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sjc
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 Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:24 pm Post subject: Worst President Ever? |
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If I were an American citizen this would be the only time I would have voted for Dubya. 
| Code: | A question that seems to be on everybody's mind these days turns out to be: Is George Bush the worst President in American history?
But how do you judge? Is he the most morally disgusting? The worst mangler of the English language? Ever since the atom bomb was dropped, we've had a whole string of bozos who cannot pronounce the word "nuclear." How much should that count against them?
Is John Tyler, our tenth President, a candidate for worst President? Some people who have never heard of this guy have heard of the campaign slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too." Well, Tippecanoe (William Henry Harrison) lasted about a month in office before he died of a cold contracted while making his inaugural address, and the rest is non-history. Tyler is best remembered, if he is remembered at all, as the President whose entire Cabinet, save one, quit on him. Please do not confuse him with Zachary Taylor, the twelfth President, easily Tyler's equal in forgettability.
Is the most forgettable also the worst? Men like Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Benjamin Harrison (Tippecanoe's grandson) were more politically brain-dead than really bad. But not so with James Buchanan, No. 15, who was President from 1857 to 1861. Aside from being a dull, unimaginative, dray horse of a politician, he was the President whose cowardice in handling the South and slavery ended the remotest possibility that the United States would be spared the horrors of the Civil War.
The consequences of Buchanan's political poltroonery were long-lasting and dire, as contrasted with those of Warren Harding. Harding (No. 29) has won many Worst President contests because he had three or four truly stinky crooks in his administration to go along with an otherwise outstanding Cabinet. He was a slob with a drinking problem, and he was also afflicted with Bill Clinton's zipper disease. Since booze was illegal when he was President (1921-23), getting smashed in the White House made him a not-so-great role model — not that much of the country was paying attention since all the other adults in America were doing the same thing at the local speakeasy.
There is a great story about Harding in the closet making boom-boom with his girlfriend, and of his wife being restrained by the Secret Service guys from rushing in and exposing the President in the flagrantest of delictos. But worst President? Not so much.
Others proposed for the worst list include Herbert Hoover, James Madison, Ulysses Grant and Richard Nixon.
Hoover, Democratic propaganda to the contrary, did not cause the Great Depression nor was he indifferent to his people's sufferings. A brilliant, decent man, he was absolutely the unluckiest President.
Madison, the fourth President, justly called the Father of the Constitution, fits anyone's description of a great man, but he loused up the presidency by going to war against England in 1812 with no Army and not much more of a Navy. His foreign policies were so hated in New England that the young federal republic he had done so much to start almost blew apart. Worse was to come. Madison could do nothing when the Brits occupied Washington, D.C., and burned down the White House. But in the long run the consequences of his mistakes were minor, so he cannot have the "worst prexy" horse collar put around his neck.
Grant was too noble a man to be the worst anything. He had some crooks in his administration, but, like Harding, he had nothing to do with their corruption. On the plus side, he was the last President until Lyndon Johnson who would go to bat for black people.
As for Nixon, it's still too early to tell. Too many people still living hate him or love him. The decision on that strange, baggy-faced man belongs to Gen X and beyond.
Which brings us to Bush II. It's also too early to tell, but if first signs mean anything, he has got a lot to answer for. We know he is responsible for the death of a lot of people who never hurt him or us. We wonder if he has so disturbed the entire Middle East quadrant of the globe that years and years may pass while the people there and the people here suffer for what he has done. Will we get habeas corpus back? Will the thumb screw become standard operating procedure, or will it be returned to the Middle Ages whence George Bush found it?
One of the criteria for being worst is how much lasting damage the President did. Buchanan, for instance, did more than words can convey. With Bush II the reckoning is yet to be made. |
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/09/opinion/main2453779.shtml
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Knight_of_BAAWA
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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They forgot Lincoln and FDR.
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Materialist99
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:51 am Post subject: |
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| Knight_of_BAAWA wrote: | | They forgot Lincoln and FDR. |
They got a lot of people killed, so it seems the media generally depicts them as great successes. Looking at the ranking of presidents at Wikipedia, it seems those presidents that have wars are generally considered great presidents, while presidents where peace reigns are considered failures.
It is interesting how Liberals and Conservatives rank the presidents. Hardly a difference! It's amazing how most Liberals and Conservatives think there is a big difference, between themselves.
