The only way Germans stand up, is if they are assured they will not face Soviet tanks. That assurance was there because Soviets didn't waltz into Poland 5 years sooner, the government opposition to Solidarity failed there and there was no response by Russia, and that is in part because their economy was crashing after Afghanistan and in trying to prop up all the other corrupt regimes and because they had no idea how far RR might go. They didn't have anything to compete with the star wars defense and weren't sure we couldn't build it. Regan sold it to the world, Further the Pope kept a free Poland in the world and especially the Eastern European face all the time. His encouragement meant so much to the heavily catholic Polish people. Solidarity members often point to feeling like they had God on their side and America too.

It was delivery more than anything else, but just as JFK told Berlin it would not ever be handed over to the Russians when he gave his "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" Speech, RR's "Mr. Gorbachev Tear Down This Wall" Speech sent a shiver down the Soviet spine. Only Yards from the gun towers of the East, an American President and a real live cowboy as far as the Soviets were concerned was giving them an ultimatum. They just didn't know how far he would go, and that made them hesitate.

The first blocks of that wall came down in the election of Blessed John Paul II The Great. As I have said before, he was very close to President Regan in view and I believe we will find a lot of information sharing between these two heads of State. I think RR's election sent a strong message abroad that America was tired of being thought of as a soft superpower. These winds of change in Poland much like the recent success of the Egyptian rebels, gave the peoples other nations the opportunity to stand p almost together and sat the Soviets back on their heels. In that blink of time, the revolution occured and was telecast on Cable. Like the Arab conficts on Al Jeezera this televised images made serious inroads and again held back Moscow.

I don't credit RR with the fall of the wall, I credit him with crafting a world and a reality where that could have happened.

Americans have an obsession with making everything about them, so when they read/hear that Reagan said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" and the wall came down a few years later, they think "OMG Ronnie Ray-gun GOAT!!!" Only problem is, it wasn't Gorbachev who tore down the wall, and nor was it Reagan (to the contrary, Thatcher and to a much lesser extent Reagan were actually disturbed that the wall was coming down at all--no one wanted a destabilized Eastern front at that point). It's classic post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, or what I suppose we'd call results-oriented thinking on a Poker site.

Stuff like this:
is mostly ex post facto hagiography that doesn't gel very well with the internal situation in Germany, Poland, or the USSR. The Soviet collapse was long, the strategic situation was changed very little in the 1980s, and Reagan played almost no role in accelerating the collapse. Nor did John Paul II have much significance except having the good fortune to be Polish-born and an arch-conservative, orthodox anti-communist, thus providing a PR symbol for Solidarity, Lech Walesa, and the rest. What almost nobody knows or remembers, though, is that Solidarity's primary goal was to create an economic system of worker ownership ("legitimate" socialism in their minds), not the free market dreams of Reaganites and Thatcherites.

The facts aside, Americans like Reagan because after Vietnam/Watergate/Stagflation/Iranian hostage crisis, he made Americans feel better.

You could go into a much longer description, but "feel better" sums it up pretty well.

Then someone shot him and he bounced back up and kept going.

As a symbolic leader, he was great. As for his actual policies and accomplishments, meh. There is much debate to be had and probably some more time needed. I agree his economic policies seem like they were long term terrible.

Easily Best FDR/Washington and Lincoln in third.

I missed Nixon from 2002-2008 .

Theodore Roosevelt.... the former cowboy!

James Madison... saved the US from a British invasion that would have wiped away all the work of the Revolution.

A lot of historians believe that the later elections of FDR were rigged. I remember several history professors who have said this before.

Best president: George Washington -Established a lot to help build this country.

Worst President: Abraham Lincoln - Caused more bloodshed than any other president.

Wat

Nixon escalated the war in Vietnam and ordered or oversaw many secret unethical policies and campaigns, such as the bombing of Cambodia that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The Khmer Rouge increased in number 20 fold after the bombing campaign. Nixon by no means wanted to give up on Vietnam until it was finally deemed unwinable. Watergate is small potatoes. If morality counts for anything then Nixon was a terrible president in my view. I don't think Kennedy was good president either.

Washington has to be worst - without him you'd still be British subjects, allowed to play poker online and no tax on winnings.

I'll go with the obvious ones.

FDR, Washington & Lincoln.

FDR being greatest president ever is grossly overrated.

The man attempted to take over the Supreme Court, imprisoned Japanese descendents illegally and spent more money on social programs than any president ever had before him


Washington-1
Lincoln-2
Jefferson-3

Those "Japanese descendants" were rounded up without charge, imprisoned without trial, and lost most of their possessions. As an added bonus, the men got to go risk their lives fighting the Germans while their wives, children, and elderly parents spent the war in concentration camps.

Not to mention he ordered the burning of crops and slaughter of livestock in a lunatic scheme to try to raise crop prices. This at a time when people had no money and were going hungry. Then there was the little matter of him sealing the fate of millions of people in Eastern Europe, agreeing in a back room meeting with his "uncle Joe" to condemn nations from Poland to Bulgaria to 50 years of Stalinism. What a lover of freedom.

I could also bring up how the Ponzi scheme he founded is nearing its endgame, and the aftermath is not going to be pretty - but that's just piling on.

The fact that so many think he was great is overwhelming evidence that government education needs to end. Greatly expand central government power & leave a mountain of skulls in your wake and you are a great man (FDR, Wilson, Lincoln). Leave the American people alone to live their lives as they see fit (Harding, Coolidge) and you are an abject failure.

Examining his deeds, there is no conclusion to draw other than FDR was an utterly contemptible man. There is no justification to be made for his complete disregard for people's natural rights (American and otherwise).

Open your freaking minds.

Always tough to say who exactly was the greatest. Though the president credited with the following message belongs amongst the best. Certainly a far better president than his partymate FDR:

"When we consider that the theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him, it is plain that the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice ... The public Treasury, which should only exist as a conduit conveying the people's tribute to its legitimate objects of expenditure, becomes a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people's use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country's development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder."

just because FDR is overrated as the goat doesnt mean he isnt top 5

OK. He's extremely overrated and doesn't belong in the top 5.

Glad we got that settled.

lol @ u

List your top 5:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Like any other President at the time wouldn't have done this, when the alternative was WWIII immediately on the heels of WWII, when the Soviets had a significant advantage in infantry and armor.

FYP. Pretending that the 1929 crash and subsequent Depression was not directly tied to the way the 20s were managed is to significantly revise the entire record.

I'm not going to say he's the best .... but I've always thought James Polk is underrated and I don't think he's been mentioned in this thread at all.

To make my point more clearly, I'll list 5 that were just plain better than FDR (in no particular order):

1. Washington
2. Cleveland
3. Jefferson
4. Eisenhower
5. Jackson

Versus the US advantage in air power and A-bombs. I think we all know who wins that match-up.

What's not common knowledge is how badly FDR misjudged the Soviet Union both before and during the war. Truman understood them much better and it was rather lucky for the US that FDR exited the scene before the war ended leaving Harry to deal with the USSR instead.

Nor were FDR's view on how to fight WWII very good. He was however, wise enough not to interfere too much with those who knew how to prosecute the war.

(and FDR + LBJ)

Truman was confronted with a plan for a preemptive strike against the Soviets using said air power and atomic weaponry and turned it down. Genocide was not a reasonable policy alternative, even for a President as hawkish as Truman.