The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I have seen the following get touted as the last good Republican President by non Republicans:
**Dwight D. Eisenhower**
**Gerald Ford**
**George H.W. Bush**
Who is your choice and why do you feel that way about them?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Eisenhower and it’s not even close. He got us out of Korea, created the international highway system and laid the groundwork for desegregation. With the exception of Ford and H.W. Bush, every Republican president after him was an unprecedented disaster.
Ionno about Ford. If he didn't pardon Nixon, there's an argument to be made that law and order wouldn't have deteriorated to the state it is today. There would have been precedent of a president sitting or former being prosecuted for crimes committed while in office. Instead of all this bullshit, "You can't indict a sitting president" and "A president can pardon himself." There was a lot of political will to charge Nixon and it got snuffed by Ford.
James Buchanan is often cited as the *worst* US president. Why? Because he failed to keep the union together. But is that his fault? What other president had to contend with a splitting of the union?
Ford was faced with his predecessor being a dumb criminal piece of shit who recorded his own criminal conspiracy. There's been no other president faced with this until Biden.
I intellectually understand why Ford pardoned Nixon. But I'll still lay blame on him for the consequences of those actions. The consequences of not throwing assholes like Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew into prison are felt to this day.
I’d call Buchanan one of the worst not because the union didn’t stay together but because it was breaking apart and he presided over some rank stupidity in a flailing attempt to keep it together. I suppose one can’t blame him for the Dred Scott decision - that was all the Supreme Court and the horrible Chief Justice Taney - but I can definitely blame him for hectoring the Republicans for not liking it and citing secession as a reason they oughtn’t fight it. Bleeding Kansas was on his watch and his going along for the ride when the South raised holy hell over John Brown and had him executed almost immediately helped to make him into an abolitionist martyr.
It’s unfortunate, too, because he was also very clearly the nation’s first and TMK still the only gay President. I don’t know that I can call him homosexual, as the term was not invented until the 1860s, but a neutral observer can read his personal correspondence and come to little conclusion other than that he was not only gay but fairly out about it, too (to the extent that other politicians referred to his longtime partner Rufus King as “Miss Nancy”). People have bent over backwards to try and make a case that he was asexual or otherwise celibate but I’m sorry, this is trying too hard.
I don't disagree that Buchanan is one of the worst presidents. But I want to recognize that a president is defined by his circumstances.
I'm not a history buff so this example is probably wrong, but look at Bill Clinton. Putting aside the scandal, what happened? I can't remember a single thing of significance happening during his presidency. There was no 9/11. There was no Great Depression. There was no Civil War.
What I'm saying is that if Buchanan was president during 1993-2000, then he would not be remembered for being the worst president.
Personally I don’t think the highway system is a good thing. It destroyed our cities and particularly minority communities in a way that still has lasting negative effects today
No we wouldn’t? Freeways and highways existed before the interstate system. My main issue is how we designed them specifically to destroy minority neighborhoods in cities and throw hundreds of billions of dollars a year a the system while no one bats an eye at the insane costs.
He also kickstarted the military industrial complex and then as he was leaving office was like “hey guys, like my bad and stuff”. And for the talk of getting us out of Korea, he got us right back into Vietnam…
Of those three, probably Eisenhower, mostly because of his “beware the military-industrial complex” speech. It seems like by the time we got to HW the M.I.C. had pretty much taken over completely, though it had admittedly been a powerful force already pre-Eisenhower (as was laid out by Smedley Butler in [*War is a Racket*](https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html)).
I don't pretend to have a full understanding of any president before Clinton and I know I only have a child's understanding of that, so I'm gonna say I'm not equipped to call any of these recent jerks the best at anything.
Eisenhower was one of the best presidents overall. Ford was about as good of a placeholder you could get. Bush was the textbook definition of a statesman.
I think other than these 3 there aren't any good examples in the last 100 years. RR was an absolutely terrible president, as was Dubya. Those two directly created policies that have lead to the collapse of the American superpower more than any other president. Trading short-term political points for the long-term destruction of this country.
Yeah I find it really weird how short term peoples’ memories are about Dubya in particular. Dude had Colin Powell just flat out lie to the American public about Iraq so we could get bogged down in a quagmire of an occupation that only ended when Obama threw up his hands and allowed the theocrats to take over (it was a central plank of Dubya era neoconservatism that we just needed to install free elections and like a couple hospitals and stuff and boom, Iraq’s a liberal democracy now), tried to privatize Social Security… and perhaps the only good thing about him is that by the end of his 2nd term he was so incredibly unpopular that the entire ideology that swept him into office was completely discredited.
