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Could be any political leader from history, though they have to be real. Also, explain why.

For me, it would be any of the four rightly-guided caliphs after the Prophet's death. Everything, from the sheer expansion to the religious unity of the caliphate always amazes me. In such a short time, Arabia went from a melting pot of various beliefs and acts to one of the strongest empires. Also, whilst England descended into ignorance and madness, Baghdad and the caliphate in general became a center of knowledge, mathematics/algebra (or al-jabr), literature, etc.

Honorable mentions would include Adolf Hitler for his strategic genius (not because of what he did, mind you), Askia of Songhai for leading one of the greatest Islamic empires in Africa, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (founder of Pakistan) because just imagine leading one of the greatest population migrations of all time, and finally Augustus Caesar for having the best special units in Civilization V. Great for early conquest, war, and empire-building.

Genghis Khan, for forming the second-largest empire in the history of the world. 

Charles Martel(though he's not a leader), for effectively stopping the Muslim conquest of Western Europe. 

Josip Broz Tito, for holding Yugoslavia together until his death.

Wait, who topped Genghis? What was the first largest empire?

Nobody toppled Genghis, he died.

The British Empire was the largest.

FUCK YEAH! BRITAIN!

But then the American and Indian revolutions occurred :p

And then Pakistan decided to bitch out of India.

We don't talk about those.

And you guys took a French-Catholic shithole instead of sugar-producing islands. WTF?
 

Genghis was the reason that Hitler thought it was safe to invade Russia in winter.

Of modern times it's a guy called José Mujica, he was President of Uruguay until this year. Back in the 1960s he joined a Communist/guerilla movement in Uruguay to topple the regime inspired by the Cuban revolution. He was shot a bunch of times and nearly died, then captured a bunch of times and escaped. He spent like 13 years in captivity while the country underwent a military coup; this included being put in the bottom of a well for two years. Eventually he was released; constitutional democracy had been formed in the country, he grew in popularity over time. He legalised marijuana and did another bunch of cool shit including donating most of his salary to charity and also living on a farm instead of the Presidential palace which he refused.

Political Leader? Fucking hell that's hard. Uh, Theodore Roosevelt?

For the mustache of course.

And because he kicked Spain's ass in Cuba and won us the Phillipines.

If we're deciding based on mustaches, I say Adolf Hitler.

Hitler had a pathetic, girly-man excuse for a mustache.

That wasn't even a full mustache!

This isn't even a competition, Ambrose Burnside wins best mustache by a mile.

Now that is a mustache.

It is indeed a glorious mustache.

Charlie Chaplin had it first!

It looked better on Moe...

Honestly? I am going for General Ulysses S. Grant. He later became President after leading the Union Army in the Western Theater to victory over the Confederacy and caused their ultimate surrender. His political reforms were fine, but I admire his ability to lead an army then turn around and lead a country with the same effeciency.

Andy Jackson did the same thing, except his side lost the war. I guess his politics weren't that great either, now that I think about it...

True, but Grant lead an entire unified country. But I do give Jackson credit because he effectively lead a rebellious nation while in the midst of defeat. He was an excellent leader as well, if his politics weren't good.

Really? Grant ran one of the most corrupt governments in the history of the United States. He has a whole wikipedia page dedicated to scandals during his presidency, and the word Grantism was coined because of the rampant corruption.

Yeah, Grant is a prime example why war-heroes don't necessarily make good presidents.

(With the exception of Teddy "The Ass-Kicker" Roosevelt, of course.

And even he set a precedent for more government intervention in the economy (I read that as somewhat bad, you prolly diagree) and totally bullied Japan into submission/a trade agreement and giving away the land they got through fighting back to Russia.

He might've been an asshole, but he was damn good at his job!

Taft was more way anti-trust than Teddy was. Gotta give the credit where it's due.

Agreed. Teddy > Taft. One thing I respected about Roosevelt was that he at least (kinda) supported big business, and was willing to have a gentlemen's agreement when it came to fixing a legal issue in a company. Problem is that future presidents took as a go-ahead to have the Federal Government mess with the economy haha.

Taft was a really nice and humble guy, but not a guy fit of a leadership position. Guess you gotta be somewhat stubborn to be a good lead.

Don't forget he also got stuck in his bathtub!

The government really shouldn't have any say over the economy in my mind. Their job is to protect their citizens and achieve a higher standard living for all of us. I liked Teddy because he realized that while (some) monopolies may be good for the economy, they're not great for the average American.

Plus, he got to piss off a lot of powerful people in the process. What a guy.

Strategic genius? Hitler? 

