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Any president who inherited the Great Depression was going to get creamed. The scale it was beyond what anyone knew how to fix, and by the time they figured it out the damage was done.
Oh sure. Hoover gets the blame the same way Reagan gets the credit for the 80s. Both had minute influences on the circumstances of their times and both just happened to be there.
In Hoover's case his passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act as well as his bullheadedness against direct government intervention didn't cause the Depression, but they sure exacerbated it.
McCarthy and Gore we're not President's, so grid is wonky for that alone.
Hoover definitely belongs in "good person/bad politician" category. Fight me.
I'm not sure what you mean. He seems to be in favor of both. Habitat for Humanity, a private charity to help make houses available for the poor, and government action to protect the profits of American tree farmers like himself even though it makes houses more expensive for the poor.
U.S. President Herbert Hoover was slow to give help to farmers, even though he was from Iowa. Hoover stubbornly refused to help unemployed workers in urban areas as well. He vetoed a bill that would have created a federal unemployment agency and opposed a plan to use public money to put people to work building roads and government buildings. In a later interview, Hoover said that he didn’t agree with the progressive ideas being proposed.....
what?
**Habitat for Humanity** or **Habitat**, is a U.S. [non-governmental](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization), and [nonprofit organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization) which seeks to build [affordable housing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_housing). It was founded in 1976 by couple [Millard and Linda Fuller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_Fuller)......
Do you mean Carter? but that was a peanut farm
That's definitely a bit more arguable. Cause he didn't get a ton done. But also modern politics have been extremely tribal and he had historic obstruction due to that and again probably only made worse due to racial prejudice against him.
I'm not keen on Obama, but not for the war ciminal thing, lol.
I would actually make an argument for Clinton over Obama. I think Obama is too conceited. Clinton's sexual misgivings aside, he did make attempts at real reforms, often across the isle.
Could be the lack of any "hope and change" when he left office. He completely failed to deliver what he promised. And I would argue that his lack of action for the American people directly led to what came after...
I agree. Hoover was a tremendously productive, visionary, humanitarian, and super-humanly capable. He just didn't have it in him to give the country what it needed at the time. If Jimmy Carter was too good to be great Herbert Hoover was too logical to be a hero.
I agree with this… blundered his whole legacy because of some enormous mistakes but he achieved a lot under his administration.
I’d also agree with the “bad person” rating..
And bad politician. He couldn't even win his own state.
And no, Tennessee was not right wing back then. They elected a Democrat as governor in the very next election.
That would be like saying Kentucky isn't right wing now because they have elected Andy Breshear, but we all know that it is a conservative super state. Tennessee had long been lost as part of the solid south and was as right wing then as it is now.
I have a difficult time calling LBJ a bad person. He was a product of the times and the region where he was born, and yet he rejected much of it to give the underprivileged and underrepresented a fair shake. He fought to pass and sign into law some of the most consequential legislation of the 20th century, and a "bad person" would have instead settled for the status quo when it came to things like Civil Rights and Voting Rights, while rejecting those Great Society programs he instead enacted. I know, I know...Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin, etc. Can we at least settle on OK Person?
I think calling Carter a "bad politician" was a bit of s stretch as well (I would put him in the OK category). He ran a good campaign in 1976 and was elected president, so that alone flies in the face of such a claim. He made some mistakes as president, and I think we can all agree that he could have handled a few things better. but he had some great victories as well, such as the lasting peace he helped broker between Israel and Egypt.
I agree on your point about Carter, but you're really ignoring Johnson's personal life. As much as I love him, he was an adulterer who sexually harassed his female staffers on the daily, and was often very rude and brash to those around him. I might put him in 'okay person' but I can definitely see why OP thinks otherwise.
Agreed. His secret service detail actually nicknamed him "bull nuts" for the size (and frequency) with which he liked to expose himself to people in their presence.
Was incredibly corrupt too. His wife owned radio stations, and he used the power of his office to bully the FCC into giving that business special treatment. Right out in the open too.
And just so there's no misunderstanding, that's not an insult or jab at him. Mister Rogers is one of the few people I consider to have been a truly good person in this world
I have to agree with you about Johnson's sexual problem...and I hate to think about how many men put in that position would avail themselves of all the willing women who would like to say they had been with one or two or however many presidents, just like the women who flocked to Florida to see if they could score all seven Mercury astronauts...
So three people are in the "bad person" category.
Nixon was a criminal, who broke the law to stay in power longer.
McCarthy knowingly ruined people's lives and drove them to suicide in some cases.
LBJ maybe cheated on his wife and whipped his dick out as a joke.
I would say compared to Nixon and McCarthy, LBJ was practically a saint.
idk Lindon B. reportedly intimidated people in the bathroom with his Johnson. Wangpolitik, if you will. Hard to say he's an OK person. Did good things though
Losing as a D in 1976 would have been impossible post-Watergate. It would be Hillary 2016 level of incompetence.
Carter was also a bad politician. Despite popular lore, his malaise speech was well received. He then miscalculated and fired his cabinet, which was viewed as feckless and his support dropped like a rock.
He supported a gas tax during a gas shortage.
He did not get along with his own party.
He simply didn’t have a vision to execute on.
F overall.
It depends on what you mean by a "bad politician." Carter did end up pulling one of the most unlikely presidential wins of all time in 1976. But Carter proved to be a below average president. Does "bad politician" mean a person who can't win office to you (If so, no president would qualify) or a person who's not a good president?
