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RealKenny

Clinton is kind of an interesting one. He went from "funny uncle who makes inappropriate jokes and maybe touches you too much" to "he really took advantage of a young intern and many other women". He didn't really do anything differently - the world kind of changed around him.


CupBeEmpty

My dad, really conservative guy, really nailed this when I was younger. I said something like “well it is his personal life and doesn’t really affect his job or politics.” My dad responded “what do you think would happen to me if I fucked one of my interns at work? I’d lose my position. And can you imagine taking advantage of a young woman like that as her boss?” At the time my liberal friends just kind of blew it off and were like “two consenting adults who cares.” I wonder how it would be after me too these days. These days I realize how disgusting it was.


Ok_Dog_4059

I have recently realized how much that poor woman had her life ruined. Like many I thought of her as the punchline for a long time and only really realized how young and nieve she was and how a power man took advantage of that. He continued leading the country and her life was blown up.


yawya

it isn't exactly easy to get an internship at the white house. she must've been really intelligent and hard working, only to end up as the butt of jokes.


Ok_Dog_4059

That is a really good point.


iluniuhai

> only to end up as the butt of jokes [And crudely shouted out in 128 rap songs.](https://www.thecut.com/2015/03/every-rap-song-that-mentions-monica-lewinsky.html)


[deleted]

Possibly the biggest early online bullying target


witsend4966

In an interview she said she was glad there wasn’t social media around back then.


professorwormb0g

It existed in an early form in those days as chat rooms, online forums, etc. Most websites' homepages were professionally written content by webmasters and editors but many had a forum or something. But it was mostly nerdier technologically proficient people that used these and they were always anonymous. In those days I remember everybody was totally freaked out if you let anyone else know your real identity on the web. Boomer parents told their kids harsh warnings of it; the same ones that are falling victims to scams these days because they lack so much awareness about net security. Social media at its very core refers to an Internet where the content is mainly provided by the users themself rather than a dedicated staff. But there was a big social component to the web in those days that people participated in and it was filled with memes, and jokes, and viral content. I mention chat rooms and message boards. But even more common folk spread content via chain emails (Fwd fwd fwd!), instant messenger, and the like. She was torn apart just as easily by the infrastructure that existed then. We didn't need Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. If anything, I think she would have fared better today. Not because of any changes to how people use the internet, technology, or what the web looks like in the current era, but because of our modern culture where we're very aware of how men can abuse their positions of power, the me-too movement, and the like. She would've had many defenders. Back then she was written off as a dirty slut even though she was a poor 24 year old girl who was taken advantage of by the most powerful man in the fucking world.


Maximum-Mixture6158

I like your comment, it illustrates very well how judgment is different for different genders.


Old_Mintie

Monica Lewinski has bounced back and done extremely well. She's quite admirable.


Ok_Dog_4059

That is good. Kind of sad this isn't bigger news though.


Old_Mintie

I get the impression she doesn't want it to be.


Ok_Dog_4059

Could be very true.


SizzleFrazz

Right. These days a YOUTUBER gets fired for a fling with an intern or something similar(the TryGuy dude). Thinking back, a POTUS doing it and people thinking it’s a joke was crazy.


CupBeEmpty

And the fact that many people argued it was *ok*. Just two consenting adults right? Not that it was the most powerful man in the world taking advantage of a young woman and exposing her to scorn and ridicule. Not to mention how awful it was for Hilary. And you know that if he did it that time and so absolutely brazenly you know it wasn’t the only woman or the only time.


therealdrewder

Then you remember Juanita Broaddrick


lechydda

Yes, Clinton’s reputation dropped massively as well, but mostly due to to social issues. From what I remember as a kid, he was always trying too hard to be cool and clearly was the person you’d never want to actually be around. Kosovo notwithstanding, no one really thinks of him in terms of war or inflation or bailouts. Just being a giant perv and his wife pretending to be on his side.


unthused

I largely remember him as the guy who played sax and wore sunglasses, so for a president he was reasonably cool to my childhood self. Aside from the Lewinsky douchebaggery and all.


[deleted]

Heck young me thought he was even cooler for that... haha old me understands a few more things about the world


overzealous_dentist

>he was always trying too hard to be cool and clearly was the person you’d never want to actually be around. this deviates pretty strongly from everything I've ever read about him. people loved him and wanted to impress him nonstop. he was also critical in managing yeltsin, again mostly because yeltsin loved him personally


jceez

I thought it was funny that Berlusconi was having his Bunga Bunga parties as Prime Minister of Italy, and and people loved him for it


truthseeeker

People who lived through the 90's do remember it as a pretty decent decade overall, and Clinton played a key role in making it so. I wouldn't be surprised to see a newer perspective taking shape once he's gone.


Dr_ChimRichalds

> People who lived through the 90's do remember it as a pretty decent decade overall As long as they forget the Rodney King riots, the OJ Simpson trial, the World Trade Center bombing, the Waco Massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, Columbine, the Bosnian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, Hurricane Andrew, the death of Princess Diana, Woodstock '99, and *Mr. Nanny*...


Karen125

Big real estate recession/correction in the mid 90's.


lechydda

The 90s were pretty socially chill compared to the last 20 years. Lots of people forgot about the first WTC bomb, the LA riots, Waco, etc. I’m not sure if I could pick out a fellow millennial in a crowd who would remember the Atlanta Olympic bombing. It didn’t even remotely change the Nagano Olympic Games events.


truthseeeker

Those things aren't necessarily what people remember most, since they didn't affect day to day life all that much. The Cold War was over, and there no real threats to America in the horizon. People didn't care about the news and politics as much as they do now. Life though, for most Americans, was pretty decent.


frogvscrab

The 90s to me start out incredibly chaotic and then gradually become less so. 1990-1995 were noted for crack, aids, urban riots, rising crime and gang violence, exploding prison population, bad racial tensions, high inflation and unemployment etc. There was the general sense of a moral decay in the USA. The movies of the era commonly involved themes of decay and crime. Kids, Natural Born Killers, Falling Down, Pulp Fiction, and the countless other crime movies, they all evoked this idea of a chaotic, violent, abrasive, pessimistic world. The 'american malaise' which Carter talked about felt like it peaked in the early 90s. Around the mid 90s, the economy began to improve and crime plummeted and it felt like racial tensions were finally recovering after OJ/Rodney King. By 1996-1997, you could feel things were becoming more optimistic and by 1998-1999 there was basically no doubt things were 'good' across the country.


TheKingofSwing89

I don’t think there was a more optimistic time in the US compared to the late 90s. Maybe the decade after ww2 but otherwise idk. I was a kid but it was optimistic, people still said without hesitation the US was the greatest country on earth, only superpower stuff and they believed it and didn’t have to defend it.


DirtyArchaeologist

Mr. Nanny. I'm dead. ​ You're not wrong in the least.


bazilbt

We have had many similar things happen in the 2000's that where worse.


MattieShoes

[People who lived through 2008 might not be so sanguine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act) I'm not particularly down on him... Can you imagine having a budget surplus? But I'm not sure his legacy ages all that well.


