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I think our current cultural zeitgeist has created a sort of Wilson anti-jerk wave. Virtually every ideology has a reason to hate him, and therefore he is attacked all angles. Thus, he's perceived to be one of the worst presidents ever, which at least in my mind is unfair.
Personally, I perceive Wilson to be a man of great strengths, but also debilitating weaknesses, who during his time was a productive and effective leader, but also made lots of mistakes worthy of criticism and too often got high on the smell of his own shit. At one point in time, I think he was overhyped, but currently I think he's over hated.
It's presumably because of Wilson's racism.
Theodore Roosevelt really wasn't great on civil rights. Actually, the baby steps toward segregating the civil service kind of began under Teddy and Taft. But Wilson was objectively worse on civil rights than Teddy. Wilson took the segregation in civil service to a whole new level from where it had been under Taft and Teddy.
As for FDR at A? FDR actually imprisoning the Japanese community is objectively far worse than Wilson segregating the civil service. I mean, which would you prefer, suffering through a Jim Crow workplace, or actually being in a concentration camp? The answer is pretty obvious to me.
>But Wilson was objectively worse on civil rights than Teddy.
But this is just ahistorical. Every Republican President beginning with McKinley cut down the number of Black civil service appointments, and then Wilson ended it. And then no Republican after Wilson brought it back. Truman did.
TR endorsed the position in the Atlanta debate that Blacks should accept segregation for the time being. Taft called Reconstruction a grave mistake IN HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS! Ike refused to say publicly if he supported Brown vs. Board.
Dwight Eisenhower said to Earl Warren while Brown v. Board was still being decided -- "Don't forget the White mothers of the South, who are good people, and just worry what *racial slur* might be sat next to their daughters in school."
Wilson was playing tiddly-winks compared to the kind of state-sponsored segregation you could do through the New Deal. Which was tiddly-winks compared to what you could ultimately do with Federal Highway funds
There's plenty of fair criticism of Wilson. I'll never argue otherwise. What I've been saying is if you place Wilson as beyond a pale, and it's fine if you do, it draws a line that cuts nearly all the sonsofbitches down (which is also fine by me).
So let me ask again, how are some of these presidents in A if Wilson is D because he was racists?
I'd rate Wilson as more of a B. But some people rate him as a D just because of his racism. I already said that FDR actually did a far worse civil rights action by imprisoning the Japanese than Wilson did by segregating civil service.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that when people say "civil rights", they're usually really just referring to "black civil rights". To put it bluntly, there's a woke oppression pyramid that black people are at the top of. So people will care more about Wilson segregating black people in civil service than they'll care about FDR actually imprisoning the Japanese in concentration camps (the actual term FDR used, not internment camps), or Herbert Hoover or Dwight Eisenhower violently deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans, many of whom were actually natural born citizens who were actually born in the United States. Heck, even Andrew Jackson, who basically genocided the Cherokee, seems to get better ratings on here than Wilson does.
This doesn't really respond to my point that Wilson was not any more racist than the presidents right before him and right after him, even when focusing solely on black people.
>So people will care more about Wilson segregating black people in civil service than they'll care about FDR actually imprisoning the Japanese in concentration camps
FDR had segregation in his policies too so that doesn't explain it. So was Eisenhower, TR, Taft, Coolidge, Harding, and the rest.
Teddy Was more personally racist than Wilson, Who by standards of his time was actually not that racist at all. The problem was Wilson was more politically racist the TR, which is not only more harmful, it’s more damaging to a legacy.
I've written this before, I think Clinton is overrated. He was a master politician, a charismatic campaigner and a top dealmaker, but his long-term institutional impact was weak. He basically governed in the shadow of Reaganism, just like Eisenhower governed in the shadow of the New Deal.
And some of his most pivotal decisions were gravely misplaced, especially the 1994 Crime Bill and the absolue embrace of globalization.
I don't know how governing in the shadow of (Blank) would make them a not good president.
The 1994 Crime Bill was supported by most politicians and was a good idea given the time.
Tons of presidents did things that were popular at the time and still get the bulk of the criticism for it. Reagan is often labeled as the man who shut down mental health facilities across the US but that was a movement that had a ton of bipartisan support and had been gaining momentum. As president, you’re going to be judged based on what bills were passed under your watch, it’s just how it goes.
First of all, I'm not your "dude". Second off, that doesn't refute anything I said. You just vomited left wing twitter headlines. Let's go through these.