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sjc
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:26 am Post subject: |
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| Materialist99 wrote: | | They got a lot of people killed, so it seems the media generally depicts them as great successes. Looking at the ranking of presidents at Wikipedia, it seems those presidents that have wars are generally considered great presidents, while presidents where peace reigns are considered failures. |
I think the difference here is in who had started the wars. Lincoln freed the slaves. FDR brought America out of the Great Depression. Though, he brought America quite late into the war. Dubya started the war on Iraq.
| Quote: | | It is interesting how Liberals and Conservatives rank the presidents. Hardly a difference! It's amazing how most Liberals and Conservatives think there is a big difference, between themselves. |
Depends on what you mean by greatness. Lincoln did stuff that many modern republicans would look down own. Many of these put party politics aside and just did the right thing.
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Materialist99
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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| sjc wrote: |
I think the difference here is in who had started the wars. Lincoln freed the slaves. |
Lincoln wouldn't allow the Southern secede. I don't see how there could have been a war without his aggression.
If he got over 600,000 people killed to free the slave, wouldn't this show how bad or incompetent he was. As far as I know, no other place in the world had that kind of bloodshed, when chattel slavery was ended. He was one of a kind in such bloodshed.
| sjc wrote: | | FDR brought America out of the Great Depression. Though, he brought America quite late into the war. Dubya started the war on Iraq. |
FDR did not bring America out of the Great Depression, he prolonged it. Unemployment was 17.2 percent in 1939, which shows how the New Deal was such a failure.
I doubt that Japan would have attacked, without the oil embargo of Japan.
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sjc
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Materialist99 wrote: | | Lincoln wouldn't allow the Southern secede. I don't see how there could have been a war without his aggression. |
His aggression? Plotting to destroy a nation is treason you know.
| Code: | | Fighting commenced on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a Federal military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
| Quote: | | If he got over 600,000 people killed to free the slave, wouldn't this show how bad or incompetent he was. As far as I know, no other place in the world had that kind of bloodshed, when chattel slavery was ended. He was one of a kind in such bloodshed. |
There was also the British Empire for bloodshed.
| Quote: | | FDR did not bring America out of the Great Depression, he prolonged it. Unemployment was 17.2 percent in 1939, which shows how the New Deal was such a failure. |
Which was down from 24.9% at the height of the GD in 1933. Many of the programs, which came out of the ND, are still around. Social security for one. Now families don't have to toss their elderly out into the street. It is hardly a failure, maybe by republican standards, but morally it was the right thing to do.
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/unempl71.html
There is also this.
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/depres26.html
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/newdeal.html
| Quote: | | I doubt that Japan would have attacked, without the oil embargo of Japan. |
They were an ally of the Nazis at the time if you had forgotten that little fact. There was a war going on you know.....
AL and FDR definitely don't make the list as the worse president. Dubya definitely is the worse one ever.. His level of incompetence is criminal.
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Last edited by sjc on Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Anti-Theist420
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:32 pm Post subject: |
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im not american but i always though Jimmy Carter was a good guy....am i wrong? lol
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sjc
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Anti-Theist420 wrote: | | im not american but i always though Jimmy Carter was a good guy....am i wrong? lol |
He was too nice. He couldn't compete with Reagan's "brand" of politics which has infected the republican party now.
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Iliketofrolic666
laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer
Joined: 13 May 2006
Posts: 266
Local time: 10:24 PM
Location: Buffalo, NY
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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| sjc wrote: | | Materialist99 wrote: | | They got a lot of people killed, so it seems the media generally depicts them as great successes. Looking at the ranking of presidents at Wikipedia, it seems those presidents that have wars are generally considered great presidents, while presidents where peace reigns are considered failures. |
I think the difference here is in who had started the wars. Lincoln freed the slaves. FDR brought America out of the Great Depression. Though, he brought America quite late into the war. Dubya started the war on Iraq.
| Quote: | | It is interesting how Liberals and Conservatives rank the presidents. Hardly a difference! It's amazing how most Liberals and Conservatives think there is a big difference, between themselves. |
Depends on what you mean by greatness. Lincoln did stuff that many modern republicans would look down own. Many of these put party politics aside and just did the right thing. |
FDR didn't bring America out of the Great Depression, he prolonged it, he missed the main cause of the depression which was deflation and tariffs. He blamed those big meanie corporations instead.
| Quote: |
Social security for one. Now families don't have to toss their elderly out into the street. |
Social security is failing, when it started something like 30+ people supported one retiree, soon it will be 2 working for every 1 retiree. Thanks for that great example of how the New Deal is a failure.
