The Worst U.S. President of all Time?

[Nonimus]

Nixon! His performance in 'Futurama' is appalling!

 

[dcmorgan]

A picture says more than 1000 words...

 

[Nonimus]

 

[Tongue_Me]

The one that wasn't elected to begin with and the one who was elected the second time around out of fear.

 

[TriBi]

I am not sufficiently well versed in ALL the American Presidents to make a totally accurate call on this.

However, in relatively recent terms, I think history will probably be at least as unkind to GWB as it was to RMN...

 

[eddielee]

It's a toss up between Richard Nixon and the current President, George Bush Jr.

 

[sheep]

I don't know how the U.S. could have survived if it had a president worse than Dubya. And I wonder if it will

 

[jkirk3000]

Let's see...10% unemployment rate, 12% inflation rate, 18% interest rate, gas shortages, our fellow Americans held hostage in our embassy in Tehran with no credible response for over a year and he coined the word malais...who else but the self agrandizing, world famous peanut farmer: Jimmy Carter!

 

[Snickers52]

In my lifetime it's definitely the trifecta of Nixon/Reagan/GW Bush. Nixon and Reagan have already taken their spots in hell and a new spot is being made ready for the current asshole.

The best thing that comes about from having presidents like these fools is that usually the country is so sick of them by the time their terms are over, even the idiots who voted them into office vote in the opposite direction. Then we have a few years of prosperity and peace until the conservatives and religious freaks get hungry for another period of Naziism and we put another criminal into the White House.

The one good thing about Bush is that he's fucked up his idiot brother's chance of ever becoming president. I think the Bush dynasty has effectively been destroyed by this fool.

 

[The Gay Wizard]

Let's see...10% unemployment rate, 12% inflation rate, 18% interest rate, gas shortages, our fellow Americans held hostage in our embassy in Tehran with no credible response for over a year and he coined the word malais...who else but the self agrandizing, world famous peanut farmer: Jimmy Carter!

Agreed. Jimmy Carter, GWB Jr., and Nixon would all be up there. As per your question Peto regarding Hoover I would say he was a victim of time/circumstance however his inability and seemingly unwillingness to find a solution to the great depression was an error on his part that he will always be looked down upon. FDR however even with all his reforms wasn't able to end the great depression without WWII.

 

[farmerjor]

Are you kidding me? FDR came out with the New Deal program which employed thousands of workers during the depression and instituted things that people couldn't live without like welfare and social security. He was one of the greatest presidents. By the way, if it wasn't for FDR, the democratic party that we see to day would probably be even weaker than it is now. He helped create grass-root democrats. If anything Herbert Hoover is one of the worst presidents because I advocated the "trickle down effect", saw the Depression coming, and refused to do anything about it because he thought it was going to fix itself.

 

[Eagle653]

I think the absolute worst one of them all was Franklin Pierce in the early 1850s. He didn't want the job, was unqualified for it, was totally incompetent (and lazy), was an alcoholic, and suffered from such severe depression that he was largely unable to function. His wife never forgave him for running and then getting elected, because their 11 year old son was decapitated on a train platform on the way to Washington for the inauguration. She secluded herself in her bedroom for 4 years and refused to do any traditional First Lady roles.

In more the modern era, I think George W. Bush is the worst president since. He makes even Nixon look good.

 

[RationalLunacy]

......

 

[kev]

I am not sufficiently well versed in ALL the American Presidents to make a totally accurate call on this.

However, in relatively recent terms, I think history will probably be at least as unkind to GWB as it was to RMN...

Well, never count on history to take your side. The conventional wisdom (and I suspect the hardcore belief among GLBT's) at the time was that Reagan was the worst...but look at how history remembered him when he died, i.e., his role in the fall of the Soviet Union.