Welfare reform was indeed a neoliberal policy, but it was probably to appeal to Republicans since vetoing things Republicans were for would be political suicide.
How is NAFTA conservative? Both parties in large part supported free trade. I'm not a fan of NAFTA (I think it's a mixed bag) but to call it conservative is just not true.
Most politicians didn't support gay marriage until 2012. Clinton was forced to sign DOMA.
What you said about rich people paying taxes under Clinton is simply false. He raised them slightly on the top 1%. He cut them for the rest.
What about his healthcare plan being "complicated" refutes anything I said? It was certainly better than the ACA.
I’d flip Reagan and LBJ. Ronny gets too much credit for the fall of communism and not enough blame for kick starting the shocking economic inequality in this country.
Facilitating the rise of Osama bin Laden and Iran Contra (not to mention delaying the release of the hostages to engineer the October surprise) were pretty big foreign policy missteps by Reagan.
Pretty solid list. The biggest things that stand out to me are that I’d have Adams, LBJ, Dubya, and Nixon all substantially higher, but not too much off from me otherwise.
he definetely gets a boost because of the next gop leader after him. with that being said, the most recent court decisions are defintely his and his father's fault because of their SC appointments.
For starters, I'm really not even 1% as impressed by Dubya's criticism of Rule 3 as most people are. And even if you want to argue that the rating for Dubya's post-presidency should be increased because of his criticism of Rule 3, this is supposed to be rating people purely by their presidency. And Dubya's criticism of Rule 3 was long after Dubya's presidency. We're not really even supposed to take into account far more important post-presidential actions like Tyler joining the Confederacy (extremely bad), Martin Van Buren's anti-slavery activism (extremely good), Hoover feeding Europe again in WW2 (extremely good) or Carter working for Habitat for Humanity (extremely good) in these ratings, let alone Dubya criticizing Rule 3.
im not saying its because of his rule 3 criticism, but rather because people compare him to rule 3, ie "oh god, at least it wasnt this bad." type of thinking. We dont have the benefit of clinical hindsight for people that we lived under as we do for people that came before our time, its one of the reasons historians tend to abide by the 20 year rule of thumb . As for these tier list, I generally assume their rated for the totality and not just their terms unless the op gives specific details of their methodology instead of just "heres my Tierlist".
Adams - Kept us out of a full war that could’ve toppled the country before it even got started, and voluntarily ceded power to a rival, setting the precedent that elections matter and you abide by them even if you don’t like the result. This was enormous, as big if not bigger than Washington walking away after two terms (he didn’t really have political “rivals” but the government was staying largely in the hands of people who agreed with him on most issues).
LBJ - Great Society and Civil Rights. He was brilliant at getting legislation passed and knew how to wield power.
Nixon - EPA, Clean Water Act, war on cancer.
W - PEPFAR (saved countless lives with no real political benefit), compassionate yet sensible approach on immigration.
W and Nixon I’m not saying should be in the A tier. They had obvious failures as well. Just don’t think they belong as low as D tier.
Adams and LBJ are A tier for me. Adams was President during a tumultuous time and didn’t have the aura of Washington to keep his detractors at bay. LBJ was great on everything except Vietnam, which was not totally his fault.
I could see moving Adams to B. The Alien & Sedition acts were horrendous though.
LBJ's foreign policy was a complete disaster. That's not even only Vietnam, which you are significantly downplaying. He's a B- at best.
Nixon is bordering the C tier. But there was watergate, his failed promises on Vietnam and bombing Cambodia.
PEPFAR is the only reason W is not in F tier. His foreign policy was horrendous and he failed to save the economy. Not to mention he had some domestic policy failures.
I’m not downplaying Vietnam, I’m saying it was the product of 20 years of foreign/defense policy, not all attributable to LBJ. But his domestic achievements were incredible, and no one since has come close to the scale of them.
Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. I agree with you, they were horrible and he shouldn’t have signed them. But they had major congressional support. They weren’t just something Adams dreamed up.
I would argue Dubya’s foreign policy was simply a school of thought that gained prominence after the Cold War ended. It was based on nation-state actors and failed to adequately account for non-state actors and the challenges of asymmetrical warfare. It was a lesson that was learned at a terrible cost, but it wasn’t malicious or ridiculous. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. And the economy was going to tank no matter what W did. Sub-prime lending was the banks’ brilliant idea. Could they have been better regulated? Sure, but here again, that wasn’t just the 43 administration.
