Who was the best US president in the last 40 years?

I cannot believe what I’m about to say, but I’m going to go with my initial gut reaction to seeing that list. Of all of them, I admire Bush 1 for making decisions based on what was right in the moment even at the expense of political expediency. The entire decade of the 90’s may have been very different had Bush 1 not had the conviction to stand up to a room full of war hawks and hold the line against invading Iraq, which was a mistake his son would later unfortunately make. He also attempted to address rising budget deficits that were not projected in ‘88 (when he made the “no new taxes” pledge) by enacting cuts and tax increases that were fiscally reasonable given the shifting economic landscape, and he did this knowing he’d be crucified for it in ‘92. I can’t think of another president out of that group who consistently opted for the best decision for the situation over the best political maneuver for himself. In retrospect, he doesn’t get enough credit for that, and when I was in my early 20’s, I certainly didn’t recognize it at the time. However, I appreciate it now.

Reagan

I'd probably go with Clinton, but not with a whole lot of conviction or certainty. Many of Clinton's flaws bothered me less than some of the others, and on policies I tended to agree with him a lot, so that might skew my answer a bit. If I really disagreed with him more, I might not put him first.

Reagan was incredibly effective and influential, but some of the influences have been pretty horrific, and I think Republicans putting him on a pedestal alongside the biggies like Lincoln is really dumb. He could be my no. 1, but I feel like I'd want to add an asterisk or something.

Obama's another odd one for me, because when I think back, substantively, in eight years, it seems like he had two major accomplishments, cleaning up the economic mess that was dumped on him and Obamacare, which pushing through ended up making it impossible to get anything done legislatively after that.

Trump is still working at destroying Obama care, and is pretty much still making reversing Obama no matter what the issue is one of his priorities, so I feel like, by the time the Trump regime is deposed, Obama may well end up being remembered mostly for being the well spoken black guy that scared America so badly, we elected Trump.

I hope I'm wrong about that, and using think it's justified, but I feel like even a tiny bit of blame for enabling the Trump presidency may end up overshadowing everything else.

Carter, I always liked, when I disagreed with him, and the guy was sharp, but not a great President. I sat in on one of his classes, though, and feel like, maybe if he'd had the benefit of coming after Reagan and Bush like Clinton did, he might have been really good.

Bush 1 I personally liked, but being President wasn't his gig, and he seemed to lack the leadership and personality to do much more than trail on Reagan's coat tails until Slick Willy dazzled everybody with superior style.

Bush 2 was probably well intentioned, but 911, Iraq, Afghanistan and Katrina really screwed him up and anything else he did or didn't do will likely be forgotten.

And last, there's Trump, whose deeds are still being done. He's at the bottom of my list, but, in terms of influencing the country and changing the course of history, he may still end up with the biggest chapter in the history books. I hope I'm wrong one that one, or that the backlash is what he's remembered for.

Josiah Bartlet!

Carter, the only one out of them who is actually a decent human being

Barack Obama. 🇺🇸

Reagan - although I wasn't of his party and I didn't vote for him, his background as being first an actor, then a Governor, then President, gave him the smooth confidence in the public eye necessary for public speaking and State of the Union addresses. When there was a crisis brewing, he didn't immediately fly off like someone else I could name, but won't. but looked into it, prepared his speech and outlined his proposal to handle it. Reminds me of FDR. He didn't spew hate messages to any one organization or group while working on a crisis - you don't DO that when you want the public's confidence - and their votes.

Most people don't know their history.

Many of the realities of HW's presidency are not well understood by the public.

He will go down as one of the most influential and highly qualified presidents of the modern age.

The Donald

LOL...on scale of 1-5 all would get a 1 at best. This goes all the way back to Washington....
Some worse than others but none great as our distorted history makes them seem with Andrew Jackson @ -10 and Abraham Lincoln @ -20.....

There seem to be presidents from only one country in that list. I'm sure the best president is statistically more likely to be, or have been, leader of another country.

You.

It doesn’t matter. You can say something good and bad about every president and be right.

I was going to say Frank Roosevelt but yea...that was more than 25 years ago..so I'm going to say the ghost of Frank Roosevelt

jfk

You mean the lesser lesser of multiple fakes?

🤔 none

Obama was and still is a joke

Hard to say. It's like they're all the same guy. 🤭

FDR

Trump

all politicians are shit