This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 16 Feb 2009, by Elena LaVictoire.
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16 Feb 09
Elena LaVictoireIt's interesting to me that President Obama wants to be compared to President Lincoln - but I think there are much more similarities between President Lincoln and President Bush!
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I also find it interesting that Lincoln is ranked as First, but he is preceded and succeeded by men who rank as the worst Presidents in history. Can you imagine if one of those fellows was President during the Civil War?
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The historians ranked Richard Nixon at 27th, only two places behind Jimmy Carter. Without Watergate, he probably would have made it into the teens. Whatever you think about him, he did achieve some notable foreign policy accomplishments.
Lyndon Johnson comes in 11th, right behind Ronald Reagan. His enormous domestic accomplishments, especially in civil rights, outweigh his blundering of the Vietnam War by these historians. I’m not so sure he should be that high.
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Finally, that leads us to Lincoln. Believe me, he was a giant of a man. Yet it is always overlooked that he ordered the violation of political rights during the Civil War. Fraudulent elections were held in border states to put in pro-Union governments, habeas corpus was suspended, thousands were jailed and censorship imposed. It appears that George Bush took much of his playbook from Lincoln. Still, Lincoln deserves somewhere in the top five because of his accomplishments, but probably behind Washington.
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