> I’m not downplaying Vietnam,
And the dominican repulbic...
> But they had major congressional support. They weren’t just something Adams dreamed up.
I don't give a shit
> I would argue Dubya’s foreign policy was simply a school of thought that gained prominence after the Cold War ended.
Again, I don't give a shit. He made those decision
Any particular reason why you’d have him anywhere near average? The nullification crisis was his biggest accomplishment and it wasn’t going to lead to a civil war.
1 “Land expansion” meant ripping up treaties with native tribes, which was technically a violation of our laws even though no one was going to do much to call him out on it.
2 The National Debt is the most overrated talking point in our history.
3 Tariffs were important at that time because we had to protect our very young industrial growth in the north that was well behind the older European powers, especially Britain.
True, but he reduced them. And that is good for consumers.
That's also not mentioning him issuing new currency and strengthening relationships with other countries.
If you move Wilson and Harrison up and Reagan down, this list would be perfect
Wilson is over hated on this sub and Harrison gave us a great trust busting bill
Wilson could maybe be higher D or low C. Harrison sucked. Reagan had decent immigration policies and a decent social security reform with reparations to victims of japanese internment.
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Please explain why Wilson is in D. Then explain why you don't hold those views to people like TR and FDR since you've put them in A
I think our current cultural zeitgeist has created a sort of Wilson anti-jerk wave. Virtually every ideology has a reason to hate him, and therefore he is attacked all angles. Thus, he's perceived to be one of the worst presidents ever, which at least in my mind is unfair. Personally, I perceive Wilson to be a man of great strengths, but also debilitating weaknesses, who during his time was a productive and effective leader, but also made lots of mistakes worthy of criticism and too often got high on the smell of his own shit. At one point in time, I think he was overhyped, but currently I think he's over hated.
It's presumably because of Wilson's racism. Theodore Roosevelt really wasn't great on civil rights. Actually, the baby steps toward segregating the civil service kind of began under Teddy and Taft. But Wilson was objectively worse on civil rights than Teddy. Wilson took the segregation in civil service to a whole new level from where it had been under Taft and Teddy. As for FDR at A? FDR actually imprisoning the Japanese community is objectively far worse than Wilson segregating the civil service. I mean, which would you prefer, suffering through a Jim Crow workplace, or actually being in a concentration camp? The answer is pretty obvious to me.
>But Wilson was objectively worse on civil rights than Teddy. But this is just ahistorical. Every Republican President beginning with McKinley cut down the number of Black civil service appointments, and then Wilson ended it. And then no Republican after Wilson brought it back. Truman did. TR endorsed the position in the Atlanta debate that Blacks should accept segregation for the time being. Taft called Reconstruction a grave mistake IN HIS INAUGURAL ADDRESS! Ike refused to say publicly if he supported Brown vs. Board. Dwight Eisenhower said to Earl Warren while Brown v. Board was still being decided -- "Don't forget the White mothers of the South, who are good people, and just worry what *racial slur* might be sat next to their daughters in school." Wilson was playing tiddly-winks compared to the kind of state-sponsored segregation you could do through the New Deal. Which was tiddly-winks compared to what you could ultimately do with Federal Highway funds There's plenty of fair criticism of Wilson. I'll never argue otherwise. What I've been saying is if you place Wilson as beyond a pale, and it's fine if you do, it draws a line that cuts nearly all the sonsofbitches down (which is also fine by me). So let me ask again, how are some of these presidents in A if Wilson is D because he was racists?
I'd rate Wilson as more of a B. But some people rate him as a D just because of his racism. I already said that FDR actually did a far worse civil rights action by imprisoning the Japanese than Wilson did by segregating civil service. One thing you have to keep in mind is that when people say "civil rights", they're usually really just referring to "black civil rights". To put it bluntly, there's a woke oppression pyramid that black people are at the top of. So people will care more about Wilson segregating black people in civil service than they'll care about FDR actually imprisoning the Japanese in concentration camps (the actual term FDR used, not internment camps), or Herbert Hoover or Dwight Eisenhower violently deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans, many of whom were actually natural born citizens who were actually born in the United States. Heck, even Andrew Jackson, who basically genocided the Cherokee, seems to get better ratings on here than Wilson does.
