Posted on 08/12/2005 3:25:54 PM PDT by hang 'em
Who is/was the WORST U.S. PRESIDENT EVER? Carter? Clinton? Make your choice and state your reasons.
Coolidge, one of the best Presidents. And probably the last one to understand the PROPER role of the Presidency.
FDR...FDR...FDR...see post 15 he/she is right...FDR's hero was Stalin...and he hated Churchill...that says it all...
Good post. Very informative.
Of course you can take that game further -- Nixon gave us Ford and Carter, but they gave us Reagan, and the Nixon era helped kill off Rockefeller Republicanism so things worked out in the end -- but that's probably going too far. You have to look at what they were in their own time. Nixon had great opportunities. He fulfilled some of them and grossly squandered others. I don't know what history will finally make of him. It's interesting to speculate. Did Nixon's failure kill an earlier "consensus" or moderate style of politics, or was it already doomed by the polarization of the 1960s? Did his disgrace postpone a conservative age or make one possible? But when Nixon left office it was pretty clear that he'd really soured things for the country and his party.
Nicollo, what about Taft and Wilson? Is Taft responsible for Wilson's taking office with 41.8% of the popular vote? Is Roosevelt responsible for it? Did Taft's troubles give TR his opening? Or was Teddy such a force of nature that nothing could have stopped him from trying to get back into politics? Or was TR responsible to begin with for having made such bad choices earlier?
In the end, though, we have to hold Wilson, FDR, Carter and the rest for what they actually did themselves. Wilson made his own miscalculations and mistakes. All the more so, since what voters expected them to do wasn't what they actually did. But it's not just whether or not presidents agree with us that makes them good or bad.
Gross incompetence or corruption or simple inability to cope with problems make bad presidents just as much as bad ideas. The next question is whether we make a distinction between the corrupt, the incompetent and those who worked earnestly and in good faith to deal with problems that proved unsurmountable.
Carter was something of the Democrats Hoover, and comes in for the same sort of criticism as Hoover: he's the one who lost it for them for a generation. Those who would put Lincoln at their list of the worst have to face the same question with Pierce and especially Buchanan. They made the situation that Lincoln faced and the enviroment that he succeeded in. That they created it through inaction doesn't excuse their failing.
Of course you can take that game further -- Nixon gave us Ford and Carter, but they gave us Reagan, and the Nixon era helped kill off Rockefeller Republicanism so things worked out in the end -- but that's probably going too far. You have to look at what they were in their own time. Nixon had great opportunities. He fulfilled some of them and grossly squandered others.
I don't know what history will finally make of him. It's possible to speculate. Did Nixon's failure kill an earlier "consensus" or moderate style of politics, or was it already doomed by the polarization of the 1960s? Did his disgrace postpone a conservative age or make one possible? But when Nixon left office it was pretty clear that he'd really soured things for the country and his party.
Nicollo, what about Taft and Wilson? Is Taft responsible for Wilson's taking office with 41.8% of the popular vote? Is Roosevelt responsible for it? Did Taft's troubles give TR his opening? Or was Teddy such a force of nature that nothing could have stopped him from trying to get back into politics? Or was TR responsible to begin with for having made such bad choices earlier?
In the end, though, we have to hold Wilson, FDR, Carter and the rest responsible for what they actually did themselves. Wilson made his own miscalculations and mistakes. All the more so, since what voters expected them to do wasn't what they actually did. But it's not just whether or not presidents agree with us that makes them good or bad.
Gross incompetence or corruption or simple inability to cope with problems make bad presidents just as much as bad ideas. The next question is whether we make a distinction between the corrupt, the incompetent and those who worked earnestly and in good faith to deal with problems that proved unsurmountable. In that way, Nixon comes off worse than Hoover, but does that mean Carter does better than Nixon?
Indeed, FDR set the stage for much of the extreme liberalism that we see today. He gave the government a great big grab of power that politicians from both parties have enjoyed to this day, at the expense of the constituency.
Sorry, but you're fooling yourself if you believe McKinley's rhetoric about the 1890 tariff. The bill was DELIBERATELY designed to reduce the revenue surplus. Of course McKinley didn't say it. He wasn't as stupid as you would have us believe.
Your statistics on late 1890's growth tell nothing of a tariff's effect upon the economy. The Dingley tariff came in 1897 and didn't have any effect until well thereafter, and that with a war intervening. Rather, the late 1890s growth was a result of the Wilson-Gorman tariff instead of the Dingley. (Your doom scenario for Cleveland's preferred tariff is unprovable and thus irrelevant).
As for Smoot-Hawley, do not discount its effect upon the automobile industry. And do not discount the effect of the automobile industry upon the national economy. For all his faults, FDR never made that mistake.
