WORST PRESIDENT EVER (vote)

8/12/2005

[hang 'em]

Who is/was the WORST U.S. PRESIDENT EVER? Carter? Clinton? Make your choice and state your reasons.

[Allan]

To this Canadian the answer is obvious:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

followed by

Woodrow Wilson
whom Americans can thank for their graduated Federal income tax.

[Virginia Queen]

True. They are both spawns of the Devil.

[mombonn]

it looks like the majority is for Carter.

For those of us old enough to have endured both presidents, cartbilly wins by a landslide.

I sat in the middle of the bed sobbing when cartbilly was declared winner. I couldn't believe our country had elected a man named jimmy.

Little did I know that that was his best attribute.

[TheDon]

Carter also allowed the terrorists to take over Iran. Let's face it, Rat presidents are making the world a more dangerous place.

[x]

Pierce and Buchanan. Letting the country fall apart around you is pretty bad.

As bad as Carter was, the country made an excellent recovery from his mistakes. That's the thing about being a bad leader -- your successor can make people think things weren't so bad. I don't know if Hoover was less competent than Carter, but his mistakes led to more lasting damage.

Right now it looks like Johnson and Johnson are the most controversial of the presidents. Present-day historians hate Andrew Johnson's bigoted views and lack of control, but a lot of the old "he saved the presidency" sentiment persists. Lyndon Johnson screwed up worse than Carter or Nixon, but some still value him for civil rights.

[Types_with_Fist]

rocas511
Since Aug 12, 2005

[Patriot from Philly]

Buchanan, whose poor leadership forced the country closer to Civil War.

Carter, terrible President, worse former President, mean and petty,

[vannrox]

William Howard Taft

Distinguished jurist, effective administrator, but poor politician, William Howard Taft spent four uncomfortable years in the White House. Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the intense battles between Progressives and conservatives, and got scant credit for the achievements of his administration.

Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, he was graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his "plate the right side up when offices were falling."

But Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other ambitions for him.

His route to the White House was via administrative posts. President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator. Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy, built roads and schools, and gave the people at least some participation in government.

President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.

Taft disliked the campaign--"one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life." But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.

Progressives were pleased with Taft's election. "Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft is the man to put it into the barn." Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt--the "mad messiah."

Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his predecessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt "ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends."

Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada, which Taft pushed through Congress, would have pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff, but the Canadians rejected it. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.

In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.

In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.

Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until just before his death in 1930. To Taft, the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote: "I don't remember that I ever was President."

[omega4412]

I agree. LBJ. One time I was in DC walking along the Potomac and came across the monument to LBJ. I didn't relieve myself on it but I did say a prayer for the repose of his soul, specifying the temperature at which it ought to repose.

[usurper]

There is no contest. Jimmy Carter is the worst president of the United States ever.

I second that. I blame him for the rise of radical Islamic armies of Orks which will continue to kill our citizens for generations to come.

[boycott]

Carter

[yarddog]

Most incompetent was Jimmy Carter.

Most evil would be a toss up between LBJ and Clinton.

Although I think both FDR and Lincoln were decent men, they probably did as much harm to the country as any.

[Lurking Libertarian]

All Andrew Johnson wanted to do was carry out Lincoln's vision for Reconstruction, but Thaddeus Stevens and his unrepentant radicals crucified the man. The only reason that they wanted to impeach him is because he wanted to treat his fellow Southerners as if they were human beings, rather than the evil, rabid dogs that the Radical Reconstructionists saw us as.

But he did it with such incompetence that he empowered the Radicals far more.

[Stellar Dendrite]

Clinton, but Cah-tuh is a CLOSE second!

[iconoclast]

Lyndon Johnson, with Bush Jr. closing rapidly.

[vannrox]

Woodrow Wilson

Like Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. "No one but the President," he said, "seems to be expected ... to look out for the general interests of the country." He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy."

Wilson had seen the frightfulness of war. He was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina.

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.

Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902.

His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor.

He was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states' rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote.

Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices.

Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law prohibited child labor; another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won re-election.

But after the election Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On April 2,1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.

Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Wilson went before Congress in January 1918, to enunciate American war aims--the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish "A general association of nations...affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."

After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?"

But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.

The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.

[cubreporter]

clintin...worst president ever.

Disrespectful to the office
Sex in the oval office
Shameful behavior
Selfish behavior
No class
No dignity
No character
No morals
No manners
No taste
Endangered our country
Weakened our military


He had NOTHING to offer this country.
He was a taker
He was ruled by his wife who thought SHE was president

Yes, the worst president with the worst first lady (and I use that term lightly...very lightly)to ever set foot in the White House.

Glad he is gone.
We are better off.

billy clintin the worst president in our history

[delacoert]

Clinton, Carter or Wilson - I can't decide.

[puppypusher]

Jimmy Carter Is number one with the Slick One (W.Clinton) close behind.