My fellow TFKers, the time has come to answer this question once and for all.
Nominations will close at 6pm tomorrow and the polls will close at 6 on Thanksgiving day
I will get the ball rolling with 3 nominations
Theodore Roosevelt
Republican, September 1901 to March 09 http://kpl.gov/uploadedImages/Guides/theodore-roosevelt-p.jpg
*Constructed the Panama Canal, the single greatest step before nuclear arms in making the US a superpower
*Restored power from the captains of industry who had been calling all the shots and back into the White House. This led to a seachange in social and working conditions for the vast majority of Americans.
*Great conservationist at a time when lassez-faire inustrialism was the order of the day, incuding rescuing the Grand Canyon. Peacemaker, won the noble prize for peace in 1906
The most recent president to be engraved on Mt Rushmore, Teddy Roosevelt grabbed the presidency by the balls and transformed it into the most powerful office in the world which it remains to thus day.
Lyndon B Johnson, (LBJ)
Democrat, November 1963 to January 69
*Ended racial segregation in the southern states and signed numerous civil rights acts
*Implemented the worlds first enviromental protection acts
*Creator of the great society which included the establishment of medicare and medicaid, consumer protection, public broadcasting and numerous education and anti poverty acts.
No president has done more to shape the culture of modern America as we know and love it today.
cracking thread Laz.
my most recent favourite would have to be George W Bush after all the jobs he created with Haliburton in the middle east.
let me have a think about it and ill post a proper reply in the morning
George W. Bush’s speech on 9/14/01 to the emergency services’ employees and rescue workers at Ground Zero makes him the Greatest American President of all time. I nominate George.
“Can’t hear ya George…”
“I can hear you! I can hear you! And soon the people…”
Tonight, what began on the commons in Concord, Massachusetts, as an alliance of farmers and workers- of cobblers and tinsmiths, of statesmen and students, of mothers and wives, of men and boys-lives two centuries later as America.
Ah yes let’s start with Theodore Roosevelt, was quite good at picking his fights, never really stood up against anyone unless he felt he could win and therefore, gain prestige for his actions. Was quite content to allow American imperialism to expand over ex-Spanish colonies that they annexed for themselves after winning the Spanish-American war, took over the Phillipines at a struggle after brutally repressing the revolutionary movement there and Roosevelt’s army carried out several massacres of innocent civilians and used concentration camps as part of it’s tactics where an estimated 300,000 Philippians died in captivity. The U.S under Roosevelt also annexed Guam, Puerto Rico and made Cuba a satellite state of America with a puppet government that followed American orders and operated in favour of American corporations with interests in Cuban sugar and this continued right up until Castro’s successful revolution in the late 50’s.
Also Roosevelt never tackled contentious issues like racism or segregation and he never really stood into the gap or did much of real substance without resorting to underhand tactics to achieve his goals. To gain control of the Panama Canal, Roosevelt incited Panamanian revolutionaries to rebel against Columbia who were their colonial overlords, and once they succeeded with American support the U.S were almost instantly handed the canal by Panama for the paltry figure of $10 million and so Roosevelt was the first interventionist president in Central America that set a precedent for all future presidents to protect American interests their by whatever underhand means they could find.
Johnson escalated American involvement in Vietnam based on the lie of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and though his domestic social policy achievements were very admirable, his failures in foreign policy and escalation of Vietnam not only wasted thousands of American soldier’s lives and millions of Vietnamese lives but, they also caused his Great Society to fall as well as the ludicrous amounts of money wasted on Vietnam were funneled away from his Great Society and led to Nixon axing a sizable majority of it later on in the 70’s as their was no way that America could afford both the war and the social projects that Johnson created.
Truman, well this line that Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives is a pile of shite pandered about the place like it was cold hard fact, perhaps it did but, nobody can say for sure how the war would have turned out if nukes had not being used. The Japanese were going to surrender regardless before 1945 was out, they knew the game was up even the military hardliners knew it but, it was the fact that the U.S under Truman were looking for unconditional surrender and that was the main reason the Japanese had not surrendered already before the bombings.
Also Truman supported the creation of Israel in 1948, he himself believed the Jews deserved a homeland more out of a sense of justice for the Jews than anything and he was influenced by a life-long Jewish friend, who was working for the Israeli Jews, trying to butter up Truman and it worked, but American support for Israel, which was first instigated by Truman, is a key factor in the ongoing instability and needless deaths in the middle east to the present day. He was a bit of a simpleton really lacked any real political guile and never achieved sweet f.a on his domestic policy front. Basically there is no such thing as a great American president they all have fundamental flaws that drag them down really no matter which of these 44 gimps people vouch for.