Why should I trust a website dedicated to FDR, that says how the New Deal "helped" without explaining how exactly this was done? It is extremely vague and I wonder how these FDR apologetics explain the 1938 recession and the mass unemployment up-and-till 1942 (WWII obviously).
| Quote: | | They were an ally of the Nazis at the time if you had forgotten that little fact. There was a war going on you know..... |
......that we hadn't entered yet. Pearl Harbor was a preemptive attack, because they saw our involvement as inevitable at that point.
| sjc wrote: | | Anti-Theist420 wrote: | | im not american but i always though Jimmy Carter was a good guy....am i wrong? lol |
He was too nice. He couldn't compete with Reagan's "brand" of politics which has infected the republican party now. |
Why does everyone dislike Reagan? (This is a strictly informational question as I know only one thing about Reagan) |
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sjc
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Iliketofrolic666 wrote: | | FDR didn't bring America out of the Great Depression, he prolonged it, he missed the main cause of the depression which was deflation and tariffs. He blamed those big meanie corporations instead. |
If the shoe fits....
| Quote: | | Social security is failing, when it started something like 30+ people supported one retiree, soon it will be 2 working for every 1 retiree. Thanks for that great example of how the New Deal is a failure. |
That has more to do with right-wing efforts to gutt it in order to pay for tax breaks for the rich for one. We have a similar plan and its not failing at all. In other words its not FDR's plan that is failing....
| Quote: | | Why should I trust a website dedicated to FDR, that says how the New Deal "helped" without explaining how exactly this was done? It is extremely vague and I wonder how these FDR apologetics explain the 1938 recession and the mass unemployment up-and-till 1942 (WWII obviously). |
Speaking of an apologist.... 
| Quote: | | ......that we hadn't entered yet. |
But the USA was still supporting the Allied side of the war at the time....
| Quote: | | Pearl Harbor was a preemptive attack, because they saw our involvement as inevitable at that point. |
Of course. The USA needed a kick in the pants to join in. too bad it had to come at such a terrible cost.
| Quote: | | Why does everyone dislike Reagan? (This is a strictly informational question as I know only one thing about Reagan) |
Why, because the effects of his failed policies are coming to light. He turned a $1 trillion national debt (Took 80 years to build.) into a $4 trillion national debt in only eight short years. I consider him to be one of the worse presidents because of his domestic and foreign policies which America is paying the price for now. He had one big party, that made everyone feel good for awhile, then the bill came and everyone found out that they had it stuck to them. Its like going to a pizza party and later you find out that they had all been billed to your name.
The policies that Dubya is continuing to enact with the same disastrous results to the country as a whole. Policies which only benefited a very few over the majority.
When all is said and done AL and FDR are not considered to be bad presidents. In fact they are considered to be great presidents.
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Iliketofrolic666
laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer
Joined: 13 May 2006
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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| sjc wrote: | | Iliketofrolic666 wrote: | | FDR didn't bring America out of the Great Depression, he prolonged it, he missed the main cause of the depression which was deflation and tariffs. He blamed those big meanie corporations instead. |
If the shoe fits....
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"Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Rose: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." Ben Shalom Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve.
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| Quote: | | Social security is failing, when it started something like 30+ people supported one retiree, soon it will be 2 working for every 1 retiree. Thanks for that great example of how the New Deal is a failure. |
That has more to do with right-wing efforts to gutt it in order to pay for tax breaks for the rich.
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No it doesn't, it is caused by the mismanagement of the funds that are put into SS. I am sorry, but there is no way that you can justify government spending habits. One of my relatives worked for U.S. government and there were people that came in, did 30 minutes of work and got payed for 8 hours (He quit because he was so sickened by the waste in government). My dad used to work for the local government, and he said it was the worst managed thing he had ever seen in his life. As an example, they bought a massive amount of Brand-new Apple computers that sat unused in boxes for a few years until they were sold for far less than they were worth initially, they were still unused.Social Security operates on a false premise, that government will display some level competence in how it handles money. There will only be one result of giving money to the government, they will expect more and waste more. This premise is easily defeated when you look at "Dubya" or any other politician. There is no way you can justify the fact that 32% of the average American's income goes to this corrupt gov't. in 1904 it was just 6%.
So in summary, the problem is the belief that government will use your money for some noble cause and not waste it on helping out their best buddies at some large corporations, labor unions, on themselves, on a bridge to no where, or some other special interest group.