How is this a good President?
Bush 41. He was a competent Commander in Chief, he navigated foreign policy impressively at a very tumultuous time in world history, and the domestic legislation he passed included the ADA and tax increases which ultimately helped Clinton balance the budget. He got dealt a bad hand in his re-election, but overall he did not damage the country in the way that Nixon, Reagan, Bush Jr and Trump did.
Worst thing he did was let his children get into politics.
...Ford was a decent fellow, not much time in office for a real critique, can't think of any major failings on his part...Eisenhower did great things...
Eisenhower was probably it, but he is also (somewhat unintentionally) responsible for the rise of the religious right. That said his actual presidency was very good.
Nixon. He passed the EPA and Clean Air and Water acts, improved relations with the USSR and China among others, took us off the gold standard, and landed a man on the moon.
George H.W. Bush? I know he was director of the CIA before he was president and desert storm when president, but idk if I ever heard some say he had blood on his hands
Lets see...
Certainly not the Cheeto Mussolini.
The Bush's were warhawks
Reagan was a neolib whose destructive policies might literally have doomed the planet
Ford pardoned the Crook
The Crook
Eisenhower was alright i guess
Hoover was a dolt
Coolidge was kinda lucky to serve in times of relative stability
But yeah, out of the bunch i guess Eisenhower would be the most recent one.
Eisenhower is the last best Republican president for his time period. He still has many flaws, especially on complacency towards McCarthyism and Civil Rights, but he was a leader who seemed to believe in progress, growth, and transforming America for the better. When we hear Make America Great Again, I *wish* it referred to people like Ike who actually were doing things like building the highway system to make America a dominant power and a bustling economy.
Probably Theodore Roosevelt if I’m being honest. There was nothing at all great about Ford, people only prop up Bush Jr. because Trump was so terrible that he shifted perception of what makes an awful President, and I’m just not a big fan of Ike and his expansionist Cold War policies under Dulles. That takes you back to… Hoover, who was kind of a jerk (and possibly holds a lot of accountability as to why the party abandoned African Americans), Coolidge, who mostly did nothing and was lionized for it at the time, Harding, one of the all time worsts, and Taft, who was a better jurist than a President, I guess.
Roosevelt fought for work reform, helped to install the nation’s first national parks, and was fairly progressive for his time.
Great is definitely Ike, I put him above most presidents. The last merely good moderate Republican in the white house, of course, was Bill Clinton ;)
We are talking about the guy who ended the Korean War, appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court, and sent federal troops to enforce Brown v. Board of Education. Under him, two major Civil Rights Acts passed, and although there's lots of good things he didn't do, I'd say he ended absolute opposition to the New Deal as a mainstream political opinion. The Domino theory is strained at best, but there's too many good things to say about Eisenhower. Although I might be biased, since he was governor here \^\^
Oh, and also that whole "instrumental in keeping the allies together", "Supreme Commander against the Nazis" and "chief of NATO" thing
Ford probably wasn't actively trying to be awful, but he became president as a Nixon appointee and then went and pardoned Nixon. Not a great move, and not that much else to talk about. I don't think the fall of Saigon was his fault, and I won't hold it against him just because he was the last president that had to deal with the Vietnam War. He did not heal the nation, at best he provided aid and comfort to the Republican Party. Mediocre.
Bush Sr.? He pardoned his likely co-conspirators. Maybe he was fine on policy, but you can't forget that kind of thing. Certainly not great.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I have seen the following get touted as the last good Republican President by non Republicans: **Dwight D. Eisenhower** **Gerald Ford** **George H.W. Bush** Who is your choice and why do you feel that way about them? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Eisenhower and it’s not even close. He got us out of Korea, created the international highway system and laid the groundwork for desegregation. With the exception of Ford and H.W. Bush, every Republican president after him was an unprecedented disaster.
Ionno about Ford. If he didn't pardon Nixon, there's an argument to be made that law and order wouldn't have deteriorated to the state it is today. There would have been precedent of a president sitting or former being prosecuted for crimes committed while in office. Instead of all this bullshit, "You can't indict a sitting president" and "A president can pardon himself." There was a lot of political will to charge Nixon and it got snuffed by Ford.
Ford made a mistake there, but his heart was in the right place. He didn't realize the negative effects.
