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[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

To me, it doesn't really matter how their presidency/policies turned out or even the detrimental impact they may have had on the nation, but whether they maintained sensible views and made meaningful contributions. It seems fitting to lay stress on their virtues and merits, especially from Hitler's pov.

Worst: FDR (above all. The values he put into his concept of freedom were misplaced), Wilson (good intentions, but naive), Lincoln, Post-JFK presidencies.

Best: Jefferson (a man of principle/character, who shared a number of Hitler's views), Truman (a modest man endowed with common sense, uncompromising and firm in decisions, and he furnished one of the best indictments of the Jewish problem), Teddy (he had a daily habit of star gazing and discerning constellations, along the lines of Pythagorean philosophy, which afforded him a sense of proportion), Hoover (he actually met Hitler, and despite viewing him as a madman, he came to regard FDR as a greater menace to world peace), Nixon (saw clearly through communism), JFK (put up a good fight against CIA. In his visit to Hitler's retreat, he delivered an impartial historical judgment to posterity).

Also, both Nixon and Hoover were Quakers, which Thomas Paine argued wasn't far off from the original Deist conception.

Honorable mention for George Washington, for 1) his warning in the Farewell Address, 2) his explanation for why they didn't rush to emancipate their slaves, and 3) voluntarily relinquishing the reigns to power after winning the war (unlike Churchill, he recognized that he was fit for the battlefield, not peacetime).

As for Jackson, he's somewhere in the middle. He wasn't far-sighted in his policies. Jackson was a man of action/history who propelled the nation into material greatness through conquest and expansion, but like Churchill he didn't rise superior to the social conditions of his time, and thus, he didn't shape his epoch in the way Hitler did.