UK Experts rate Roosevelt best US president., Bush 31st

Linky

Let the arguments about bias begin!

You sure that's not "badass"? We all know the Teddymeister was the most badass.

Nope, because it's FDR. Teddy's at 5. If it was most badass, he'd have been first.

Raeg at Reagan and Jackson being in the top ten, or anywhere away from the bottom, for that matter.

Roosevelt II being @ #1 tells me this list is fucked.

EDIT: HAHAHAHA

>>Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) and Woodrow Wilson (1913-21), are placed fifth and sixth

>>FDR's liberal successors, Harry Truman (1945-53) and Lyndon Johnson (1963-69), come seventh and 11th respectively.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

edited 17th Jan '11 4:18:03 PM by BalloonFleet

Balloon Fleet, I don't get what's so self-evidently funny here.

And Reagan is high on the list because he played a big part in winning the Cold War and ending the 70's recession.

I don't have too high an opinion of Andrew Jackson myself, but I can at least see why he's there; his populist ideology isn't going away any time soon.

edited 17th Jan '11 4:32:02 PM by silver2195

\*Thinks up suggestion box idea for Fox News or CNN to rate UK Prime Ministers and royalty in the same fashion.*

How the fuck did Johnson place 11th?

Not sayon' I agree with it, but... civil rights, probably.

"And Reagan is high on the list because he played a big part in winning the Cold War" - silver

... I thought that had more to do with Gorbachev. o.o

Well yes, but we can't put him on the list

"A big part" doesn't mean the main part.

The only one I really object to is Jackson. The guy had nothing like a positive legacy.

His response to the Nullification Crisis could be considered a positive legacy, I suppose.

In general, though, I'm not a fan of Jackson.

edited 17th Jan '11 5:09:25 PM by silver2195

Hey, I didn't read the list, it's not my fault that there's two Roosevelts and the OP didn't specify.

Qualifications paragraph:

In total, 47 British academics specialising in American history and politics took part. They were asked to rate the performance of every president from 1789 to 2009 (excluding William Henry Harrison and James Garfield, who both died shortly after taking office) in five categories:

• vision/agenda-setting
• domestic leadership
• foreign policy leadership
• moral authority
• positive historical significance of their legacy

edited 17th Jan '11 5:11:32 PM by Deboss

*Thinks up suggestion box idea for Fox News or CNN to rate UK Prime Ministers and royalty in the same fashion.*

It'd be interesting to see how Blair would fare; I honestly don't know what the American media makes of him because as I see it he doesn't really fit into to either of the American definitions of "conservative" or "liberal", which seem to count for a lot in this kind of thing.

If such a ranking was conducted, Thatcher and Churchill would probably come out on top. Depending on the methodology, Attlee would be near the bottom (for being a socialist) or in the middle (as a concession for actually achieving most of his mandate).

edited 17th Jan '11 5:40:10 PM by TheGloomer

Moral authority sounds very, very, very, very prone to bias. I'd nix that category all together. "Morality" should only apply to the legality of the president's actions, and nothing more.

Also "vision/agenda setting"...that seems a bit murky. Having a bold vision/agenda doesn't seem admirable if that vision is, say, manifest destiny at the expense of the natives/people in other countries.

All that being said, the list didn't turn out that badly. (Why Jackson though?)

It sounds like something that was done just to get attention.

Jeez am I tired with the Lincoln worship, him and FDR, (Reagan whenever the right brings him up).

I can't believe Bush placed so highly, I'd put him somewhere in the bottom 5. Along with Reagan, Jackson, Bush I, and Hayes.

^ Surely, they're not worse than Harding or Pierce. Bottom 10 maybe.

It'd be interesting to see how Blair would fare; I honestly don't know what the American media makes of him because as I see it he doesn't really fit into to either of the American definitions of "conservative" or "liberal", which seem to count for a lot in this kind of thing.

Some British guy noone cares about who is BF Fs with Bush.

For fuck's sake, Woodrow Wilson was in the top 10? As I've said before, that guy made George Bush look like Mahatma fucking Gandhi. His policies fucked up the world for most of the entire 20th century.

I actually agree with FDR being on top. He was pretty clearly at least top five, and none of the other top five handled two seperate crisises.

But the rest of the list is clearly crap. Clinton and Bush I>> Carter, Nixon > Carter and Bush I (Nixon was a surpizingly good president excluding Watergate), Jefferson should be maybe at ten instead of top five (he gets a lot of credit for the Louisiana Purchase, but he also started a pretty delusionary embargo against Britain and France that completely trashed the US economy), and Reagan might've been better than Carter but was way worse than any president since Carter. Except Bush II. Who should be bottom five.

EDIT: OH YES RT JUST REMINDED ME. While Wilson may have made the Treaty of Versailles less bad than it would've been otherwise, he also was an entirely bad president from America's point of view.

edited 17th Jan '11 6:40:22 PM by BlackHumor

Well, Wilson was right about Europe post-WW 1, he just failed to make France and England obey him.

If the US were to make such a survey about British leaders, Churchill would be certain to win.

edited 17th Jan '11 6:42:36 PM by Ultrayellow

Whatever he did for the Treaty of Versailles won't make up for the fact that his military intervention in the Russian Revolution more or less guaranteed the rise of Stalinist Russia and the Cold War. We could have had peaceful, cooperative Communists if it weren't for him.

Love it or hate it Taoist, you have to admit that Stalinist Russia was one of the only ways Hitler could have been stopped. Just saying. But as a matter of fact, despite his intentions, Wilson failed to make the Treaty of Versailles better, since it was still ridiculous enough to allow the rise of the Nazis.