Whose your favorite president ever?

[creekrat77]

[TredKiller]

Probably Franklin Rooselvelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and John F Kennedy. Clinton and Obama are also up there. Can't see how Thomas Jefferson outranks George Washington.

DEEEAAADDD

lol the bold is just to wrong man, like you cant honestly believe that

i mean the fact that you didnt even mention Lincoln before naming Clinton and Obama is nuts lol. i could probably name 10 off the top of my head that did more and better then Clinton and Obama,

and because im bored i Will: Abe Lincoln, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan.

not all of these guys were good morally, but as is often the case with great men... it doesnt matter, they got **** done. all of them with a legacy and accomplishments that literally **** on everything bill and barak have ever done, not even an close really.

Can you address my critique of JFK and why he is not up there at the top? (I can be convinced by a good argument, I assure you.)

are you saying he deserves to be at the top or he doesn't?

i believe he has a case.

he has become overrated due to his assassination, not to mention the long list of mediocre presidents that have come in his wake.

The Cuban missile crisis is why i feel he was great, it can be argued that it was the closest america has come to a war with russia, wheras many other presidents would have declared war immediately (such as Reagan, or Bush Jr) Kennedy disregarded those who were clamoring for war and let his political savvy and deal making keep the piece. it can be argued that Kennedy initiated the whole thing by letting the bay of pigs happen, but i believe he more then made up for it by getting us out of the whole mess. he also Beefed up NASA and put in the budget and motivation needed to get a man on the moon.

and to be honest, other presidents just arn't like Kennedy. the way he walked, talked, carried himself, is like he was born to be president. if you were designing a president for america you'd probably create someone similar to JFK.

perhaps his best attribute was his ability to inspire people, to set goals for the country that everyone could by into. the reason why America made it to the moon was because Mr.Kennedy made us believe we could, he set the goal, and it is a testament to his legacy that we did indeed land a man on the moon "Before this decade is out..."

other then Reagan, and Clinton was alright, nothing but MEDIOCRITY in JFK's wake, he has become overrated because many, myself included, consider him the last REAL president.

[One_Tycoon]

Can you site a source that is unbiased please.

Just because the source has the word "conservative" in it doesn't mean you get to dismiss it at face value. Guess how low you are ranked in this pyramid:

[TredKiller]

Just because the source has the word "conservative" in it doesn't mean you get to dismiss it at face value. Guess how low you are ranked in this pyramid:

your a republican ay?

who ya got in these elections, i dislike Cruz, Cuban immigrant born in Canada raised in Texas, has to be the most unexciting candidate ever. I like Trump, and Rubio, the rest are for the birds

[One_Tycoon]

your a republican ay?

who ya got in these elections, i dislike Cruz, Cuban immigrant born in Canada raised in Texas, has to be the most unexciting candidate ever. I like Trump, and Rubio, the rest are for the birds

I'm not a Republican...just a proponent of Free Market Capitalism and you can take a guess which party comes closer to championing a free market.

I like Cruz...he passes the Pro-Capitalism Test and gets a 85% capitalist approval rating from yours truly. A solid Senate obstructionist. We need more obstructionists in the Senate.

Trump is good for the LOLz

And i don't like Marco Rubio. As Rand Paul correctly pointed out...he wants to increase spending which disqualifies him from pretending to be a fiscal conservative. Tbh...i never liked Rubio. The way he grabbed that water bottle during that GOP State of the Union response...gave off funny Socialist/Communist, Central planning vibes.

[One_Tycoon]

As far as the thread's question of who the TBE president was/is...i believe i answered that question with this thread about 3 years ago:

http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=540027

[chris boys]

your a republican ay?

who ya got in these elections, i dislike Cruz, Cuban immigrant born in Canada raised in Texas, has to be the most unexciting candidate ever. I like Trump, and Rubio, the rest are for the birds

To Tredkiller:

Yeah, you make some good points on JFK

Here is what I wrote originally

Comment on it:

I decided that before I go to who I think are the top guns, I want to deal with the case of JFK.

