Worst President of the 20th Century

I still want to vote for George W.

I mean, he was alive during the 20th century, and I think that qualifies him plenty enough.

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

I still want to vote for George W.

I mean, he was alive during the 20th century, and I think that qualifies him plenty enough.

Nonconsecutive posts arguing for the inclusion of Grover Cleveland based on this logic to follow.

Herbert Hoover, for watching the Great Depression happen and doing little.

Originally Posted by Lord Styphon

Moreso than Watergate itself?

While Watergate did do a lot to hurt the federal government's rep, Ford also had a chance to undo some of the damage and start restoring the government's credibility by letting Nixon's trial go forward. Instead, he pardoned Nixon, not only denying the US that chance, but also further damaging the government's credibility.

From the breakin to Nixon's resignation, Watergate had been doing damage the government's credibility for over two years. Putting Nixon on trial would have dragged it out for many more years. Are you suggesting that in all that time, and with whatever would have been entered into evidence, the government's reputation would not only have escaped further tarnishing, but recovered?

By pardoning Nixon, however, Ford let the matter stop doing damage. It may have cost him a full term in 1976, but it meant that the damage ended with his presidency. Carter effectively started with a clean slate.

In essence, yes, I was suggesting that. I suppose, though, in this case, it was damned if you do, damned if you don't. Ford either could have let the trial go forward, letting everything be bared and (admittedly) tarnishing his and the government's rep further to eventually have closure and a public that knew that justice was done, or pardoned him and put a stop to the entire thing.

I also wonder if the damage DID end with Carter's presidency, since there are a fair few votes for him as well.

Fuggit, I'm just sitting back and reading from now on.

I'm gonna say FDR, and I'm confident that I'll be blasted for it.

Here's the deal though. FDR first brought two things to our government that I see as being what will finally break our country. 1st, Social Security; 2nd deficit spending. Although the second is a good thing, as it is now, it's a really, really bad thing. And the first really is something i think the government should never be involved with, and the care of elderly and the infirm should be left to the families.

Needless to say, the guy did a damn good job with the great depression in the short term. I think that what he started, potentially is the beginning of our downfall.

And just so you know, it's just my opinion, and I don't claim to be an expert or particularly intelligent in the political/government world, so what the hell.

FDR isn't high on my list either, but in regards to Social Security, LBJ's Great Society reforms is the real demon making it in to a back-breaker. FDR's initial SS program wasn't as much of a crutch as the Great Society made it in to. Social Security was fine and dandy for the Great Depression and aiding in the poor and what-not, but it should've been removed. Instead, it was vamped up courtesy of Johnson.

I contend that William Howard Taft was the worst, because he did a crummy job of succeeding Theodore Roosevelt, ended up pissing Teddy off, caused the formation of the Bull-Moose party, and then split the Republican vote, causing Woodrow Wilson to be elected.

Also, Taft was a fatty.

Quote:

Here's the deal though. FDR first brought two things to our government that I see as being what will finally break our country. 1st, Social Security; 2nd deficit spending. Although the second is a good thing, as it is now, it's a really, really bad thing. And the first really is something i think the government should never be involved with, and the care of elderly and the infirm should be left to the families.

I would agree with you that deficit spending is useful at times, but never in excess, for it leads to too much inflation (which is happening now). I have to disagree with you on the Social Security aspect though. What if an old man has no family? What if he has no community that will assist him? People are generally good, but it's normally not their job to be helping others at all times. Granted there are organizations, but these are not guaranteed universally. It's easy to criticize the government for being inefficient at times, but that comes from a lack of accountability and it is undue to mistrust it in everything it does. Social Security is not ruining the country, the contradictory fiscal policies of deficit spending and tax cuts are what is ruining our economy.

And as for FDR on other accounts...I think he did a brilliant job with World War II, with a few mistakes here and there, one notably being his acceptance of Soviet presence in Eastern European countries at the last meeting they had before the war ended. And come on...he just kicked ass in every sense of the word manly...same goes for Truman. Have you heard some of the stuff they said? Every President has blunders...one needs to look at the politician as a whole and not knit-pick one or two policies.

There's a lot of lackluster candidates there, and I almost chose Harding for being such a damned layabout, which I feel is strictly worse than a president who actually tries yet still fails, but in the end I chose Lyndon B. Johnson.

Johnson was a stubborn bastard and didn't pay heed to the advices he was often given. He also had some questionably bad faith in several of his aides. In the end, Johnson contributed to a large socio-political mess that continued to have negative repercussions years after he left office, and whose failures dramatically worsened the domestic state of the U.S. as well. Those who succeeded him in the presidency had their work cut out and many took the blame for what were, essentially, Johnson's oversights and failures.