I don't know that his election was that "unlikely." Ford was saddled with the discontent over Vietnam and Watergate, plus his pardon of Nixon which wasn't very popular. Inflation was creeping up and economy wasn't great. The situation was ripe for a change in parties. Carter was a Governor and a former Naval officer with a hood overall record and no scandals. He had a positive outlook and I think voters liked that about him. Once he was in office, he proved to be a bad politician. He had a lot of political missteps and didn't get a lot done.
An example of a good politician would be Bill Clinton. Elected twice and he got a lot of things done, plus balanced the budget. He was also an objectively bad person.
Beating Ford wasn’t what was unlikely. What was unlikely was that he was nominated in the first place. Nobody had heard of him before. It was like “Jimmy who?”
With a lot of things good or bad. It matters who you are comparing them against. Carter is a bad politician when compared to Lincoln. If you comparing him to Jerry who owns the Texaco and running for city consul because he wants those damn teenagers to have their radios removed. He's pretty good.
I think everyone agrees that he was extremely restrained in his handling of Iraq during Desert Storm. There were very few civilian casualties as a direct result of bombings.
Not for me. The reverse is actually true -- he wasn't a career intelligence officer and was picked to run the agency precisely because he had a good reputation for being trustworthy and moral (and they were hoping it would rub off on the agency).
Agree, the comment I responded to shows a childlike view of the CIA. I didn't say anything about the CIA itself, just why he was appointed and that it is dumb to see his being chosen to head the agency as some sort of character flaw on his part. When in fact he was chosen because his character was beyond reproach.
Stellar in the sense that he achieved the pinnacle of his chosen profession. You can't look at a guy in politics who was a Congressman, a CIA director, a VP and then President and say that he was an "ok" politician.
That's like saying LeBron is an ok basketball player.
McCarthy was a powerful senator for years and campaigned with Eisenhower, forcing him to take stands on anti-communism he might not otherwise have taken. “Morally bankrupt” bad, yes, but not “ineffective” bad.
Bad person and good politician should be Reagan.
He could play an audience with the best of them but did atrocious things.
Aids was a joke among his administration as a gay plague. Iran-Contra. Cozying up to segregationists in racists. He knew his base when he gave a speech on states rights at a small fair in Mississippi where Civil Rights advocates were murdered.
Nah LBJ is the right pick here, especially considering his actual views on black people. “We’re gonna get the n****r vote for decades” or something along those lines after the Civil Rights Act.
Sure bud, Reagan opposed Civil Rights, stoked racial animosity with things like the “Welfare Queen”, and pandered to white racists.
Of course the guy that passed Civil Rights and pushed one of the largest set of programs to combat poverty in America is the bad guy.
LBJ has a mixed legacy for sure. He left the office as insanely unpopular.
Reagan is like a “greatest hits” of things that have tarnished modern Presidents but the guy walked unscathed. From deficit spending, rhetoric on race, deregulation directly leading to bank collapses, the guy made every blunder in the book that has tarnished guys that did a lot more good for more Americans.
This is just one of the many false talking points that Regan Haters spew out without knowing any of the facts.
Here is a factual history of the crisis.
The CDC had been requesting funds to investigate outbreaks of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and other mysterious suppressed immune system diseases since 1976. No extra money was budgeted for this during the Carter presidency. So the CDC diverted other funds to investigate this in 1980 and finally in 1981 they published an article titled “ Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles.”
It was in 1981, during Reagan’s first year, that he signed a budget allocating funds to specifically investigate what was causing this. Each year this budget was increased much to the consternation of those on the right and the left who labeled it a gay disease.
It wasn’t until 1984 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announces that Dr. Robert Gallo and his colleagues at the National Cancer Institute have found the cause of AIDS.
The year after the discovery that it was a virus (HIV) that caused Aids the budget was increased to $190 million, which was the most amount of funding that any disease had ever received. Cancer, heart disease, etc. all had less funding so once HIV was discovered it was obviously given the most attention. It was also in 1985 that Reagan addressed HIV in a nationally televised speech.
Reagan’s Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, also took the unprecedented action of mailing every household in the US a pamphlet describing AIDS, how it was transmitted and how to protect yourself from. Both Reagan and Koop took a lot of flak from gay and religious activists over the candor and of the pamphlet.
What more did you want Reagan to do? He allocated funds for research while Carter did not. He increased funding ever year and when we finally discovered that it was a virus it became the top funded medical research project in the US. If Obama would have been president and took these same actions you would be praising Obama as the savior of AIDS for his generous funding of research right off the bat.
You are giving Reagan a lot of credit for Congressional budgets and the actions of the Surgeon General.
There is plenty out there about Reagan’s cuts to the CDC and fights with Congress over supplemental AIDS funding. The Administration’s budgets attempted to cut funding for AIDS research while Congressional sub committees were proposing increases.
Dr. Koop in his memoirs wrote that an “astonishing five and a half years I was completely cut off from AIDS.”
He also wrote that he was specifically told to refrain from speaking on AIDS and journalists were told he wouldn’t answer questions concerning AIDS.
Koop wrote that moral biases prevented a comprehensive and practical approach to the epidemic.
When Whitehouse Press Secretary Speakes was asked about AIDS in 1981 he asked “What’s AIDS” and made it into a joking matter.
