wheat for roughly $1. Once agricultural imports had been severely limited by trade legislation, that same farmer could only sell the same bushel of wheat for 25¢.

I would agree with you on Nixon when it comes to foreign policy, but his economic policies were total disasters, leading to a series of economic shocks throughout the 70s. You simply cannot freeze prices and Nixon, by doing so, actually created higher inflation as a result. It was idiocy, and it didn't really deal with the genesis of inflation in the first place--the massive expansion of the money supply by the Federal reserve in order to pay for LBJ's Great Society Program and the Vietnam War at the same time.

[bobsmith]

I think Jackson is one of the most OVERrated presidents. He was a complete nut and we are lucky to have survived him. Re-Elect Adams for President 1828!

Also, Nixon wasn't quite as bad as everyone thinks. I'd take Nixon over Reagan or Bush Jr. any day.

[Equal-Opp.]

obama, because he inherited a financial mess and in less than a year he prevented another great depression.