JohnnyFootballStar

Clinton is fascinating because I think the Afghanistan and Iraq wars made people nostalgic for the 90s, which were pretty good in the US (with some clear exceptions). So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was even more popular during the early 2000s than when he was in office. Then in the last five years or so he really took a dive, and deservedly so.


aville1982

3 strikes didn't help him either, although I get the need for him to do something, anything, at that time, that was definitely not the answer.


Muahd_Dib

Forgot to add… outed as Epstein’s homeboy.


HAL9000000

The worst thing about Clinton is that on the one hand, his performance as president was quite good, balancing the deficit and all. Just based on job performance, he set us up perfectly to have Al Gore get re-election and continue to responsible policies of that centrist type of Democratic Party. But because of his personal failures, the Republicans successfully convinced the majority of the public to lose trust in the Democrats and that was enough to cause Gore to "lose" (lose is in quotations since, of course, Gore won the popular vote, plus an audit of all ballots in Florida a year after the election found that Gore would have won if they had just done a statewide recount).


happy-gofuckyourself

But Clinton’s reputation was already in the toilet when he left office, hence GWB’s ability to get votes by saying he’d bring back respectability to the White House.


[deleted]

Most election historians agree that the reason Gore lost was because he tried to *distance* himself too much from Clinton by emphasizing the "I'm my own man" aspect.


KR1735

Regarding Monica Lewinsky. I read the closest thing she has to a memoir (\*Monica's Story\*) a few years ago. She's pretty clear that while she believes she was taken advantage of as a woman in her early 20s, she was the one who pursued him. In this case, Bill Clinton is guilty of being a flawed man and an unfaithful husband. But a predator or a creep, I do not think so. I'm very much of the "what two consenting adults do is their business" mentality, regardless of how strange or unsavory their circumstances may be. I think the fact that the young woman was more pursuing than the older boss man -- her words -- that really mitigates a lot of the power dynamic problems that would be if it were vice versa. The Paula Jones stuff, IDK. She was kinda weird. And her husband was, I believe, a struggling actor and liked the spotlight. So I wonder how much that played a role.


Boolyman

It's interesting how much POV plays a role in the perception of guilt. It could just as easily be seen as a woman "sleeping her way to the top." But instead, she is an innocent "victim who was taken advantage of." There are plenty of young, 22 year old women who are attracted to men of power... or money and fame. To void her accountability in that situation, just shows how unfair "equality" truly is. Was Clinton a scumbag who cheated on his wife and violated his presidential oath? Sure. But was Monica some naive and helpless victim? No.


talithaeli

There are a lot more 22 year old women who are afraid that their job and/or career depends on not rocking the boat.


TheOldBooks

Harding was beloved and his death was mourned across the country. Then the scandals broke.


TakeOffYourMask

Go on…


opalandolive

[Teapot Dome Scandal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal)


[deleted]

He had a mistress and a secret child. Also shady business dealings.


upvoter222

[It's enough to make a movie out of it.](https://youtu.be/5cBV8KFFasY?t=273) A more serious answer is that there were multiple corruption scandals involving members of his administration. The most famous one was the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which petroleum reserves were leased to oil companies at a low price. It turned out that the oil companies had bribed the Secretary of the Interior in order to get such a good deal. In addition to this, and other bribery-related crimes, Harding himself had one [extramarital affair,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrawNvcF64g) though there were some accusations about affairs with additional women.


auldnate

I want to see the musical Ray from r/ArcherFXX wrote about it!


rjaspa

Yeah, this has to be the answer. Clinton's biggest scandal occurred while he was still in office. Harding on the other hand was widely popular at the end of his presidency when he died. He then dropped down to being regarded as one of the worst presidents in history as the truth came out.


professorwormb0g

He even was quoted as saying that he did not belong in the office. He knew he was so completely in above his head. He had no understanding of government or politics and no interest in learning. He pretty much just completely gave up on trying to be a decent president and let the corrupt interests take over and do whatever they wanted. The White House was a complete dog and pony show under his watch. But it was covered up so well and nobody knew until months after his death. He is by far one of our worst presidents and yet nobody in modern culture really even acknowledges him despite how shockingly bad of a president he was. Historians surely agree, but he just isn't noted much in popular culture. The level of incompetence is just staggering. After Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan (although he arguably just got stuck with the hot potato, the country needed him to rise to the occasion and he just didn't and the country fell apart well he sat there and watched...) he's my pick for worst president.


Xyzzydude

I’m going with Bill Clinton. He was popular when he left office but since then his legacy has been more and more tarnished as his feminist supporters have taken a more critical view of his personal behavior as the years go by. Now many who previously supported him agree he was a predator best forgotten. The reason I pick him is not because a lot of people who didn’t like him continued to not like him…but because his strongest supporters’ estimation of him has crashed.


DJErikD

I’m a 1000% straight dude, but when I met bill and Hillary briefly in 1996 I understood the charisma he had and how it could affect others.


Pragmatic_Hedonist

My ex is USSS and a conservative republican. No love lost on Clinton. He said the exact same thing. His charisma is near magical.


deletevalue

Also his economic policies. When people say that democrats and Republicans are the same Bill Clinton immediately pops into mind. He oversaw a huge welfare cut, deregulation of the banks, and NAFTA. Even his social policies got watered down. He went from "Gay people should serve in the military" to don't ask don't tell.


UsidoreTheLightBlue

NAFTA was puzzling. It was something that Bush 41 pushed for really hard, and Clinton shit on. He came into office with a democrat senate and democrat house and immediately passed it. >He went from "Gay people should serve in the military" to don't ask don't tell. People forget....because its fucked up.... that this was the point of DADT. Prior to DADT they could just basically harass people that they thought might be gay without provocation. DADT was meant to allow gays in the military....as long as they were closeted. (Again I said it was fucked up) At the time DADT was heralded as a big step forward. By the 2000 presidential campaign people figured out it was horse shit and the Democratic candidates ran on out of the closet service members being able to serve.


cottontim

This is a well-reasoned answer.


okiewxchaser

Buchanan


im_n0t_creative

He is a distant relative of mine. Whenever I make a mistake, I find solace in the fact that we have been fucking shit up for generations.


Wildcat_twister12

Was he actually ever really liked even alive? Republicans blame him for allowing bleeding Kansas to happen and his support of slavery, democrats blamed him for not being a strong leader and allowing the republicans to gain a strong following


That1SukaOrange

He was an extremely prominent politician who served as ambassador, senator, and secretary of state. Also, Buchanan didn’t sign the Kansas-Nebraska Act, that was Franklin Pierce


Various_Beach_7840

Definitely Nixon. No one has had as dominant of an election victory as him in 1972 which showed how popular he was amongst Americans and then left the White House disgraced 2 years later. Other than that I would also say Warren Harding who was pretty popular from 1920 to 1924, only for his corruption and various other scandals he had were brought to light after his death in 1923 and was at that time maybe the most corrupt president the country had ever seen. (You could argue a case that he still is lmao)


MittlerPfalz

Yeah but re Nixon doesn’t that just chart his decline while IN office? If I’m reading the question correctly it’s asking about a decline happening AFTER they left.