Nixon gave us Ford and Carter, but they gave us Reagan, and the Nixon era helped kill off Rockefeller Republicanism so things worked out in the end...LOL! Yes, that may be taking it too far... except, honestly, that's how history works. I think we give historical actors too much credit for the good and the bad. Certaintly individuals impact history, but more often than not they are products of their times as much as innovators -- catalysts not original agents.
As for your thoughts on the '12 election, I subscribe to the old theory that TR/Taft together took the majority Pubbies and Wilson got the minority Dimmies. Even by 1916 the sway was held by TR progressives, as you know in the Hiram Johnson story. There's a huge "what if" that excites Political Scientists (oh, what a magnificently Progressive term!) well beyond reason as to what if it were TR v Wilson, or Wilson v Taft alone. They often look to CA, which was, by virtue of H. Johnson's disenfranchisement of Republicans, TR v Wilson alone, and which was won by Wilson. That's a bad example, for it was part of the larger problem that year.
My view is that 1912 was inevitible. Taft competently presided over a break in the Republican party that had to come given TR's prodding during his presidency, and in choosing the "Old Guard" Taft defined the party thereafter. TR, for his part, defined the Democratic party come 1932.
What's amazing about the Wilson presidency is that his first term was more Taft's 2nd term than his own. Wilson's tariff revision was, honestly, not far from what Taft would have accepted had the Taft Tariff Board been allowed to function. The Fed Act, the Clayton Act, the income tax, etc. were all defined under Taft. The only difference between Wilson's first term and Taft was Wilson's democratic spin on what Taft set in motion. Taft, for example, would have kept the corporate income tax instead of putting in a personal income tax. And he would never have given labor the anti-trust exemption that Wilson gave it in the Clayton Act. Into Wilson's 2nd term, and WWI, however, they went different ways. Taft would have gone into the War reluctantly, as well, and he would have sought some kind of international body afterwards, but Wilson went overboard, well beyond where Taft, or his heir (in Hughes), would have gone. Taft would never have allowed all those wartime controls and never so long as did Wilson, and he would not have been nearly so arrogant as Wilson was at Versailles.
Hope that makes sense.
Btw, have you read David Burton's book, "Confident Peacemaker"?
Carter.
I saw Buchanan mentioned. I wouldn't be too hard on him or the other men who served between Polk and Lincoln-they were all pretty much mediocre leaders, both products and victims of their times.
I love McKinley, and I consider him one of our greatest presidents. He was wrong on the tariff.
Unfortunately, his and the Republican obsession on the tariff brought us Woodrow Wilson in 1912. (Had Taft not talked tariff revision in 1908, we would have had William Jennings Bryan for a President, God Help Us...) For all the issues of that year, Wilson won on the tariff, which is most unfortunate, for the tariff was the least of the era's problems.
The man who most wanted to avoid the tariff as an issue, Teddy Roosevelt, was the man most responsible for making the tariff 1912's biggest issue. In 1909 Roosevelt progressives latched on to tariff reform as their honey bear, and they wouldn't go until Roosevelt ran for office in 1912, at which point tariff reform was adopted by Wilson, who won the election on it. TR never had the guts to stand for tariff reform -- all the while never believing in it in the first place.
Tariffs were and are ever politics more than economics.
Worst POTUS ever....and you want to place President Bush in the top three....AND you place Lincoln at #1????
I vote your post the worst I've read tonight....
LOL!!
"...his daughter is butt-ugly..."
Hmmm, could be talking about BOTH daughters. :)
1. Johnson
2. Clinton
3. Carter
Johnson the epitome of evil; Johnson was corrupt and capable of ordering/arranging the assassination of JFK. Johnson wanted to be president to bad he would stoop to anything to get there.
Clinton is dishonest, personally corrupt, a congenital liar. Not however, in Johnson's class - just a wanna be badder than Johnson.
Carter is just plain stupid, ignorant and a pawn of all that is evil on the left.
"Herbert Hoover, the architect of the great depression"
You need to go back and learn history again - you are spewing the revisionist history of the Left.
I could say FDR had to allow the Japs to bomb Pearl Harbor in order to get us into WWII and so end the depression.
It is true that the '29 bust and depression that followed happened on Hoover's 'watch'. He did not cause it.
It is also true that FDR did not get us out of that depression. WWII did the trick. FDR immediately asked for and got stuff through Congress to try and end the depression in 1933 after his 1st inaugural - the same measures that Hoover asked for earlier and did not get. Some of those measures might have been effective if applied early, when Hoover asked Congress for them. FDR knew that he needed the war to turn the economy around, but I do not think that he 'arranged' the Jap attack by deliberatly ignoring evidence of what was about to happen.
In a class by himself!
In CLASSLESS CLASS by himself!
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