Kisses from two hot Presidents! Lucky woman!

Although he died when I wasn't too old. But the question is: during my lifetime. I have always had problems with Clinton because of DADT, DOMA and NAFTA. I always thought he had no balls on the first two. Maybe they got bitten off by the horsefaced one in AR, Paula something? And, I will admit, I didn't vote for Jimmy the 2nd time, midguidedly voted for Anderson. That is the one vote I really regret. Grandma hated Harry "Ass" Truman for sending Uncle Fred to Korea. JFK is more romanticized legend than actual deeds. Johnson got a shitload done, but his intransigence on Vietnam brought him down. Jimmy supported a lot of the right wing shit, he's better now than he was as President. Clinton sucked up wayyyyyy too much to the Rethugs. Unfortunately, for all the good things that he has done and had to work with Blue Dogs and Rethugs who oppose him at every step, our current President needs a spine and a realization that the the aforementioned will never deal with him honestly.

My earliest remembrance of a president was Truman and I got the distorted idea, being in Texas at the time, that everybody hated him.

i was still in the womb when jfk died. we could open up a whole debate as to whether or not that's within my "lifetime"....

Ballsy president too. The older I get, the less I admire his intimidation of the legislative branch, regardless of the necessity of the laws he crammed through. Sadly, he undid himself with his constant "bigger is better" mentality, particularly in Vietnam.

all presidents are. i mean, nixon created the epa, go figure. and poppy signed the americans with disability act. reagan, hmm, that's a toughie -- ok, he did sign cobra, that's something i guess. well, nothing decent comes to mind for shrub, but there's probably something. something very small, no doubt, but something.

clinton was certainly a more popular president, but in terms of accomplishments, especially enduring accomplishments, lbj has 'em all beat by a mile.

obama could be great, but is hindered by the times. republicans and the media won't let him come anywhere close to accomplishing what he could. just imagine him with a strongly liberal congress. sigh.

... Especially if we're going to judge on raw accomplishment.

Of course, since the question is framed as the best president "in your lifetime," my choices are limited to Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton and Obama. If we could go back a little earlier, I would choose FDR.

what with the war and all (my friends were all draft age), but in retrospect, he really got a lot accomplished on the domestic front.

Grover the Good.

Ma, Ma Where's my Pa?
Gone to the White House, Ha, ha, ha!

And he's still stepping up to the plate everyday. He's one of my heroes.

...but being dead makes it kinda tough.

There aren't too many of your generation who are computer savvy...

We can all agree that Obama is better than Clinton right? I mean Obama has just done more where as Clinton was just lip service and was more preoccupied with keeping his job than actually doing it.

...you're on the wrong website! I think you make a good argument, but no post on DU should start with We can all agree that ....

No. We can't.

I would love to be able to say someday, all three were excellent

Unfortunately, President Kennedy only had less than 3 years to get things done before his life was abruptly cut short. After JFK, I'll go with LBJ. Some of my fondest memories are of the Great Society and associated public service announcements, which gave me cause to be optimistic about the future. Take away the Vietnam War, and LBJ could easily have been one of the Top Five US Presidents. For that matter, Kennedy probably could have been one of the very greats, too.

I voted for him, and that was the first time I ever voted.

the first hundred times I heard it.

What is that from?

A wholly owned subsidiary of the World Wide Web^TM.

Best POTUS for domestic policy since FDR, though had he lived JFK would have probably been the best in both domestic and foreign policy.

Foreign policy it's Jimmy Carter for promoting human rights around the world.

He's been the most progressive president in my lifetime imo. And also he didn't have white privilege that the other president's had to help them along, no birthers, teabaggers or 24/7 hate news channel dedicated to help try and fail your administration. Obama, has overcame so many obstacles and if he wins re-election he will be hands down the best president ever.

I'm still pulling for Obama.

Then I'm pulling for Elizabeth Warren and me living for at least another ten years.

... by a country mile. No one else is even in his league.

nt

except for that little thing in Southeast Asia. . .shoot--nobody's perfect. .

Im kidding!

(Sorta... the bills he signed would brand him a liberal in todays political climate.)

JFK.

Last edited Thu May 24, 2012, 11:24 PM - Edit history (1)

Watergate and restored a sense of fundamental decency to politics. (Gerald Ford deserves a co-credit for this also, I think.)

Were Ford still alive, I have trouble seeing him as successful in today's Repig Party.

Good thread by the way -- allows everyone to (as the song says) "accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative"

and I still believe that history will be much kinder to him after Reagan gets his due

I'm not a fan of the Viet Nam war.

especially after the dirty dozen years of Raygun and Poppy Bush ... when Clinton became president I felt like I got my country back.

Wow, ageism rears its ugly head. At least us relics have a knowledge of history having lived it first hand.