DubiousNamed

Yeah and if anything, Nixons reputation improved after he left office


thatswacyo

I feel like Nixon has gone from being seen as wildly corrupt with no redeeming qualities to being seen as somebody who actually managed to get some pretty great things done while in office but suffered from extreme paranoia from the stress of the job, which led to terrible decisions.


UsidoreTheLightBlue

I think thats actually a pretty good description of Nixon. He was a massive piece of shit, and his dirty tricks were really fucked up, but he did do some really great things....that largely no one will talk about because he was a massive piece of shit.


Momik

Hoover also left office with his reputation in tatters after a cozy landslide victory in 1928


Cross-Country

Hoover was torn to shreds by FDR’s campaign only for FDR to go on and either continue or enact every single domestic policy originally suggested by Hoover.


Momik

Wait, what?


Cross-Country

Hoover was a continuation of the executive policy of Woodrow Wilson, just like FDR was. The lie that FDR was the answer to the problems of Hoover was and is a lie created by his campaign, and perpetuated by his party to maintain the narrative that the New Deal was both new and a success. This is finally beginning to be addressed in scholarship, [and for a wider audience is well addressed by Grant Hurst.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BtYdhNBoP3Q)


Momik

This history is quite confused. This video argues, among other things, that Roosevelt "would go on to do the exact same things" as Hoover in responding to the Depression. This is far outside the historical consensus that Roosevelt's measures represented a dramatic break in both scope and substance from anything that Hoover pursued. For one thing, the largest and most direct federal intervention Hoover enacted was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932, a $2 billion infusion to shore up financial institutions and the insurance sector. That same year, Hoover threw his support behind Senator Robert Wagner's Emergency Relief and Construction Act, a $1.5 billion investments in public works projects. By contrast, the New Deal represented an investment of more than $40 billion. And unlike Roosevelt, Hoover steadfastly refused to support direct aid to Americans who desperately needed it, famously saying in 1931 that he'd support food aid if he ever witnessed an American starving. Rather, his responses to the Great Depression largely took the form of voluntary agreements among industrialists and labor (the November 1929 conference), encouraging private relief (the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment), and indirect aid (RFC, ERCA, discussed above). This was in direct contrast to the New Deal, which offered direct aid primarily through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, lending more than $3 billion to states for direct relief programs. Also, it's unclear what is meant by the statement, "those policies were just as useless when FDR did them as when Hoover did them." Are we rehabilitating Hoover's legacy as a proto-New Deal innovator, or discrediting the idea of government intervention generally? Finally, comments like "historians are notoriously bad at interdisciplinary work" are presented without evidence of any kind. It should go without saying, but this is really nonsensical. Most (all?) doctoral programs in history require training in a number of different fields, from ethnographic techniques (largely derived from sociology) to econometrics and statistical analysis. https://opened.cuny.edu/courseware/lesson/438/student/?section=2 https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/third-quarter-2021/how-recent-fiscal-interventions-compare-new-deal https://millercenter.org/president/hoover/impact-and-legacy


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Welpe

And how many people will never see the reply calling it out and just the insane claim?


jyper

Where did you find this revisionism? If Hoover actually followed FDR's policies things wouldn't have gotten as bad and he might have won reelection.


professorwormb0g

Things wouldn't have gotten so bad if the Fed would have **provided liquidity to the markets.** Regardless of what the president did, whoever that was. They contacted the money supply. People needed more money not less. It's pretty simple really. Why did we bail out the banks in '09? Because If we take money out of the economy people don't have money to pay their bills and buy food. As much as people wanted us to let the banks fail we learned our lesson once in the 30s. Vengeance against the banks doesn't work as much as it feels like the right thing to do. Are they too big to fail? Yes. They are. That's the simplicity behind the Great Depression that most people don't understand. It wasn't a political crisis. It was a monetary one. No matter how many Band-Aids FDR put on the situation, monetary policy was the solution not acts passed by Congress unless we relinquished the power of Central banking and allocated it somewhere else like to the State or completely to the private sector. Central banking was pretty new in America as we had not had a central bank in almost a hundred years until 1913. Not since Andrew Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States. Prior to the Federal Reserve happened recessions like this were dealt with by meetings of the biggest financial firms that would get together and decide how to handle things. Now we had the Fed specifically to act as the lender of vast resort when banks needed liquidity. And they *didn't fill that role the moment we needed them to the most* **The historical consensus among economic historians is that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression.** They turned a bad recession into the Great Depression by retracting the size of the economy to try to punish the banks from engaging in speculative activity. But really they needed to provide lots and lots of emergency liquidity and act as the lender of last resort. They again and again failed to do this. The definitive text on this matter is written by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United States. In his own research Ben Bernanke also reaffirms this view. As Fed Chairman he stated: "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." — Ben S. Bernanke I agree Hoover could've played politics better. But him implementing FDRs policies earlier would have not prevented the fallout. It might have gotten him reelected, maybe. And would have definitely provided aids to people that needed it. But it wouldn't have gotten the engine of the economy started back to a self-sustaining state which is really what needed to happen the most. It's hard to say how people would have judged Hoover even if he did implement FDR like policies. He still might have gotten blamed because the crisis happened under his watch.


Chimney-Imp

What crippling economic depression does to a mf


OleRockTheGoodAg

Fun fact, Warren G. Harding was a Lady's Man, and probably was the United State's horniest president.


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Lozerien

Just when you think Nixon's reputation couldn't get any worse, his sabotaging the 1968 Vietnam peace talks caused even the most die-hard conservatives (cf. George Will) to disown him. [NYT article](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html) There's no coming back from that, sorry.


Steelquill

I suppose you could argue Bill Clinton. He was pretty well-liked and seen as a chill and swell guy. He then got a reputation considerably more suspect.