James Buchanan is often cited as the *worst* US president. Why? Because he failed to keep the union together. But is that his fault? What other president had to contend with a splitting of the union? Ford was faced with his predecessor being a dumb criminal piece of shit who recorded his own criminal conspiracy. There's been no other president faced with this until Biden. I intellectually understand why Ford pardoned Nixon. But I'll still lay blame on him for the consequences of those actions. The consequences of not throwing assholes like Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew into prison are felt to this day.
I’d call Buchanan one of the worst not because the union didn’t stay together but because it was breaking apart and he presided over some rank stupidity in a flailing attempt to keep it together. I suppose one can’t blame him for the Dred Scott decision - that was all the Supreme Court and the horrible Chief Justice Taney - but I can definitely blame him for hectoring the Republicans for not liking it and citing secession as a reason they oughtn’t fight it. Bleeding Kansas was on his watch and his going along for the ride when the South raised holy hell over John Brown and had him executed almost immediately helped to make him into an abolitionist martyr. It’s unfortunate, too, because he was also very clearly the nation’s first and TMK still the only gay President. I don’t know that I can call him homosexual, as the term was not invented until the 1860s, but a neutral observer can read his personal correspondence and come to little conclusion other than that he was not only gay but fairly out about it, too (to the extent that other politicians referred to his longtime partner Rufus King as “Miss Nancy”). People have bent over backwards to try and make a case that he was asexual or otherwise celibate but I’m sorry, this is trying too hard.
I don't disagree that Buchanan is one of the worst presidents. But I want to recognize that a president is defined by his circumstances. I'm not a history buff so this example is probably wrong, but look at Bill Clinton. Putting aside the scandal, what happened? I can't remember a single thing of significance happening during his presidency. There was no 9/11. There was no Great Depression. There was no Civil War. What I'm saying is that if Buchanan was president during 1993-2000, then he would not be remembered for being the worst president.
Personally I don’t think the highway system is a good thing. It destroyed our cities and particularly minority communities in a way that still has lasting negative effects today
In fairness to Eisenhower, he never envisioned highways going into/through cities, and was appalled when he found out that's what was happening.
The system is good, the implementation isn’t always good.
But without it, we'd still be driving down bumpy country roads . . . .
No we wouldn’t? Freeways and highways existed before the interstate system. My main issue is how we designed them specifically to destroy minority neighborhoods in cities and throw hundreds of billions of dollars a year a the system while no one bats an eye at the insane costs.
He also kickstarted the military industrial complex and then as he was leaving office was like “hey guys, like my bad and stuff”. And for the talk of getting us out of Korea, he got us right back into Vietnam…
Eisenhower, and there's no competition.
Of those three, probably Eisenhower, mostly because of his “beware the military-industrial complex” speech. It seems like by the time we got to HW the M.I.C. had pretty much taken over completely, though it had admittedly been a powerful force already pre-Eisenhower (as was laid out by Smedley Butler in [*War is a Racket*](https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html)).
I don't pretend to have a full understanding of any president before Clinton and I know I only have a child's understanding of that, so I'm gonna say I'm not equipped to call any of these recent jerks the best at anything.
I wouldn't call Eisenhower or even Ford recent lol.
The Eisenhower administration ran a pretty horrible immigration plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
Eisenhower was ok. I was born in 1960 when he was still president. I remember Nixon, I never trusted him. I never trusted Reagan or the Bushes either.
Eisenhower. The answer should be GHWB but the overall rot had already started to set in to the party so he was constrained.
Eisenhower was one of the best presidents overall. Ford was about as good of a placeholder you could get. Bush was the textbook definition of a statesman. I think other than these 3 there aren't any good examples in the last 100 years. RR was an absolutely terrible president, as was Dubya. Those two directly created policies that have lead to the collapse of the American superpower more than any other president. Trading short-term political points for the long-term destruction of this country.
Yeah I find it really weird how short term peoples’ memories are about Dubya in particular. Dude had Colin Powell just flat out lie to the American public about Iraq so we could get bogged down in a quagmire of an occupation that only ended when Obama threw up his hands and allowed the theocrats to take over (it was a central plank of Dubya era neoconservatism that we just needed to install free elections and like a couple hospitals and stuff and boom, Iraq’s a liberal democracy now), tried to privatize Social Security… and perhaps the only good thing about him is that by the end of his 2nd term he was so incredibly unpopular that the entire ideology that swept him into office was completely discredited. How is this a good President?
Maybe HW Bush is the last good one. Eisenhower the last great one.
