Has it occurred to you that that may be due to the fact that he, as you observe, accomplished very little of his (wife’s) agenda?

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Crete/3450/index.html

That anyone could manage to think highly of this repugnant rapist toad is just appalling.

Reason #1 being that the person who would opine that doesn’t know a damned thing about Franklin D. Roosevelt, the biggest thief in human history.

Washington did impose martial law. He did activate the militia from surrounding states and other parts of Pennsylvania. He did personally lead military troops to suppress American citizens who were rebelling against the tax. (That tax was a failure, by the way, and was repealed less than 10 years later.)

Those are facts, neither disingenous nor misleading.

“working through a panic” is a code for ruthlessly allowing weak or dying business entities to fail. then the bottom-feeders move in, money starts flowing again, and the cycle begins anew. it’s harsh; it’s no fun to go through; but it works.

fdr screwed it up. by meddling in the business cycle; and empowering that mistake with the power of government – which he expanded greatly – he just made things worse; and allowed the depression to drag on & on. allowing it to get so bad that it took a world war to finally overcome his inept “leadership” and get us back on our feet.

if you doubt that, consider that fdr had esentially unlimited powers, a compliant congress, and a public willing to accept his dictats, but – even allowing for make-work jobs such as the ccc & wpa – the unemployment rate in the decade of the ’30’s never dipped below 15%.

even though fdr was “helping to end the depression”. odd, that. for some reason, fdr’s *never* held accountable for his gross economic *failures*. everyone blames the banks; or the stock market; or the republicans.

just like teacher told ‘em to. and don’t even get me *started* on the fdr national ponzi scheme.

We’ll have to agree to disagree since I think a 150+yr precedent outweighs the example you provided which is disingenuous at best and factually misleading at worst.

Brother: The citation uses “competence” and “Warren G. Harding” in the same sentence
Me: the basic idea is that being a flashy flamboyant member of the world ego stage is precisely the opposite of being a good president
Me: the less a president does, and especially the less he tries to expand the power of the federal government (especially the executive branch), the more competent he is to the task of being president
Me: george bush is possibly the worst president we’ve ever had for a number of reasons – but the biggest is that he daily wipes his @ss with the constitution, trying to get extra corny smudges on the bill of rights
Me: anyway, that’s the idea behind the article
Me: and i agree

I think Polk was a shit president for the war of conquest.

“Pointless carnage of WWI?” I think that’s a little much. We suffered comparatively little compared to France and England (less than a tenth as much), and without America the Allies wouldn’t have won. Maybe that would have been a good thing, but a German Empire encompassing all of Europe? Dangerous. I think Wilson’s biggest mistake (actually, the biggest mistake made by the Allies) was not pressing Germany into an unconditional surrender and eventually dismembering her in 1920 or so.

My favorite president? Eisenhower. Ended the Korean war, cut down on military spending, and managed to avoid nuclear war–or any other war, in a very tense time. He had his problems (like the covert actions in Iran and Guatemala), but he knew what he was doing.

The Whiskey Rebellion undoes any “greatness” attributable to Washington.

“There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former tolls had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it, he said that he would have done the had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it.”

…scholars insist that America’s great presidents are the nation builders and the war leaders–men who overturned the settled constitutional order during periods of crisis….

…professors prefer presidents who dream big and attempt great things–even when they leave wreckage in their wake…

So… How does Bush fit into this theory? He certainly turned the Constitution on end and left wreckage in his wake. And nation building has been his middle name (albeit not any nations in this hemisphere). He’s also changed the way we think about foreign policy. Instead of how long between wars we now think in terms of how many wars we’re in at one time. I mean is that the substance of a greatness or what?