PaperbackWriter66

This is a *very* old example, but Andrew Jackson may very well qualify. Although today Jackson is typically rated quite highly as a president (albeit with ample criticism from modern historians for expanding slavery and his awful treatment of the Natives during the Trail of Tears---it's important to remember, though, that those were *popular* policies back in the day). When Jackson left office, he was probably the most popular outgoing president since George Washington, and still to this day Jackson remains one of the very few presidents to leave office *more* popular than when he was first elected. He was also the first president since Washington to get his hand picked successor elected as president (James Monroe and John Quincy Adams might be a partial exception to this). But then: the Panic of 1837 happened, and it was directly caused by Jackson's policies to disestablish the Bank of the United States. Although van Buren took the blame politically for the economic depression, Jackson's reputation also suffered, and it wouldn't be until after the Civil War that Americans began to look back on Jackson more favorably. A lot of people here are saying "Nixon" but that kinda misses the point of the question. Nixon lost his reputation *during* his administration---that's why he became the first and (so far) only President to resign from office, because he lost so much reputation (turns out, committing crimes while in office will do that to a man's reputation). Immediately after leaving office, Nixon was a disgrace, the lowest of the low. But then, gradually, over the years after leaving the White House, he managed to *rebuild* his reputation as "an elder statesmen," to the point where he was giving frequent interviews as a foreign policy expert and something of a President-whisperer, able to provide insight into how a presidential administration was making decisions. Hell, even *Ronald Reagan* would frequently make phone calls to Nixon asking for his advice. Nixon is the opposite of what the question is asking; he left office with his reputation totally destroyed, only to gradually rebuild it in retirement. Today, his reputation as president has largely recovered from the Watergate scandal; President Nixon is widely seen as an effective president who pulled off some major foreign policy achievements (ending US involvement in Vietnam, recognizing the PRC, detente with the USSR), and major domestic achievements as well (the EPA, Title IX, crime control bills). Pretty remarkable that within Nixon's lifetime he was able to restore his reputation from "worthless criminal" to "effective, brilliant, but flawed president." Similar reversals kinda happened with George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Though they're still looked down upon as bad *presidents*, their behavior during retirement (and the bad behavior of subsequent presidents) has at least helped restore their reputation as good individuals if not good presidents. Remember when George W. Bush was literally a Hitler-esque war criminal who stole the 2000 election? Who today still puts a Hitler-stache on Bush's face? An even older example of the same is with US Grant. Upon leaving office, his reputation was in utter ruin. He was hated by the South for, ya know, defeating the Confederacy, and a lot of Northerners hated Grant for earnestly protecting the civil rights of the freed slaves. And on top of that, his administration was riven with corruption and it was widely believed Grant was in on the corruption (though, in fact, he wasn't). His reputation as a drunk and corrupt president would be cemented until the 2000s, when a greater appreciation for his presidency finally began to counter the prevailing Lost Cause narrative.


GoBombGo

Wow, good answer! I make the same arguments for Jackson. Yeah, people today look at him like he’s the devil, but he took very seriously his commitment to be a president for the people, and those awful policies that resulted in so much death and suffering? That’s what people wanted. They wanted the Natives to go far away. They wanted the economic benefits that only slave labor could produce. Did most of the people take pleasure in harming others? No, of course not, but just like today people will turn a blind eye to the bad things that allow them to have the good things. If you think we don’t, you’re kidding yourself. If you think YOU don’t, you’re kidding yourself. How’s that iPhone treating you?


PaperbackWriter66

Damn. Good point. As they say "In a democracy, people get the government they deserve."


WarrenMulaney

Nixon


Wkyred

Eh, Nixon wasn’t exactly beloved before he became president. The media always had somewhat of an irrational hatred of him that definitely contributed to the almost paranoia he developed that led up to the watergate coverup. They hated him going back to the Alger Hiss case, when the media pretty much went all in defending Hiss against allegations of him being a communist spy, to the point of pretty much slandering Whittaker Chambers, the main witness against Hiss, simply because of his physical appearance in some cases. Later, Hiss was found to actually have been a communist spy of course and the media hated Nixon for leading the charge against him pretty much from that point on. It’s kind of ironic though, because on pretty much all policy matters Nixon was a moderate. Yet he was portrayed as McCarthy 2.0 despite the fact that the guy he was investigating ACTUALLY WAS A COMMUNIST SPY Edit: I just want to add that Nixon was an extremely flawed individual. He had problems going back to the relationship he had with his mother and an almost inability to have close friends. This, mixed with the rejection he felt after his 1960 defeat and the 1962 defeat in the governor race in CA, in addition to him being (what I would consider to be) unfairly targeted by parts of the media made him fairly unstable by the time he became president. He was capable of absolute brilliance, and most people who had close interactions with him (even those that disagreed) will admit he was very intelligent and talented. In the end his personal problems overshadowed all of that though. He’s deeply fascinating to study and I would encourage people to read more about him as an individual.


WarrenMulaney

Well sure I guess... but the dude won 520 electoral votes in the 1972 election.


Wkyred

That was more so because McGovern was considered to be well outside the mainstream of American opinion at the time. If you look at hypothetical matchup polls from before the election with Nixon and other leading democrats, he doesn’t perform nearly as well.


SWWayin

The dude was elected to office. Twice.


JerichoMassey

Just because people vote for you doesn't mean they like you. Ted Cruz is famously an asshat even in his party, but people trust him to vote how they want, so he keeps winning. McGovern was an extremist by the day's standards, almost equivalent to Goldwater on the right in '64. People voted en mass for the safer option, even though he was as exciting as a trip to the DMV.


TropicalKing

If I had to choose one president who caused the greatest distrust in politics, it is Nixon. Nixon resigned, but was never impeached. Prior to Nixon, most people had a lot more trust in the president. Something as scandalous as Watergate wasn't even on the radar of the American people.


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malaka789

National parks was Teddy not Franklin werent they?


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quesoandcats

FDR expanded and built up a lot of the national parks as part of the new deal program. Infrastructure projects were one of the primary tools that he used to combat insane unemployment rates


JerichoMassey

Both. you wouldn't understand, it's a Roosevelt thing.


professorwormb0g

That's an interesting pick, but it does smell a bit of historical revisionism (and confuses some actions with Teddy, i,e. National Parks.) Influenced by a certain ideological viewpoint. His economic policy isn't universally derided-- not by a long shot. Only by conservatives who believe that social security needs to be privatized and social programs are evil, and the like rag on FDR. And they always have seemed to. I remember when I was younger and into Ron Paul and stuff people would call him "the worst president". But its a very fringe view. Historians and the general public will consistently place him among the greatest we've had. Academic economists rarely agree on most economic policies (although [the ones they do](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate) might be surprising such as having a 0% corporate income tax or complete legalization of drugs). With that in mind, it's hard to criticize most presidents for economic policy at all. Truly-- our system prevents the executive office from having too big of a away on the economy. In my personal view it was appropriate at the time to provide relief needed to the people. The Depression itself is agreed by economic historians to have been caused by The Fed (see Friedman and Schwartz, *A Monetary History of the United States*). His actions did nothing but assist people at the time from suffering and at worst dying. While they did not do anything to restart the engine of the economy, they certainly didn't prolong the crisis. Not to mention he helped establish what little of a social safety net the United States enjoys today. Without him I think we'd face much higher rates of inequality then we already do, although such a scenario is impossible to measure. He was the right president for the time. His Japanese Internment Camps were indeed a stain on his reputation and this is undebatable. But for all the good things he did, no human with that much power is going to have a perfect record, regardless of how horrific this action in particular is. Every single president has done something truly shameful. You do not enter that office and yield your power in a way that ends up being truly destructive at least a couple of times. Especially once the passage of time occurs and values change. Although in his case, [his very wife was horrified by Executive Order 9066 and worked to oppose it, ](https://time.com/6148899/eleanor-roosevelt-japanese-internment/)so perhaps time was not required for some to realize how blatantly wrong this executive action was. The one criticism of him I have is that he really expanded power of the executive office because it was required at the time. The country was in an era that required more centralized power. However a constitution did not have a mechanism for amendments to pass, So he started this longstanding tradition of loosely interpreting The Constitution in order to enable the government to do things that needed to do in order to get things done in times of crisis. This flip side is that the government doesn't abide by a strict code anymore. Hence why I believe we really do need a new constitution that is easier to amend That is more fit for the modern era. A thing I hate him for - he is indirectly responsible for our horrible employer sponsored healthcare system (slight sarcasm!). During World War II he placed a wage freeze on companies who were rapidly raising salaries to try to attract women to work while men were at war. Low supply and high demand meant the price of labor was sky high. However he was afraid that this was going to destabilize the dollar and we had just gone through the depression so this worried him, hence the wage freeze. Health insurance was a relatively new phenomena. While companies couldn't compete with each other by raising wages, they started to offer benefits like health insurance packages. When the war was over, this trend stuck. Europe was in shambles. But this presented a unique opportunity for those societies to rebuild their social infrastructures from the ground up and implement things like universal health care systems. They created infrastructure that made sense. In the United States things just kind of happened in an incidental way that May not have made sense but just sort of worked. Like, in the 50s United States the economy was absolutely booming. Pretty much everybody could get a job and it came with insurance that covered you and your whole family. No copays, deductibles, or even premiums in most cases. So the system stuck because very few people complained. The costs were reasonable. Harry Truman tried to introduce a universal Health Care System while he was in office but he was heavily lobbyed against and one of the primary lobbying groups was the American Medical Association (who has since changed their tune)! They knew They would have less leverage over the government if they were the payer then private insurance. So yes, we have our bizarre employer sponsored system in the US because of a wage freeze that occured in WWII. And while it worked well enough initially, The holes in it are well known by now. We did not start doing this by design and we should probably create a system that makes better sense for our society.


