There nobody living who voted before FDR.

@barjoe Of effing course;.

For you, I edited my comment. I took out the 2nd sentence.

I agree. Truman, Eisenhower and Wilson are rated way too high.

@barjoe I certainly wouldn't argue with that.

I'll answer that - I say he possibly did because Cheney convinced him to believe. Having worked in military intelligence, I doubt more than a small group of analysts believed it either. The executive branch cherry picked the reports.
I never experienced anything of that magnitude, however I did have a report nullified and I was told the military was sticking with past evaluations of a target I had worked on in North Korea. I assessed that a "seaplane landing facility" was not only inactive, it was unusable and most likelya dummy target. A case like that wasn't going to cause a war, so I figured, let them waste a missile. Another time, a guy asked me for help locating a radio antenna - it wasn't where the military coordinates placed it. I found it about 600 yards away. He opted to go with the coordinates listed and some random building. That's how civilians die (I was in a different department by then or he would have had to use my assessment). Hopefully, by the time we did go to war with that country, over a decade later, that target had been reevaluated.

@Beowulfsfriend Thank you for your insight. "W" was not known to be the brightest person by any means, and Cheyney was a powerful manipulator-just the way the GOP likes to run things. Cheyney, in my opinion, was the functioning president.

I like that Grant made it into the top half. He was a true hero and our first (one of the few) Civil Rights presidents. Underrated.

Reagan destroyed the manufacturing sector and unions. He and Bush 1 fucked the US into a consumer economy, and made giving most of the weath to only a few elite.

Reagan and the Bushs worked to destroy everything FDR did.

@Beowulfsfriend Republicans all do.

What do/did you think about it?

@LucyLoohoo Thank you for the reminder. I'm sorry, I concede that I haven't gotten to it yet. I've fallen way behind on my responsibilities and am struggling to keep my head above water. I think Joe posts a lot of good stuff and this one interests me in particular because sometimes a comparative analysis helps put things in perspective. Anyway, I will try to get to that today and see if it helps me, particularly in light of the above comments.

@LovinLarge Ohhhh...I understand! There's just SO MUCH TO READ.....I get it.

@LucyLoohoo Okay, thanks to you I finally got around to this article. FYI the Siena College Research Institute in NY is a Catholic institution. The ranking is based on a survey of "presidential scholars" and has been conducted 7 times since 1982.

I really would have liked to see much more information to justify the rankings. In particular, I think they should have said a lot more about Trump, in particular how he mismanaged the pandemic and at least made note that he has the dubious distinction if being a one term president. Other fudgers like Nixon and GWB should have been down there bringing up the tail end, all things considered. Reagan should be down there with them in view of his assault on the middle class including unions, taxation, civil rights, deregulation and AIDS. Clinton also brought disrepute to the office and is quite overrated by this survey, in my view.

There were also some who could have fared better, like Carter who did what he could at the time. Taft sounds like an interesting guy, I wish they'd discussed his term more. Both Adam's and also Polk had profound effects on the country and could be placed higher. Obama was stronger domestically than on foreign policy but he is a great man who did the best he could and we are better for it. Johnson also deserves a boost for his civil rights work.

Generally, it would have been more helpful if they'd detailed the pros and cons of each office although I did learn from the scant information included. I found the negatives got more airtime than the positives though and I would have liked to see them be at least equal. I was not raised or educated in the US so my presidential knowledge is mostly through reading and is quite lacking, I'm sure. I may not have agreed with the article but I did find it informative.

@LovinLarge I completely agree with you re: Carter and Johnson. Sometimes, circumstances are just insurmountable! Thanks for the summary....I don't trust Catholic summaries.