Who are the best Presidents America never had?

Obama in my lifetime.

Franklin Roosevelt in the 20th Century.

Lincoln in the 19th.

18th? Maybe Washington if only because he decided against being a monarch.

Never Had, as in lost their elections or died before they could compete.

Bobby Kennedy and Al Gore. Also Hillary Clinton.

Kang.

Kodos, R4!!!!

Pete Buttigieg.

Fortunately, he's just a matter of time.

Again, Bobby Kennedy & Al Gore

Maybe Charles Evans Hughes.

Short bio @ history.com

[quote] Hughes came close to being elected president in 1916. A shift of less than four thousand votes in California would have given him that state’s electoral votes and the presidency. If Hughes had not projected such an austere public image (or if he had secured the support of Governor Hiram W. Johnson), he would probably have been elected.

Gore Vidal

Adlai Stevenson.

I know this won't be popular, but Mitt Romney would have made a decent president.

^^Mitt Romney is ok as a republican, but he also had no use for anyone who wasn't white, Christian or straight. 47%

Bobby was on his way. I still get teary about it. Al Gore and Hillary both of whom were robbed. Mario Cuomo and Adlai Stevenson— although he probably wouldn’t have been much different than Ike in governance—and Gene McCarthy.

I voted for John Kerry and I think he would have been amazing.

Gary Hart is somewhere on the list.

Howard Dean, the best ever, the DNC's biggest unforgivable mistake.

John Kerry.

Al Gore, not even close. It's almost painful to think about how different our country (and the world) could be right now if Gore had been POTUS in 2001.

Al Gore.

If we had elected Romney we would not have gotten Trump. Two terms, he would be ending up now and Biden would probably still be president -elect.

Ben Franklin. The only president of the United States who was never president of the United States.

Why are Democrats so enamored with Romney?

Gore

Howard Dean - That was as angry as I've ever been at the political Establishment. They didn't want Dean so he was out of the race before my state held primaries. I still follow him on Twitter.

Someone mentioned Romney above - He would have been decent and light years ahead of Trump, if only he'd run in 2016 instead of 2012.

Henry Clay for the 19th century

Gore? The guy who had the poor judgment to distance himself from Bill and choose that snake Lieberman as running mate? Puhlease.

Nice guy though. Big dick.

Gore? His wife fights against free speech and wants to censor every single thing she finds offensive. What's liberal and open minded about that?

[Quote] Howard Dean - That was as angry as I've ever been at the political Establishment.

What a genuinely democratic grassroots groundswell he inspired. The only one I've seen in my lifetime. That scared the DNC and their corporate masters and they put a contract out on him. Jeez. Obama's campaign was astroturf compared to Dean's. We lost a huge opportunity.

Sarah Louise Palin

Isn’t it sad that every recent failed Democratic presidential candidate EXCEPT Mike Dukakis has been mentioned?

I feel sorry for Mike. I don’t know if he would have been a good President, but he did get absolutely bulldozed by the GOP bullshit machine.

Barry Goldwater.

Wendell Willkie.

Moira Rose

Leslie Gore

Selina Meyer

Ralph Nader.

Lincoln - 2nd term.

Yes to Nader.

R30 I was just about to list Michael Dukakis. He ran the year was born.

I think Kerry and Dean are acceptable answers, but I don't know if John Kerry would have made an EXCELLENT president. I think he would've been okay at the very least, but probably not revolutionary.

Al Gore might've saved us a bunch of trouble had he won the election, and I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton would have been pretty competent.

And Mitt Romney doesn't have any credibility. He's another one whose a white supremacist. In 2012 he held a press event alongside Donald Trump, with his wife Anne. For a Trump endorsement because of the birther nonsense. And look how that worked out for Mitt.

Mitt is typical white male opportunistic trash. Just like most white men are.

Pure garbage.

John Anderson. Just throwing another name out there really, that said I’m sure he would have been better than either Reagan or Carter. I like where he stood on the political spectrum.

Oh and Bill Bradley. They floated his name around literally every election cycle as the Democrat who could win America back, and then when he finally does decide to run, its many years too late and against a sitting VP. Whoops.

But I think he would have been great had he run at the right time.

Howard Stassen

Mario Cuomo, another great missed opportunity. The only politician who came close to being a statesman. And gave us Chris.

Bobby Kennedy

Hillary Clinton

Edmund Muskie

John McCain would have made a good, maybe even great president; sans Palin, that is. He definitely would have been better than W Bush.

Oh wow really!! Better than W? You don't say!?

Oh wow really!! Better than W? You don't say!?

One thing is for sure, the democratic party is way ahead of the Republican party n diverse presidential tickets.

The first black president, and the first woman of color and first woman vice president etc. And Joe Biden was apart of both winning tickets.

It just goes to show, that going black works in Joe's favor, LOL.

Every time!

Robert Kennedy.

R43, the one-time boy wonder of politics, the former governor of Minnesota, who later became a running joke due to his continuous bids for the presidency & very bad toupee, was Harold, not Howard, Stassen.

Howard Dean, Al Gore, and John Kerry. Dean and Gore in particular ,and to a lesser extent Kerry ,were on the receiving end of relentlessly mocking and snide coverage by the mainstream press as well as the usual right wing suspects. Evgenia Peretz wrote a very insightful article in Vanity Fair (sorry can't link now) about the extent of the press corps irrational attacks against Gore in 2000.