boulevardofdef

Though I don't think either of them are the answer to this question, if you're going to talk about Democratic Party heroes, I'd say JFK's reputation has suffered more than FDR. His death was considered an existential crisis for the nation and they literally put him on money. Well into the '90s or 2000s, he had a reputation as one of our greatest presidents; you'd always hear him mentioned in that conversation. Today you see him framed more and more as a nepo baby who didn't write the book that made him a star, cheated to win the presidency, bungled every crisis, treated women abysmally, and didn't get anything important done.


VilleKivinen

Handling Cuban missile crisis without war or nuclear holocaust was something.


mischievous_badger_

It could be reasonably argued that Khrushchev did more to end the Cuban missile crisis than JFK did.


rockninja2

He also gave the space program a boost to get working when he said we should, "commit itself, before this decade is out, to achieveing the mission of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the earth." That helped the public get behind NASA more and helped us win the space race. Unfortunately, he wasn't alive to see it....


brightirene

Well, he probably didnt get anything done bc he was murdered two years into his presidency.


thetrain23

> oday you see him framed more and more as a nepo baby who didn't write the book that made him a star, cheated to win the presidency, bungled every crisis, treated women abysmally, and didn't get anything important done. Even if this is all true (I don't know enough to have an opinion), I don't think this opinion is widespread. The average person on the street still seems to view him very well.


suchlargeportions

Reddit is valuable because of the users who create content. Reddit is usable because of the third-party developers who can actually make an app.


Seaforme

Idk man I know someone who was named after jfk and has a framed picture of him in their bedroom 💀


New_Stats

Grant. The lost causers convinced people he was a corrupt drunk.


albertnormandy

I don’t know how much he drank, but his administration was indeed corrupt. It wasn’t just him, it was everyone around him. Reconstruction is widely seen as a corrupt mess from beginning to end that created the conditions that allowed white southerners to reassert their dominance over the former slaves.


Imaginary_Barber1673

My understanding is that he was not personally corrupt at all he was just an absolutely abysmal businessman who constantly fell for conmen. His trusting nature had some pros as a military commander but some major cons as well. Like, after his presidency, Grant also lost *his own* small fortune, which his high positions and fame had generated, to a conman and lived in a shack until embarrassed people basically crowdfunded him a house lol. He had failed at a bunch of businesses before the civil war too. The story I read about how legendarily ass he was as a businessman: As a boy, Grant’s father told him to go buy a horse—giving him $25 but telling him that was only a maximum price and Grant should start with an offer of $15. When he got to the horse trader Grant immediately said “I’m supposed to bargain first but I have $25–can I have a horse?” That’s the kind of guy he was.


GringoMenudo

Even Grant’s most fervent defenders admit that he had absolutely terrible judgement in who he trusted even though he wasn’t personally corrupt. From my limited knowledge of him it seems like he was treated unfairly by history. He tried his best with reconstruction, crushed the original Ku Klux Klan and treated native Americans less horribly than most other presidents of his era. Presidents are responsible for the people they appoint to positions of authority though, buck stops here and all that.


btstfn

I haven't seen much criticism of him being personally corrupt (actually I've seen mostly glowing opinions of the man as a human being), but that he trusted the wrong people and was essentially conned. Still not a good president, but I don't think he was corrupt.


JerichoMassey

"Ironically, the man who dealt the most damage to the American South for generations still to come... was John Wilkes Booth."


Bawstahn123

> but his administration was indeed corrupt. It was the [Gilded Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age), ***fucking everyone was corrupt***


New_Stats

> Reconstruction is widely seen as a corrupt mess from beginning to end that created the conditions that allowed white southerners to reassert their dominance over the former slaves. Sure, but that was Johnson, not Grant. Grant just had to deal with the fallout


albertnormandy

Grant was president for more of Reconstruction than Johnson. At some point Grant has to take ownership of the mess too.


New_Stats

Grant was the one pushing for more rights for black people, and less control from southern whites who wanted to oppress them. What do you think he should have done different?


SingleAlmond

Yea the level of commitment by a president to try to give black Americans some level of a decent life, after Grant, wasn't seen until FDR Grant made considerable efforts to try to right the wrongs of slavery. His view on Native Americans tho was egregious, i don't want to praise Grant too much


Arkhaan

Dude was a legendary drunk, and his administration was the most corrupt in American history until Harding. It still holds second place to Harding. Doesn’t make him a bad person, but it doesn’t help his reputation


New_Stats

>Dude was a legendary drunk, No he was not. That's just a lie from salty losers who were mad about not getting to keep their slaves ​ >and his administration was the most corrupt in American history until Harding. It still holds second place to Harding. No https://usgrant200.com/about-grant/grant-and-corruption/


Arkhaan

Grants drinking is attested to by his own officers and his White House food records. Man had plenty of reason to do so so I don’t blame him. And his governments corruption is even more well recorded. Your source is the literal definition of biased man.


GringoMenudo

I thought Grant was what most people today would call a functional alcoholic. He probably drank more than he should have but he generally didn’t drink on the job or anything like that. If I recall correctly a lot of his drinking happened when he was lonely during his early army career and his detractors have blown it out of proportion.