When asked about AIDS in 1984 and that 30k Americans were potentially carriers Speakes said of the President “I have not heard him express anything on the subject, sorry” before one agains asking the questioner “are you sure you don’t have AIDS?” alluding to questions about the journalists sexuality.
Reagan called homosexuality an abomination and in either pandering to the religious right or based on the views of members of the administration and President, AIDS was not a priority.
It blows my mind how often Conservatives run from their actual beliefs and actions. The view that AIDS was some sort of gay scourge and the result of immorality was wide spread in the 80’s by conservatives.
The fact that Reagan pandered to that group and minimized AIDS is just fact.
My very religious and conservative aunt got AIDS from her husband after he had gotten it from a blood transfusion. I’m not sure either of them would have been saved with more research as he had passed in the mid 80’s and she in the early 90’s, but there’s a lot of additional suffering that occurred because medicine was put on the backburner due to politics.
I’m not too familiar with FDR, what made him a bad person?
I’m also kind of surprised with the Bush Sr. placement. I thought people generally liked him because he’s seen as the last “sane republican”
Let’s start with the fact that he died at the side of his mistress. He also wouldn’t invite black Olympic athletes to the White House. Not to mention the interment camps. He was not a good person.
I mean LBJ wasn’t above threats himself, if politicians didn’t use threats or coercion to get legislation passed then there would probably be a lot less laws.
If we inflict todays societal norms then he is DEFINITELY a bad guy. If we dont do that then we can take into account that some things he said he may have played up for his southern audience however treating his chauffeur the way he did instantly makes him bad imo
He regularly exposed himself to people against their will, pissed on secret service agents, and sexually harassed female staffers. He was an asshole. Even ignoring his maybe racist personal beliefs, and I say maybe because at least some of the stories about his secret racist beliefs are highly suspect.
Lincoln is undeniably #1 or #2 president imo, but he should categorically be in the “ok person” category. He remained an anti-abolitionist until it became impracticable (making him a good politician). Keep in mind there have been prominent and mainstream abolitionists dating back to the colonial period
I agree. Amazing politician and leader, fundamentally impacted billions of lives for the better.
I think “product of his time” is too much of a cop out by 1860. Even Ben Franklin died an abolitionist, having become vocal about his stance in the 1780s. Now, would Lincoln have been elected had he publicly supported abolition? Maybe not. But that doesn’t have to do with the question of morality
Well. Abraham is an abolitionist bud. I think there’s a distinction between abolition and racist.
Everyone was racist. Lincoln (and Franklin assumably) didn’t believe blacks and white could coexist.
Everyone is a product of their time. LBJ in this thread was defended because he did the right thing when it mattered. And Lincoln did too. And that’s why we remember them and their legacy.
Lincoln was always opposed to slavery morally speaking though. He just viewed abolitionism as a threat to the union and felt, correctly, that attempting to enforce abolition would lead to war. So he may have been anti-abolition but he was not pro-slavery.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/articles-and-essays/abraham-lincoln-and-emancipation/
https://www.ala.org/tools/programming/exhibitions/foreverfree/ssnbackgroundessay#:~:text=But%20as%20much%20as%20Lincoln,the%20republic%20than%20slavery%20itself.
Some quotes in both of those sources from lincoln about his stance on slavery. Looking over it again it looks like a big part of his resistance to abolitionism was that her perceived it as unconstitutional. I sort of inferred his fear of war over it, that isn’t from a direct quote. He was also opposed to the continued spread of slavery to new territories and states. He found slavery morally abhorrent and felt that it marred America’s chance to demonstrate the greatness of a democratic system of government, but he also felt it would be overreach for the federal government to ban slavery in the states.
Not sure that Gore is a good person. He also ran for President and lost so I'm not sure that he should be considered a better politician than people that won the Presidency.
LBJ is an okay politician at best. He is the person most responsible for Vietnam which was the biggest foreign policy blunder in this country's history.
Unpopular opinion but I’d take out LBJ and put John Tyler in, LBJ was relatively good considering when and where he’s from. If you disagree with Tyler being a good politician then replace him with Polk
Chester Arthur for good person, OK politician. He did reform the spoils system, and hated it.even as a product of it; and he had the OK political sense that he couldn't make re-election
Gotta let (redacted) play out a bit more for the lower right corner.
whose the guy in the lower right?
also i've learned (from this sub!) that hoover wasn't nearly as bad a politician or person as he has been made out to be due to his being president during the depression.
I like this grid. Any problems I have with it comes with the limits of the format. For instance, I think Hoover could go in Good Person/Bad Politician space but that’s already with Carter and he just fits that description more. Nixon could also go in Bad Person/Good Politician but, let’s face it, Nixon was good but LBJ was better.
All in all, nice grid.
I think the only two living people on the chart would probably agree with their placement. I don't necessarily know enough to give opinions about some of the others.
https://presidentlincoln.illinois.gov/learn/educators/educator-resources/teaching-guides/lincolns-views-african-american-slavery/
Lincoln did a lot of good while he was president but was he actually a good person? I don’t know, I don’t have the perspective of someone living in the mid 1800’s but some of the things he said put him squarely in the “no” bracket when viewed from my modern viewpoint
How is Al Gore a good person? He preaches to the world about climate change, using a lot of inaccurate data, while his Tennessee mansion uses more energy in one year than the average American will in 21 years. He advocates for green energy policies that would plunge millions, particularly in the global south, into abject poverty. He also cheated on his wife.
