Interesting comment, jatfla. It seems to me that many - perhaps most - of the presidents never lived up to what they could have been because of a personal moral or character weakness.
Johnson - a pioneer and hero in many ways - yet knew he needed to exit Vietnam but didn't have the political courage to pull the plug and look like a loser.
Nixon - brilliant in opening doors to China, yet taken down by his own scheming and paranoia.
Ford - an exception, seems pretty much WYSIWYG
Carter, likewise.
Reagan - truly brilliant in communication, yet - especially later - completely unable to address AIDS or put his foot down on illegal Iran-Contra activity.
Bush 1 - pretty WYSIWYG
Clinton - missed hi...

Interesting comment, jatfla. It seems to me that many - perhaps most - of the presidents never lived up to what they could have been because of a personal moral or character weakness.
Johnson - a pioneer and hero in many ways - yet knew he needed to exit Vietnam but didn't have the political courage to pull the plug and look like a loser.
Nixon - brilliant in opening doors to China, yet taken down by his own scheming and paranoia.
Ford - an exception, seems pretty much WYSIWYG
Carter, likewise.
Reagan - truly brilliant in communication, yet - especially later - completely unable to address AIDS or put his foot down on illegal Iran-Contra activity.
Bush 1 - pretty WYSIWYG
Clinton - missed his potential by a mile by stumbling over his own neediness into Oval Office dalliance, then lying about it. Could have been so much more.
Bush 2 - seemingly a good enough guy, but completely buffaloed by tougher characters who take advantage of his ethical weakness to coax him into abject, rather pathetic lying for their own cause.

That Kennedy was "just" an adulterer/womanizer - no, like all presidents, he was more than the sum of his flaws. He <i>was</i> brilliant, and transformational to much of the world. But like so many, what he was on the outside was limited and dimmed by the parts of moral smallness that remained unaddressed on the inside.

Reagan for me. I was being showered by praises about how he was the greatest president in the 20th Century, and shamefully, I believed it for a while. But some free-thinking friends made information available to me that wasn't sanitized by the White House Press Office, and I started seeing what a douche he was. It's only in the most recent years that I've realized what an utter monster he was. Put aside the fact that he totally stole the thunder of Canada and France in their role in breaking the back of fascist rule in Eastern Europe (a break it has since healed, and is near-fully recovered from; only fascism of a capitalist flavour this time), but Reagan can also be pinpointed as the origin...

Reagan for me. I was being showered by praises about how he was the greatest president in the 20th Century, and shamefully, I believed it for a while. But some free-thinking friends made information available to me that wasn't sanitized by the White House Press Office, and I started seeing what a douche he was. It's only in the most recent years that I've realized what an utter monster he was. Put aside the fact that he totally stole the thunder of Canada and France in their role in breaking the back of fascist rule in Eastern Europe (a break it has since healed, and is near-fully recovered from; only fascism of a capitalist flavour this time), but Reagan can also be pinpointed as the original source of the Wall Street Crash and the recession we are currently in with his irresponsible deregulation of the market. Later presidents allowed that damage to snowball, out of sight; with Republicans adding to the damage, and Democrats failing to re-regulate before it was too late, but Reagan is the poster-boy of all the financial problems we're having now.

I just wish I had known that back then.