I think we can all agree that when it comes to intelligence and speaking ability and inspiration for the American people, he was of the highest caliber. I was a young lad during his Presidency and was totally inspired by him. My father (an immigrant electrical engineer from the UK) absolutely loved hearing him speak. His speech at the American University (the last one he gave) on trying to have real peace and some substantive agreements with the Soviets was one of the greatest ever given by an American President. You can find him giving that speech on YouTube, and it thrills me to this day. He inspired the whole world. Hell, his speech in Berlin was like a rock concert. It was so inspiring that commentators there at the time said that the people seemed close to rioting in support of what he was saying.

His handling of the Cuban Missile crisis was diplomacy of the highest caliber and under the most trying circumstances any President ever had to encounter. He (and his advisers and his brother) literally saved the world form nuclear war.

He also had some decent accomplishments legislatively – the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, a farm bill, man-power training legislation, increases in Social Security benefits and the minimum wage, and the Area Redevelopment Program.

I think here (with his legislation), however, we can begin to get a better understanding of his Presidency. At the time he was assassinated, he had two very big pieces of legislation before Congress (the ones I mention above were relatively minor) – The Civil Rights Act and the tax-cut bill. If you read Robert Caro’s latest volume of his biography of LBJ, you see that this legislation was going nowhere. You also see that JFK apparently did not understand this fact. He and his advisers had some big blind spots about how to get things done in Congress. Both of those pieces of legislation were going to die an unflattering death.

LBJ was the guy who knew what had to be done. On the third day of his Presidency he met late at night with the Kennedy economic advisers and discussed the tax cut bill. They were humbled by him. He quickly showed what was really going on and what they had to do to get the bill passed (some things they had never even considered). There were some questions and answers, but within an hour they realized Johnson was correct. Afterward, they recounted how they walked out of that room with a totally changed outlook – the bill could be passed if they did what Johnson said. But, of course, they didn’t really do that much in the end. Johnson did almost everything himself on that bill (in a sort of tour de force with his encounters with Senator Harry Byrd). He got it through.

The tax bill turned out to be very important. The economy had been sluggish for about three years running. The tax cuts (taking down the outrageous rates that still lingered from the WWII war years) initiated a sustained period of great economic growth.

The situation with the Civil Rights Act was even worse. Johnson had attempted to tell JFk the mistakes he should not make with this legislation, but he ignored his advice (if he ever even got it – LBJ was treated like a leper by the Kennedys). As a result, Kennedy had fallen into a bear trap (the one the South always used in the Senate -- for a hundred years -- to defeat civil rights). Again, Johnson quickly sussed out the situation and found the one key step (Caro calls it the “one lever”), the only one, that could be taken to get the bill making progress. Then he put the entire weight of his administration behind that lever and leaned on it with everything he had. He also got on board the key Senators and Congressman (most of whom he knew personally very well) to lean on it as well. He also made it clear publicly that this Act was going to be the real deal – strong with no compromises. In fact, the Act got stronger as it made its way, not weaker. It turned out to be one the truly great legislative accomplishments in American history.

So, I think we must take a sobering view of what Kennedy’s accomplishments would have looked like at the end of his first term. He would have had two very black marks. And remember, the Civil Rights Act had to pass – the country was being torn apart by what was happening in the South.

Even more sobering is to examine Kennedy’s policy towards Cuba. Kennedy and his brother (especially his brother) were borderline maniacs when it came to Cuba. They just couldn’t let it go. Kennedy had suffered a big black eye at the Bay of Pigs, but apparently he couldn’t understand that the Cuban government (and military) were strong and enjoyed great popular support amongst the Cuban people. Kennedy was always hammering on the CIA to find some way to get rid of Castro, mostly by assassinating him. He sent in constant commando raids to sabotage Cuban industry etc.. This is real cowboy crap.

I am a Hindu (yep, I am), and I look at a lot of what happened with Kennedy as karma. He ****ed with Castro, and the Russians decided to support their ally and **** back. Maybe that whole Cuban missile thing would never have happened if Kennedy hadn’t been the way he was on Cuba.

There was something similar going on with Vietnam. Kennedy had put in about 15,000 troops into that country (though he lied to the American people about it). That was a significant escalation of the conflict. He also played the key role in the assassination of Diem. Why? Because Diem wanted to make peace with the North! Kennedy had to stop that because he couldn’t have peace during his administration’s first term (from an election he had won so narrowly) and appear weak on fighting communism. The Pentagon Papers make clear the lies and deception Kennedy was involved in with Vietnam.

