kurabrhm said:
Its a bit late for that. Reagan is now dead. He was very old and very senile when he died. One should forgive and forget the poor man rather than make him a criminal posthumously.
If the shoe fits. Just because someone is senile or dead doesn't mean discussion of the naegatives of their public life should be off limits.
Most underrated: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Gerald Ford. Please don't kill me. That doesn't mean I think that Gerald Ford was the best president, not even close, but most people think he was just that goose that resided in office after Nixon resigned. But I think Gerald Ford saved the presidency and restored faith of the US public in the president. Carter and Reagan also played their parts, but Ford layed down the foundation.
Most Overrated: Washington. Please don't kill me again. I'm not saying Washington was all that bad, he was what every president since has wanted to be (hell, I'm sure they would love to be half of what Washington was). But he had a situation that would never be repeated again, and it wasn't entirely the force of his will that guided the young America through the first few years. As JFK later said "Every American mother wants her boy to grow up and be president without becoming a politician first" - Washington was the only man who achieved that. Any problems during the Washington administration was blamed on the politicians around him, Washington was above politics. So I think his status as god among men isn't entirely deserved, and I think comparing him to other presidents is unfair. So he won't make my list of best presidents, even though I've love him at the top.
Top five:
1. Abe Lincoln - Saw the US through the hard times of the Civil War, not perfectly, but did the best of a hard time. Without that victory, the presidency wouldn't have reasserted itself over the South.
2. Andrew Jackson - took the US from an elitist virtual aristocracy to a popular democracy.
3. Harry Truman - Made the best of an inherited Administration he knew little about at the end of WWII, and held his ground to challenges to presidential authority in the Korean War.
4. Ronnie Raygun - as much as I hate this fellow, I guess the popular view of him that he made Americans proud of themselves and their past again holds some water. And he trusted experts and advisors that he hired (FDR, the man who I was going to put here, struggled against his advisors for his own vision). Trust me, if I was a politically biased historian, Ronnie wouldn't have made it to the list.
5. Grover Cleveland - An honest politician, who can find?
There is a discussion of American presidents
here. Feel free to take part.
