Who is likely the most morally grounded President?

What Kennedy liked to bang broads??? Next your going to tell me that water is wet and the sky is blue!!!

On a serious note, I think you kind of need to be not well morally grounded to be an effectual president. Take Carter or Ford or Bush I for instance, who are probably are most morally grounded presidents of the last 50 years and they are also are least effectual. Take Kennedy for instance, it takes a certain ballsyness (aka a lack of morals) to do what he was doing, but I also think it served him well during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Could you imagine if Carter had handled that. I'm pretty sure things would not have gone so well.

Note: I love Jimmy Carter I think he is an honest good person, but even as a liberal I don't think he was a good president.

 

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

 

ROX, thanks for the "special consideration," but don't be concerned about it. I've argued about Jack Kennedy here with liberals, progressives, and moderates (you know who you are!), who I do hold in very high regard (Kennedy, not the guys I argued with ;-)- ). Regarding JFK's well documented libido? Eisenhower allegedly had an affair with his driver, Capt. Kay Summersby, during WWII. FDR had an affair of decades duration with Lucy Page Mercer, his "personal and social secretary." Members of the press either knew about, or suspected, that those affairs were taking place, but didn't report them. A President's (or Supreme Allied Commander/Europe) private life was considered off limits. His public life was something else altogether. The press drew a distinction between the two, a practice that I wish still existed. I don't care if a President has an affair, if he/she is discreet. I care about his policies, his leadership during a crisis. His public morality, not his private morality. I can draw that distinction. Not everyone can, of course, and I respect that. What I find sad is that so much time and energy is spent by the reporting media trying to sniff out scandal, when they should be spending that energy, in my opinion, reporting on issues of substance, issues that matter.

 

I'd argue Carter. Genuinely good man with a good heart, who just happened to be an inept, bumbling moron who was unqualified to run a gas station, but got elected because people were still freaking about an incredibly overrated scandal in Watergate. That alone says how relevant being a "good man" is to being President.

 

I'd say Carter, and contrary to what a lot of others say, I think he was pretty good as President. In some areas he was exceptional, in some areas he was certainly less than exceptional. All together I think he was above average, who acted often out of courage and his moral conviction, and I think it lead him in the right direction.

 

I know its popular to rail on Carter and he was definitely terrible at playing the game of politics but lets not get totally carried away here.

 

I will add that Watergate was hardly "an incredibly overrated scandal."

 

Watergate is overrated in terms of what other political and campaigning machines probably did in the past, but I think with the postwar resources and powers the President had and the open dispute with Congress and law enforcement you had a terrifying precedent that had to be stamped out legally and possibly politically. I think a lot of bad situations converged when Carter was President. He did alienate his party in Congress and seemed to have made bad choices at both ends of the Iran Hostage Crisis (welcoming the Shah and trying to negotiate), but I almost wish he was in charge in '64 or '68; if he could have resisted the urge all the other WWII vets in office had to win a big one against the Communists that decade might have ended a little more peacefully.

 

He used shady electoral tactics which pretty much every president before him used, and about the only thing you could say is that Nixon was somewhat more blatant about it. But the real difference between Nixon and his predecessors was that a lot of the shadiness and governmental incompetence that occurred in Vietnam ( "what, you're telling me that Ngo was killed when he was overthrown? NO WAI.") caused the American people to go into a "let's get the corrupt bastards in Washington" mood, and Nixon happened to be in office at the time. The mood continued after Watergate and so the American people elected a nice young uncorrupt man who it turned out, was a complete idiot.

It's ridiculous to me how Watergate overshadows everything Nixon accomplished, while a family of bootleggers and election riggers, whose pretty boy son bumbled from one foreign policy mess to another to a degree that would embarrass Bush II, is venerated because his brains were blown out by a loser. As someone who highly, highly respects Nixon - I view him or Truman as the greatest of the post-war presidents - it's absolutely frustrating.

 

It's like asking what puppet has the best personality when the ventriloquist isn't even taken into account. Presidents have no real authority of anything, it's the shareholders that have the power.

 

William Henry Harrison.
Why? Because he died on his 32nd day in office.
Blank moral slate.

 

The bootlegging charge against Joe Kennedy has never been proven. Democratic big city ward politics was corrupt, but, again, conclusive voter fraud in favor of either Kennedy or Nixon was never proven. These are secondary to your main point but touted so regularly as criticisms of JFK that it needs to be stated again and again that they simply haven't been validated. Kennedy is respected because he was the first successful candidate to campaign on Civil Rights, convinced LBJ to do the same as running mate and then was popular enough for LBJ to assume the legacy when no other Executives or candidates up that point would. This had a narrower immediate impact than their deceptions and failures in Vietnam or the Bay of Pigs; but in the same way that Nixon's specific mistakes had to be memorialized, so did Kennedy's and Johnson successes. I won't neglect to praise Nixon's reapproachement with China, however, really no good reason for that to have not happened much earlier.

 

Hands down Carter on morally grounded And His fabled ineptness is nearly complete bs. It is based on conservative spin and the fact that he lost relection to an empty headed actor who ****ed the country by starting a drift to mindless government hatred that leads to continual self inflicted bs like the "fiscal cliff" bs, steep budget deficits, the damaging fantasy of supply sideeconomics-- the ultimate free lunch--- and hence decaying infrastructure, education, the environment etc.

Dubya will go down as a complete disaster for the country and the Reublicans are already afraid to have him anywhere near their reelection campaigns. Yet he was relected so that is no yardstick for competence, and certainly not morality.

Post presidency recent GOP presidents, Gerald Ford through Dubya have done next to nothing for humanity, but cash in on corporate boards and be country clubbing golf guys.

Obama is at best a Clinton who kept his *ick in his pants, always willing to compromise on benfits for the needy and solicitous of the wealthy and corporte elite-- a corporate Dem, when not courting ordinary folks' votes. Post presidency the Clinton model is the best we can hope for-- Obama not cashing in directly by just becoming an executive on Wall Street, only part time overly well paid corporate speaking engagements and sweet talking a bit of corporate charity from the wealthy corporate folks he feels comfortable with. I certainly would not expect Obama to devote his life to taking on a huge project like ending the buying of our government ala Citizen's United Style, Climate Change or some other major problem which might create controvesy with elements of the corporate establishment such as human righs in the style Carter has..

 

OK! This definitely gives one more insight into your ideology.

Rocket River

 

Nuclear physicist is a moron?

 

I am not going to defend Carter as a President, as that is not the issue... however he was not and is not a moron. He is a very bright man that graduated in the top 5% of his class.

 

My vote goes to Ronald Reagan. I always got the sense that his morals and credibility were beyond reproach. I was proud to have him as our president.

 

Nuclear physicist is not a moron of course, but the smart they have might not translate to political world.

 

South America would disagree with you.