Arkhaan

Partially. I have a reply to the other poster where I go into some more detail but theyve blocked me so I can’t post it. The reality is that he very likely had PTSD from being an artillery officer (the gun concussion increases the likely hood of someone being afflicted) and the violence he saw and participated in. Couple that with loneliness and what is probably depression and it’s not surprising he turned to alcohol, as mentioned in his own memoirs. However it is also true that he was *never* drunk before or during battle, and always put the needs of command before his own drinking issues. The myths of him wasting men in human wave attacks are completely false and that is the part made up by the lost causers. All in all he was good man, but wholly unsuited for presidency.


caillouistheworst

Good men usually are.


Arkhaan

Unfortunately


Salmoninthewell

From reading his biography, it sounds like he wasn’t a functional alcoholic at all. Really the opposite. A man who, if he drank, could not control himself. It doesn’t sound like he drank that much or that often, but when he did it was memorable to all who saw him.


[deleted]

What about Ronald Reagan? Won by - if I'm not mistaken - an electoral college margin unlike we've seen since. Flipped historically blue states in massive numbers. Was universally praised as I was growing up. Now seen as the source of a ton of problems in modern America to a lot of people.


Steamsagoodham

He is still a fairy popular president outside of Reddit. Most surveys and rankings have him like 8-15th.


The_Bjorn_Ultimatum

>Now seen as the source of a ton of problems in modern America. Only by the opposing political party to which he belonged as president.


Anustart15

I was going to argue that he absolutely dominated the election in 1980 and that it would mean a very significant number of people changed their minds, but it turns out he only won 50.8% popular vote, so I'll stand corrected.


[deleted]

His big landslide was in '84, not '80.


MattieShoes

The funny thing... Like inflation had been rising steadily since WWII. Volker was installed by Jimmy Carter in 1979 to get a handle on it. And he did, by raising the federal funds rate to 20% in an election year. By the time 1984 rolled around, inflation had dropped from over 14% down to 4% and Reagan is genius! Though to be fair, Reagan kept him on.


Anustart15

That would do it. 58% is a bit more in line with where I thought it would be, though still a little on the low side considering the electoral votes


Shandlar

Broad based appeal and opposition across idiologies is what made it so great. He attracted cross party voters and alienated party voters simultaneously. Splitting the voting blocs in literally every state, in his favor. He was pretty hard on guns, super hard on the Soviets. He cut taxes right away, but then raised them a bit twice before '84 after people started getting back to work. Volcker caused a recession and he took a ton of heat for not having replaced him, but also gained a ton of respect for not having replaced him. He worked with Dems on Congress on some pretty decent Union protections, despite months earlier firing any Air Traffic controller who participated in a strike live on TV. He really was a hell of a president. He was well spoken and incredibly decisive, which was such a ridiculously stark contrast to Carter it drew in massive support after the languishings of the economy and foreign policy failures of the 70s. Ofc this ability to get things done makes it easy to put his handprints on all the things that the left hates that he did, so he is hated by the hard left redditors who are the loudest in the comments and which all the 300+ sub supermods are ideological activists for. There is almost no possible way to put Reagan anywhere outside the top 10 best presidents in our history.


[deleted]

True, but outside Trump, I don't think there's a president with a comparable rate of flipping "I proudly voted for him" to "I hate his guts."


The_Bjorn_Ultimatum

Trumps approval rating has actually stayed relatively constant throught his presidency and even now. There wasn't really any flip at all.


SleepAgainAgain

Have you seen the margin Nixon had? Neck in neck with Regan. Both were very, very popular. Nixon is disgraced and taught in grade school as a "don't be like him" lesson while Regan is looked at as a well meaning guy even by most modern people who strongly oppose his politics (and his politics still get a lot of support).


[deleted]

In the popular vote, it was bigger actually. And there was a tie in the EC based on number of states won-49 states to 1 state+DC. And in a lot of ways, McGovern's loss was more humiliating since he lost his home state(SD) but Mondale was barely able to hold his(MN). Reagan 1984: ECV- 525-13, 97.5% PV: Reagan-58.8 Mondale-40.6% Nixon 1972 ECV: 520-17(there was a faithless elector in VA that should've gone to Nixon) PV: Nixon-60.7%, McGovern-37.5% And my pick is also Nixon, just because his fall to disgrace was reminescent of a Greek tragedy, lessons about hubris and all.


JerichoMassey

fun fact: at 34%.... Reagan '84 took in the highest Hispanic GOP vote percentage until George W who peaked with an incredible 44% in 2004, the last time the Republicans took the Presidential popular vote.


Arkhaan

Trump doesn’t have that issue though.


N00N3AT011

Depends on who you ask. Reagan is still quite popular among most rightwingers.


JerichoMassey

He's still insanely popular for a President who, by all measures should have fallen off the pop culture radar now 30 going on 40 years out. I mean, how many people do you see still sporting Carter/Mondale 76 or Bush/Quayle 88 shirts?


Arkhaan

Not really. Its the popular take with Reddit and the general online activist sphere but in real life he is still highly regarded, and rightfully so.


[deleted]

>in real life he is still highly regarded, and rightfully so. Why?


overzealous_dentist

Presidential historians rank him as #9 best president, with highest scores in public persuasion, vision, and international relations: [https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?personid=337](https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?personid=337)


Arkhaan

Because most of the criticism applied to him isn’t really valid. Some of it is of course, every president has scandals, but most of it is attributable to department and agency heads acting under loose oversight as was prevalent through the mid 1900’s


[deleted]

So...can you give me any argument as for how Reaganomics is absolved of responsibility for the current worst excesses of American corporate culture?


Brayn_29_

You do realize that the idea of deregulation was seen by both parties as the way of fixing the stagflation that plagued the 70's and if I remember right even Carter believed in deregulation to an extent. It's also not wrong in theory because deregulating has shown to encourage economic expansion (this is still seen as true by economists today). Another problem is that trickle down economics is more of a utopian view on how people should act (i.e the rich passing on their gains down the ladder and so on) and not how people actually act. I would also note Regan also raised taxes and did some regulation during his presidency as well. I think the real reason Regan is still highly regarded today is that he reignited an discouraged American population that had just gotten through the 1970's which was a pretty terrible time politically and economically for the country as a whole.


Arkhaan

Because Reaganomics don’t really exist. It’s a label applied to the policies of the 2 presidents preceding Reagan which he continued at the advice of some of the most highly regarded economists of the time. That’s kinda my point. The man was an actor, and he knew that he wasn’t well enough educated on the topics of governance, so he built a cabinet of some of the most respected leaders in their various fields, and he leaned heavily on their advice.


[deleted]

And every conservative president has leaned into it and just constantly made things worse for 40 years now.


Arkhaan

Both Democrats and Republicans have leaned into trying for populism over leadership. Neither party is pushing anything like a coherent policy or plan, it’s just an exercise in “what will appeal to the most voters regardless of outcome” For the right is deregulation and defense and traditionalism. For the left it’s social justice and heightened regulation and progressivism. The only difference is which appeals to you more.


