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.

[x]

It's clear that Marx wasn't a free trader in the sense that many businessmen are. But it would be going to far to say that free trade is the "ultimate expression of capitalism" and that therefore Marx couldn't have been a free trader. Free trade is an expression of internationalism, and Marx was a revolutionary internationalist.

Marx and Engels appreciated the revolutionary and internationalist effects of free trade. So do some corporate executives and management gurus today, though "revolutionary" means something very different to them today. In no way was Marx a protectionist. He despised most protectionists.

But I don't know what the original argument was about. I just jumped in because it looked like your quote didn't represent what the communists believed. I don't know what the context of your argument was, and whether you're defending free trade from association with Marx or attacking protection as Marxist. That makes a difference. Defenders always have an easier time proving a case.

So I suppose I'll just leave it at this: Marx wasn't a free trader in the conventionally accepted business-oriented sense of the word, but he also wasn't a protectionist in the usually accepted nationalist or business-oriented sense of the word either.

[Calvin Locke]

...they named a U.S. submarine

Some idiot Admiral pushed for it, so as to have a sub named after a president, and the Clinton administration agreed
to it.

[Calvin Locke]

I'd like someone to tell me how foriegn trade increased from 1938 to 1948.

Most of the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins, for one thing. I'm guessing that they had to buy stuff from
the US, with "loans" from US taxpayers, that is.

[ItsForTheChildren]

Clinton.

He wasn't our first black president. He was our first Chinese president.

Followed so closely as to be illegal until Lawrence v. Texas, by Carter.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I'm going to throw in FDR. The New Deal, Social Security, Federal tax withholding leading the expansion of the federal branch of government, and he stocked the federal bureaucracy with Soviet agents.

Have to agree. As bad a carter, clinton and LBJ were this trumps all. And you didn't even mention packing the SC.

[jslade]

Herbert Hoover, the architect of the great depression

Exactly how? Please be detailed.

[HangnJudge]

I've been corrected - see #57
I was thinking of Smoot-Hawley act et. al.
And that the depression occurred on his watch
but the discussion progressed well beyond that
and we've been corrected.

There was some support for the position #217
but I got pretty raked for that vote, probably deserved it

[Thebaddog]

I couldn't remember enough of the history. I thought the blind eye to the espionage was big enough. The Venona files stated that there were so many secret agent at the Treasury Department that they were bumping into each other.

[Zman516]

Clinton. We may never survive long enough to know the extent of the damage he has wrought.

Carter a close second. In addition to all of Carter's disasters previously mentioned, I was especially infuriated when he gave blanket amnesty to the traitorous chicken$hiite draft-dodging c***s**kers who fled to Canada, etc. during the Vietnam war.

FDR, LBJ tied for third.

[AzaleaCity5691]

When, has anyone who defends the South in this day and age spoken out in favor of slavery?

Oh wait, it hasn't happened. The people of Georgia if given a vote on the 1956 flag would have chosen the 1956, however, do-gooders in the legislature didn't want to give the people that choice because they knew what they would do.

Look at the results of the flag referendums in Mississippi.......

I'm sorry that some people still like to believe stereotypes about the Southland, but that's their problem, not mine

[AzaleaCity5691]

You seem to be of the mistaken impression that all the things blacks in the South suffered were specifically at the hands of whites. What northern history likes to conveniently cover up are the actions of all those members of the black aristocracy were just as bound and determined to maintain the old order, and who were so willing to sell their own down the creek without a paddle to do it. I have yet to see all these historians castigate these people, many of whom still dominate black high society in the Southeast.

[Cincinna]

Jimmeh
Slick Willie

[LS]

I lived in the south for years; played Rock and Roll throughout Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Loved the people, liked the area, but even in the 1970s I still found a high level of racism (and this among "rockers" who, one would think, would be more liberal). It was ok to play with a black on stage, but NEVER to be friends with one.

Your point, however, is quite right, and it is one of the first points that Roger Ransom makes in his new book, "The Confederate States of America." He says that whatever the (belated) rationale for "states rights" was, no one in America today would reinstitute a slave system.

[Cincinna]

Both Carter and Clinton paved the way for Islamo-fascism to take root and grow in Iran and the Middle East.
Clinton directly was responsible for not taking out Osama and for allowing the info on Mohammed Atta & Co to be kept secret.

[Austin Willard Wright]

How many black aristocrats were expelling thousands of blacks from large plantations and pocketing money from the "Northern" Roosevelt administration in the process?

BTW, I think that the black aristocrats are generally a heroic group in black history. It was their genius that created hundreds of schools, colleges, fraternal organizations, and other instiutions of self-help and mutual aid.

[SiliconValleyGuy]

Clinton. I never waste my breath stating the obvious.

[rcocean]

Being curious I looked up the numbers. In 1948 GNP was $250 billion. Exports were $15 billion of which $5 billion was paid for directly or indirectly by Uncle Sam. Imports were $5 billion. Imports/Exports in 1938 were about $3 billion dollars each. Exports in 1948 only accounted for 1/15 of the US economy. By Comparison the US Federal budget for 1948 was $21 billion.

As you can see the idea that we went from depression to prosperity from 1938 to 1948 due to "Free Trade" is absurd. Exports went up by $10 billion while GNP went up from $100 billion to $250 billion. It also shows that exports were such a small percent of GNP that Smoot-Halley did not "cause" the depression or even make it worse.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Re-read what I said. I never claimed that free trade created prosperity after 1938. You asked why trade increased and I provided a MFN as a reason. That's all.