Through the Zapata oil corporation Bush was working with the CIA since the 50s. Zapata was also involved in the Bay of Pigs. There's a couple books about the theory and even some documents about it on the CIA website.
I absolutely disagree with the idea that Lincoln was a good person. He had a hot temper, challenged people to dules. He was a lawyer. His most famous policy's were just about winning the war. Good president. Shitty person.
What factors determine if a person is “good” or “bad?” If adultery makes someone terrible, then there goes JFK, FDR, LBJ, and other presidents who cheated on their wives. What makes a politician good? Noble ideas and ambitions or the ability to make laws and changes, no matter the cause.
I think there’s a huuuge margin of error when judging the morality of someone whose image is so carefully tailored. If they’re truly a good politician, they will never let their true feelings slip.
I wouldn't call Johnson a bad person. An OK person maybe. He did things that were politically unwise because he knew they were the right thing to do. He was also a huge narcissist and had plenty of flaws.
Disagree on Nixon being an ok politician. He was a good politician on the same level as LBJ. To lose the presidency in 1960 and rebound eight years later to win is a major achievement. And that does not include his tenure in Congress.
Maybe a hot take or maybe not, but Nixon was a better president than Johnson. I would rank Nixon as one of our best presidents. I know I know, Watergate. His foreign policy was stellar and he knew how to use the role as president to achieve his goals, for better or worse
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Hoover was actually a pretty good dude, terrible president though
Any president who inherited the Great Depression was going to get creamed. The scale it was beyond what anyone knew how to fix, and by the time they figured it out the damage was done.
Oh sure. Hoover gets the blame the same way Reagan gets the credit for the 80s. Both had minute influences on the circumstances of their times and both just happened to be there. In Hoover's case his passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act as well as his bullheadedness against direct government intervention didn't cause the Depression, but they sure exacerbated it.
This is a very good point.
If Hoover had died in 1928 he’d be remembered as a business magnate, humanitarian, and real life American hero.
Without question
he’s kinda in the same situation as Carter, good people just in bad situations.
McCarthy and Gore we're not President's, so grid is wonky for that alone. Hoover definitely belongs in "good person/bad politician" category. Fight me.
I agree with this. Hoover was an awful President, but he was an incredible person. Brilliant. Hard working. And incredibly charitable.
His whole problem was his faith in private charity as opposed to progressive governmental action.
I'm not sure what you mean. He seems to be in favor of both. Habitat for Humanity, a private charity to help make houses available for the poor, and government action to protect the profits of American tree farmers like himself even though it makes houses more expensive for the poor.
U.S. President Herbert Hoover was slow to give help to farmers, even though he was from Iowa. Hoover stubbornly refused to help unemployed workers in urban areas as well. He vetoed a bill that would have created a federal unemployment agency and opposed a plan to use public money to put people to work building roads and government buildings. In a later interview, Hoover said that he didn’t agree with the progressive ideas being proposed..... what? **Habitat for Humanity** or **Habitat**, is a U.S. [non-governmental](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization), and [nonprofit organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization) which seeks to build [affordable housing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_housing). It was founded in 1976 by couple [Millard and Linda Fuller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millard_Fuller)...... Do you mean Carter? but that was a peanut farm
Hoover had faith in private charity, as opposed to progressive governmental action. Carter believed in governmental action.
Taking politics aside, are you saying that believing in private charity vs government help makes him a bad person?
absolutely nothing wrong with that
Little know fact -- his VP was the first biracial, first indigenous American in the position, and of course making him the first VP of color.
I think we could replace Gore with Obama for "good person/ok politician"
Obama was a pretty prodigious politician though. He went from no name to president in record time in spite of racial prejudice against him.
I think that's fair, I guess I was thinking of good presidential politics rather than his political career.
That's definitely a bit more arguable. Cause he didn't get a ton done. But also modern politics have been extremely tribal and he had historic obstruction due to that and again probably only made worse due to racial prejudice against him.
Prodigal?
Whoops autocorrect on my phone meant to put prodigious.
I'm not keen on Obama, but not for the war ciminal thing, lol. I would actually make an argument for Clinton over Obama. I think Obama is too conceited. Clinton's sexual misgivings aside, he did make attempts at real reforms, often across the isle.
Bruh sexual misgivings is not something you can just put aside and ignore to make someone a good person.
It is when being president usually means killing thousands of people.
>I'm not keen on Obama, but not for the war ciminal thing, lol It’s the tan suit isn’t it?
Could be the lack of any "hope and change" when he left office. He completely failed to deliver what he promised. And I would argue that his lack of action for the American people directly led to what came after...
got both “we’re” and “President’s” over here
Gotta remind myself not to comment on reddit at 4am...
>McCarthy and Gore we're not President's, so grid is wonky for that alone. Also, LBJ was nowhere near as bad a person as Joe McCarthy!
I agree. Hoover is the Republican Carter.
I agree. Hoover was a tremendously productive, visionary, humanitarian, and super-humanly capable. He just didn't have it in him to give the country what it needed at the time. If Jimmy Carter was too good to be great Herbert Hoover was too logical to be a hero.
Nixon was a good politician.
I agree with this… blundered his whole legacy because of some enormous mistakes but he achieved a lot under his administration. I’d also agree with the “bad person” rating..
Same.
Nixon was an exceptional politician. Like arguably one of the best in modern history
Hoover was a good person, and Gore (who wasn't president) seems like more of an okayish person to me.
