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I don't know about that. The presidents usually viewed as the "greatest" are:
George Washington- No party
Thomas Jefferson- Democrat-Republican
Abraham Lincoln- Republican
Theodore Roosevelt- Republican
Woodrow Wilson- Democrat
FDR- Democrat
Reagan- Republican
That's pretty evenly balanced to me. If we throw Clinton in there it's perfectly balanced.
One third of our presidents served before the Republican Party came into existence. So an ideal balance would be 3 Dems and 2 Repubs out of the top five. Balance would require an equal number from each party after 1860.
By whom are those presidents "viewed as the greatest"? I don't hear anybody except staunch conservatives calling Reagan a great president. But Wilson is probably pretty debatable, too.
Agreed and seems like a fair assessment. Although have never been all that impressed with Obama's ''marketing'' abilities, especially his (in)ability to sell his own accomplishments (like Obamacare or saving the economy from total disaster). But nevertheless, he's obviously a very patient, long-term strategist and by all accounts, an outstanding manager... which IMO are way more important qualities than his public leadership style!
I suspect now that he's helped put out most of the major fires, we're gonna see a much more ambitious and long-term agenda emerge in his 2nd term, along with other initiatives (like Obamacare), that'll have similar far-reaching impact.
Tempers begin to cool and those who's only interest is here-and-now partisanship begin to fade away to other arguments.
And the difficulty which accompanies that phenomena is that viewpoints on past events will very much hinge on "here and now" interests." That which when it took place was seen as a distasteful but necessary action, may in the future just be seen as distasteful now that the necessity is no longer a factor.
The most dramatic illustration of the dynamic which we are discussing came with extraordinarily influential Charles Beard and his school of Marxist driven economic interpretation. In the first part of the 20th Century, Beardians were reinterpreting everything, and somehow or other they discovered that every single thing that had ever happened had been motivated entirely by the economics involved and happily fit just perfectly with Marxist models and predictions.
Beardians dominated history for decades, finally pushed aside by the patriotic fever which accompanied WW II and spawned an entirely new school of thought which moved the emphasis from economics to ideologies, emerging under the collective name "Republican Consensus." That ruled the academic environments until the cynical sixties and seventies produced a new school which saw ideology as a mask/justification for for keeping those in power at the top.
And on it goes...and it always seems right at the time it is published...
With the passage of time, insiders retire from active politicals and become more willing to reveal what went on behind the scenes, less concerned about how it will affect contemporary politics (for which a previous administration becomes increasingly less relevant with the passage of time).
Major players pass away, and people are then more willing to discuss them candidly, for better or worse.
Relevant documents are declassified 25, 50, 75 years later.
We will simply know much more about the Bush Adminsitration in 50 years than we now know.
As for Obama, yes, it is too soon to begin judging his Presidency as a total since it is incomplete. Really, you had to ask that?
One third of our presidents served before the Republican Party came into existence. So an ideal balance would be 3 Dems and 2 Repubs out of the top five. Balance would require an equal number from each party after 1860.
By whom are those presidents "viewed as the greatest"? I don't hear anybody except staunch conservatives calling Reagan a great president. But Wilson is probably pretty debatable, too.
You have a point with Reagan. But the same can be said for FDR. Conservatives despite FDR and all of his New Deal programs. Just sayin. Everyone on that list (if we remove Reagan) is generally listed as one of the greatest.
Most people when asked who the worst President in all history is will say Bush or Obama, depending on their political leanings. Do you think its too soon to judge these Presidents in a historical sense? How long do you think it will be before we can? I have always thought history will judge Bush more kindly years from now. Harry Truman was hated and reviled in 1952 yet now he is generally thought of as a good President. Maybe we need to get past the Great Recession and see how things end up before we can say Bush is the worst President in all history. Personally I think Clinton is the most recent President we can even begin to judge in a historical sense and even that is pushing it. In 2000, most people thought Clinton's legacy would be Lewinsky and the sex scandals but as the years go by when people think of Clinton they are more likely to think of the booming '90s economy and the tech revolution than they are the sex scandals.
I would argue that it is premature because the story of the Bush (I and II), Clinton and Obama is still being writen and many prominant participants are still in some sort of Office or organization involved in public policy or politics. When the system is purged of all who have a vested interest in have a certain verdict we won't be able to get a so-called historical view. Do you think anyone involved in the Clinto adminstration would give anything but a positive opinion? The same is true with the Bushes and certainly Obama.
Not accurately and objectively. Neither can Clinton.
In my opinion the current recession isn't Obama's fault nor Bush's. I put it on Clinton, but another decade down the road and we'll all have better hindsight.
NAFTA will probably go down as the worst thing this country has ever agreed to. Which one signed that? That would be my choice of the worst president in modern times.
My 2 cents. If you look close enough, the root is the fed act of 1913. Every single president has grown our debt and ran deficits, except clinton in one quarter. Fed and fractional reserve is the root of your bubbles and crashes.
This is absolutely false. Bubbles and crashes are the result of an unregulated uncontroled capitalist economy. The reson the Fed was created in 1913 was to prevent finacial panics and to speed the healing of a depressed economy. Americans got tired of being dragged through a DEPRESSION after a financial panic every 20 years on average. You need to look at long term trends for things like the cpi estimated back to the 1790s to see that before the New Deal we had an ecomony characterized by growth spurts followed by severe depression where as much as 50% of this nations economy was simply erased and with it peoples wages, savings and assets. After 1932 there has been none of this we have recessions but they don't cause 20-40% of Americans their jobs or homes or worse. Why do you think this is? The Fed was created to serve the function of a finacier who literally pulled America out of the Panics of 1893 and 1908. A man named J.P. Morgan who had the clout to provide liquidity to jump start America's economy and markets. Morgan was aging and died not long after the rescue of the crash of 1908. So we invented a organiztion to be our financial fireman. The work was not complete by 1929 and it took that Panic to get a working Fed and got us off the gold standard. The Fed provides us with a J.P. Morgan long after he left us. It sloves the problem of providing a J. P. Morgan when we need him the most.
While I have participated in several "best/worst presidents" threads that was mainly out of a desire to discuss politics in a place a little more intellectual then the P&OC forum, lol. In general, historians would lump anything that happened in the past 80 years into "current events". By that standard, we need to go back to 1932 and earlier before you can be sure you can remove enough personal prejudice and have enough of an "after" to begin making some judgements. Following that, yes it is far too early to judge Bush or Obama. Heck, it is far too early to really impartially and historically judge FDR, Truman and Eisenhower as well.
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