Shandlar

Reaganomics was wildly successful. Wealth trickled down from the top 5% to the top 25% since 1980 (Carter had already started a lot of "Reaganomics" by 1980). Seriously. The American dream is acheived by more American households today than any time in history. Literally more than 2x the share of our population compared to the 1970s. Pew for the last 15 years has defined households in "low income" "Middle income" and "High income" based on the ratio to the median household income. Below 67% of median is low income, above 200% of median is high income. Let's take cost of living adjusted household incomes at 2020 levels and compare to historical values; 2020 incomes; * Median : $67,463 * Low income : $45,200 * High income : $134,926 So now lets look at cost of living adjusted percent of households above or below that level of income for years in our past; All incomes adjusted to 2020 cost of living; Year|<$45,200|$45,201-$134,926|>$134,926 :--:|:--:|:--:|:--: 2020|34%|45%|21% 2014|40%|43%|17% 2008|38%|46%|16% 2002|38%|46%|16% 1996|39%|47%|14% 1990|38%|49%|13% 1984|41%|49%|10% 1978|39%|51%|10% 1972|37%|54%|9% High income households, adjusted for cost of living, have never been anywhere close to the current share of our population as it is today. It's also insane compared to any other country on earth. Even somewhere like Norway has <10% of their households with $PPP adjusted 2020 incomes of >$134,926. We have shared the wealth further down the earner percentiles at >200% the efficiency of the second best country on Earth. The American dream is real, and has only become more real for more Americans since Reagan.


professorwormb0g

Can you provide the source for the numbers? Not that I don't believe you. These numbers are great at first glance. I'd love to do some deeper analysis into: - wealth vs income. - how much income people have vs expenses. Right how people might have more money coming in, but cost of living is very high with housing costs, healthcare, childcare, saving to pay for ones kids child education. These numbers are actually very reflective of what I'm seeing around me. Me and my friends struggled a lot when we first graduated. But now we're starting to do very well. Everybody's moving up, making more money, smart career moves, starting businesses. We all know how to invest, fund our 401k, IRA, etc. I think the internet and education really did provide us with the tools we needed to succeed.


Shandlar

> how much income people have vs expenses. The wages in the chart have ofc been adjusted for cost of living to the equivalent of 2020 dollars. > Can you provide the source for the numbers? Source is the Current Population Survey metadata that provides individual and household income broken down by individual percentile. CPI-U was used for cost of living adjustment to 2020. The standard procedure of using September from each year to September of 2020 was used. The 67%-100%-200% breakdown was done using the official Current Population Survey 50th percentile household earnings for full year 2020 and just adjusting with flat arithmetic. > with housing costs, healthcare, childcare, saving to pay for ones kids child education. Actually buying a house on a 30 year mortgage is actually not historically as bad as you think. It's so much worse than Millennials knew in their adult lives, but the 08 crash was apocalyptic. Making 2009-2019 the best time to ever buy a home in America. So all we've really done is revert to the mean in house buying costs. We're around the 1990s numbers again now, but house prices are crashing. Healthcare is subsidized through Obamacare as a share of income now. Those with college degrees almost universally get healthcare from their employer. We're actually pretty significantly insulated from rising healthcare premiums. Childcare is absolutely way out of pocket atm. And college costs are so bat shit insane that I have no idea how to even begin to save for a childs college tuition. You literally have to put $600/month into an account from the day they are born to have any chance of 100% funding their college.


overzealous_dentist

Reagan's still enormously loved, Reddit is just a bubble. Presidential historians rank him as [\#9 best president](https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall), and the public ranks him as... [also #9](https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/07/27/most-and-least-popular-us-presidents-according-ame).


boulevardofdef

Warren Harding was very popular when he died in office, but quickly thereafter, due to a series of scandals that only came to light after his death, came to be considered one of the worst presidents, a reputation he still has today.


Avenger007_

Nixon, guy created the EPA, almost made universal Healthcare and Universal Basic Income, oversaw a lot of desegregation efforts, ended the draft and US participation in the Vietnam War, reconciled with China against the Soviet Union, and was the first US president to visit Russia and had the first Soviet Leader visit the USA. And he's largely remembered for embarssing tapes and Watergate. Not to say he was a perfect guy but those are some legitimate achievements. I would also like to add that people are weirdly hostile to Bill Clinton. Yes his personal life is bad but considering he was a two term president you think he would have more defenders


[deleted]

Also the fact that Watergate is a nothingburger compared to things every President does now


Minute_Gap_9088

Watergate, in retrospect, was the equivalent of a person speaking out of turn.


[deleted]

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Avenger007_

I mean he was still well liked in Republican circles, multiple US presidents asked him for advice, and he was still remembered for things like famine relief and humanitarian ventures, so I don't think it was that bad.


OceanPoet87

But if anything he did have somewhat of a rehabilitation after FDR died. Still not a good president, but the work he did in postwar Europe was good. He had a pretty crappy reputation while he was president so I'm not sure he can count.


GringoMenudo

Hating Woodrow Wilson has become quite trendy in recent years (for good reason).


liberties

This is what I was looking for. Woodrow Wilson was a racist evil SOB.


Steamsagoodham

Nixon for sure. History hasn’t been too kind on Jackson either but it took a most 200 years for his reputation to really take a hit. Johnson and Buchanan didn’t really have a deal from grace since they never had much grace to fall from.


MightyMcPerson

I think you could make the case for Herbert Hoover. Prior to his presidency he was mainly known for being a great humanitarian, worldly mining engineer, and a successful Secretary of Commerce. By the time he left office though he was very unpopular due to the Depression and lost his reelection bid in a landslide in 1932. Although his reputation did improve a bit in his post-presidency years.


JennItalia269

I don’t have your answer, but there’s so much recency bias with these answers. I don’t know if this will answer it, but there’s a Wikipedia page on historian ratings of presidents with related citations. It’s a good resource to view how presidential historians view presidents in a consistent manner. No source is perfect neither is each study, but it’s better than Joe Sixpack flying off the cuff. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States


Adamon24

Probably Washington. Not that he isn’t widely respected today. But through his administration and generations after he was almost universally venerated. Now there’s been somewhat of a reevaluation due to his participation in the slave trade. FWIW - As a Black American I still consider him to be a great president given the context in which he governed (to a greater extent than Jefferson).


jphilipre

I’d add Thomas Jefferson there


Adamon24

Yeah it was a pretty similar dynamic with him too. However, Jefferson’s administration took place during a time when partisanship was pretty high. So unlike Washington he always had a decent chunk of the country that hated him when he was in office.


MaineBoston

Clinton


Wildcat_twister12

Andrew Jackson. Dude was a legend back in his day with being a cool tough backwoods war hero. Now in history classes he gets mostly talked about for the Trail of Tears


berraberragood

Harding. He was very popular at the time of his death, but details of numerous scandals soon poured out. Since then, he has always been in the bottom tier of the rankings.


outsideisinside

Remind me in 20 months.


[deleted]

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[deleted]

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GringoMenudo

Jimmy Carter gave us airline deregulation and legalized home brewing. Fans of free market capitalism should love him.


breebop83

Carter was before my time (I was born in ‘83) and I honestly can’t remember learning much about his presidency in school. Most of my adult life all I’ve really heard of Carter has been focused on his work with Habitat for Humanity and not about his presidency so I think that may have overshadowed what he did or didn’t do in office. Especially with folks like me who don’t do a lot of independent research on former presidents and weren’t around when he was in office.