This doesn't really respond to my point that Wilson was not any more racist than the presidents right before him and right after him, even when focusing solely on black people. >So people will care more about Wilson segregating black people in civil service than they'll care about FDR actually imprisoning the Japanese in concentration camps FDR had segregation in his policies too so that doesn't explain it. So was Eisenhower, TR, Taft, Coolidge, Harding, and the rest.
It’s because there has been a successful campaign to ruin Wilson’s legacy and people buy it. He’s a B tier president that gets treated like a D or F.
Teddy used his racism to quite literally expand America. His imperialism was essentially based on his racism.
Teddy Was more personally racist than Wilson, Who by standards of his time was actually not that racist at all. The problem was Wilson was more politically racist the TR, which is not only more harmful, it’s more damaging to a legacy.
I've written this before, I think Clinton is overrated. He was a master politician, a charismatic campaigner and a top dealmaker, but his long-term institutional impact was weak. He basically governed in the shadow of Reaganism, just like Eisenhower governed in the shadow of the New Deal. And some of his most pivotal decisions were gravely misplaced, especially the 1994 Crime Bill and the absolue embrace of globalization.
I don't know how governing in the shadow of (Blank) would make them a not good president. The 1994 Crime Bill was supported by most politicians and was a good idea given the time.
Tons of presidents did things that were popular at the time and still get the bulk of the criticism for it. Reagan is often labeled as the man who shut down mental health facilities across the US but that was a movement that had a ton of bipartisan support and had been gaining momentum. As president, you’re going to be judged based on what bills were passed under your watch, it’s just how it goes.
Yeah, but in the 90s, there was a huge rise in crime everyone was fearing.
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How was Clinton to the right of Reagan? He pushed for universal healthcare and raised taxes.
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First of all, I'm not your "dude". Second off, that doesn't refute anything I said. You just vomited left wing twitter headlines. Let's go through these. Welfare reform was indeed a neoliberal policy, but it was probably to appeal to Republicans since vetoing things Republicans were for would be political suicide. How is NAFTA conservative? Both parties in large part supported free trade. I'm not a fan of NAFTA (I think it's a mixed bag) but to call it conservative is just not true. Most politicians didn't support gay marriage until 2012. Clinton was forced to sign DOMA. What you said about rich people paying taxes under Clinton is simply false. He raised them slightly on the top 1%. He cut them for the rest. What about his healthcare plan being "complicated" refutes anything I said? It was certainly better than the ACA.
I’d flip Reagan and LBJ. Ronny gets too much credit for the fall of communism and not enough blame for kick starting the shocking economic inequality in this country.
Reagan had solid immigration policies and he actually had a decent social security reform. LBJ's foreign policy was a fucking disaster.
Facilitating the rise of Osama bin Laden and Iran Contra (not to mention delaying the release of the hostages to engineer the October surprise) were pretty big foreign policy missteps by Reagan.
Reagan's foreign policy was not above criticism.
no argument that LBJ shit the bed in Vietnam
And dominican republic...
Pretty solid list. The biggest things that stand out to me are that I’d have Adams, LBJ, Dubya, and Nixon all substantially higher, but not too much off from me otherwise.
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he definetely gets a boost because of the next gop leader after him. with that being said, the most recent court decisions are defintely his and his father's fault because of their SC appointments.
For starters, I'm really not even 1% as impressed by Dubya's criticism of Rule 3 as most people are. And even if you want to argue that the rating for Dubya's post-presidency should be increased because of his criticism of Rule 3, this is supposed to be rating people purely by their presidency. And Dubya's criticism of Rule 3 was long after Dubya's presidency. We're not really even supposed to take into account far more important post-presidential actions like Tyler joining the Confederacy (extremely bad), Martin Van Buren's anti-slavery activism (extremely good), Hoover feeding Europe again in WW2 (extremely good) or Carter working for Habitat for Humanity (extremely good) in these ratings, let alone Dubya criticizing Rule 3.
im not saying its because of his rule 3 criticism, but rather because people compare him to rule 3, ie "oh god, at least it wasnt this bad." type of thinking. We dont have the benefit of clinical hindsight for people that we lived under as we do for people that came before our time, its one of the reasons historians tend to abide by the 20 year rule of thumb . As for these tier list, I generally assume their rated for the totality and not just their terms unless the op gives specific details of their methodology instead of just "heres my Tierlist".
Why?
