Favourite U.S. President?

Indeed. I'd have made a very good Liberal Party PM before 1914 when they lost their way. Bit of imperialism, eugenics but also free trade and a bit of social liberalism.

True although i don't think many over there rave about him.

Since the U.S. Presidential Elections are soon, I was wondering who all your favourite U.S. Presidents are. Personally mine would be Reagan.

*waits for an idiot to say Obama*

Since the U.S. Presidential Elections are soon, I was wondering who all your favourite U.S. Presidents are. Personally mine would be Reagan.

*waits for an idiot to say Obama*

The vast majority of them have been terrible, and every President since WWII would have been hanged for war crimes at Nuremberg if the principles were applied.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama would be the top three for me. I've recently warmed to Obama again after this excellent (but very long) article about his foreign policy.

He's smart, logical, measured and takes some surprising stances on Saudi Arabia and similar regimes, and is unique for being a President who actually admits his mistakes and who actually says that he regrets the disastrous Libyan intervention in 2011. He understands the perils of military intervention; understands that, statistically speaking, terrorism is less dangerous than driving a car or standing in a bathtub; and wants to focus more on Asia, Africa and Latin America, which have great potential.

On the Republican side, Dwight Eisenhower was probably their best (or, rather, least worse).

Economically, we had a good string of Presidents from FDR to Nixon who implemented sensible Keynesian policies. Reagan, though, started off a terrible economic agenda which we still haven't got rid of to this day. When combining both economic and foreign policy (with his terrorist campaigns against Nicaragua and other Latin American countries), I'd have to say that Reagan is one of the United States' worst Presidents in history.

LOL

That said, it isn't surprising that a leftist like yourself is happy when America has weak Presidents.

If you want to label me a 'leftist', then fine, but I don't consider myself one. Looking at politics based on policy is far more helpful.

I'd venture to say, though, that many Americans believe FDR to have been a strong President. Certainly, he's one of the most popular Presidents, if not the most popular President, in history.

I also don't know where you got the notion that Obama is a weak President from. Putin invaded Georgia under Bush's watch, despite Bush having illegally invaded and occupied Iraq with tens of thousands of US troops. Unlike Obama, Bush failed to understand that his so-called "strong" policies led to more terrorism, so being "strong" is, unfortunately, pretty irrelevant when it usually equates to being stupid. You can scream at a problem and call for it to be smashed with a sledgehammer, or you can, as Obama has tried to do, analyse the costs and benefits of a specific policy before going in all guns blazing.

Just another symptom, to quote Christopher Hitchens, of the fact that George W. Bush was unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.

These Presidents certainly aren't perfect, but I'd rather favour some relatively intelligent ones over some of the more prolific human rights abusers, warmongers and idiots, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan being the most prominent of these.

Once you said Jimmy Carter it was hard for me to continue taking you seriously...

"Idiot" reporting for duty. Why you hating tho?

hold on guys, I think it's trying to communicate

Lincoln was not anti-slavery. These ****ers are just politicians very few have any human decency. Washington owned slaves too.

I know - even jefferson owned slaves which was the worst of all because his philosophies were clearly meant to repel things like slavery. and lincoln, though not massively in favour of abolitionish *still* freed the slaves, whether his intentions were political or not. I never said these people were saints - no president is/was or will be.

So what makes Obama less of a choice? He may be a weak president, but that is more to do with the fact that the senate and congress are not behind him.

Lincoln was not anti-slavery.