If it weren't for the temper tantrum that the MSM and Democrats are throwing about being out of power, and yes, IT IS ALL ABOUT POWER, Bush would have a much more favorable rating. I believe that 30 years down the line, history will see his vision for democracy in the Middle East to be a great one; and it will look at the denigration of the War in Iraq by the MSM and the Democrats as only

I vote for President Carter as the worst President of the 20th century, and Franklin Pierce for the 19th century. Both presidents in the 18th century were A-ok to me.

 

[jkirk3000]

How anyone can mention Ronald Reagan as a "worst" president is beyound me. Talk about revisionist history - he took over the country in the middle of an economic mess he inherited from the imcompetent Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Congress. The military was emasculated and our foreign policy was to turn the other cheek even when we were being kicked in the ass. Reagan presided over the largest peace-time economic expansion in the history of the country, restored our feeling of self worth, restored the military and through his tenacious and determined actions, helped force the end of the Soviet Union...thus liberating millions from the tyranny of communism. But I guess it's easy to forget when we still have the holier than though Jimmy Carter around to pass criticism on everything Republican.

 

[RationalLunacy]

How anyone can mention Ronald Reagan as a "worst" president is beyound me.

You obviously aren't old enough to remember the AIDS crisis, when a diagnosis of AIDS was an automatic death sentence. I do. I lost my partner of 14 years to the disease, in large part due to the inaction of the Reagan administration to pick up one finger and do anything about it, much less mention it.

You may want to read the book or view the movie called And the Band Played On for an accurate and poignant account of how the Reagan administration looked the other way as tens of thousands of gay men suffered horribly and died.

 

[jkirk3000]

Excuse me, I'm probably older than you and of course I remember the Aids crisis...which was just beginning to be identified during the 80's...

 

[RationalLunacy]

Excuse me, I'm probably older than you and of course I remember the Aids crisis...which was just beginning to be identified during the 80's...

Yes, and it would have been identified a lot sooner if the Reagan administration, knowing the disease was out there and was killing gay men across the country, would have funded the CDC with sufficient $$$ to do the research. Instead, it became a private battle between Dr. Gallo and a consortium of French scientists, with the CDC left out of the research circle entirely.

This is all I will say on this subject. I'm going to go into the other room now and remember my former partner, who died a horrible, excruciating death from AIDS on September 15, 1994.

 

[Soilwork]

George W Bush I think is so horrible because he doesn't WANT to be president.

He just did it because he had nothing else better to do.

And any president who says the greatest moment of his presidency was catching a fish in his man-made lake that was stocked with fish is in need of impeachemnt.. especially when he lies about how big the fish was.

Seriously, I'm not a big student of US history, but from what I know.. GWB all the way.. the wost president ever.

 

[naked gent]

The New Deal was of course a good thing, finally getting the U.S. up towards the standards in other Western countries, but that was the effectuation of a strong popular desire, which is how things are supposed to work in a democracy. Any president after Hoover would have had to follow the same path (as also Hoover actually had started with towards the end of his precidency). Maybe not as eloquently as FDR, but the direction and the outcome had had to be in that direction regardless of whom had won the election.

Siding with the Communist Soviet Union, on the other hand, that was done against the opinion of plenty of the informed politicians and, reasonably, a clear majority of the electorate. That was something FDR contributed with on his own. He most definitely had a choice. He could have started with Japan. And the outcome would have been very different. Not the least for the people in countries such as Poland, actually an abandoned allied country over which the war in Europe had started. Most shamefully of all this was demonstrated in the lack of outside support during the Warsaw Uprising, when the allied stod by watching the Wehrmacht making Warsaw into ruins.

Then followed 50 years of only slowly waining Stalinist strength.
(I do, by the way, not credit Reagan for its demise. I believe the Soviet Union withered down due to inner weakness. Allied strain did contribute, yes of course, but that allied strain had been applied for decades and was in no way anything invented by the Reagan administration.)

Schmidt I agree with your post but I'm not sure what you believe F.D.R.'s options were concerning the Soviet Union. Are you saying we should not have been allies with them against Hitler or we should have done something different after the fall of Germany. I don't like what happened either but I'm not sure what the alternative was.