I mean, if you want to pick someone who was an amaizing strategist then you should be looking at Rommel, Napolean, etc. There are plenty more brilliant strategists then Hitler, the guy who staged a winter war against russia, decided to fight a two front war against the world's super powers, and wasted his bullets killing civilians. The only genius hitler had was his charisma, nothing else, lol

Mmm. I'm inclined to agree, tbh. I don't think Hitler read his history books too thoroughly, otherwise he might've learned enough from previous campaigns, but it's just as well, he was kind of a dick. (Did I win? Did I get the 'Understatement of the Year' award?)

I think he was too overconfident, more than he was stupid. He'd accomplished so much already, and didn't think he could be stopped. 

In other words, he got to ambitious and fucked up. Hehe

By the end his cult of personality had basically taken over. He never made many decisions, most of it was his inferiors doing what they thought he wanted them to in order to get into his good books. He was more the ideological driving force behind the whole thing.

He knew next to nothing about war, ha ha. He consitantly made mistakes, and the only reason Germany was dangerous was because their generals were amaizing. (#rommel4lyfe). 

He was however, phenominal at manipulating people and the public, though a good deal of that also came from his propaganda leaders. 

A lot of the things attributed to Hitler where things come up with by the people around him that he took credit for when shit got mainstream. Hitler was a mascot, and a syphilitic, meth-headed lunatic full of birdshit who couldn't think straight to save his life, Himmler and the others were the ones with any strategic genius.

The smelly, wet town of thotyville holds a secret.

Malkalack ... has the perfect life working as a stripper in the city and have sex with his jesus boyfriend, coins ....

However, when he finds a big pistol in his cellar, he begins to realise that things are not quite as they seem in the ... family.

An orgy leaves Malkalack with some startling questions about his past, and he sets off to wild thotyville to find some answers.

At first the people of thotyville are nice and hairy. He is intrigued by the curiously di|do gangsta, drakoblare .... However, after he introduces him to hard cocaine, Malkalack slowly finds himself drawn into a web of taking a niggas chain, dropping a duece in the urinal and perhaps, even a hairy orgy.

Can Malkalack resist the charms of drakoblare ... and uncover the secret of the big pistol before it's too late, or will his demise become yet another thotyville legend?

Okay, what the actual frick is that?

*slow clap* That was one of the trashiest things I've ever read. Still a better love story than Twilight WarriorCats.

Good to see you again, Chow. 

LLAMF!

He'd still kick your ass.

I'd like to see him try. Come on Hitler, 1v1 m8,

Stalin because reasons. 

He was a decent leader. He held Russia together during a war.....Churchill was definitely the better wartime leader in history. 

XD I wasn't serious when I said Stalin. 

Teddy Roosevelt. Dude was a badass.

Right? xD I was genuinely sad I had to hear the best details about his life as an adult rather than as a kid in school. "Why did no one tell me this before?" (Andrew Jackson's life story was also something I would've enjoyed hearing then.)

History is best learned by yourself. I personally read about Roosevelt while doing an extra credit assignment in fourth grade. Schools teach history from a biased point of view nowadays.

Pretty much all history has a biased view. History is written by the victor.

Unless it's Viking history.

True enough, but we can still dig up enough evidence, because ... even if House MD is right and "everyone lies," (and he is, because they do) differing countries rarely tell the same lies at the same time, multiple witnesses usually only keep the same story straight if it's mostly true, and physical evidence doesn't have its own motive.

Romania thinks of Vlad as a hero, while the rest of the world thinks him crazy and a monster. That is a real turn around.

He is a hero. One who brutally impaled and executed all of those who stood in his way, but he's a hero to his own country.

The fact that his parrot got kicked out of funeral for swearing still makes me laugh. Those are the types of leaders we need, not guys who grew up with a trust fund.

Agreed, whole-heartedly.

Also, this video made me smile:

It made me smile too...

... Thanks for ruining my ninja edit. My browser screwed up. ANYWAY, video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SupNaQeJrq0

Yep, gotta love the avid sport hunter and the guy who drove my family off their land. XD

Kidding. Teddy was fucking awesome. He graduated from an ivy league school and frequently rubbed his upperclassness in the public's face, yet he still had bigger balls than any politician living today. Jackson, however...meh.

Churchill was amazing, considering circumstance. Alexander Hamilton was way ahead of his time, and would have probably become president if John Addams hadn't messed up the Federalist Party reputation.

B.C. Would probably be Moses, led hundreds of thousands of slaves out of a world-power which went on to survive and pass on traditions longer than pretty much any other nation afaik. So I think it's safe to say he set a solid precedent.

