Rank and Rate the Presidents

[Formless]

Wow, Iosef, you really are not painting the Brazilian school system in a good light if you think Reagan decreased the national debt and federal spending in this country.

[General Mung Beans]

EDIT: Of course, I forgot that we're talking about Pat Buchanan here - the same self-proclaimed "conservative" who sees nothing wrong at all with protectionism, and thinks the government perfectly within its limitations in jailing homosexuals.

He's a paleonconservative (the Pre-Cambrian Age maybe ) who unlike most conservatives support protectionism and advocate extreme social conservatism.

Also there was almost a Maoist streak in both Jefferson and Jackson in their suspiscion of commercialism, industry, and banking and their support for an agarian society.

[Einzige]

EDIT: Of course, I forgot that we're talking about Pat Buchanan here - the same self-proclaimed "conservative" who sees nothing wrong at all with protectionism, and thinks the government perfectly within its limitations in jailing homosexuals.

He's a paleonconservative (the Pre-Cambrian Age maybe ) who unlike most conservatives support protectionism and advocate extreme social conservatism.

Also there was almost a Maoist streak in both Jefferson and Jackson in their suspiscion of commercialism, industry, and banking and their support for an agarian society.

Of course, I'd argue there's nothing conservative about such a position at all; and that Jefferson's view of America - a socially permissive, decentralized society - is far more worth pursuing than Buchanan's vision of a centralized quasi-theocracy.

[Gandalf]

Of course he was against atomics and mobilized the religious elements in the country so his record is mixed.

That's the thing that annoys me the most about Carter; his awakening of the Evangelical vote as a real political force.

While he may have intended to use the "good" aspects of it, it was so effortlessly perverted to become the basis of the modern Republican party.

[Iosef Cross]

Wow, Iosef, you really are not painting the Brazilian school system in a good light if you think Reagan decreased the national debt and federal spending in this country.

Well, can you show me an statistic of the evolution of the goverment spending in proportion to GDP during the Reagan years? I only know that between 1980 and 2000 government spending in proportion of GDP decreased, and decreased quite violently. I didn't claim that Reagan decreased the rate of increase in public debt, but that he decreased spending relative to GDP.

[Iosef Cross]

Yeah, no



Debt decreased between 1980 and 2000, but it wasn't Reagan who did the decreasing.

I was talking about spending in proportion to GDP, not debt!

See:


Well, I changed my mind, the best US president in the last 80 years was Clinton! Bush is currently the worst, but I fear that Obama might be even worse.

But Reagan turned the tide of increasing government spending. Bush turned it up again....

Actually, debt is not very important, see Ricardian equivalence. Or read this paper:
http://hussonet.free.fr/barro74.pdf

What really matters is not how the government pays for it's spending, but how much it spends.

[Formless]

I'm no economist, but so far as I know, when you talk about national debt GDP is already factored in.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Iosef Cross]

I am talking about spending in proportion to GDP, it measures current expenditures of the State in proportion to GDP. National debt in proportion to GDP is something completely different, it measures State debt in proportion to GDP.

Reagan cut taxes but didn't decrease spending at the same time and at the same magnitude, creating deficits and increasing debt. Republican presidents generally do things like that.

[PeZook]

I'm no economist, but so far as I know, when you talk about national debt GDP is already factored in.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Depends on the calculation method one uses, which means any graph comparing government spending to GDP without delineating the calculation method is completely worthless, but that's very typical of Iosef: he has a habit of making broad conclusions based on the flimsiest of data sets.

I will also point out that it's entirely possible to lower government spending yet massively increase the debt, which is much worse than simply retaining high government spending.

When you look at the entirety of Reagan's policies, you'll see that while he might've decreased relative spending somewhat, he also cut taxes disproportionately. It's like saving five dollars on McDonald's after losing one's job: meaningless.

[Einzige]

I was talking about spending in proportion to GDP, not debt!

See:

My chart is adjusted to foreign borrowing as a percentage of GDP. You lose.