And for the record, Reagan may not have been the icon of restraint but he was certainly what America needed in 1980, from a morale perspective. Reagan's presence restored America's faith in itself, no small feat. I don't condone all of Reagan's policies and decisions but he was charismatic and familiar, and for a while, these traits carried the day.

I voted NIXON based on the many levels of embarrassment that exist around him, even after his death. I mean, no matter how corrupt any other president may or may not have been, this guy couldn't even hold the job.

THAT, and his bringing in the War on Drugs and, if I'm not mistaken, ushered in basically every other War on (something that is appearantly a problem).

Don't get me wrong, though, there are some other sad individuals on that list (I'm lookin' at you, Taft)

Originally Posted by TheReverend

Needless to say, the guy did a damn good job with the great depression in the short term. I think that what he started, potentially is the beginning of our downfall.

And just so you know, it's just my opinion, and I don't claim to be an expert or particularly intelligent in the political/government world, so what the hell.

FDR is definitely one of the most overrated presidents, but the New Deal is far too complicated of an issue to paint in absolute terms of good or bad, even in the short term.

Even if Social Security ends up being a failure, it won't destroy the Republic.

Woodrow Wilson.

During the Versailles treaty negotiations he emphasized self-determination for small nations which created a mess out of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, as well as alienating the French and British Empires in the process. He should have been dealing with the war debt, reparations, and the war guilt clause.Wilson just had to talk crap about small nations and their right to exist in a world full of decaying empires.

Failure to emphasis those issues resulted in most of the Fourteen Points being rejected by the French and British. Along with the US rejecting the Versailles treaty. Which if ratified would've kept the United States involved in any sort of collective security arrangement that could have possibly stopped a second World War. The inability of the British and French to trust each other, (without having America hold their hands) and their unwillingness to negotiate with the Soviet Union sealed the deal for World War II.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

the United States as an imperial, or interventionist global power, which set the tone for T. Roosevelt, Wilson, and the Cold War.

You make that sound like a bad thing. I call bullshit.

Are you seriously saying that the world would be better off today under Soviet or Nazi hegemony, instead of American leadership/Empire?

I'd have to say Jimmy Carter. One of the worst presidencies this country has ever had to endure. But hey, you know, at least he went out and did something nice after he screwed stuff up. You have to like the guy even though he was a terrible president. He's just better at doing humanitarian stuff without being leader of the USA.

Specifically I'd have to call attention to how badly he botched up the Iran hostage crisis. Or the, you know, insane inflation that he was almost entirely responsible for. Or how he went on so much about human rights, but still tried to work with favorable trade conditions with China, which still is one of the worst human-rights abusing countries on the planet. Losing the Panama Canal, the whole bit in Afghanistan...his entire presidential story is nothing but a series of botch-ups.

EDIT: I don't know enough about a lot of the listed Presidents to say for sure which one I'd think is the worse. However, out of the Presidents I do know a fair bit about, my vote goes to Carter for the worse.

EDIT EDIT: As far as do-nothing presidencies go, you should probably take a look at the Eisenhower presidency. Honestly, whenever he gets mentioned, everyone is like "Isn't he the highway guy?" That's all he'll ever be remembered for. Building roads. He wasn't a bad president persay, just uneventful.

That depends on whether you think that history would have taken that turn with the absence of America on the world stage.

Of course, without American participation in the First World War, there likely wouldn't have been a second, or at least not one in which Fascism would come to the forefront. McKinley's expansion of US imperialism marred our history with the war in the Phillipines, which was definitely a bad thing, and even with the Soviets controlling Russia, there's nothing to suggest that at any point it would have been capable of expanding and controlling other nations in the way that the Great Patriotic War enabled them to.

Third, our policy of containment was sound in the sense of checking Soviet aggression, but our involvement in Vietnam specifically did not have anything to do with the Soviets or even the Chinese, since Ho Chi Minh led a movement of national communism in order to free Vietnam from French imperialism, which was another problem in part created by Wilson since once the chips were down he chose the maintenance of French and British empires over the self-determination of their subjected peoples, suggesting that in the end he only cared about the self-determination of whites.

And fourth, our strong-arming of latin American nations at the turn of the century is what led to their strong distrust of American power in the first place, and our support of kleptocrats is what led people to support communist movements which we later deposed, leading to further harmed relations, or do I have to bring up Iran-Contra and the College of the Americas?