Expanded political answer.
reference: tuscl.net
- RANK THESE PRESIDENTS/PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES FROM YOUR FAVORITE TO LEAST FAVORITE. GEORGE W BUSH / DONALD TRUMP / BERNIE SANDERS / HILLARY CLINTON / BARACK OBAMA / MARCO RUBIO.
GEORGE W BUSH / BERNIE SANDERS / DONALD TRUMP / MARCO RUBIO / BARACK OBAMA / HILLARY CLINTON.
I do regret my last two votes for President. Voting for Hildebeast was a mistake. Also I was probably too quick to dismiss Mittens, despite him being a Plutocrat and that whole 47 percent comment.
President Bush valued freedom. He had a simplistic view of the world and saw the U.S. as an imperial power to export democracy. I throw him under the bus for the Iraq War, for torture, and No Child Left Behind. He appointed advisors and trusted them, some I wish President Trump would do more of, but sometimes I have to be careful what I wish for.
I don't know that U.S. or Roman style democracy works elsewhere. What foreign nations seem to want is democracies that previous administrations have worried were Socialist in style. We fought proxy wars or fostered regime changes in the 20th century to subvert that (Vietnam, Iran, Cuba). If Socialism really runs its course because of failure to generate wealth and reinvestment of capital (machinery and money) then wouldn't it have been better to let those collapse on their own rather than intervene?
Sometimes I see issues in black and white like W. Too bad he was such a neocon. But the man valued freedom, free speech, and protest. He let citizens freely protest or speak out against him all the while pointing out how great America was for people to have freedom and rights to do that.
I can overlook the democratic socialist agenda of Bernie Sanders. I do feel like there is less of a feeling that he can be bought by special interests. The issues surrounding his expensive home do worry me, like they do with Marco Rubio but for different reasons. I do feel that Mr. Sanders doesn't have thin skin, like Mr. Trump does. I do feel that Mr. Sanders understands many of us getting killed in this economy. I don't agree with the 1 percent comments. Many of the 1 percent are professionals like doctors and lawyers. The real issue, if there is one, is the 0.1 percent or the 0.01 percent. And even that isn't the real issue. The real issue is that productivity gains (since 1990 or since 1970) are only going to the top 17 percent or so. Why are the rest being left behind? How do we retool skills and market value of the human and social capital for those not taking advantage of the booming economy. Mr. Sanders is not perfect, but he's at least talking about it. He also respects gun rights. He's wrong about the minimum wage and healthcare. We need more protest candidates like him.
I like that President Trump is a New York cosmopolitan. He isn't working to subvert abortion rights for young women. He isn't working to restrict gay marriage. He respects the police and the military who keep us safe from harm. He thought he could drain the swamp. I said he couldn't be bought by special interests.
He's perhaps a compassionate conservative to a fault, like Mr. Reagan was. It's admirable that he supports Medicaid and Medicare. It's admirable that he supports aspects of the ACA (Obamacare): pre-existing conditions, no life time limits or caps, keeping Medicaid people covered. That's compassionate conservatism. It will be expensive.
I like the Mr. Trump tries to (unsuccessfully though!) strike deals with Congressional Democrats. That is something I remember Mr. Reagan doing with Congress, too.
He's a protest candidate. We need more like that.
Mr. Rubio, Mr. Obama, and Mrs. Clinton are all the establishment, do they go to the bottom.
Mr. Rubio was rushed into his candidacy. He often repeated phrases in debates, he felt like a manufactured candidate, and truthfully I let his stances on abortion bother me too much at the time but I factor this less now. If he'd had been able to verbally out-judo Mr. Trump or articulate his leadership better, he might have been ranked higher. He also had some alleged corruption issues regarding the sale of his home at above market value to a suspected lobbyist. I'm just done with lobbyists. I love his high-maintenance, former pro-cheerleader wife. I can't blame the guy there. :p I like that he was a former Cuban who hated Cuban and Soviet Socialism. We need more success stories like that. What we need less of is less bought and paid for establishment candidates.
Mr. Obama lied to us about aspects of Obamacare. He made the government less transparent than even Mr. Bush. Drone strikes? WTF? Racial and class struggles are even worse now than when he started office. He may have stabilized the economy but he bailed out banks, Wall Streets, and General Motors. I guess wish I could figure out how to better improve my situation. I don't blame him for that but many of us did ask for advice but the answer of "keep doing what you're already doing" wasn't particularly useful people not in the top 17% or not on welfare. But that's a minor complaint and personal responsibility should be bore by me. He's wrong on Globalism. He's wrong on gun control.
Hildebeast. My views on her have evolved. She's the establishment, corrupt, inappropriate actions that were probably criminal but we'll never now. She's wrong on gun control. She felt entitled to support from Mr. Sanders supporters. She used social wedge issues. She's a Globalist. Bought and paid for. She needs to go.
reference: tuscl.net
There's a lot to unpack here, but it's great that you put real thought into your answer. First, as you and PoolyD imply, we should acknowledge that there can be a big difference between the candidate and the president, right? As Mario Cuomo once said, they campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Every candidate who wins needs to strike a balance between his actual beliefs, his campaign promises, and the opinions of his new constituents. Therefore, we really need to rank the George W. Bush 2000 campaign, the George W. Bush 2004 campaign, the actual George W. Bush presidency, the Barack Obama 2008 campaign, the Barack Obama 2012 campaign, the actual Barack Obama presidency, the Donald Trump 2016 campaign, the actual Donald Trump presidency so far, the Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign, the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, the Marco Rubio 2016 campaign, and the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. While we're at it, we can also rank the pre-2011 Donald Trump, because he was basically an entirely different guy. And you can even speculate on the imaginary administrations of Clinton, Sanders, and Rubio, assuming they had won.
Anyway, I don't think Bush was philosophically a neoconservative, as you claim. He was from the social conservative wing of the party. But he did surround himself with neocons... and that mattered quite a bit, as it turned out. It doesn't make a difference, really, just splitting hairs. Also, Obama didn't technically bail out those companies, Bush did. Obama just continued the bailout, so it isn't fair to put all, or even most, of the blame on him. But he was more "into it" than Bush was, I guess.
Nobody asked me, but I would rank them this way:
Bush 2000 campaign Imaginary Rubio presidency Rubio 2016 campaign Actual Trump presidency so far Bush 2004 campaign Obama 2008 campaign Trump 2016 campaign Actual Bush presidency Actual Obama presidency Sanders 2016 campaign Obama 2012 campaign Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign Imaginary Hillary Clinton presidency Imaginary Sanders presidency
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to rank pre-2011 Trump relative to campaign Trump and President Trump, because everything I used to agree with him about I now disagree with, and vice versa.