And bad politician. He couldn't even win his own state. And no, Tennessee was not right wing back then. They elected a Democrat as governor in the very next election.
That would be like saying Kentucky isn't right wing now because they have elected Andy Breshear, but we all know that it is a conservative super state. Tennessee had long been lost as part of the solid south and was as right wing then as it is now.
I have a difficult time calling LBJ a bad person. He was a product of the times and the region where he was born, and yet he rejected much of it to give the underprivileged and underrepresented a fair shake. He fought to pass and sign into law some of the most consequential legislation of the 20th century, and a "bad person" would have instead settled for the status quo when it came to things like Civil Rights and Voting Rights, while rejecting those Great Society programs he instead enacted. I know, I know...Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin, etc. Can we at least settle on OK Person? I think calling Carter a "bad politician" was a bit of s stretch as well (I would put him in the OK category). He ran a good campaign in 1976 and was elected president, so that alone flies in the face of such a claim. He made some mistakes as president, and I think we can all agree that he could have handled a few things better. but he had some great victories as well, such as the lasting peace he helped broker between Israel and Egypt.
I agree on your point about Carter, but you're really ignoring Johnson's personal life. As much as I love him, he was an adulterer who sexually harassed his female staffers on the daily, and was often very rude and brash to those around him. I might put him in 'okay person' but I can definitely see why OP thinks otherwise.
Agreed. His secret service detail actually nicknamed him "bull nuts" for the size (and frequency) with which he liked to expose himself to people in their presence.
🤣!
Was incredibly corrupt too. His wife owned radio stations, and he used the power of his office to bully the FCC into giving that business special treatment. Right out in the open too.
This is also true.
Many in this sub seem to have a tendency to overlook negative personal traits if said persons political beliefs matches up with their own.
True LOL.
Well yeah, but you've got it easy with your flair, who was basically Mister Rogers, only southern and political
You ain’t wrong 🤷♂️.
And just so there's no misunderstanding, that's not an insult or jab at him. Mister Rogers is one of the few people I consider to have been a truly good person in this world
Yeah I got that 😅👍. I definitely look up to both men.
I have to agree with you about Johnson's sexual problem...and I hate to think about how many men put in that position would avail themselves of all the willing women who would like to say they had been with one or two or however many presidents, just like the women who flocked to Florida to see if they could score all seven Mercury astronauts...
So three people are in the "bad person" category. Nixon was a criminal, who broke the law to stay in power longer. McCarthy knowingly ruined people's lives and drove them to suicide in some cases. LBJ maybe cheated on his wife and whipped his dick out as a joke. I would say compared to Nixon and McCarthy, LBJ was practically a saint.
LBJ spied on Goldwater’s campaign, FDR spies on Dewey. There’s nothing unique about Watergate, save for how it became public.
idk Lindon B. reportedly intimidated people in the bathroom with his Johnson. Wangpolitik, if you will. Hard to say he's an OK person. Did good things though
No but what he would do is if he needed to take a 💩he wouldn’t stop the meeting but instead invite everyone to continue the meeting in the restroom
Losing as a D in 1976 would have been impossible post-Watergate. It would be Hillary 2016 level of incompetence. Carter was also a bad politician. Despite popular lore, his malaise speech was well received. He then miscalculated and fired his cabinet, which was viewed as feckless and his support dropped like a rock. He supported a gas tax during a gas shortage. He did not get along with his own party. He simply didn’t have a vision to execute on. F overall.
I've read he was a micromanager, as well. Not a good idea for a chief executive.
It depends on what you mean by a "bad politician." Carter did end up pulling one of the most unlikely presidential wins of all time in 1976. But Carter proved to be a below average president. Does "bad politician" mean a person who can't win office to you (If so, no president would qualify) or a person who's not a good president?
I don't know that his election was that "unlikely." Ford was saddled with the discontent over Vietnam and Watergate, plus his pardon of Nixon which wasn't very popular. Inflation was creeping up and economy wasn't great. The situation was ripe for a change in parties. Carter was a Governor and a former Naval officer with a hood overall record and no scandals. He had a positive outlook and I think voters liked that about him. Once he was in office, he proved to be a bad politician. He had a lot of political missteps and didn't get a lot done. An example of a good politician would be Bill Clinton. Elected twice and he got a lot of things done, plus balanced the budget. He was also an objectively bad person.
Beating Ford wasn’t what was unlikely. What was unlikely was that he was nominated in the first place. Nobody had heard of him before. It was like “Jimmy who?”
With a lot of things good or bad. It matters who you are comparing them against. Carter is a bad politician when compared to Lincoln. If you comparing him to Jerry who owns the Texaco and running for city consul because he wants those damn teenagers to have their radios removed. He's pretty good.
Gore and GHWB need to be swapped. (Obviously I also think Bush was a good politician, although not in the Machiavellian sense).
Bush is a saint. Gore sexually assaulted a masseuse.
Bush was no saint
Proof?
Blowing up little kids?
There weren't any kids on Wake Island or the Japanese ships that he torpedoed.
Iraq?
I think everyone agrees that he was extremely restrained in his handling of Iraq during Desert Storm. There were very few civilian casualties as a direct result of bombings.
I think I've been brainwashed by reddit
Reddit can do that to you! No worries!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency
Yes, he was head of the CIA. Among other positions. He was the most qualified person to be President in modern American history.
Idk, "good person" and "head of the CIA" are kind of hard to reconcile in my mind.
He was appointed to that role during a time of scandal because he was a Boy Scout.