Well, I changed my mind, the best US president in the last 80 years was Clinton! Bush is currently the worst, but I fear that Obama might be even worse.

But Reagan turned the tide of increasing government spending. Bush turned it up again....

No, Reagan turned the tide of increasing government spending on liberal social programmes, and instead turned the tide on of spending on the military and conservative social programmes. He spent more on these things than any of his predecessors, and can hardly be said to have been an fiscal conservative at all.

And LOL @ the notion that Obama will be nearly so bad as Bush the Lesser.

Ricardian equivalence is meaningless unless it's grounded in reality.

[Samuel]

The British Empire abolished slavery before the United States did and England also gradually became a democracy. I think they went through the changes during the 1830s, about the same time the US also removed alot of the barriers to voting based on property.

Yes that's true but that was only because Britain than had outside of a few Caribbean colonies no area with significant slaveholding. And the British I believe retained minimal property requirements well through the Nineteenth Century.

The majority of the slaves imported in the Americas went to the Carribbean.

Yeah, I've often heard them selectively quote Jefferson (i.e., the "Blood of Patriots" line), while ironically claiming that under Hamilton we'd be living in a dictatorship; and this comes from those who are rather reasonably well educated/read. Their level of cognitive dissidence is simply astounding.

Jefferson is like Ghandai- he sounds nice, but his politics are rather idiotic. A nation of small scale farmers? If you want to be backwards and conquered by your neighbors it is okay. If you want to be strong, you improve your industry and trade.

Yeah, seeing how the general trends were going in the Anglosphere during the 19th century, I can see something along the lines of the Two Georges being a normative outcome in most cases, which would be great for the British Empire/Anglosphere, but not for the Francophonie/Russian Empire/others.

You mean a situation similar to right now where there is only one real world power? Would that be better or worse for the world?

Also there was almost a Maoist streak in both Jefferson and Jackson in their suspiscion of commercialism, industry, and banking and their support for an agarian society.

Think of them as hippies with the rich as "the man" and the farmers as the people.

Well, I changed my mind, the best US president in the last 80 years was Clinton!

You leave out FDR? Heretic! Anyways Clinto did good because he was in power during an economic boom and used the surplus to pay of debt- almost always a good choice of action.

Reagan cut taxes but didn't decrease spending at the same time and at the same magnitude, creating deficits and increasing debt. Republican presidents generally do things like that.

It is a stimulus plan Sorry- I'm pretty sure only Reagan and Bush did that- previous Republican presidents had different economic strategies.

[montypython]

Yeah, seeing how the general trends were going in the Anglosphere during the 19th century, I can see something along the lines of the Two Georges being a normative outcome in most cases, which would be great for the British Empire/Anglosphere, but not for the Francophonie/Russian Empire/others.

You mean a situation similar to right now where there is only one real world power? Would that be better or worse for the world?

In that sense it wouldn't be much different than what we have now among the major powers (with different political labels, e.g, Franco-Hispania), main noticeable differences would be in places like Africa (having a British Empire with American-dominated economic power could transform African colonies into developed locales like Singapore, which would improve African quality of life substantially.)

[D.Turtle]

See:


Well, I changed my mind, the best US president in the last 80 years was Clinton! Bush is currently the worst, but I fear that Obama might be even worse.

But Reagan turned the tide of increasing government spending. Bush turned it up again....

Can't you read your own graph?

Reagan was President from 1981 to 1989. According to your graph Government spending as a percentage of GDP went up from about 33.5% to 35% of GDP. Where is the "turning of the tide"?

[PeZook]

Actually, debt is not very important, see Ricardian equivalence. Or read this paper:
http://hussonet.free.fr/barro74.pdf

For fuck's sake, are you trying to give me an aneurysm? Jesus christ...

You are, of course, aware that Ricardian equivalence is a thought experiment and utterly useless as a model for shaping national policy, right? Do you even know what assumptions are required to make it work?

Why do you insist on using one-sided barely articulated standards as base for your retarded suggestions?

What really matters is not how the government pays for it's spending, but how much it spends.