Then there's also Meir Kahane, who, while I'm not really willing to argue about it, figured things out that most are still in denial about. Several specific Rabbis did similarly for different causes, and I respect them very much as well.

Surprised nobody mentioned the Founding Fathers of the USA. From a bunch of unruly rebels they made a world superpower and created what was probably, at the time, the most free and successful republic in the world.

Do religious leaders count as political leaders?

Definitely, depending what they did and/or influenced. Think Rebbe Akiva, Rav Nahman of Breslev, Hacham Ovadia Yosef, etc...

We didn't become a superpower until at least a century after their time, that's why I didn't include them.

I think that without their groundwork we would have never become a superpower haha.

With less competent successors, that groundwork wouldn't have been worth jack. I believe the true greatness lies in the people who accomplished their goals, not the ones who paved the way for them.

I guess that's why you like Bill Clinton more than Reagan hahaha.

There's a reason Reagan is called the Teflon president. Dude was incompetent. 

I dunno, Reagan pretty much ended the Cold War on good terms, brought American faith back in the government after the past screw-ups (Nixon, Carter, various scandals), and got the economy booming again.

I mean, the debt was tripled in the process, but the economy was strong enough from all the Reaganomics that Clinton was able to lower it pretty easily before setting things to blow up (literally and figuratively) in the next president's face.

The Cold War didn't pretty much end because of Reagan, it just pretty much ended while Reagan was president. The Pope probably had more to do with that than Reagan did. Teflon.

"At the start of the Iran-Contra investigation, Attorney General Edwin Meese had set the time parameters from 1984 to 1986, thus keeping outside of the frame the possibility of a much more serious scandal originating during Campaign 1980, i.e., whether Reagan’s campaign undermined President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages in Iran and then paid off the Iranians by allowing Israel to ship weapons to Iran for the Iran-Iraq War.

So, while congressional and federal investigators looked only at how the specific 1985-86 arms sales to Iran got started, there was no timely attention paid to evidence that the Reagan administration had quietly approved Israeli arms sales to Iran in 1981 and that those contacts went back to the days before Election 1980 when the hostage crisis destroyed Carter’s reelection hopes and ensured Reagan’s victory.

The 52 hostages were not released until Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981.

Over the years, about two dozen sources – including Iranian officials, Israeli insiders, European intelligence operatives, Republican activists and even Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – have provided information about alleged contacts with Iran by the Reagan campaign." https://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/09/rethinking-watergateiran-contra/

If he managed to restore faith in American politics, he was only able to do so because he discredited his predecessors and cover up his own involvement in his clandestine operations more discreetly than they were.

I'd argue, since if I remember correctly he and Gorbachev both agreed that mutually assured destruction was a really bad thing and they both limited and dismantled some of their nuclear prowess, and after that tension cooled and that was that.

I think that Reagan had enough enemies that they'd have uncovered his involvement in the Contra affair if he indeed was a deciding factor of it. Can't prove anything, of course, but I don't think he was involved. But I could be wrong, since politics is full of scandals anywhere and everywhere.

Also, you're gonna have to explain what Teflon is. All I'm getting some sort of lubricant haha.

There's a saying that some people are made of Teflon, which basically means they're extremely lucky.

Teflon is a nonstick coating and whenever there was a scandal, controversy, etc. Reagan always managed to get out of it and nothing ever "stuck" to him.

But as they say, better to be lucky than good.

Ahuh. Thanks for explaining (both End and Playa).

I realize I'm beating a dead horse right here, but this quote is too hilarious not to post hahaha.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trees_cause_pollution

As Playa said, the Cold War pretty much ended on its own, and Regan had little to do with it. What he did do however, was create a larger gap between the rich and poor, something that is still a large problem. 

That gap is what has been the predecessor to nearly all civil wars throughout history.  The gap tends to keep growing until the disenfranchised have finally had all they can take, and then all hell breaks loose.

And then start another civil war :).

Since there's nothing on but reruns, why the heck not.  :)

I should have said precursor, my brain just isn't working today...

- Ieyasu Tokugawa 

- Mahatma Gandhi

- Vladimir Lenin

...I'll be back with reasons in the morning.

Gandhi was a racist

And a pedophile

And he ate gold coins.

None of that is really relevant though (except the gold coins thing...that just blew my mind..fuck you Gandhi! That is not fasting! Arrgh). Hitler wasn't a particularly nice person, but he was still one of the great political leaders of history. 

Winston Churchill because

Churchill was a boxer yo. Another badass leader.