RFK for sure.

Agree with Bobby Kennedy, Howard Dean, and Hillary Clinton.

As someone who came of age during the Watergate era, I think that Howard Baker would have been an excellent President.

FDR! He got us through the Depression and WWII and was just getting going in 1945!!

R27, putting a warning label on music doesn't stop people from listening to it, your "free speech" crusade is pretty silly

Agree about Howard Dean. I follow him on Twitter - he's a good man.

And Hillary Clinton NEVER would have called the coronavirus a hoax

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley

I believe that if Hillary had been elected in 2016, that she would not have won re-election this year.

She would have gone down in history as one of the worst presidents because a total of 5000 people died of Covid on her watch.

Pete.

Sorry, I meant Pete as best. Not the best we never had. Pete, you go gurl!

RFK by far.

I'll also say this: James Garfield, who was president, was shot a few months after being inaugurated and died a few months later, and consequently didn't [italic]really[/italic] get to serve as president.

A major goal of his was to create equal opportunity because of both income inequality and racism, and he also proposed a federally-funded universal education system.

Ferraro

Why me of course!

Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, for sure. McCain might have been okay if he’d been elected in 2000, but no way in hell would I have preferred him over Obama.

Gary Hart would’ve been good, maybe as good as Bill Clinton. Kerry and Dukakis would’ve probably been okay, if uninspiring. Both of them are about as dull as GHW Bush.

Wendell Willkie. If FDR hadn't broken precedent and decided to run for a 3rd term, I think Willkie would have won.

Of the losing candidates of this century, while Gore and Kerry would have been better than W., they would have been dull, uninspiring and mediocre presidencies. Not great presidencies. Same with Hillary Clinton. Obama certainly superior to McCain and Romney, but those two would have been better than W. and certainly better than Trump.

Mario Cuomo, Hillary, Al Gore, Elizabeth Warren, Bobby Kennedy, and...wait for it... Arnold Schwarznegger

Amen to James Garfield. What could have been had he not died due to his grossly negligent doctor.

I loved Clinton and Obama.

Warren has gone back to being Bernie's mouthpiece. The exact same thing that made her lose the primary. She really doesn't get it.

OK, maybe something controversial to say, but McCain would have dealt with Putin's attacks better than Obama.

Clinton would have been okay, but she really had no specific agenda and I suspect she's be Eisenhower-like. Gore at least had an issue to champion.

R19 Do any of you actually know Gore. He's as dull as dishwasher. When I see him coming across a room, I run. I can't see him ever having been a great President. And, he wears those stupid cowboy boots like a Republican. But, its really because he's too cheap to buy a decent pair of shoes.

Well, Eisenhower had a pretty good run r72. Sometimes sanity is all you need in the White House as we are all learning.

Anyone who isn't saying RFK has got to be just too young to know what we missed. Imagine a President who said this at his inauguration:

"Aeschylus...wrote, 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

Except it wasn't at his inauguration, it was extempore, and it was to a largely black audience the night Martin Luther King was assassinated, after all his minders begged him to cancel the engagement because his life could be at risk from the crowd. It is now on his memorial at Arlington.

Just imagine what America could do if someone like that could be President today.

John McCain (without Sarah Palin) as he seemed like a decent guy. If I was an American I would have voted for him.

McCain was dreadful. You just had to watch the 2008 debates. he seemed like some crazy uncle in the attic. He was reviled by colleagues---a real grandstander, basically chatshow guy.

Whether Gore had a dynamic personality is irrelevant. He would have brought competent people into government and would have moved forward on addressing teh environment.

Eisenhower only looked good after LBJ and Nixon. He was, at best mediocre. He drew Korea to a tie, not a victory. he let McCarthy get away with murder. He had a heart attacks and played golf and let the Dulles brothers commit mayhem in the name of the US

R76, McCain said it was a "sad day" when DADT was overturned.

The better man won.

Two terms of Clinton post Bush followed by two terms of Obama. Obama under-performed due to having to clean up W's mess while lacking DC experience. Clinton would have fixed up the mess leaving a much better platform for Obama to be transformative in the way he promised but really never delivered.

I wonder what kind of president Ross Perot would have been?

Crazy.

R77 I'll never forget Mccains line about Obama being " that one!". For a brief second the genial mask slipped and you could see the run of the mill rage filled rich white guy beneath the phony Maverick routine. He gets a lot of credit for the Obama wasn't a Muslim line but I think he was just playing to what the press would want to hear. And for all the praise he got for denying Obama was Muslim, note that he didn't say that it wouldn't matter if he was.

yeah, maybe McCain in 2000 but by 2008 he was filled with rage and bitterness. Would have been an angry, shitty president after that. I wonder if Nixon would have been okay in 1960. By 1968, the bitterness and anger was all consuming. (Admittedly, that had started before 1960, but still ...)

Although they were of different parties and philosophies, John McCain was one of the very few public officials who continued to visit his fellow Arizonan Mo Udall throughout Udall's long decline due to Parkinson's. Udall's family never forgot the continued kindness McCain extended in private. If character is exhibited when no one is watching, McCain had it in spades.

R83: The 2008 McCain was the same McCain as 2000---he simply was better at cultivating the press and remaining civil. He was always a hard right conservative and basically a spoiled jerk like Bush.