BEST Leaders

[Melcaster]

Queen Victoria and Adolph Hitler.

[Umanian SSR]

Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ronald Reagan.

Minus the Ronald Regan.

JFK.

[Meowfoundland]

Empress Myeongseong, Victoria, Maria Theresa, Catherine II and Elizabeth of Russia.

[Rambhutan]

Saladin, Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton

[The Blaatschapen]

Letty Demmers-van der Geest, former mayor of Best, Netherlands.

Or whoever is the leader of this: http://best.eu.org/

[Verdeguay]

Letty Demmers-van der Geest, former mayor of Best, Netherlands.

Or whoever is the leader of this: http://best.eu.org/

What is a "Blaatschapen"?

[Laerod]

William Henry Harrison.

And if you can formulate a reason why he wasn't a great leader, you have an abnormal understanding of history.

I'll bite: He didn't lead.

[Laerod]

Queen Victoria and Adolph Hitler.

You should read up on the guy so you can see just how wrong you are.

[Kaczania]

United States: President Theodore Roosevelt
United Kingdom: Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Middle East: Sultan Sala ad-Din
Russia: Emperor Peter The Great
South America: President Simón Bolívar
Africa: Emperor Haile Selassie I
Europe: Pope Gregory I The Great
Southern Asia: Mohandas Gandhi (Did not hold political office)
East Asia: Emperor Meiji
Australia: Prime Minister Robert Menzies

[The Blaatschapen]

Letty Demmers-van der Geest, former mayor of Best, Netherlands.

Or whoever is the leader of this: http://best.eu.org/

What is a "Blaatschapen"?

Good question. It's the exact opposite of what an 'xkcd' is: http://xkcd.com/207/

[Nazis in Space]

Me.

Seriously, though, Cyrus the Great shits all over everyone else, past, present, or future. How retards who either as good as (Or in some cases, actually) ruined their countries (Often without any need to do so) like Churchill, Lincoln, Frederick II or Napoleon get a mention is beyond me, anyway.

I also have a soft spot for people like this guy, mind. Of course, not conquering empires, they're not usually well known, so I'm sure there's a decent number of his kind buried in history. Juarez serves as a stand-in for them.

[Nazis in Space]

Hm. Come to think of it - probably the most capable, intelligent, and successful leader of the entire lolww2 period - Francisco Franco.

• Successfully enlisted the aid of Germany and Italy to eliminate the socialist/ communist opposition in Spain despite the tacit interference of the Sovjet Union on the side of the latter
• At the same time, ensured continuing sympathies of the British and French elites (Neither of which were fond of the Spanish Republic) to make sure they stayed out of the conflict, hilarious Hollywood/ British cinema falsifications of history denying this aspect nonwithstanding
• Kept his country out of the world war by refusing to actually reciprocate the direct military aid Hitler had provided him a few years earlier - not the least due to his civil war promise to Britain to stay neutral if the shit hit the fan with Germany
• Stayed in power until his death in 1975 and, despite being a supposedly compromised, fascist regime in the vein of the Third Reich and Fascist Italy, managed to actually enlist the aid of the US for his purposes, cleverly using the cold war and the US' anti-communist position in his favour and leading Spain into a period of unprecedented economic growth

Of course Franco suffered from disadvantages - Spain didn't have the industrial base to make a significant impact on the period, and thus couldn't go on a lolwar spree. But in terms of diplomatic skill, of rational assessment of the political environment and drawing the correct conclusions, in terms of, well, politics at large, Franco was quite possibly, nay, definitely the most brilliant leader of the mid-twentieth century. Not the 'Tall and Mighty!' public image he made sure to generate artificially, but intelligent.

Certainly, he wasn't a nice man. Certainly, it all kind of fell apart as soon as he died (But then again, Juan Carlos I is a remarkably capable politician in his own right). But the eventual result speaks for itself - Spain developed successfully, its sovereignity remaining infact throughout the whole period, it grew stronger, not weaker. Franco managed to achieve what amounts to being pretty much the optimal possible result, given Spain's starting position. What did Britain achieve? It fought until it was no longer capable of holding on to its empire, and by the end of the war, was little more than a base of operations for the Americans. America? Threw away half of Europe to the Sovjets - it had the opportunity to utterly dominate the world, and wasted it. The Sovjet Union? Reasonably close to clear success, but the loss in terms of human resources was unnecessarily large, and would form a long-term disadvantage that substantially impacted the cold war. Germany and Japan? Well, the results here are well known. France? Pretty much like Britain.