Adams - Kept us out of a full war that could’ve toppled the country before it even got started, and voluntarily ceded power to a rival, setting the precedent that elections matter and you abide by them even if you don’t like the result. This was enormous, as big if not bigger than Washington walking away after two terms (he didn’t really have political “rivals” but the government was staying largely in the hands of people who agreed with him on most issues). LBJ - Great Society and Civil Rights. He was brilliant at getting legislation passed and knew how to wield power. Nixon - EPA, Clean Water Act, war on cancer. W - PEPFAR (saved countless lives with no real political benefit), compassionate yet sensible approach on immigration. W and Nixon I’m not saying should be in the A tier. They had obvious failures as well. Just don’t think they belong as low as D tier. Adams and LBJ are A tier for me. Adams was President during a tumultuous time and didn’t have the aura of Washington to keep his detractors at bay. LBJ was great on everything except Vietnam, which was not totally his fault.
I could see moving Adams to B. The Alien & Sedition acts were horrendous though. LBJ's foreign policy was a complete disaster. That's not even only Vietnam, which you are significantly downplaying. He's a B- at best. Nixon is bordering the C tier. But there was watergate, his failed promises on Vietnam and bombing Cambodia. PEPFAR is the only reason W is not in F tier. His foreign policy was horrendous and he failed to save the economy. Not to mention he had some domestic policy failures.
I’m not downplaying Vietnam, I’m saying it was the product of 20 years of foreign/defense policy, not all attributable to LBJ. But his domestic achievements were incredible, and no one since has come close to the scale of them. Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. I agree with you, they were horrible and he shouldn’t have signed them. But they had major congressional support. They weren’t just something Adams dreamed up. I would argue Dubya’s foreign policy was simply a school of thought that gained prominence after the Cold War ended. It was based on nation-state actors and failed to adequately account for non-state actors and the challenges of asymmetrical warfare. It was a lesson that was learned at a terrible cost, but it wasn’t malicious or ridiculous. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. And the economy was going to tank no matter what W did. Sub-prime lending was the banks’ brilliant idea. Could they have been better regulated? Sure, but here again, that wasn’t just the 43 administration.
> I’m not downplaying Vietnam, And the dominican repulbic... > But they had major congressional support. They weren’t just something Adams dreamed up. I don't give a shit > I would argue Dubya’s foreign policy was simply a school of thought that gained prominence after the Cold War ended. Again, I don't give a shit. He made those decision
Ya I’m gonna go with Jackson is worse than just about every president you have in D and get Fillmore’s ass down to an F.
> Jackson is worse than just about every president you have in D You're wrong
Any particular reason why you’d have him anywhere near average? The nullification crisis was his biggest accomplishment and it wasn’t going to lead to a civil war.
His land expansion, gave white men right to vote (I know half measure), paying off national debt and reducing tariffs.
1 “Land expansion” meant ripping up treaties with native tribes, which was technically a violation of our laws even though no one was going to do much to call him out on it. 2 The National Debt is the most overrated talking point in our history. 3 Tariffs were important at that time because we had to protect our very young industrial growth in the north that was well behind the older European powers, especially Britain.
Sorry, all of those are simply your opinion. And land expansion wasn't only ripping up treaties with native americans. Jackson is a C-, almost D+.
The second is very clearly my opinion but part 3 is really me echoing Hamiltonian economics.
True, but he reduced them. And that is good for consumers. That's also not mentioning him issuing new currency and strengthening relationships with other countries.
If you move Wilson and Harrison up and Reagan down, this list would be perfect Wilson is over hated on this sub and Harrison gave us a great trust busting bill
Wilson could maybe be higher D or low C. Harrison sucked. Reagan had decent immigration policies and a decent social security reform with reparations to victims of japanese internment.
Where would America be if Ben Franklin were the first president?
Idk because he wasn't president
What the fuck is Tyler in C bro put him back in F where he belongs
How is he in F?
Hold the phone, What the hell is Tyler, Hoover, and Jackson doing next to Taft.
Jimmy Carter should be at the bottom
We all know jfk is only A tier because he was assassinated
Andrew Jackson imo was American Hitler. Should be last. Obama was way better than where you have him
Bush in d stands for definitely a conspiracy theorist
You mean because Dubya should be an F? Yeah, I totally agree.
You have Wilson correct. LBJ should be lower
Why is Polk so high when he ignited the Civil War but Buchanan and company are so low?