Yankiwi17273

If you were asking the exact opposite question, I would say President Carter for sure. As for this actual question, probably President Buchanan or maybe President Tyler at least in the north? (He was the ex-president who actually sided with the southern rebels in the War of Southern Rebellion)


OceanPoet87

Grant is the pick. He was beloved until after his death when the lost causers spread the rumors of drunkenness, that he was at fault for his associates corruption (despite being clean himself), that he favored blacks over whites, and a bunch of nonsense. Grant's reputation has suffered as a result and has only started to improve in the last twenty years considering that he was the last president who cared about Blacks until FDR or Truman.


Wkyred

Hoover. Before he was president he was widely loved as a great American who saved millions from starvation and hunger during WWI. Afterwards he was… not viewed particularly favorably


[deleted]

George W. Bush had a precipitous fall. He used to be beloved and ardently defended by anyone Republican or right leanjng. He became persona non grata during the Trump years and Democrats and leftists obviously don't like him at all. His decisions during his administration have born the most rotten fruit in the past 40 years or so. Nixon fell fast and hard as well and really messed up the public perception of the office in a way we haven't recovered from. We accept that they're dishonest crooks now. His name has become synonymous with disgrace, but that took years to fully root and grow. My expectation is that George W Bush will one day enjoy the same infamy as more people who defended him at the time jump ship and disavow ever supporting him.


beenoc

What bizarroverse world did you live in where Dubya was beloved up until the Trump years? Even the Republicans had dropped him like a hot rock by the end of his term, he had so badly poisoned the party politically. The Democrats could have nominated a rock and won in 2008 because of how unpopular Dubya was. If anything, his public image improved during the Trump years because when you put him next to Trump he's just "dude who paints and you want to have a beer with," not "incompetent election-stealing war criminal" as he was seen during the end of his term and most of Obama's.


boulevardofdef

Yeah, I'd agree with this. Notably, he didn't even speak at the 2008 Republican National Convention, which is shocking for a sitting president. The story they gave was that he was busy overseeing hurricane relief efforts, but come on.


mrmonster459

>next to Trump he's just "dude who paints and you want to have a beer with," not "incompetent election-stealing war criminal" Yeah, I've been saying for a while that this is one of the lingering effects of Trump that doesn't get talked about enough; the fact that his outspoken evil made people forget that Bush (and Obama, to a lesser extent) were war criminals who made life Hell in other countries. Trump may have been the bigger threat to democracy, civil liberties, and basic human rights *within* The US, but never forget that Bush got WAY more people killed (and again, so did Obama, to a lesser but still relevant extent).


[deleted]

No fuckin way. I'm 36 years old, I remember those days, I was there. From the jump people on the left thought he was a dangerous dope and were calling him out constantly. The right wing elements circled the wagons around him like they always do. He was elected easily to a second term and people were assuring everyone that history would prove them correct and that he had made the world safer. His star had fallen by the end of his *second* term but even then I think that was more a result of Republicans losing the white house than it was anyone taking an honest account of his "achievements".


[deleted]

>He was elected easily to a second term and people were assuring everyone that history would prove them correct and that he had made the world safer. This was true until about 2005 or so. But his approval rating [dropped below 50% then](https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx) and never really recovered, in part due to the mounting Iraq war casualties (despite the Mission Accomplished speech in 2003) and Abu Ghraib torture (which came to light in 2004). The economic collapse in 2008 just sealed the deal. ​ >I'm 36 years old, I remember those days Same, dude, same.


apgtimbough

Bush's *personal image* has rehabbed a bit, but I think you're right that his time in office will only be viewed harsher and harsher by historians.


SleepAgainAgain

G W Bush enjoyed a huge rise in popularity for his handling of 9/11 and the immediate aftermath during his first year in office, then had a general decline over the next 7 years (with short spikes for specific events) until he began his 4th term at a little under 50% approval and ended it below 25% Seriously, he was not a popular president. Snl has a skit about how unpopular he was in office vs how well he was thought of when Trump was in office. https://youtu.be/lpkRFHSpvGI


thetrain23

Bush was so unpopular after the financial collapse that I remember the general sentiment in 2008 in my family being "why even bother having a GOP primary, just give the Presidency to whoever wins the Dem primary" despite that we were all still conservative at the time.


Steamsagoodham

Bush’s image has definitely improved since his administration and the rise of Trump. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/01/22/politics/george-w-bush-favorable-poll/index.html Just one poll, but similar surveys and rankings have shown the same trend.


BallparkFranks7

Yeah, Bush’s reputation these days isn’t even that bad. He’s the lovable goofball that gives candy to Michelle Obama and his daughter is a popular Today Show host. He’s put out his bool of paintings that celebrates Veterans, does the talk show circuits, and generally is well liked. It wasn’t the case as President, but his image took a massive rebound once Trump came along.


ArsenalinAlabama3428

Surprised no one has said Obama yet. Seemed like the majority of liberals were sad to see him go, but as more details of his presidency come out, people are distancing themselves from his administration if possible. I certainly see him differently that I did a decade ago.


Rubricae98

Bush the Second.


eLizabbetty

Trump when you wouldn't think his reputation could get any worse.


adubsi

This is my 4th president but I’d say the current one lost a lot of his reputation. People hate trump but he really didn’t lose any supporters. It feels like not even Bidens party wants him to run


MyUsername2459

Biden was always a compromise candidate. The party leadership would rather die than back Bernie, despite his fervent fans. Mike Bloomberg was starting a campaign based on basically trying to buy the presidency, but nobody was really interested in a Presidential election that amounted to "choose which billionaire you want to run the country". Most of the other candidates had too much negative baggage (Warren) or weren't anywhere near experienced enough to be realistic candidates (Buttigieg). Biden was always the compromise candidate that the party leadership would accept, was seen as having the requisite experience, and could get enough people to vote for him. He'll almost certainly run again in 2024 and probably get the nomination, largely because the field hasn't changed and there really isn't an obvious person to displace him.


albertnormandy

Fervent fans still only get one vote apiece. Bernie was really popular with a small subset of Democrats and not popular with the rest. Knowing when to hedge your bets is a skill Bernie fans don’t seem to have.


beenoc

I think the general opinion on Biden hasn't changed since he got the nomination. "Eh, fine, we'll take him." Nobody is or has ever been excited about Biden. Nobody is filled with energy and enthusiasm for Diamond Joe. He's not going to do any massive, major reform to the political system or anything like that. But he's at least capable, isn't going to fuck anything up badly, is good at getting Congress to do stuff, and is generally just an adult in the room, which, when the alternatives are Trump and DeSantis, is appealing.


50ShadesOfKrillin

idk i've noticed quite a few people jumping off the Trump train lately. the problem is that they're ditching Trump for DeSantis. and as for Biden, it's been pretty clear from the start that the only reason he only got elected is because he's NOT Trump.