Franco's Spain on the other hand, stands tall.

[Voerdeland]

Clement Attlee, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Deng Xiaoping, Benjamin Disraeli

[Risottia]

Hmm...

let's see:

Augustus, Traianus, Friedrich II of Schwaben, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Maria Theresa of Austria, Richelieu, Disraeli, Bismarck, Giolitti, Lenin, Masaryk, FD Roosevelt, Ho Chi Mihn.

[The Archregimancy]

Disraeli,

I'm sorry, Riso, but every time someone nominates Disraeli over Gladstone, they make a mod cry.

[Risottia]

Disraeli,

I'm sorry, Riso, but every time someone nominates Disraeli over Gladstone, they make a mod cry.

YAY! I make mods cry! I'M POWERFUL!!!

(poor Arch... I'm joking )

Dunno, Gladstone seemed a bit less effective in enacting his policies - from what I remember since... uhh... the last history class I took. That is in 1995.

[Desperate Measures]

King Luis Filipe.

[FREEaquaticdancelesson]

Ghengis Khan,
He really turned that country around, and spread his seed like a John deer.

[Melcaster]

Queen Victoria and Adolph Hitler.

You should read up on the guy so you can see just how wrong you are.

[The Archregimancy]

I'm sorry, Riso, but every time someone nominates Disraeli over Gladstone, they make a mod cry. (Image)

YAY! I make mods cry! I'M POWERFUL!!!

(poor Arch... I'm joking )

Dunno, Gladstone seemed a bit less effective in enacting his policies - from what I remember since... uhh... the last history class I took. That is in 1995.

I may be biased because I'm currently writing a book chapter about the archaeology of Gladstonian Britain, but I'd argue that while both Disraeli and Gladstone were substantive figures, Gladstone was the single most substantive British politician of the Victorian era. His extraordinary series of accomplishments and reforms in his period of high power from 1859-1874, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer, then as Prime Minister, arguably make him the most substantive Western European politician of his day; yes, ahead of Bismarck. His second term as Prime Minister from 1880-1885, while not as effective as his first, still featured a record of reform that would be honourable by any other standard (not least of which was the Married Women's Property Act of 1882, which gave married women both separate property rights and legal recognition as individuals for the first time). Only his short third premiership in 1886 and final premiership in 1892-94 - both dominated by the issue of Irish Home Rule - were relative failures.

The most important difference between Disraeli and Gladstone is that where Disraeli more often than not enacted policies (many of them admittedly good ones) solely out of cynical political calculation, Gladstone was a conviction politician (though not always a consistent one). No wonder they hated each other; Disraeli saw Gladstone as a priggish hypocrite, and Gladstone saw Disraeli as an unprincipled opportunist. I don't know... maybe you're more used to the latter in Italy? Stern Victorian High Anglican moralist politicians of deep personal principle are out of fashion in this more cynical age, but I'd still choose Gladstone over Disraeli any day.

Gladstone's greatest failure was his inability to pass Irish Home Rule through the Conservative-dominated House of Lords. But that the Lords defeated him over the issue that dominated the last decade of his extraordinary political career didn't make him any less right as regards the policies he wanted to enact over Ireland.

Edit:

With help from both Wiki and the Roy Jenkins biography of Gladstone, I offer a brief list of just some of his domestic accomplishments in his first two terms as Prime Minister - which excludes his equally successful period as Chancellor (and note that from 1882-1885, he was both Prime Minister and Chancellor):

- Disestablishment of the minority Protestant Church of Ireland (1868)
- Introduction of national system of public education (1870)
- Introduction of the secret ballot for local and national elections (1872)
- Establishment of the High Court and Court of Appeal (1873)
- Gradual enactment of the Cardwell Reforms to the British armed forces, which - among other things - ended flogging and the sale of commissions
- Granting of property and legal rights to married women (1882)
- Series of additional electoral reforms to stamp out corruption and grant the counties [rural areas] the same rights as the boroughs [towns and cities] (1883-1884)

[Athenarena]

Winston Churchill, William Cosgrave (Ok, Really Kevin O Higgins seeing as Cosgrave was always sick) and FDR

[Chan Huix]

Ronald Reagan, George Washington,Qin Shi Huang, and Genghis Khan.

[Wamitoria]

Ronald Reagan

[Athenarena]

Now where did you find that Wamitoria? It was genius!

[Wamitoria]

Now where did you find that Wamitoria? It was genius!

Just google it.