<p>Because Buchanan was a swell chap, right? What with watching the Civil War creep up on him from a mile away. (:</p>
<p>And waving at it. And asking it to come inside, for a spot of tea. Oh do, it’s no trouble, Mr. Bloody Conflict, no trouble at all. Please, Go right on your way. I’m sure someone will manage to sort this out.</p>
<p>Ha! Buchanan! That guy was hilarious. Well, now at least. No so much back then, I suppose…</p>
<p>I didn’t like Jackson either, because he seemed to have no care at all for the Constitution or human rights. Didn’t people used to refer to him as “King Andrew”?</p>
<p>We’ve had very few /good/ presidents when you think about it. One of my faves has always been Bill Clinton.</p>
<p>“I would be a full-blown libertarian, if not for my conscience.”
Zach, that’s a great way to put it.</p>
<p>True. He’d definitely be near the bottom, somewhere around William Henry Harrison and Zach Taylor.</p>
<p>Cut Harrison some slack. It’s not his fault that he only had a month to reach everybody’s expectations.</p>
<p>I’d just like to say that up until about the Civil War, war was a very different thing than the warfare of WWI and WWII. No trenches, no machine guns, no barbed wire… The Civil War really introduced that in a mainstream way. It wasn’t like that before, and I don’t think people realized just how bad it ws going to be.</p>
<p>Who were your favorites Classik?</p>
<p>I find the concept of Napoleonic warfare sadistically amusing.</p>
<p>Favorites? Like you said, we’ve had a pretty small number of gooduns. Lincoln springs to mind, despite not being able to do much presidenting. Madison got stuff done, which is cool. FDR of course, he possibly wins. Clinton was good, but I don’t really have a well-defined concept of his term, oddly enough. And for the wildcard, I like James K Polk for being a total jerk and still managing to double the nation’s size.</p>
<p>Lincoln wins by default due to the civil war. He broke countless constitutional rights.</p>
<p>I like FDR… He did what he had to during a time of crisis. I don’t like all the presidents after him who never decided that since the problem was over, we could stop trying to fix it.</p>
<p>I liked FDR – at least he was willing to experiment with different policies…even if none of them really ended up working. But every president has his negative, and FDR’s were Japanese internment and court-packing. I did like Lincoln as well, and I liked the fact that we was a self-made man. He did what he needed to do to save the country (although suspending habias corpus still bothers me, and the Emancipation Proclaimation had no meaning at the time). Thomas Jefferson also managed to double the size of the country (and was perhaps less of a jerk) but he had the embargo thing…</p>
<p>The guy who should have been president and never was: Adlai Stevenson.
Most overrated: Reagan, JFK.</p>
<p>For those who sould’ve been president, I see your Stevenson and raise you Webster and Hamilton.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, I actually liked George Washington (no major scandals!)
He may not have been the most brilliant of our presidents, but he was wise about his choices (especially balancing Hamilton and Jefferson) and warned us of imperialism and factionalization…but did we listen? NoooOOOoooo…</p>
<p>Henry “the Great Compromiser” Clay would have been good at handling the North and South’s respective sectionalist interests. For his time, he could have been a great president too, especially as a moderate.</p>
<p>I liked Webster…but I also liked Calhoun (people always bash me for that). Interesting.</p>
<p>Al Gore /should/ have been president too…
Ack…three posts in a row…</p>
<p>So… no one’s posting… </p>
<p>Anyone have any spring break plans?</p>
<p>Also, when is everyone’s spring break? Mine is next week.</p>
<p>Actually I lied. Ignore my last post haha for some reason it wasn’t refreshing</p>
<p>Al Gore was elected president. That he didn’t choose to serve is secondary.</p>
<p>Spring break? Seeing as I just had mid-winter break a couple of weeks ago, mine is not until Easter weekend…no plans as of yet.</p>
<p>I don’t see that Gore had a choice in the matter…??</p>
<p>I’m gonna be a state senate page. yayyyy app padding.</p>
<p>mines is two weeks away. i have to take the darn science fcat before i get my break. and for all none Floridians yes that test is as full of crap as it sounds.</p>