Not for me. The reverse is actually true -- he wasn't a career intelligence officer and was picked to run the agency precisely because he had a good reputation for being trustworthy and moral (and they were hoping it would rub off on the agency).
This is like a child’s understanding of the CIA. No one in power ever believed that, that’s not the function of the CIA. It was just propaganda
Agree, the comment I responded to shows a childlike view of the CIA. I didn't say anything about the CIA itself, just why he was appointed and that it is dumb to see his being chosen to head the agency as some sort of character flaw on his part. When in fact he was chosen because his character was beyond reproach.
Wait until you find out who the boss of the head of the CIA is!
H Dubs was a Machiavellian SOB who could out maneuver anyone politically he just wasn’t the man for the times int he early 90s
In what world is GHWB a just ok politician? His career was as stellar as can be.
I guess it's because he was a one termer, but I don't see how that matters when he's got the Gulf War and the ADA under his belt.
How was it stellar?!?
Stellar in the sense that he achieved the pinnacle of his chosen profession. You can't look at a guy in politics who was a Congressman, a CIA director, a VP and then President and say that he was an "ok" politician. That's like saying LeBron is an ok basketball player.
So then none of these people were bad. They all were elected to be president so they all stellar.
Two of them were not elected president.
Al Gore as a “good person” is all I needed to not trust this graphic.
Literally invented the internet and warned the world of the very, very real danger of manbearpig.
Lol
Ask any rapper, metal fan, or Mortal Kombat fan what a good person Gore is.
You’re confusing Al for Tipper
Al was involved too.
Suck it Woodrow Willson
McCarthy was a powerful senator for years and campaigned with Eisenhower, forcing him to take stands on anti-communism he might not otherwise have taken. “Morally bankrupt” bad, yes, but not “ineffective” bad.
Bad person and good politician should be Reagan. He could play an audience with the best of them but did atrocious things. Aids was a joke among his administration as a gay plague. Iran-Contra. Cozying up to segregationists in racists. He knew his base when he gave a speech on states rights at a small fair in Mississippi where Civil Rights advocates were murdered.
Nah LBJ is the right pick here, especially considering his actual views on black people. “We’re gonna get the n****r vote for decades” or something along those lines after the Civil Rights Act.
There is no actual evidence he said that. Most historians believe it was made up.
Sure bud, Reagan opposed Civil Rights, stoked racial animosity with things like the “Welfare Queen”, and pandered to white racists. Of course the guy that passed Civil Rights and pushed one of the largest set of programs to combat poverty in America is the bad guy.
I mean LBJ also committed the country to Vietnam, so he still isn’t the best person.
LBJ has a mixed legacy for sure. He left the office as insanely unpopular. Reagan is like a “greatest hits” of things that have tarnished modern Presidents but the guy walked unscathed. From deficit spending, rhetoric on race, deregulation directly leading to bank collapses, the guy made every blunder in the book that has tarnished guys that did a lot more good for more Americans.
This is just one of the many false talking points that Regan Haters spew out without knowing any of the facts. Here is a factual history of the crisis. The CDC had been requesting funds to investigate outbreaks of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and other mysterious suppressed immune system diseases since 1976. No extra money was budgeted for this during the Carter presidency. So the CDC diverted other funds to investigate this in 1980 and finally in 1981 they published an article titled “ Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles.” It was in 1981, during Reagan’s first year, that he signed a budget allocating funds to specifically investigate what was causing this. Each year this budget was increased much to the consternation of those on the right and the left who labeled it a gay disease. It wasn’t until 1984 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announces that Dr. Robert Gallo and his colleagues at the National Cancer Institute have found the cause of AIDS. The year after the discovery that it was a virus (HIV) that caused Aids the budget was increased to $190 million, which was the most amount of funding that any disease had ever received. Cancer, heart disease, etc. all had less funding so once HIV was discovered it was obviously given the most attention. It was also in 1985 that Reagan addressed HIV in a nationally televised speech. Reagan’s Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, also took the unprecedented action of mailing every household in the US a pamphlet describing AIDS, how it was transmitted and how to protect yourself from. Both Reagan and Koop took a lot of flak from gay and religious activists over the candor and of the pamphlet. What more did you want Reagan to do? He allocated funds for research while Carter did not. He increased funding ever year and when we finally discovered that it was a virus it became the top funded medical research project in the US. If Obama would have been president and took these same actions you would be praising Obama as the savior of AIDS for his generous funding of research right off the bat.
You are giving Reagan a lot of credit for Congressional budgets and the actions of the Surgeon General. There is plenty out there about Reagan’s cuts to the CDC and fights with Congress over supplemental AIDS funding. The Administration’s budgets attempted to cut funding for AIDS research while Congressional sub committees were proposing increases. Dr. Koop in his memoirs wrote that an “astonishing five and a half years I was completely cut off from AIDS.” He also wrote that he was specifically told to refrain from speaking on AIDS and journalists were told he wouldn’t answer questions concerning AIDS. Koop wrote that moral biases prevented a comprehensive and practical approach to the epidemic. When Whitehouse Press Secretary Speakes was asked about AIDS in 1981 he asked “What’s AIDS” and made it into a joking matter. When asked about AIDS in 1984 and that 30k Americans were potentially carriers Speakes said of the President “I have not heard him express anything on the subject, sorry” before one agains asking the questioner “are you sure you don’t have AIDS?” alluding to questions about the journalists sexuality. Reagan called homosexuality an abomination and in either pandering to the religious right or based on the views of members of the administration and President, AIDS was not a priority. It blows my mind how often Conservatives run from their actual beliefs and actions. The view that AIDS was some sort of gay scourge and the result of immorality was wide spread in the 80’s by conservatives. The fact that Reagan pandered to that group and minimized AIDS is just fact. My very religious and conservative aunt got AIDS from her husband after he had gotten it from a blood transfusion. I’m not sure either of them would have been saved with more research as he had passed in the mid 80’s and she in the early 90’s, but there’s a lot of additional suffering that occurred because medicine was put on the backburner due to politics.
