Current Events > Who's the last president that both sides could tolerate?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Bush jr? If for nothing else but how he handled 9/11.

Feel like the rift started when Obama got elected, and grew exponentially once Trump got in.

Kinda yeah, but I was pretty young at the time.

Didnt seem to be as much hostility between left and right. But maybe I just wasnt exposed to it.

Reagan had bipartisan support for the most part.

Jfk?

Bush jr right after 9/11

which is so funny in retrospect

Right after 9/11 it would be Bush.

Before that I'm not sure. Republicans hated Clinton so maybe Reagan? But I'm not old enough to remember Reagan so I don't know.

https://youtu.be/TxNprnas7i8

look at his face, so unbothered .

even waves off the security trying to get him out lol

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

Right after 9/11 it would be Bush.

Before that I'm not sure. Republicans hated Clinton so maybe Reagan? But I'm not old enough to remember Reagan so I don't know.

Reagan sucks, definitely not

Dwight maybe

Nah, everyone made fun of W when I was a kid. I even lived in a crimson red area, lol.

I was only 10 when Clinton left office, so I cant say much about it

Master_Bass posted...

Nah, everyone made fun of W when I was a kid. I even lived in a crimson red area, lol.

Everyone loved the bushisms.

It wasnt the same as Republicans making fun of Bidens speech imo.

fool me once, shame on. Shame on you. Fool me, cant get fooled again or whatever he said

I think W is more popular now then he was during his presidency tbqh. Hes basically become the Republican version of Jimmy Carter. Helps that he hates Trump too.

Funny how history remembers GWB fondly for managing the fallout of the disaster that his administration did nothing to prevent despite having foreknowledge of exactly the type of attack that would take place and who was behind it.

Reagan won the popular vote by 18% in 1984, Electoral College was 525-13, with all states except Minnesota going to Reagan.

Yeah, I definitely remember people calling him stupid and hating that he started two wars. Especially Iraq since that was started on false pretenses.

The right lost their collective shit as soon as their worst nightmare was elected into office. There's a reason why they tried to brand him as a Muslim from the Middle East.

Nobody reasonable had any issue with Obama.

Obama should be the obvious one. But considering theres STILL people saying Michelle is a man, that will never happen unfortunately

Reagan

George Washington

lww99 posted...

Obama should be the obvious one. But considering theres STILL people saying Michelle is a man, that will never happen unfortunately

Those people don't count as people

i dunno, but definitely not Dubya. FDR, maybe? dude was elected four times.

King George the Third

Obama should be the correct answer but racists

Pre-BJ Clinton maybe? Post-911 Bush for like 30 seconds?

Clinton

JFK is a pretty good response.

Clinton. While it is definitely true that there was a level of the Republican party that hated him, the vast majority of the populace actually was completely fine with him regardless of party.

Since then Bush was generally liked enough by both parties (or at least not hated enough to be considered divisive) until it was clear that he wasn't going to do anything but strip away rights + try and be a famous war-time president, Obama was fine in terms of his legislation but he showed off just how little racism had gone away, Trump was a complete dumpster fire and outside of his cult no one actually liked him by the end, and Biden has shown that Republicans are no longer able to tolerate anything less than the literal death of their political "opponents" (like, Biden isn't a particularly great president but geez is he over-hated for the dumbest reasons).

Monroe

He ran for reelection unopposed.

Beyond him and Washington, every president has had huge numbers of significant haters.

K181 posted...

Monroe

He ran for reelection unopposed.

Beyond him and Washington, every president has had huge numbers of significant haters.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/02/17/george-washington-unpopular-president/

Washington wasn't actually that popular as a president. It's mostly just propaganda trying to make it seem like our founders were deities.

Speaking of modern political history, I'd say the answer is probably George H.W. Bush. He was just socially conservative enough to be tolerable to the "family values" oriented Republicans, but he was much more fiscally liberal than Ronald Reagan, making him more popular with Democrats than other modern Republican Presidents. H.W. Bush expanded government spending, raised taxes despite campaign promises not to do so, signed legislation expanding civil rights protections for handicapped Americans, and also supported and signed the Clean Air Act adding new environmental protections to federal law. His handling of the Gulf War generally received bipartisan support, since he managed the affair relatively well and kept intervention in the Middle East very brief, though populist rightists and isolationists such as Pat Buchanan still opposed even this intervention. In the end, Bush was unable to win reelection because, while he was super offensive to virtually no one, he was too moderate to really rally all of the parts of the old Reagan coalition, and he failed to keep many former Reagan voters from defecting to Ross Perot, especially in the face of a challenge from Bill Clinton, a Democrat who was a much better candidate on the campaign trail than earlier politicians that party put forth (such as Michael Dukakis, George McGovern, and Hubert Humphrey).

