FDR knocks out Reagan as best 20th century president

The Colorado Independent ^ | 12/29/08 | Wendy Norris

[presidio9]

Deal triumphs over the patriarch of the 1980s “government is the problem,” according to a new Rasmussen poll.

By a margin of 45-40 with 15 percent undecided, poll respondents selected Franklin Delano Roosevelt as better than Ronald Reagan. Predictably, the two commanders-in-chief won high marks from those on their ideological spectrum, with 76 percent of liberals favoring Roosevelt and 68 percent of conservatives preferring Reagan.

But it’s with moderate, women and African-American voters where the poll gets interesting. Centrists back FDR over Reagan 56 percent to 26 percent, while black voters overwhelmingly support him by a 2-to-1 margin. Women favored Roosevelt by 15 percentage points.

As fewer voters align with a specific political school of thought and women and minorities become more politically engaged, future candidates could do well to emulate the big thinking of the New Deal, focusing on a collapsing economy and multiple foreign wars rather than political pandering and ideology.

It probably also doesn’t hurt that the poll was conducted as Americans watched foreclosures loom, unemployment soar and Wall Street melt down. Maybe in the midst of an economic crisis, free markets without regulatory watch-dogging doesn’t seem like such a great idea after all.

[SolidWood]

Corresponds with the Demobama victory... they can’t get enough of socialist busybodies who sell out to communists.

[IrishCatholic]

This is because conservatives fail to teach.
Socialists have no such problem.

When conservatives bother to try and evangelize their message this will change. Until then, what did you expect?

[Gaffer]

(I guess Wendy polled the same people who voted for ZerO)

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Sadly, this is a sign of the times. Americans want Uncle Sam to give them what they want and make “the rich” pay for it. We want to be children and have our parent, the government, take care of us, rather than Reagan-style individuals.

[dfwgator]

The pendulum swings back and forth, once people see under Obama, that Government isn’t the solution, it will swing back.

[OCCASparky]

Socialists don't teach, they indoctrinate. Teaching means allowing the student to follow the logical progression to conclusion and make their own decisions based on that process.

IOW, conservatism means utilizing critical thinking. Why do that when you can just roll over and let the nanny state provide for you without any risk or hope of advancement?

[television is just wrong]

one explanation, out country has turned to Socialism

[OCCASparky]

The pendulum swings back and forth, once people see under Obama, that Government isn’t the solution, it will swing back.

One would have thought that after FDR, LBJ, and Carter. Sadly, they have not.

[presidio9]

As fewer voters align with a specific political school of thought and women and minorities become more politically engaged, future candidates could do well to emulate the big thinking of the New Deal, focusing on a collapsing economy and multiple foreign wars rather than political pandering and ideology.

How sad and ironic that the unintended consequences of the 15th and 19th amendments might end up being our nation's ultimate destruction.

[Flycatcher]

68 percent of conservatives preferring Reagan.

Are you kidding me? So 32 percent of conservatives prefer FDR?

Something stinks here.

[dfwgator]

Unfortunately, under President Bush, even though he spent like a Keynsian, with predictable results, people perceive he was conservative, and that we are in dire straits because of Reagan-like conservative policies.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Makes no sense...

[Opinionated Blowhard]

No it doesn't—its been moving in one direction since the 1930s—over 70 years. Reagan was as close as we've had to a small government president in the past 70 years and he could only slow the growth of government. A GOP President with a GOP Congress spent like drunken sailors. I hate to be pessimistic but it is a sign of national decline, like Britain experienced, when the government does more and more.

[presidio9]

Are you kidding me? So 32 percent of conservatives prefer FDR?

Something stinks here.

I agree with you. Sounds a bit like "32% of Muslims prefer Jesus." Unfortunately, what it makes me think is that at least half of the people who vote in this country are so stupid, that are unable to make any concrete distinction between liberalism and conservatism. We need a poll quiz.

[Vaduz]

Poll it must be true NOT

[Venturer]

I think you can get a poll to say just about anything, dependent on who you ask and how you phrase the questions.

Reagan was without doubt the greatst President of the 20th century.

[headstamp 2]

This cycle the voters voted for “Uncle Sugar”. You have an entire generation of voters who have no memory of the 70’s that swept Reagan in.

Also an entire class of voters now that believe government is there to wipe their behinds and see to their needs. In other words a new class of voters that has basically given up on taking care of themselves.

[Fiji Hill]

I would give Warren Harding a high ranking. He was the only president of the century to substantially reduce the size of the federal government, and he successfully fought a depression and turned the economy around.

Harding and his successor Coolidge were also the last presidents to view themselves as chief magistrates, in the Jeffersonian tradition, with limited, enumerated powers. After 1928, the president essentially became an elected king.

[jeffc]

Unfortunately, as both Presidents were of the 20th century, and most Americans alive today were not here for either presidency, all we really know about them is filtered through a liberal media and their promoted biographies.
Which one do you think gets more favorable treatment, in the media and the history books used in public education?