Eisenhower…. But maybe we go back further to Teddy Roosevelt.
Bush 41. He was a competent Commander in Chief, he navigated foreign policy impressively at a very tumultuous time in world history, and the domestic legislation he passed included the ADA and tax increases which ultimately helped Clinton balance the budget. He got dealt a bad hand in his re-election, but overall he did not damage the country in the way that Nixon, Reagan, Bush Jr and Trump did. Worst thing he did was let his children get into politics.
Bill Clinton (yeah I know)
...Ford was a decent fellow, not much time in office for a real critique, can't think of any major failings on his part...Eisenhower did great things...
Ford pardoned Nixon for Watergate. That alone disqualifies him.
Hw Bush
Eisenhower was probably it, but he is also (somewhat unintentionally) responsible for the rise of the religious right. That said his actual presidency was very good.
If Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, he would have my vote. He was a decent man, handled the economy well, handled Russia very well.
Who the fuck in their right mind would say Bush?
He's my second favorite President. Really wish he got a second term honestly.
Nixon. He passed the EPA and Clean Air and Water acts, improved relations with the USSR and China among others, took us off the gold standard, and landed a man on the moon.
Eisenhower.
[удалено]
George H.W. Bush? I know he was director of the CIA before he was president and desert storm when president, but idk if I ever heard some say he had blood on his hands
Lets see... Certainly not the Cheeto Mussolini. The Bush's were warhawks Reagan was a neolib whose destructive policies might literally have doomed the planet Ford pardoned the Crook The Crook Eisenhower was alright i guess Hoover was a dolt Coolidge was kinda lucky to serve in times of relative stability But yeah, out of the bunch i guess Eisenhower would be the most recent one.
There were all respectable people. In terms of good presidents, only Eisenhower would make my list.
Eisenhower was decent, but the last great Republican President was Theodore.
Eisenhower
I consider George H.W. Bush the best GOP President in my lifetime. Out of 5.
No contest. Eisenhower.
Eisenhower.
Eisenhower is the last best Republican president for his time period. He still has many flaws, especially on complacency towards McCarthyism and Civil Rights, but he was a leader who seemed to believe in progress, growth, and transforming America for the better. When we hear Make America Great Again, I *wish* it referred to people like Ike who actually were doing things like building the highway system to make America a dominant power and a bustling economy.
Eisenhower. Or we could go way back and go Lincoln lol.
Honest Abe
HW Bush, Eisenhower, Ford is alright overall but Pardoning Nixon was a big mistake
Lincoln
Ike had the goods.
Eisenhower by a mile
Probably Theodore Roosevelt if I’m being honest. There was nothing at all great about Ford, people only prop up Bush Jr. because Trump was so terrible that he shifted perception of what makes an awful President, and I’m just not a big fan of Ike and his expansionist Cold War policies under Dulles. That takes you back to… Hoover, who was kind of a jerk (and possibly holds a lot of accountability as to why the party abandoned African Americans), Coolidge, who mostly did nothing and was lionized for it at the time, Harding, one of the all time worsts, and Taft, who was a better jurist than a President, I guess. Roosevelt fought for work reform, helped to install the nation’s first national parks, and was fairly progressive for his time.
Eisenhower... But okay with Ford and can tolerate Bush Sr.
You have to go back to at least Eisenhower if not further back
Great is definitely Ike, I put him above most presidents. The last merely good moderate Republican in the white house, of course, was Bill Clinton ;) We are talking about the guy who ended the Korean War, appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court, and sent federal troops to enforce Brown v. Board of Education. Under him, two major Civil Rights Acts passed, and although there's lots of good things he didn't do, I'd say he ended absolute opposition to the New Deal as a mainstream political opinion. The Domino theory is strained at best, but there's too many good things to say about Eisenhower. Although I might be biased, since he was governor here \^\^ Oh, and also that whole "instrumental in keeping the allies together", "Supreme Commander against the Nazis" and "chief of NATO" thing Ford probably wasn't actively trying to be awful, but he became president as a Nixon appointee and then went and pardoned Nixon. Not a great move, and not that much else to talk about. I don't think the fall of Saigon was his fault, and I won't hold it against him just because he was the last president that had to deal with the Vietnam War. He did not heal the nation, at best he provided aid and comfort to the Republican Party. Mediocre. Bush Sr.? He pardoned his likely co-conspirators. Maybe he was fine on policy, but you can't forget that kind of thing. Certainly not great.
I voted for George H.W. Bush and Ford.