Greatest US president?

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Who is the greatest US president?

George Washington	7%	[ 2 ]
John Adams	0%	[ 0 ]
Thomas Jefferson	11%	[ 3 ]
Abraham Lincoln	33%	[ 9 ]
Theodore Roosevelt	11%	[ 3 ]
T. Woodrow Wilson	0%	[ 0 ]
Franklin D. Roosevelt	15%	[ 4 ]
Harry S. Truman	0%	[ 0 ]
Dwight D. Eisenhower	4%	[ 1 ]
John F. Kennedy	4%	[ 1 ]
Arnold A. Schwarzenegger	7%	[ 2 ]
Other (please amplify in your reply)	7%	[ 2 ]

Total votes : 27

GGPViper
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23 Jul 2013, 1:36 pm

This is a familiar topic in the US.

I made a poll based on the sources I could find about popularity on Wikipedia. In the options, I omitted Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk in favour of JFK and John Adams, though, as the former are largely unknown outside the US. I also listed them in chronological order, so the ordering should not be seen as a preference for a particular president.

The poll is obviously not exhaustive, so if your preferred candidate has been omitted, please make your voice heard.

Feel free to leave a comment about why you favour a particular candidate.

Dox47
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23 Jul 2013, 1:41 pm

Washington could have been King and chose not to, that's almost unheard of in the annals of politics and power, so he gets my vote.

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CSBurks
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23 Jul 2013, 2:29 pm

Most of them sucked.

I guess I'll go with Andrew Jackson, despite the obvious problems.

Fnord
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23 Jul 2013, 2:29 pm

By what measure "Greatness"?

GoonSquad
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23 Jul 2013, 3:05 pm

Teddy Roosevelt because (click)

Quote:

When he returned as a war hero, Roosevelt decided to run for Governor of New York. Since the New Yorkers knew that TR was going to clean out all the corruption in town, George Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman decided to instead nominate him as a candidate for Vice President, a post where he presumably wouldn't have any power to do anything. The McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won, and McKinley was assassinated almost immediately. TR became President on 9/14/1901.

As President, Roosevelt settled strikes, broke up powerful trusts, built the Panama Canal, desegregated Japanese schoolchildren in California, fought to preserve the independence of South American countries from Europe and worked to conserve the American outdoors by commissioning numerous state parks. He also invited Booker T. Washington to chill at the White House, marking the first time a black man had ever eaten dinner as an official guest at the White House.

TR won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War. How many people in history can claim that they won both the Nobel Peace Prize for making peaceful and harmonious s**t happen as well as the Congressional Medal of Honor for kicking asses and possibly even taking names?

Just to prove how awesome he was TR built a huge fleet of white battleships and sailed it around the world, making sure to stop at the ports of any nation that thought it could possibly kick the US's ass just to prove to them that they couldn't.

His personal philosophy was "walk softly and carry a big stick (to kick asses with)", which goes up there with "live for revenge" and "cheat to win" as one of the three best personal philosophies ever devised.

He stood outside and gave a two-hour speech in Milwaukee immediately after being shot in the chest in an assassination attempt. It was only after the speech ended that he went to the hospital to get the bullet removed.

BULLY!

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Kraichgauer
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23 Jul 2013, 3:11 pm

I went with Lincoln. He saved the country from splitting in two, won a bloody civil war, oversaw America become a military and industrial dynamo, ended the idiocy of regionalism, and rid America of it's worst evil: slavery. All other presidents can only hope to measure up to Lincoln.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Last edited by Kraichgauer on 23 Jul 2013, 3:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ScrewyWabbit
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23 Jul 2013, 4:37 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:

Agree completely. The only one who comes close I think is FDR for leading the country through the depression and (almost) to victory in WW2.

Dox47
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23 Jul 2013, 4:57 pm

Personality wise, TR is by far my favorite, but I'm sticking with Washington as far as greatness goes. I don't think he gets nearly as much credit as he deserves for the precedents he set.

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GoonSquad
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23 Jul 2013, 4:58 pm

Okay.... you know what? Lincoln probably is our greatest president.... BUT Teddy was the greatest MAN ever to be president.

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nominalist
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23 Jul 2013, 7:00 pm

I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. However, I dedicated one of my books to President Eisenhower.

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ruveyn
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23 Jul 2013, 8:10 pm

CSBurks wrote:

Most of them sucked.

I guess I'll go with Andrew Jackson, despite the obvious problems.

He was a stone killer. He did one thing right, though. He closed the National Bank. The National Bank came back again as the Federal Reserve Bank.

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xenon13
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23 Jul 2013, 10:09 pm

Andrew Jackson left a depression in his wake... that's the last time there was no US national debt.

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23 Jul 2013, 10:36 pm

In 2012, the U.S. Government debt was 73.6% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (USGDP).

For the same time period, Canada's debt stood at 82.4% of its G.D.P.

Kurgan
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23 Jul 2013, 11:14 pm

Fnord wrote:

In 2012, the U.S. Government debt was 73.6% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (USGDP).

For the same time period, Canada's debt stood at 82.4% of its G.D.P.

You should take a look at the debt of some European countries.

GoonSquad
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23 Jul 2013, 11:17 pm

xenon13 wrote:

Andrew Jackson left a depression in his wake... that's the last time there was no US national debt.

Hey! Don't forget the trail of tears.... Old Hickory wasn't just an economic dumbass, he was a genocidal douchebag too! :roll:

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Kraichgauer
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24 Jul 2013, 3:39 am

I'm d to see my man Lincoln is ahead.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

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