Favorite US President Poll #3 1881-1933

The top two from each poll go to the final round, sometime early in the week, UNLESS someone gets 50%, in which case they go to the final round all by themselves.

All terms started and ended in March (that's when inauguration day was back then), unless otherwise noted. Also, unless otherweise noted, allwere Republicans.

I'm including Grover Cleveland only once.

He passed women's suffrage, the eight hour workday, won a world war, banned child labor, created the federal reserve system, the federal trade commission, passed a national income tax, tariff reform, workmen's comp, the clayton antitrust act -- I cannot think of another president that was this successful at implementing a vision, despite his flaws (racism, interventions in latin American, etc.)

In his time he was looked at much the same way that shrub is; an interloper, with no modesty about his belief that he had the answers for other people's problems. Wilson may have "won" the war for us, but he planted the seeds of the next war with his foolish and humiliating approach to the peace. He was also a devout racist, which I don't like in anyone. TR, all the way.

His proposal for the League of Nations was sidelined by that Repug twit Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilson did piss of George and Clemencau when he said we shouldn't punish Germany.

It's his expression of "making the world safe for democracy" that he so boldly proclaimed as a rationale for the war. A lot of people throughout the world believed that, and it gave some of them hope that they might be able to break from the yoke of European imperialism.

But Wilson then refused to entertain the notion that "non-whites" an non-Christians were capable of running their own democratic governments. In this context, the roots of the Vietnam War, and to a larger extent the spread of Stalinism, can be traced to Wilson rebuffing an individual named Ho Chi Mihn. Many small, struggling nations that until that time truly did look to America as a beacon of hope lost their faith because of Wilson.

A bookish type, even sex scandals wouldn't stick to him since no one believed them.

They are the only presidents to ever win reelection but win fewer states the second time they won than the first.

Just a little presidential trivia.

Calvin Coolidge was endorsed by the KKK?

It never ceases to amaze me that Wilson is considered "progressive". He was a white supremacist to the core, the Klan celebrated at his inaugural, he promoted eugenics and was a warmonger and colonialist. Wilson was perhaps one of the worst Presidents of the last century.

Both Wilson and TR were good Presidents because of their dedication to the Progressive Movement. However, Wilson's forgien policy of Morality over the "Big Stick" policy of TR is why I chose Wilson, and because I felt TR was too hawkish in wanting to enter WWI.

;-)

...mostly because of reading Theodore Rex. It's a good, unvarnished examination of Teddy that highlights both his flaws and his strengths. I have a lot of problems with some of his views, but overall, I think he's been on of our better Presidents.

3 words:

National Parks System


Rough Riders Baby!

in this field.