Best Republican President out of the Last 5 Who do you consider the best Republican President out of the last 5 Rocket River
I think Reagan by a long shot. GH Bush was capable but really suffered from his lack of charisma. He had some good policies but was too slow to react to the 1992-93 recession. As it turned out Clinton followed Bush's policy to a large extent in the 1993 budget and benefitted from the results of that. Reagan wasn't perfect and very far from the god that Conservatives portray him as. I often point out that Reagan based on his record couldn't survive a Republican primary these days. He's not the devil though that Liberals portray him as. While there is certainly questions of the results of his policies in 1980 the solutions of the previous decades weren't working. Stagflation made it difficult to just rely upon government based solutions to solve the economic problems of the time and taking the reins off of private business did prove successful in reviving the economy. On geopolitics while he did come in and for much of his first term was a hawk his policies did end the Soviet Union. It was largely a failure of his predecessors Bush and Clinton that the end of the Soviet Union wasn't addressed better. GW Bush in some ways is like Carter that he is a better man than he was a President. I think he was definitely over his head and allowed people like Cheney and Wolfowitz to guide him into the invasion and occupation of Iraq along with a Neo Wilsonian policy that was disastrous. On the domestic front like his father he really didn't have a good vision and just went along with the standard conservative line of tax cuts and deregulation. While his handling of crisis like Katrina showed that his administration was inept. He's far from our worst President but I would put him in the lower half of Presidents. Ford was pretty much just a place holder. He was a fairly unremarkable President that presided over the end of the Nixon and Vietnam. He will always be remembered for his pardon of Nixon than he will anything else. We already have enough to discuss about Trump but he is giving a run to being the worst President in US History.
Have to disagree about Reagan. His tax reform that gutted the top rates and started the ball rolling on the asinine supply side/voodoo economic coupled with insipid defense spending on boondoggles like Star Wars led to a tripling of the national debt during his tenure. Debt as a % of GDP was never as high as it was under Reagan. The destruction of the middle class and rise in income disparity began with those tax bills. Finally EMTALA has to be laid at his feet. Sounds good on paper hospitals can’t turn you away even if you can’t pay right? But just like the GOPs belief in not allowing pre existing conditions exclusions you can’t have these things without universal healthcare. It just doesn’t work under a private insurance model to force hospitals to give away services for free. This has led to massive rises in healthcare costs and insurance premiums as hospitals had to charge more to cover their losses in the ER.
Maybe this poll should have been the worst republican president i think we all know whom that would be.
I agree that his tax reform and supply side economics led to massive debt and other issues. At the time though when the economy was heavily burdened by inflation and US industries were losing competitive advantages already deregulating the economy and cutting taxes did spur much more entrepreneurship and productivity. While as part of that was diminishment of manufacturing and other jobs that had built the middle class if we had continued with previous practices it's not clear if those jobs would've survived anyway. Especially when inflation was eating away at savings. Also one thing that has been lost in history is that Carter near the end of his presidency was moving in the direction of deregulating and the airline deregulation act happened in 1978. Also lost in history is that Reagan actually raised taxes in the 1986 tax reform act. This is one I'm not sure can be just laid on Reagan. The Hippocratic oath already mandates that doctors have to provide care.
reagan is possibly the most overrated president and as mentioned, if he was running today the trumpublicans would blast him as a liberal for his amnesty proposal among other things. he blew up our debt and deficit, trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the wealthy, out-of-control spending, aligned himself with a**holes like saddam and what ended up becoming the taliban and al-queada. during the iran and iraq war we were arming both sides. illegally selling arms to iran. ollie north and the iran contras. our involvement in central america, which led to the murder of thousands included the rape and murder of catholic nuns in el salvador by united states supported death squads. we supported genocide in guatemala. his ignoring of the aids crisis in its early days. imo, reagan was a monster. id say eisenhower was the last good republican president, but from that list i would have to pick ford simply b/c he did the least damage.
It's ironically the one term president in HW Bush. He was the most pragamtic, the most intelligent GOP president we've seen in decades. Reagan was a charasmatic idiot who didn't know anything about government, economic policy etc outside of surface layer platitudes and resorted to red scare tactics and started the crazed movement of "anything dealing with government regardless of context is evil". Reagan was the start of stupifying political discourse from the GOP were nuanced policy positions didn't matter anymore and just jingoistic rheotric won over. Reagan was Trump lite before Trump.
Well that's a hard disagree. Reagan was the start of our downward spiral into this deregulated wallstreet world paradigm where we pretty much assume the economy is always heading towards a unsustainable bubble full of consumer debt. He also cheapened political discourse and was the precursor to Trump. Ronald Reagan is possibly one of the worst presidents we ever had.
