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Its awfully unfair to put either Harrison or Taylor on the list- both had very short terms of office particularly Harrison just 30 days.
Under President Harding, the country did very well- his policies worked excellently to recover America from WWII and produce the prosperous Roaring 20's. The fact that some of his appointees weren't of the highest character should hardly put him on the top of the list.
Presidents Grant and Johnson oversaw reconstruction- Johnson was a Democrat who faced a lot of political grief not of his own making, but Grant did a lot to further civil rights and to suppress and wipe out the KKK (the modern KKK is a different organization than the post Civil War outfit). I don't know who could have done better in that difficult set of circumstances.
President Tyler had the goal of bringing Texas into the union and succeeded- setting a goal and achieving it is hardly the mark of a failure.
Buchanan, Pierce and Fillmore definitely all belong on the list, however- they were pretty ineffectual in the pre-civil war days and didn't do anything to prevent that cataclysm or resolve the split.
Hear! Hear! Harding is one of my favorites. An awful lot of people simply repeat the media meme that he was the "worst ever", yada yada, yada....But the fact is he cut the size of government and had libertarian policies that Coolidge continued.
Think what a different world we would live in if Harding had lived. (WW I, you meant to say) Two terms of Harding followed by one of Coolidge would mean no Hoover, No FDR and so forth............It would be a different world, indeed. Probably, no Great Depression - or at least that's what I like to believe....
If I remember correctly, Regan was a cabinet member; Reagan was a President.
So you did not understand what this man wrote? If I were to assign intelligence based upon spelling as opposed to the able to comprehend a sentence based of phonetics, I'd chose the later.
Both are acceptable ways to spell the family name Regan or Reagan, with the first being the most common.
is this why RR wanted to shut down the Dept. of Education ?
When he was running for president in the 1980 election, Reagan called the newly created department "President Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle." He said he wanted to eliminate it and give “control” back to states and localities. Then in 1983, he changed his position after the release of the report “A Nation at Risk,” which warned of a “a rising tide of mediocrity.” With education becoming a political issue, Reagan told his secretary of education, Terrel Bell, to pursue excellence in education. http://http://voices.washingtonpost....ected-tod.html
I submit that he was right the first time. We were better off without the ED. Since Carter established ED performance of our schools has continued to slide.
I wouldn't label him under greatest, and I wouldn't label him under worst, but I've always thought that Grover Cleveland was vastly underrated as a president.
Hear! Hear! Harding is one of my favorites. An awful lot of people simply repeat the media meme that he was the "worst ever", yada yada, yada....But the fact is he cut the size of government and had libertarian policies that Coolidge continued.
Think what a different world we would live in if Harding had lived. (WW I, you meant to say) Two terms of Harding followed by one of Coolidge would mean no Hoover, No FDR and so forth............It would be a different world, indeed. Probably, no Great Depression - or at least that's what I like to believe....
I had to admit when I read this I couldn't stop laughing.
Harding is one of your favorite Presidents? Really???
Consider that during the Tea Pot Dome Scandal this wretched man appointed a Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, who went to prison for taking bribes from the Sinclair Oil Company. Than consider that Attorney General Harry Daugherty narrowly escaped conviction for stealing from the Veterans Administration when he was in office.
This was the tip of the iceberg. This is what could be proven. There was widespread bribe taking and stealing that occurred among the highest officials in this country. Harding either knew it was going on and did nothing to stop it, or he was so ignorant he had no business serving in any public office at all. Herbert Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce in his administration and took the latter view. Hoover wrote that "Harding became ill when he finally learned of the wretched stealing of his appointees". If you have a few minutes sometime, google the phrase "Ohio Gang". You'll learn about some of the people that Harding surrounded himself with during his mediocre presidency.
Some other facts about Harding? The Historian Robert Dallek observed about him that "you could search his speeches and never find a single idea in them". He was President during all the corruption of Prohibition. Perhaps, a wise President would have suggested its repeal. Harding and his appointees, simply used it as another excuse for stealing. Harding (as was true of his successor Coolidge) should have seen what unregulated capitalism was leading too. He could have lobbied for regulation of the securities industry and the banking industry. He and his republican cronies could have made some effort to stop the depression that had already begun in the farming sector of the economy during the 1920's, but they didn't care much about farmers. Harding once opined that he "wished there was a book out there that would tell him what was best for the economy, but even if there was I wouldn't be smart enough to read it". That about sums this guy up. He had very limited education. He had very limited intelligence. He spent most of his presidency doing favors for friends. He was also cheating on his wife, too. However, I guess after the Clinton/Lewinsky thing, we can't make too much of that.
You describe his policies as "libertarian". Hardly, libertarianism implies a "hands off" attitude by government when it comes to economic matters. The correct description of Harding's policies were those of "crony capitalism". Harding and his buddies simply sold favors that only government could give to his friends and those with the most money.
The reality is that its hard to find anything good this man did as President. The one possible exception would be appointing William Howard Taft to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wow, I'd like to know what other "insights" you have about history.
That being said, there were a few worse presidents than Harding. My choices for the very worst are Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. They deserve much of the blame for the Civil War.
Last edited by markg91359; 05-02-2013 at 02:40 PM..
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