• '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Looking over the person’s ENTIRE LIFE and the TOTAL IMPACT of the person on the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (to exclude impact on the rest of the world) who is your favorite and least favorite DECEASED President of the United States of America and why?

    Note, the men you mention MUST BE DEAD. At room temperature.  Taking a dirt nap. Pushing up the daisies.  Passed…(over, on, away, etc). Demised. Ceased to be. No more. Expired. Gone to meet their maker. Stiff. Bereft of life. Resting in peace. Off the twig. Kicked the bucket. Shuffled off the mortal coil. Run down the curtain. Joined the choir invisible. In a better place . Six feet under . Crossed over . Crossed the River Styx . Wandering the Elysian Fields. Paid Charon’s fare. Sleeping with the fishes. Bought the farm. belly up. cadaverous. checked out. defunct. departed. erased. extinct. late. perished. in repose. checked out. croaked. Danced the last dance. Gone into the west. Got a one-way ticket. No longer with us. With the ancestors. Gave up the ghost. In the grave.  “going to the big ___(whatever) in the sky” . Worm food. Bought the pine condo. Got into the fertilizer business. Became living-challenged.

    I hope that’s enough euphemisms for you to get the point that YOU MAY NOT SELECT ANY PRESIDENT WHO IS CURRENTLY ALIVE!  That means no Bush Sr.  no Bush Jr.  no Clinton.  no Carter.  (Think that’s all of them, unless Ford’s still with us, in which case NO FORD EITHER!)



    Hell, that alone could have been an interesting topic.  Feel free to add your own favorite euphemism for the dead!

    Anyway:

    Favorite President:

    Thomas Jefferson.

    From the White House’s website:

    This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello.

    When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, yet reduced the national debt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.

    During Jefferson’s second term, he was increasingly preoccupied with keeping the Nation from involvement in the Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the neutral rights of American merchantmen.

    Thomas Jefferson was also the author of the Declaration of Independence (which was greatly influenced by John Locke and Hobbes) and he influenced the authoring of the US Constitution.

    His belief was that the US Government should have nothing to do with religion, that religion should be held sacrosanct from governmental influences.  Furthermore, he believed strongly in the rights of the people to not only assemble and petition the government with their grievances, but also the right to bear arms and form militias would keep our liberty safe from tyrants and despots.

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/


    For worst president, I nominate Franklin Roosevelt.

    During his terms of President, FDR got the following passed:

    1)  Federal Emergency Relief Administration
    2) Civilian Conservation Corps (hired 250,000 unemployed men)
    3) Federal Trade Commission (broad powers to regulate mortgages)
    4) Reconstruction Finance Corporations
    5) Agricultural Adjustment Administration (which attempted to force higher prices on farmers to force them to plant less food and keep smaller herds)
    6) National Industrial Recovery Act (forced industries to set minimum prices and non-competition agreements and suspended anti-trust laws created by Theodore Roosevelt. This was later struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.)
    7) Securities and Exchange Commission (relegated wall street.)
    8.) Spent 3.3 billion USD for Public Works Administration in an attempt to stimulate the economy. (Failed, this was 1933, recovery didn’t start until 1943.)
    9) Created the Tennessee Valley Authority which was to build dams and power stations and modernize Tennessee homes.  For some reason, this agency still exists today.
    10) Repealed prhibition
    11) Plundered all US Citizen Held Gold through Executive Order Number 6102 which made it illegal to own gold until President Ford rescinded the order in 1974. (Take note all of you who think the President cannot write and enforce laws, FDR has proven that you can, even without consent of the Congress.)

    Part II (the Second New Deal)
    12) Works Progress Administration (attempted to reduce unemployment, but even at its height, unemployment still hovered above 12.5% of the population.  A REAL recession!  This in 1938)
    13) Social Security Act (which even his own mother refused to pay into.  Note, at the time, it was expected that less then 1% of citizens would collect social security benefits!)
    14) The Wagner Act (later the National Labor Relations Act) which allowed people to form unions.

    FDR also broke the tradition of American Presidents holding NO MORE then 2 terms as President prompting the American people to ratify an amendment restricting a persons ability to hold Presidential office to no more then 10 years. (2 if the President died and you were Vice President + 2 Terms of 4 years as elected President.)

    President Roosevelt also implemented payroll taxes and introduced employees to federal income taxes and tax withholdings, reaching a marginal tax rate of 91%.

    Meanwhile, Roosevelt was so incompetent at military activities, his board so full of leaks to the enemy and the press, that the US Army and US Navy banded together and determined that he would NOT be on the Need to Know list except for that information the President absolutely had to be made aware of. (The first of which was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.)

    This ended in resulting in the US Army and US Navy running the wars in Europe and in the Pacific with very little input from the President and hence we every American knows who the generals and admirals were in World War II but not World War I, Korea, Vietnam, etc, when Presidents were in full control of armed services.

    Information gathered in part from the White House and sources linked from Wiki to include:

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/

    Speeches and quotations: audio and transcripts

    * Full audio of over 40 Roosevelt speeches (including a full set of fireside chats) via the Miller Center of Public Affairs (UVa)
        * Roosevelt’s Secret White House Recordings via the Miller Center of Public Affairs (UVa)
        * famous quotes
        * The American Presidency Project at University of California at Santa Barbara
              o Public Papers of the Presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt
              o State of the Union Addresses
                    + 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944
              o State of the Union Written Messages
                    + 1945
              o Inaugural Addresses
                    + 1933, 1937, 1941, 1945
              o Fireside Chats
              o Presidential Elections
                    + 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944
              o 32 Audio/Video Clips of FDR
        * FDR - Day of Infamy video clip (2 min.)
        * Audio clips of speeches
        * First Inaugural Address, via Yale University
        * Second Inaugural Address, via Yale University
        * Third Inaugural Address, via Yale University
        * Fourth Inaugural Address, via Yale University
        * Court “Packing” Speech March 9, 1937
        * University of Virginia graduating class speech (“Stab in the Back” speech) June 10, 1940

    (You can find the links at the bottom of FDR’s Wiki page to all of that if you wish.)

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Note, DO NOT MAKE THIS A POLITICAL DISCUSSION BASED ON PARTY. If you want to discuss who did what, what worked, what did not work, then it is a HISTORY DISCUSSION.

  • 2007 AAR League

    good topic.

    but i know its going to turn into this……


  • @Cmdr:

    FDR also broke the tradition of American Presidents holding NO MORE then 2 terms as President prompting the American people to ratify an amendment restricting a persons ability to hold Presidential office to no more then 10 years. (2 if the President died and you were Vice President + 2 Terms of 4 years as elected President.)

    Meanwhile, Roosevelt was so incompetent at military activities, his board so full of leaks to the enemy and the press, that the US Army and US Navy banded together and determined that he would NOT be on the Need to Know list except for that information the President absolutely had to be made aware of. (The first of which was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.)

    This ended in resulting in the US Army and US Navy running the wars in Europe and in the Pacific with very little input from the President and hence we every American knows who the generals and admirals were in World War II but not World War I, Korea, Vietnam, etc, when Presidents were in full control of armed services.

    Ok, I have to comment on these two things.

    1. FDR was not the first to run for more than 2 terms, but was the only to win and serve.  He was elected by the people for that, and a Republican Congress pushed the amendment ratified by state legislatures and not the people after FDR’s death.

    2)  I have no idea where you came up on that military shit and have never heard that ever before.  I think it’s bullshit straight from your ass.

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