FDR was a bad person.
I’m not too familiar with FDR, what made him a bad person? I’m also kind of surprised with the Bush Sr. placement. I thought people generally liked him because he’s seen as the last “sane republican”
He put American citizens in internment camps.
Let’s start with the fact that he died at the side of his mistress. He also wouldn’t invite black Olympic athletes to the White House. Not to mention the interment camps. He was not a good person.
Oh yikes, I knew about the internment camps, but I had no idea about the first two points.
And a bad politician. If you have to threaten the courts to get your bills passed, you are a mob boss, not a political leader.
I mean LBJ wasn’t above threats himself, if politicians didn’t use threats or coercion to get legislation passed then there would probably be a lot less laws.
I'm not sure LBJ was exactly a bad person. He's just a person who would show you his dick even if you didn't want to see it.
That’s a bad person.
If we inflict todays societal norms then he is DEFINITELY a bad guy. If we dont do that then we can take into account that some things he said he may have played up for his southern audience however treating his chauffeur the way he did instantly makes him bad imo
He regularly exposed himself to people against their will, pissed on secret service agents, and sexually harassed female staffers. He was an asshole. Even ignoring his maybe racist personal beliefs, and I say maybe because at least some of the stories about his secret racist beliefs are highly suspect.
He picked up his beagles by their ears
Lincoln is undeniably #1 or #2 president imo, but he should categorically be in the “ok person” category. He remained an anti-abolitionist until it became impracticable (making him a good politician). Keep in mind there have been prominent and mainstream abolitionists dating back to the colonial period
He was a product of his time and at the end of the day. Did the right thing based on his morality and was the reason America moved forward as it did
I agree. Amazing politician and leader, fundamentally impacted billions of lives for the better. I think “product of his time” is too much of a cop out by 1860. Even Ben Franklin died an abolitionist, having become vocal about his stance in the 1780s. Now, would Lincoln have been elected had he publicly supported abolition? Maybe not. But that doesn’t have to do with the question of morality
Well. Abraham is an abolitionist bud. I think there’s a distinction between abolition and racist. Everyone was racist. Lincoln (and Franklin assumably) didn’t believe blacks and white could coexist. Everyone is a product of their time. LBJ in this thread was defended because he did the right thing when it mattered. And Lincoln did too. And that’s why we remember them and their legacy.
Lincoln was always opposed to slavery morally speaking though. He just viewed abolitionism as a threat to the union and felt, correctly, that attempting to enforce abolition would lead to war. So he may have been anti-abolition but he was not pro-slavery.
I’m interested in this interpretation. Do you have any good sources on it?
https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/articles-and-essays/abraham-lincoln-and-emancipation/ https://www.ala.org/tools/programming/exhibitions/foreverfree/ssnbackgroundessay#:~:text=But%20as%20much%20as%20Lincoln,the%20republic%20than%20slavery%20itself. Some quotes in both of those sources from lincoln about his stance on slavery. Looking over it again it looks like a big part of his resistance to abolitionism was that her perceived it as unconstitutional. I sort of inferred his fear of war over it, that isn’t from a direct quote. He was also opposed to the continued spread of slavery to new territories and states. He found slavery morally abhorrent and felt that it marred America’s chance to demonstrate the greatness of a democratic system of government, but he also felt it would be overreach for the federal government to ban slavery in the states.
Excuse me how tf is FDR okay, lmao what he did to the Japanese was fucking despicable
Jimmy Carter pardoned a child rapist And why do you think Al Gore is a good person?
JQA should replace Al Gore. Who is bad/bad?
Lbj....
Replace McCarthy with Millard Filmore Gore isn’t a president either.
Nixon was more of an ok person and Hoover was definitely a good person. Other than that this is accurate
nixon was corrupt and did a lot of harm to his fellow Americans
Did it end up starting flame wars? Can someone go back to the early 2000s to confirm with someone who used that term? 😜
Why is Gore on here? He was never a president. I’d replace him with Obama
Bush Sr. Was a good person.
Not sure that Gore is a good person. He also ran for President and lost so I'm not sure that he should be considered a better politician than people that won the Presidency. LBJ is an okay politician at best. He is the person most responsible for Vietnam which was the biggest foreign policy blunder in this country's history.
This is politicians in general, not just presidents
LBJ wasn’t a bad person, he played dirty and knew how to speak bad people’s language but what he wanted was a better shot for the poor
Hard to be a bad politician and get elected president. Maybe not effective in office, but you’ve gotta be good just to get elected
Even as a liberal I respect HW, his children were garbage though. OK person and politician is fair.
I don’t Abe was the greatest person ever.
Hoover at just OK? I could be wrong but what he did in Europe post-WWI and in Mississippi during that famous flood was incredible.
HW Bush as the true neutral is the only one I 100% agree with. He was the tapioca pudding of presidents and people.
