Who was the greatest American President?  

Yeah. Presidents are like artists. They have to die for their works to be respected.

Clinton was no more flawed than our past presidents. Kennedy had many of the same flaws that Clinton did. We just live in a time where we can easily access any information that anyone wants to talk about.
I think the fact that we talked about Clinton's flaws just opened the door for future candidates to be more open about theirs. Heck, Clinton says he didn't inhale. He opened the door for future candidates to openly admit to drug use in college with no consequence.

I sorta agree (by sorta I mean he's not my favorite). And I can't believe that people wanted him impeached for having an affair. It didn't hurt the country or go against the constitution in any way.

the articlals of impeachment were on a charge of pergury, not having the affair. Affairs aren't ilegal, a lie under oath is.

X, you are correct but wouldn't you lie about it if you were president? I would.

I also agree with mike, people hated him for the affair, said it was wrong because he was president. it didn't hurt anyone but his family. the afair had nothing to do with the public. the only reason to look down on him is because we were all supposed to trust in his honesty and he lied.

Thanks Lee, for making that point. i had an arguement with my mom about that one. she held Clintons affair against him but she loved Kennedy. I didn't see any difference, from my understanding they both lied about it, one by denial the other by omission.

I think it SHOULD go without saying that these guys will be human. If they have affairs, of course they are going to lie about it. Can they tell the American people that they had affairs and expect their wives not to find out about it. LOL!

good point.

Thanks for best response

"Through it all, he never fear mongered. He told Americans that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself. How different from the politicians of today who push fear so they can claim to keep us safe. We need another FDR and we need him now."

You are SOOOOOO wrong on that one. He may have done good things for this country, but he performed some downright evil and inexcusable acts. He rounded up Asian Americans and put them in concentration camps. He also did it on a much smaller scale with German Americans. He taught Americans to fear Asians and that was wrong. Every president has some skeletons in his closet, but his acts were some of the most despicable of the 20th century.

You raise a good point and the internment camps were certainly an ugly business but I think they had more to do with the racism of the times than with any FDR attempt to fear monger. He did not highly publicize the internments nationally in an attempt to make Americans cower. This is not to excuse him on this but they all have skeltons in their closet and I doubt that we (or any other country) will ever produce a perfect leader but on balance, FDR's presidency was the most powerful and effective and produced a lot of good. We were at the time he came into office ripe for a Hitler with conditions close to what Germany experfienced before going down the wrong road. Fortunately, we got a lot better.

At this point there seeems to be a backlash against Roosevelt's presidency and I expect to hear a lot more about the evil he did. Some will be real (as you've noted) and some not so real. That strikes me as odd coming at a time when we are experiencing some real financial woe that has at its root the repeal of some very essential Roosevelt banking statutes and it may not be a total coincidence.

I am sure that our age has much to do with how we view past presidents. Someone who was alive during the depression would probably see things much differently than I do. Listening to my grandparents and others speak of the time can give me a picture but it isn't the same as first hand experience.

Harry Truman was also a very good president, though he was hated at the time, particularly in his second term. But he was the President that had the foresight to agree to the Marshall plan without which many Western European countries would have collapsed entirely as they were bankrupt at the time. Unlike after the first world war when the Allied victors rubbed Germany's nose in it, he had the foresight to provide funding to bring Germany and the US's other enemies such as Japan back on their feet. This immeasurably helped to bring a lasting peace in Europe and in Asia by removing much bitterness that would otherwise have fested as it did in Weimar Germany during the interwar years. The Bretton Woods agreement also built the foundation blocks for the global financial system which gave the Western world much prosperity in the decades following his administration. So Truman I think is also one of the great presidents, even if he is often overlooked.