Reagan was also the start of huge corporate money in politics and the sharp rise in the joke of lobbying. Reagan is the source of much evil really. In 100 years he will be recognized as the gateway to Trump and the downfall of America as a superpower.
Except without deregulation leading to increased productivity the economy was languishing under uncompetitive industries while inflation was wiping out savings. Again Carter actually started deregulating the US economy. Nixon started using issues like race and "law and order" before Reagan. Trump's rhetoric far more matches Nixon's than it does Reagans. I will also point out that Reagan signed the last amnesty bill and not only spoke about the importance of immigrants but also enacted policies that welcomed them.
Dude you seem to have some rose tinted glasses believing America has been prospering for the average American since Reagan and only recently with Trump have we suffered. Dude, for the past 40 years we have seen the median household income adjusted barely rise while median household debt adjusted has sharply increased greatly outpacing any gains in median income by a significant margin. That just isn't sustainable. This is a large reason why people like Trump can obtain power through economic frustration. This is why political discourse has become more divisive over time. The median family has had their wallets tightened decade after decade. This is the problem with modern mainstream media. They prop up unemployment and GDP numbers as economic health indicators for the common American while completely ignoring these long term trends.
I'm not claiming everything is great now or has been since Reagan but I think most people don't know how bad things were in the late 1970's. Stagflation is something we've never seen. In fact we've seen little inflation since then. A lot of that has to do with fiscal policies that were put in and also with increased productivity. As such we've had a generation that hasn't experienced how corrosive inflation is. Debt is certainly a problem and for me personally I tend to agree with the policies of the GH Bush and Clinton in regard to dealing with fiscal policy but the idea that things were going great in the late 70's and then Reagan came along ignores just how bad things were and might've continued with out major reform.
Having issues in the 70s and Reagan being horrible for our long term economic health in terms of middle class Americans aren't mutually exclusive. In fact you can say that Reagan as a solution is like dousing water on a chemical fire to end the fire. His rhetoric has created a generation of Americans who automatically call anything to help the common American as communism. Publicly health insurance... Communism. Welfare..Communism. And I don't mean fiscal responsibility. I'm referring to household consumer debt that has sharply increased with median income barely increasing. Consumer debt that American families hold is a much more pressing issue than our federal deficits. In fact I would sacrifice increasing federal deficits if it means that it would decrease the burden of debt on American families. Our economy has been sustained by consumer debt for the past 40 years. Hence why we can have these amazing gdp numbers while Americans hold on to record high personal debts. We will continue to go through this cycle of boom and bust where the common American family hardly feels the benefits of the booms and feels all the impacts of the busts.
It's probably Ford. A mid-century Republican is a totally different animal who would have some ideological overlap with a modern Democrat. In terms of the raw damage done to the country through actual policy, it's neck and neck between Reagan and Bush Jr. You could argue a handicap for Bush Jr because 9/11 was a catalyst for a lot of the terrible decisions that came out of his administration. Ironically Trump, despite being by far the worst human being to ever set foot in Washington DC, has been so incompetent and ineffective he's going to end up with a fairly milquetoast reputation in history's eyes.
Well Regean was horrible by making deficit spending the new norm. Imagine if he had gone the other way and made surplus spending the norm. We could have a 20+ trillion lifeline right now. Trump is easily the worst president of all time. Both Bushes had their stupid wars and terror attacks. Got to be Ford
Looking thru the lens of who was the best Republican president for republicanism/conservatism, the correct answer is Reagan. But, since I don't think that ideological approach has been any good for America, I can't vote for him in the poll. He was a pivotal figure that pivoted us in the wrong direction. I also have a personal beef with him for his anti-union policies that kicked the legs out from under my father's industry and caused us some hardship (we eventually overcame). And finally, you'll always see in a thread about Reagan someone giving him credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. And that's total bs American mythology. Yes, the USSR had fiscal problems in the arms race. But, it collapsed because Gorbachev was trying to orchestrate a difficult renovation of both their government and economy to solve decades-old problems and the entrenched powers tried to stop him after it was too late. Nuclear spending and the threat of the US was one star in the constellation, but the main driver was Gorbachev himself, not Reagan. So anyway, once you knock out Reagan for personal ideological animosities, you have some pretty small fries to pick from. Ford is before my time and he hasn't managed to make himself noticeable in history. W was a disaster, and Trump is twice as bad as whatever W was. That leaves HW by process of elimination.
The one thing I credit Reagan was allowing GPS use. That spurred innovation. Reagan did a lot more damage than good though but this was one of best things he did during his presidency
