My fellow posters we need to have a word. This will be beyond the 10th reply and I am not seeing any
Up your game next time.
Anyway it seems in most cases any that live then live long enough to see yourself become a villain.
To that end none of the mob from my lifetime/time following US politics are going to be particularly well regarded, save perhaps Obama who turned out to be a bog standard politician rather than anything especially notable. Prior to that there were some spectacularly poor choices on the economics front (Reagan being an especially poor example from where I sit, him and Thatcher in the UK... oh dear).
With that in mind I look backwards. I suppose Hoover and his wife translated de re metalica, the foundational work of mining and metallurgy which is a subject close to my own heart. That is not really a presidential act though.
Going too much further back than about 1930 and we are going to find ourselves looking at rather different times which means I get to switch judgement protocols up a bit.
To that end favourite if I am not allowed Hoover for his non presidential stuff... none. I am not more than ambivalent about any of them really -- politicians are not a class of people I especially care to look up to, and indeed most don't outside of the US.
Just to be a pedant on the battery thing I have to point you all a the Baghdad Battery. Though I will happily give that he was probably the first to start to harness its true potential (pun very much intended). I am wary of crediting Edison with too much as well -- he had some very strange ideas about how things should work.