Justify this. Unless I am mistaken, your position is that less government spending is always better: I'd like to see some actual arguments for it. That, or backpedalling clarification of your original statement.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I'm curious why you rate Bush Sr. so low. The First Gulf War acheived all it's goals with very few casualties, and he was willing to do unpopular things to keep the economy afloat.

The pardoning of the criminals convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair and his confirmation that he was a religio-conservative bigot.

[Elfdart]

I would say Teddy Roosevelt hardly fits into a "mean of mediocrity." No real "colossal fuckups" really spring to mind either.

Probably because your family was not among the hundreds of thousands of people annihilated in the Philippines, including one-sixth of the population of Luzon. TR was, even by the standards of the late 1800s and early 1900s a racist, warmongering asshole whose only "qualification" for public office was having a famous daddy. In other words, he was George W. Bush with better math and English skills. Oh, and like the Crawford Caligula, he also had a fondness for water torture.

For more on why TR was an utter douche nozzle, read Theodore Roosevelt: An American Sissy(money quote):

Give a sissy a gun and he will kill everything in sight. TR's slaughter of the animals in the Badlands outdoes in spades the butcheries of that sissy of a later era, Ernest Hemingway. Elks, grizzly bears, blacktail bucks are killed joyously while a bear cub is shot, TR reports proudly, "clean through . . . from end to end" (the Teddy bear was yet to be invented). "By Godfrey, but this is fun!" TR was still very much the prig, at least in speech: "He immortalized himself along the Little Missouri by calling to one of his cowboys, 'Hasten forward quickly here!'" Years later he wrote: "There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid."

There is something strangely infantile in this obsession with dice-loaded physical courage when the only courage that matters in political or even "real" life is moral. Although TR was often reckless and always domineering in politics, he never showed much real courage, and despite some trust-busting, he never took on the great ring of corruption that ruled and rules in this republic. But then, he was born a part of it. At best, he was just a dude with the reform play. Fortunately, foreign affairs would bring him glory. As Lincoln was the Bismarck of the American states, Theodore Roosevelt was the Kaiser Wilhelm II, a more fortunate and intelligent figure than the Kaiser but every bit as bellicose and conceited. Edith Wharton described with what pride TR showed her a photograph of himself and the Kaiser with the Kaiser's inscription: "President Roosevelt shows the Emperor of Germany how to command an attack."


I once asked Alice Longworth just why her father was such a war-lover. She denied that he was. I quoted her father's dictum: "No triumph of peace is quite as great as the supreme triumph of war." A sentiment to be echoed by yet another sissy in the next generation: "Meglio un giorno da leone che cento anni da pecora." "Oh, well," she said, "that's the way they all sounded in those days." But they did not all sound that way. Certainly Theodore, Senior, would have been appalled, and I doubt if Eleanor really approved of Uncle Teddy's war-mongering.

As president, TR spoke loudly and carried a fair-sized stick. When Colombia wouldn't give him the land that he needed for a canal, he helped invent Panama out of a piece of Colombia; and got his canal. He also installed the United States as the policeman of the Western Hemisphere. In order to establish an American hegemony in the Pacific, TR presided over the tail-end of the slaughter of more than half a million Filipinos who had been under the illusion that after the Spanish-American War they would be free to set up an independent republic under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo. But TR had other plans for the Philippines. Nice Mr. Taft was made the governor-general and one thousand American teachers of English were sent to the islands to teach the natives the sovereign's language.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, TR's "open-door policy" to China had its ups and downs. In 1905 the Chinese boycotted American goods because of American immigration policies, but the United States was still able to establish the sort of beachhead on the mainland of Asia that was bound to lead to what TR would have regarded as a bully fine war with Japan. Those of us who were involved in that war did not like it all that much.

I told you he was a douche.

I'm also frankly surprised that Harding, of all people, would somehow be a president who didn't get the treatment he deserved.

One of the first acts of Warren Harding was the pardon and release of all the political prisoners who were locked up under Wilson, the most tyrannical head of state this country ever had.