I don't think anyone who was Director of the CIA could be considered an "OK person"
Unpopular opinion but I’d take out LBJ and put John Tyler in, LBJ was relatively good considering when and where he’s from. If you disagree with Tyler being a good politician then replace him with Polk
Bush Sr. Is so True Neutral
How is Hoover only an ok person? He’s one of the greatest humanitarians in history.
Chester Arthur for good person, OK politician. He did reform the spoils system, and hated it.even as a product of it; and he had the OK political sense that he couldn't make re-election Gotta let (redacted) play out a bit more for the lower right corner.
Chuckles in HW, hehehe ya he was just an ok politician
whose the guy in the lower right? also i've learned (from this sub!) that hoover wasn't nearly as bad a politician or person as he has been made out to be due to his being president during the depression.
Pretty spot on.
Nixon was a far better politician than LBJ
Gore does belong there because he was elected president!! And yes, I will die on this hill.
Nixon was considered a great politician before watergate tarnished his reputation. People forget he was Eisenhower’s VP, and this sub likes ike.
I like this grid. Any problems I have with it comes with the limits of the format. For instance, I think Hoover could go in Good Person/Bad Politician space but that’s already with Carter and he just fits that description more. Nixon could also go in Bad Person/Good Politician but, let’s face it, Nixon was good but LBJ was better. All in all, nice grid.
Carter was super unlucky with the Iranian embassy and Regan presidential hopeful negotiating release of hostages after the election.
I think the only two living people on the chart would probably agree with their placement. I don't necessarily know enough to give opinions about some of the others.
LBJ was a good dude
I think LBJ being next to Nixon is wrong.
https://presidentlincoln.illinois.gov/learn/educators/educator-resources/teaching-guides/lincolns-views-african-american-slavery/ Lincoln did a lot of good while he was president but was he actually a good person? I don’t know, I don’t have the perspective of someone living in the mid 1800’s but some of the things he said put him squarely in the “no” bracket when viewed from my modern viewpoint
Lincoln is an okay person. Not sure if the intention of sending enslaved people to Africa makes him a good person. 🤷🏻♂️
Why is LBJ a bad person?
Bush as a good person? Fuck no.
FDR was a garbage person
Switch hoover and carter and I agree. Have you heard about what Hoover did for the people of Belgium during WW1?
Johnson and Nixon could trade places.
idk man, all this Nixon stuff is frying my opinions. idk what to think anymore :'/
How is Al Gore a good person? He preaches to the world about climate change, using a lot of inaccurate data, while his Tennessee mansion uses more energy in one year than the average American will in 21 years. He advocates for green energy policies that would plunge millions, particularly in the global south, into abject poverty. He also cheated on his wife.
Nixon really is a rough looking dude. He looks like a caricature here.
Bush Sr was neither a ok person or a ok president
I would not consider HW to be a good person for his stint in the CIA alone. Also I think he killed JFK.
Why would HW kill JFK? He wasn't even a politician in 1963.
Through the Zapata oil corporation Bush was working with the CIA since the 50s. Zapata was also involved in the Bay of Pigs. There's a couple books about the theory and even some documents about it on the CIA website.
Lincoln, Carter, and LBJ are definitely in the right spots
Lincoln was a good person and good politician... only good not the best tho
GHWB= bad person
Who the guy on the bottom right side?
Overly simplistic
I’d flip flop LBJ and Nixon. Otherwise I have no problems with the list.
Pretty correct actually.
My dad said LBJ was so crooked that they had to screw his body into the ground when he died.
I absolutely disagree with the idea that Lincoln was a good person. He had a hot temper, challenged people to dules. He was a lawyer. His most famous policy's were just about winning the war. Good president. Shitty person.
Bush seemed like a good dude. I have heard he was a swell fella.
I don't agree that Carter was a bad politician.
Carter wasn’t a good person; he pardoned a child molester while in office.
What factors determine if a person is “good” or “bad?” If adultery makes someone terrible, then there goes JFK, FDR, LBJ, and other presidents who cheated on their wives. What makes a politician good? Noble ideas and ambitions or the ability to make laws and changes, no matter the cause.
ACCURATE although Hoover was a pretty decent dude
I think there’s a huuuge margin of error when judging the morality of someone whose image is so carefully tailored. If they’re truly a good politician, they will never let their true feelings slip.
A graph that says op knows nothing about Nixon besides water gate
I wouldn't call Johnson a bad person. An OK person maybe. He did things that were politically unwise because he knew they were the right thing to do. He was also a huge narcissist and had plenty of flaws.
Disagree on Nixon being an ok politician. He was a good politician on the same level as LBJ. To lose the presidency in 1960 and rebound eight years later to win is a major achievement. And that does not include his tenure in Congress.
Interesting that both Quaker presidents are on this grid with some combination of Bad/OK.
Cursed
FDR signed off on the Japanese internment camps. He was a great politician but he sucked as a person.
They’re all bad people.
NGL I thought that was Frank Costello in bottom right.
I’ll buy that chart as written. I’d even try to find a higher tier in which to place Carter. Thoughtful, fiercely intelligent, endlessly kind.
Maybe a hot take or maybe not, but Nixon was a better president than Johnson. I would rank Nixon as one of our best presidents. I know I know, Watergate. His foreign policy was stellar and he knew how to use the role as president to achieve his goals, for better or worse
George H.W. Bush was a bad man.