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POTUS Ranking-Last 40 years


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As Obama's tenure is about to end and we are embarking upon a new administration, I was thinking to myself the other day how I would rank the President's over the past 40 years. This country has had some good times and bad times during that stretch for sure. Here is how I would rank the President's based upon Performance/Results

 

Performance/Results

1. Reagan-Outside of growing the debt, his results were pretty amazing, especially his strong leadership abroad and ending the cold war.

 

2. Clinton-He moved to the center after the 1994 mid-terms and really reached out to work with the opposing party to balance the budget and pass welfare reform. The major weakness was cutting back on intelligence and not going after terror groups strong enough.

 

3. Bush 41-I think Bush 41 gets a bad rap, probably because he didn't win a 2nd term. With that said, he's the only candidate in decades to win a 3rd term for the same party, and he worked with the opposing party to lay the groundwork for the economy to turn around. Had the election been held a few months later after the mini-recession had ended, he likely would have won in 1992.

 

4. Bush 43-While we can all agree that the intelligence for Iraq was wrong, his strong leadership through the toughest time in our nation's history (9/11) can't be said enough. The pysche of the American people was completely in shambles, and for 2 or 3 years many were fearful of what would come next. He spent his entire administration focused on keeping America safe, and he delivered on that promise. He also inherited a recession early in 2001, had 9/11 and the stock market collapse, and helped usher in several years of economic growth, but certainly Iraq and the 2008 world financial collapse push him down on my list.

 

5. Obama-Obama will be remembered for being POTUS when Bin Laden was captured and when Gay marriage became the law of the land. He also is personally liked by a majority of the American people, and will be remembered as the first minority President.

 

6. Carter-There is not a lot of positives to save about Carter other than he was a nice guy and that his weakness on many issues helped bring Reagan (an outsider with no Washington experience) to power.

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That's not a bad list bnil. I think you'd be hard pressed to find many other folks that would rank W above Obama. He did keep us relatively safe, but it came at the expense of a horrible wars, and there's the argument floating around out there that Bush should've known something like 9/11 was coming and was caught sitting on his hands.

 

I'd also be tempted to slip Obama in front of Bush Sr, if only for the fact that Bush Sr benefitted from an era in which Congress actually praised bipartisanship and working together. No doubt there are ways Obama could've compromised more with the Republicans, but the way they turned up their noses at him and fought everything is reprehensible.

 

I'll admit I don't know enough about HW's administration to rank him effectively.

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As Obama's tenure is about to end and we are embarking upon a new administration, I was thinking to myself the other day how I would rank the President's over the past 40 years. This country has had some good times and bad times during that stretch for sure. Here is how I would rank the President's based upon Performance/Results

 

Performance/Results

1. Reagan-Outside of growing the debt, his results were pretty amazing, especially his strong leadership abroad and ending the cold war.

 

2. Clinton-He moved to the center after the 1994 mid-terms and really reached out to work with the opposing party to balance the budget and pass welfare reform. The major weakness was cutting back on intelligence and not going after terror groups strong enough.

 

3. Bush 41-I think Bush 41 gets a bad rap, probably because he didn't win a 2nd term. With that said, he's the only candidate in decades to win a 3rd term for the same party, and he worked with the opposing party to lay the groundwork for the economy to turn around. Had the election been held a few months later after the mini-recession had ended, he likely would have won in 1992.

 

4. Bush 43-While we can all agree that the intelligence for Iraq was wrong, his strong leadership through the toughest time in our nation's history (9/11) can't be said enough. The pysche of the American people was completely in shambles, and for 2 or 3 years many were fearful of what would come next. He spent his entire administration focused on keeping America safe, and he delivered on that promise. He also inherited a recession early in 2001, had 9/11 and the stock market collapse, and helped usher in several years of economic growth, but certainly Iraq and the 2008 world financial collapse push him down on my list.

 

5. Obama-Obama will be remembered for being POTUS when Bin Laden was captured and when Gay marriage became the law of the land. He also is personally liked by a majority of the American people, and will be remembered as the first minority President.

 

6. Carter-There is not a lot of positives to save about Carter other than he was a nice guy and that his weakness on many issues helped bring Reagan (an outsider with no Washington experience) to power.

I would agree with many of your comments but I place a great deal more weight on the negatives of Bill Clinton's Presidency. He did some positive things without question but mostly because he had to move hard right in order to win re-election and was only elected in the first place because Ross Perot hated the Bush family and ran as a third party candidate to make sure Bush didn't win. If the Clintons had not been so morally bankrupt and chronic liars and personally greedy, they could have done even more good. The damage they have done to the law and order and respect for the rule of law and respect for the integrity of the criminal justice system in particular we are still feeling today. Much of the antagonism felt by the Black community is from the very perception that there is a two tiered justice system where rich whites get away with all their crimes while the poor and minorities get railroaded. There have been many individuals over the history of the country that may have been perceived to have escaped their just deserts, but none approach the Clintons in this regard. Obama has danced around the corruption - apparently keeping his hands fairly clean.

 

Having been in the banking and financial industry from 1980 to 2014, I can tell you that the Clinton years were primarily a huge credit card and mortgage refi consumer spending binge that ultimately led to the 2008 real estate mortgage crisis which brought on the 2008 to 2016 recession in part. People lived well beyond their means by living on credit cards which were rolled over into big home mortgages and etc. Eventually this debt burden sank in and we are still dealing with it. Here in New York state, we are still dealing with hundreds of thousands of problem mortgages and foreclosures and delapadated properties. They are not in the news although the state just enacted a new law in an attempt to remedy some of the vacant and untended properties by requiring mortgage lenders to take care of their foreclosed properties better. Not sure how it will work but after 8 years of 4% mortgage rates, there are still many dumpy properties that need owners but people can't afford to buy or fix them.

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