Ok, I'll admit that I may be wrong about Japan, I am sure of my other points though. Now I don't like Reagan anymore. Reagan sounds like every politician in New York State right now. |
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sjc
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Iliketofrolic666 wrote: | | "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Rose: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." Ben Shalom Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve. |
Sarcasm.
| Quote: | | No it doesn't, it is caused by the mismanagement of the funds that are put into SS. |
That's one way to mismanage it.
| Quote: | | I am sorry, but there is no way that you can justify government spending habits. |
Depends on the government and what they spend it on.
| Quote: | | One of my relatives worked for U.S. government and there were people that came in, did 30 minutes of work and got payed for 8 hours (He quit because he was so sickened by the waste in government). |
That happens not only in government.
| Quote: | | My dad used to work for the local government, and he said it was the worst managed thing he had ever seen in his life. |
That is why many programs were moved to the federal level in the first place.
| Quote: | | So in summary, the problem is the belief that government will use your money for some noble cause and not waste it on helping out their best buddies at some large corporations, labor unions, on themselves, on a bridge to no where, or some other special interest group. |
Yet other Western countries make it work better, even if not nearly perfectly. Maybe it is because you have too many lobbyists? Or put too much value in money and not enough in people?
| Quote: | | Ok, I'll admit that I may be wrong about Japan, I am sure of my other points though. Now I don't like Reagan anymore. Reagan sounds like every politician in New York State right now. |
He's worse. To continue the pizza party analogy. Reagan, and his "friends" are the only one's to actually get the free pizza. Now Dubya wants to have his own pizza party and he's invited many of the same "friends" over, but this time most of you are not even invited, but you still have to pay for the pizzas anyways whither you know it or not.
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Iliketofrolic666
laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer
Joined: 13 May 2006
Posts: 266
Local time: 10:24 PM
Location: Buffalo, NY
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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| sjc wrote: | | Iliketofrolic666 wrote: | | "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Rose: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." Ben Shalom Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve. |
Sarcasm.
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| From the same speech wrote: |
As everyone here knows, in their Monetary History Friedman and Schwartz made the case that the economic collapse of 1929-33 was the product of the nation's monetary mechanism gone wrong. Contradicting the received wisdom at the time that they wrote, which held that money was a passive player in the events of the 1930s, Friedman and Schwartz argued that "the contraction is in fact a tragic testimonial to the importance of monetary forces [p. 300; all page references refer to Friedman and Schwartz, 1963]."
Friedman and Schwartz's account of the Great Contraction is impressive in its erudition and development of historical detail, including the use of many previously untapped primary sources. But what is most important about the work, and the reason that the book is as influential today as ever, is the authors' subtle use of history to disentangle complicated skeins of cause and effect--to solve what economists call the identification problem. A statistician studying data from the Great Depression would notice the basic fact that the money stock, output, and prices in the United States went down together in 1929 through 1933 and up together in subsequent years. But these correlations cannot answer the crucial questions: What is causing what? Are changes in the money stock largely causing changes in prices and output, as Friedman and Schwartz were to conclude? Or, instead, is the stock of money reacting passively to changes in the state of economy? Or is there yet some other, unmeasured factor that is affecting all three variables?
The special genius of the Monetary History is the authors' use of what some today would call "natural experiments"--in this context, episodes in which money moves for reasons that are plausibly unrelated to the current state of the economy. By locating such episodes, then observing what subsequently occurred in the economy, Friedman and Schwartz laboriously built the case that the causality can be interpreted as running (mostly) from money to output and prices, so that the Great Depression can reasonably be described as having been caused by monetary forces. Of course, natural experiments are never perfectly controlled, so that no single natural experiment can be viewed as dispositive--hence the importance of Friedman and Schwartz's historical analysis, which adduces a wide variety of such episodes and comparisons in support of their case. I think the most useful thing I can do in the remainder of my talk today is to remind you of the genius of the Friedman-Schwartz methodology by reviewing some of their main examples and describing how they have held up in subsequent research. |
http://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/default.htm
Doesn't seem like sarcasm to me.
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| Quote: | | No it doesn't, it is caused by the mismanagement of the funds that are put into SS. |
That's one way to mismanage it.
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wtf is that even supposed to mean?
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| Quote: | | I am sorry, but there is no way that you can justify government spending habits. |
Depends on the government and what they spend it on.