Given Bush's failure to win reelection despite high popularity ratings, James Monroe might be the true answer to this question, since he presided over the Era of Good Feelings and received virtually unanimous support from every region of the country. The two party system disappeared during his Presidency, since Federalists felt that they got enough of what they wanted from his administration to lose their reason to exist, whereas the Republicans still felt that he spoke to their beliefs and feelings on the major issues of the day. It's impossible to imagine any President receiving a near unanimous vote in the Electoral College today, in the way that Monroe did. There are reasons that the Era of Good Feelings is overrated, and we already saw a few fissures within Monroe's administration that prefigured the rise of the Jacksonian Party System, but the 1820s in general was probably a low-point in terms of partisan polarization, especially when compared with the eras that preceded it and that followed it thereafter.

Obama is definitely not a good answer here. He was considerably more liberal than Bill Clinton was as President, and he never gave conservative voters any reason to be happy with him at all. In fact, Obama helped contribute to the radically polarized political atmosphere that we have found ourselves in many ways.

Apparently Reagan even though he was a piece of shit and possibly the worst president we've ever had.

ellis123 posted...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/02/17/george-washington-unpopular-president/

Washington wasn't actually that popular as a president. It's mostly just propaganda trying to make it seem like our founders were deities.

This is pretty misleading because Washington was unanimously elected in both of his elections, and the Jeffersonian Republican hostility to his administration really didn't break out in huge numbers until the latter parts of his second term. Foreign policy issues, especially Washington's support for Britain against Revolutionary France, and his ascension to the Jay Treaty, made the Jeffersonians furious even though they were the right things to do given the context. Even Jefferson himself, who was a critic of Washington's administration, mostly blamed the things he didn't like about his Presidency on Alexander Hamilton and always spoke well of Washington as a man of republican conviction and as a leader.

Disparaging Washington for having political opponents is pretty silly when you consider that virtually every great statesman in history has had opponents to deal with as they have navigated complicated issues. Abraham Lincoln certainly had many bitter haters and enemies, and he really was not that popular either (he was a President elected with a plurality of the vote, not a majority), and yet that does not mean that those who think well of him are embracing "propaganda" or "deifying" the man. There is no question that Washington was the indispensable man of the Founding and one of the eminent statesmen in our history, whatever vitriol his Francophile enemies spouted about him.

Bush Sr.

Sariana21 posted...

Bush Sr.

Not sure why anybody thinks that when he chickened out on finishing Saddam. Honestly its probably Eisenhower. Great reputation after WW2 and got the interstate highway system going.

SolaFide posted...

This is pretty misleading because Washington was unanimously elected in both of his elections, and the Jeffersonian Republican hostility to his administration really didn't break out in huge numbers until the latter parts of his second term. Foreign policy issues, especially Washington's support for Britain against Revolutionary France, and his ascension to the Jay Treaty, made the Jeffersonians furious even though they were the right things to do given the context. Even Jefferson himself, who was a critic of Washington's administration, mostly blamed the things he didn't like about his Presidency on Alexander Hamilton and always spoke well of Washington as a man of republican conviction and as a leader.

Disparaging Washington for having political opponents is pretty silly when you consider that virtually every great statesman in history has had opponents to deal with as they have navigated complicated issues. Abraham Lincoln certainly had many bitter haters and enemies, and he really was not that popular either (he was a President elected with a plurality of the vote, not a majority), and yet that does not mean that those who think well of him are embracing "propaganda" or "deifying" the man. There is no question that Washington was the indispensable man of the Founding and one of the eminent statesmen in our history, whatever vitriol his Francophile enemies spouted about him.

I feel like you are missing my meaning. I am saying that Washington wasn't especially out there versus a lot of other presidents for roughly what you said. Washington gets overly glorified as people take his "he had no political rivals running against him" bit when it had just as much to do with the average person having actually heard of him as anything else (ignoring the fact that a non-trivial bit of that was that he was just flat out the richest person in the States at the time). The idea is that once you actually get to brass tacks acting like Washington was an outlier really wasn't that much and there are lots of other presidents that would qualify for "just as popular" if it weren't for things like the Internet/information being so much more readily available (as is travel).