There is some evidence that Kennedy was inclined to change course on Vietnam in his second term. He anticipated (correctly) that Goldwater would be his opponent, and he anticipated (again, probably correctly) that he would cream Goldwater and start his second term with a powerful popular mandate. Then he could make peace and get out of Vietnam, and not suffer fatally with the public. Who knows if this would have actually happened? Maybe, maybe not. But his record that does stand on Vietnam is a dismal one.

I generally do not give a hoot about a President’s personal life. For example, the Monica Lewinsky thing was an embarrassment – mostly for the pursuit of President, not for what he actually did (consensual oral sex with a woman who was batty for him). But Kennedy’s personal life has to be looked at more carefully. This guy took things to a whole new level. He was having affairs with a mobster’s girlfriend and with a gal whose family had strong connections with the East German Secret Police! He was taking secretaries two at a time in the White House swimming pool. He had to have good nookie literally every other day or, as he himself said, he suffered a crushing migraine headache. This had a lot to do with his health. He had Addison’s disease (which he kept secret from the American people), and he was taking an amazing ****tail of steroids and amphetamines to deal with it. Apparently this made him perpetually horny, and he would do just about anything to get his rocks off.

It seems clear that these things were not going to be kept secret from the public much longer. Major newspapers were doing investigations of his affairs. I think an article in the New York Times was scheduled to come out (but was buried after the assassination). Remember what happened to Clinton? I am almost certain Kennedy would have been impeached (and convicted) or forced to resign when the details came out.

The best way to understand Kennedy is to see those two shots that blew his brains out as the kiss from the Gods. Yep, I am serious. The Gods decided to end his life at just the right time, to let him go and sing with the angels for a while. I loved that man and still do. He was something of a prince; you just had to love him. I cried a heap of tears when he was killed, and I saw grown-ups everywhere crying too. But if we are going to be real here, even a few months more and he would have gone down to the very bottom of the barrel of Presidents.

The Gods had the big picture in mind. Because Kennedy died a sort of legend. LBJ grasped this immediately. In his speech to Congress following the assassination (another great speech you can find on YouTube), he dedicated everything he was going to do to fulfilling the vision Kennedy had. The public was ready to go with that vision. Congressmen realized that now it was going to be extra risky to oppose Kennedy’s legislation. Not only would they have to deal with a legislative genius (LBJ) but they would have to oppose a public that wanted to put something real and substantive on Kennedy’s grave.

So, what to say? I think the only reasonable assessment is that Kennedy cannot be put at the top tier of Presidents. He was simply too reckless, too prone to obsession. He was a marked man because of those qualities. He had some decent achievements, some very inspiring moments, but he was a light that was burning on a short wick. He was never going to have the staying power of the really great Presidents. He was doomed to crash, and in a very ignoble way.

[TredKiller]

So, what to say? I think the only reasonable assessment is that Kennedy cannot be put at the top tier of Presidents. He was simply too reckless, too prone to obsession. He was a marked man because of those qualities. He had some decent achievements, some very inspiring moments, but he was a light that was burning on a short wick. He was never going to have the staying power of the really great Presidents. He was doomed to crash, and in a very ignoble way.

Still better then Clinton and Obama though

[1bad65]

Um, yeah. On that. I didn't learn a single thing.

So then you proved it wasn't ignorance on your part, it was stupidity.

Maybe when you get to HS ask a teacher to explain it to you.

You have nothing to teach.

Wrong. Just because one is too stupid to learn does not mean the teacher has nothing to teach. How many basic concepts are you in need of education on?

You are also wrong throughout this thread. Keep spewing out bs if it makes you feel nice.

I've not been wrong once, and the only person saying I was is the guy who thinks 'dot-coms' and IT are the same thing!!

[Drunken Cat]

So then you proved it wasn't ignorance on your part, it was stupidity.

Maybe when you get to HS ask a teacher to explain it to you.



Wrong. Just because one is too stupid to learn does not mean the teacher has nothing to teach. How many basic concepts are you in need of education on?



I've not been wrong once, and the only person saying I was is the guy who thinks 'dot-coms' and IT are the same thing!!

You are one conceded and arrogant prick.

I do not engage with people I don't like.

Go find someone else to pick a 'debate' with.

I have repeatedly said I have no interest in a single thing you have to say.

You don't know me so don't purport that you do.

Now go on and pound more sand up your nose.

Better yet, just don't and stop talking to me.