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The U.S. government obviously. Some of the things universal health care, welfare, medicare, medicaid, corporate welfare, $1.1 trillion of "undocumentable adjustments.", $12 billion in lost cash, mandatory HPV vaccines ordered by a friend of a company executive, ear marked money, bridges to nowhere, a massive standing army, housing projects, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and anything that doesn't involve the government protecting our rights (1. Property 2. Life 3. Freedom to do whatever we want with 1 and 2 so long as it doesn't damage or destroy someone else's property or life).
| Quote: |
| Quote: | | One of my relatives worked for U.S. government and there were people that came in, did 30 minutes of work and got payed for 8 hours (He quit because he was so sickened by the waste in government). |
That happens not only in government.
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While that is true, there is accountability outside of government. In government you just blame the Dems or the Repubs and don't server jail time(If you do it is a few years in a white collar prison, not hard time). Outside of government you can be fired and prosecuted.
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| Quote: | | My dad used to work for the local government, and he said it was the worst managed thing he had ever seen in his life. |
That is why many programs were moved to the federal level in the first place.
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WTF, how does changing which level of government is in control help at all?
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| Quote: | | So in summary, the problem is the belief that government will use your money for some noble cause and not waste it on helping out their best buddies at some large corporations, labor unions, on themselves, on a bridge to no where, or some other special interest group. |
Yet other Western countries make it work better, even if not nearly perfectly. Maybe it is because you have too many lobbyists? Or put too much value in money and not enough in people?
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So how are other countries' socialized health care any better?
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| Quote: | | Ok, I'll admit that I may be wrong about Japan, I am sure of my other points though. Now I don't like Reagan anymore. Reagan sounds like every politician in New York State right now. |
He's worse. To continue the pizza party analogy. Reagan, and his "friends" are the only one's to actually get the free pizza. Now Dubya wants to have his own pizza party and he's invited many of the same "friends" over, but this time most of you are not even invited, but you still have to pay for the pizzas anyways whither you know it or not. |
........................................
No, my politicians raise taxes and still have a massive deficit, but Reagan cut taxes at least for the rich in order to give us a deficit. |
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sjc
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Iliketofrolic666 wrote: | | wtf is that even supposed to mean? |
Allocating fund to other areas where they shouldn't be.
| Quote: | | The U.S. government obviously. Some of the things universal health care, welfare, medicare, medicaid, corporate welfare, $1.1 trillion of "undocumentable adjustments.", $12 billion in lost cash, mandatory HPV vaccines ordered by a friend of a company executive, ear marked money, bridges to nowhere, a massive standing army, housing projects, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and anything that doesn't involve the government protecting our rights (1. Property 2. Life 3. Freedom to do whatever we want with 1 and 2 so long as it doesn't damage or destroy someone else's property or life). |
Under republicans. Remember, when Clinton was in charge he created a surplus.
| Quote: | | While that is true, there is accountability outside of government. |
Government is accountable to every citizen in the nation while corporations are only accountable to their shareholders. Well, that's the way it works up here anways. Our government fears us, not the other way around. It is here to serve us. In this Canada is much closer to being a true democracy than the USA is. While Canada is a parliamentary democracy, the USA is a Constitutional Republic. Even our conservatives can be more liberal than your liberals.
| Quote: | | In government you just blame the Dems or the Repubs and don't server jail time(If you do it is a few years in a white collar prison, not hard time). Outside of government you can be fired and prosecuted. |
Or get a golden parachute if you're high enough up instead.
| Quote: | | WTF, how does changing which level of government is in control help at all? |
More real accountability.
| Quote: | | So how are other countries' socialized health care any better? |
They actually work for the most part. Its true that America spends far more on health care than any other per capita, but it seems that the money is waylaid into the pockets of corporate pants more often than not..
| Quote: | ........................................
No, my politicians raise taxes and still have a massive deficit, but Reagan cut taxes at least for the rich in order to give us a deficit. |
Clinton created a surplus and was starting to pay down the national debt. Dubya squandered it in tax breaks for the rich and the war on Iraq. Canada has had surplus budgets for nearly a decade and yet we still have UHC and other social programs. We also have little to no foreign debt. Everything you seem to rail against also seems to work, for the most part, elsewhere.
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Iliketofrolic666
laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer
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Local time: 10:24 PM
Location: Buffalo, NY
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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It's not just about having a surplus, it is also about not getting taxed anymore than 10% of your total income, and not having all these bullshit worthless programs that look good on paper, but do nothing in reality.
The problem with the American health care system is because of too much government interference.
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