Or it wasn't meant to be. The site is known as having far more people over 55 than anything else here. I say something cruel and hell's fury descends on me. It's actually quite great to have the older crowd cause they help me sift through the many lies of history that I was taught in school. In any event, it was meant to be endearing. But since the first line doesn't allow smilies it falls flat. No worries though...I have nothing but respect for the "relics". Like my mum says....I'm on my 7th Pope. I insult my own mother in that. Maybe it's from her since she describes herself belonging in the reference archives of the library.

I apologize if you were insulted. But there was no insult meant. I figured it was sadder that I only lived through 2 Democratic Presidents. People go as far back as Johnson and JFK.

One does get a tad testy because of the put downs of ripened persons. BTW, I go back to Roosevelt, hence my avatar. The 68 refers to my actual age . Was speaking with some friends a week or so ago and technically, I belong in the Silent Generation which includes those born during the Great Depression and during WWII. However, many of us born during WWII feel and think more like Baby Boomers even though we are not, probably because our younger sibs were Baby Boomers. My younger (8 1/2 yrs) bro smoked pot before I did. I still do, he died of lung cancer from cigarettes. As Mr. Spock said, Live Long and Prosper.

In terms of legislative achievements, it's definitely LBJ.

In terms of temperament, Obama.

In terms of good intentions and moral fiber, Carter and Obama, I should think (Obviously I don't know either man personally, though).

Good humor and resilience? Clinton and JFK.

Obama has potential to be better but I did very well under Clinton. I'm doing horribly under Obama though I recognize that it's not his fault. He needs four more years before we can really grade his presidency. If he loses in November, Clinton wins by default.

Obama's done pretty well considering everything. He's occasionally frustrating, but he's the first president I actually admire and am proud to call president.

Clinton was a good president, too. I didn't really follow politics when Carter was president since I was so young.

Lyndon Johnson for domestic policy, his foreign policy was a total cluster ****, but he got the Civil Rights act, Medicaid, Medicare, and a whole host of other good things done. Clinton for his foreign policy.

jfk did`t have his chance and ike was a republican

Of course over looking his foreign policy is no small matter. But he was by far the most progressive president on domestic matters in American history. There is no close second.

I like President Obama best. Bill Clinton next. John Kennedy ranks next for his inspiration and aspirations. Jimmy Carter is my fav ex-president and a distant choice for his time in office.

Inspiration=Obama charisma=Clinton.

I would suspect that, had Kennedy not been murdered, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would have been significantly less robust than the versions that LBJ muscled through the Congress over Dixiecrat objections. It's impossible to this of course, but I think we'd have seen a far more creative solution to the Vietnam conflict.

So Johnson's biggest pluses and his biggest negative are both more or less due to Kennedy having been murdered. It's such a sad world sometimes.

But it's sad, really, that the best Democrats can offer up lately are Republican Lite.

I love Obama, and liked Bill Clinton well enough, but they both measure out to the right of Nixon on many issues. Perhaps with a second term, Barack can get some real progressive goals accomplished, but my hope is somewhat faint.

I was born in '52, so historically, I could go with the most "progressive" presidents since then, but Eisenhower and Nixon would probably top that list just after LBJ/Kennedy.

While president of Princeton University, Wilson tried to stop blacks from even applying for admission.

The Wilson administration established official segregation in most federal government offices, in some departments for the first time since 1863. New facilities were designed to keep the races working there separated. The historian Eric Foner says, "His administration imposed full racial segregation in Washington and hounded from office considerable numbers of black federal employees."

When a delegation of blacks protested the discriminatory actions, Wilson told them "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen." In 1914, he told The New York Times, "If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it."

The very first movie ever shown at the White House was done by Wilson. It was the KKK epic "The Birth of a Nation".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

League of Nations...!!!
I am very old.

It really had no hope of being enacted. Wilson promised to keep us out of WW I in the 1916 election and then when re-elected maneuvered to get us involved. "Antiwar groups, anarchists, communists, I.W.W. members, and other radical labor movements were regularly targeted by agents of the Department of Justice; many of their leaders were arrested on grounds of incitement to violence, espionage, or sedition. By 1918 the ranks of those arrested included Eugene Debs, the mild-mannered Socialist Party leader and labor activist, after he gave a speech opposing the war. Debs' opposition to the Wilson administration and the war earned the undying enmity of President Wilson, who later called Debs a "traitor to his country". Many recent foreign immigrants, resident aliens who opposed America's participation in World War I were eventually deported to Soviet Russia or other nations under the sweeping powers granted in the Immigration Act of 1918, which had actually been drafted by Wilson administration officials at the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Immigration. Even after the war ended in November 1918, the Wilson administration's attempts to silence radical political opponents continued, culminating in the Palmer Raids, a mass arrest and roundup of some 10,000 anarchists and labor activists led by Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

Overall not a good guy.

Hands down, Barack Obama. I wasn't born until after the Roosevelt administration.

would have done.

The discussion would have been EXACTLY the same without the word "Democratic" in the OP's title.

That pretty much sums it up about the Republican presidents in our lifetime.

But mostly for balance.

Then I'll go with Bill Clinton. =)