[Elfdart]

I'm curious why you rate Bush Sr. so low. The First Gulf War acheived all it's goals with very few casualties, and he was willing to do unpopular things to keep the economy afloat.

The pardoning of the criminals convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair and his confirmation that he was a religio-conservative bigot.

Keep in mind that much of the Iran-Contra skullduggery was run out of Bush's VP office.

[Einzige]

One of the first acts of Warren Harding was the pardon and release of all the political prisoners who were locked up under Wilson, the most tyrannical head of state this country ever had.

Warren Harding is one of the most underrated of all Presidents, and not simply in comparison to his abominable predecessor. He was one of the first Presidents to speak directly to Southerners in favor of civil rights on their home turf.

[Force Lord]

Too bad that the Teapot Dome affair damages his reputation a bit, even though it hasn't been proved that he had a direct hand on it.

[Alphawolf55]

I'm wondering about the consistent placement of FDR in the top 3. I mean I'd put him under the good list but the fact that he interned Japanese Americans, Tried to stack the Courts in his favor, got rid of some counts of free speech, broke previous accounts of what was considered good ettiquete by running for 4 terms, lied to the American people about his health should take alot of points off, or are people just putting him up there because of the New Deal?

Also even stranger whats with the high ranking of JFK?

[CarsonPalmer]

I'm wondering about the consistent placement of FDR in the top 3. I mean I'd put him under the good list but the fact that he interned Japanese Americans, Tried to stack the Courts in his favor, got rid of some counts of free speech, broke previous accounts of what was considered good ettiquete by running for 4 terms, lied to the American people about his health should take alot of points off, or are people just putting him up there because of the New Deal?

Well, you really have to compare FDR to what you would have gotten otherwise. Its hard to imagine a potential president at that time who wouldn't have interned the Japanese-Americans, and I'm not even sure which "counts of free speech" he got rid of. Breaking "good etiquette" isn't all that big of a deal, and worked out very well for the American people, and since his health didn't play a big role until late in his presidency, I don't think it should hurt him that badly either.

And its more than the New Deal, its his actions in preparing to fight and conducting the Second World War. Stuff like Lend-Lease, even before the US entered, was pretty important.

[Tritonic]

Laws including budgets are written and passed by the legislative branch (Congress), not the President; the influence of the executive branch is lesser (some veto capabilities).

For instance, the House was under a Democratic majority during all of your graph except for after the 1994 mid-terms until 2006 (a 12 year period of a Republican majority, including most of the part credited to Clinton on your graph).

Debt decreased between 1980 and 2000, but it wasn't Reagan who did the decreasing.

A more accurate statement:

With spending accelerating a little slower than usual, while with strong economic times for revenues, deficits were low from the mid 1990s through 2001, even a surplus during the latter part of that period. Then, by 2002 or rather especially 2003, the Republicans (who were in control of Congress since the 1994 mid-terms until 2006) lost their fiscal discipline, no longer having an opposite-party president to differentiate themselves fighting against, greatly raising spending again with the start of the Iraq War, etc.

Federal spending versus revenue, in the process showing deficits and the rare surplus years (not showing state and local governments, with which most of these figures would be roughly doubled):



Total:

[Alphawolf55]

That 200+ billion surplus is an act of accounting fraud btw.

[Tritonic]

That 200+ billion surplus is an act of accounting fraud btw.

The government follows different rules than would be legally acceptable for a corporation with regard to counting unfunded future liabilities, which would make the deficit figures worse than shown and eliminate the brief surpluses if differently considered. However, no matter how you figure it, relatively there was a lower spending to revenue ratio briefly during the late 1990s, and ideally I'd include a chart showing 2010 and the next several years, as we're really going into terra incognito. Like the bottom chart above illustrates, we're headed towards soon reaching 50% of GDP in spending.

[Alphawolf55]

True, I wouldn't deny that. I'm just personally tired of everyone claiming there was this 200 billion dollar surplus that just mysteriously disappeared when in reality, it was merely lowered to a 4 billion dollar deficit, that would've became a perfectly balanced budget the next, once you took into account lower interest spending.