WORST PRESIDENT EVER (vote)

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

The Presidents at the bottom are those without any constituency today, though.

Great point.

Thanks for the ping. This one looks rather more reasonable than other lists. I do believe, as you wrote on the other thread, that it's a consensus list in which weightings are the product of averages of opposing viewpoints. How else, I ask, could TR rank no. 5 but by appealing simultaneously to modern liberals and conservatives? -- a uniquely TR game.

By my view, of course, he doesn't belong there. In trying to be all things to all sides, he was ultimately much less than he's been credited, and what he took credit for himself. His first term was affirmation of McKinley, and his 2nd term was a product of his age as much as his personality. We've been down this road before, so you needn't bother. TR's truest TR moments came sporadically during his first term, briefly in 1905 following his large election, and in 1907-8 when he lost control of Congress and was thereby freed just to be Teddy... His importance was in image and personality. In action (irony intended), he's a far lesser force than those of the top 10.

While TR's emotional impact was larger than his actions, that's yet an accomplishment for a president, although I don't believe it makes for greatness. I think it rather slides him down another five notches, at least, and at least to below Jackson, whose impact was akin to TRs, only more enduring. After all, Jackson created (or sustained) a political party. TR created two opposing ones... lol!

Btw, I think the only way TR could be a top five president is by subscribing to the co-option theory. If the theory is valid, then he must be heroic, for he thereby saved the nation from socialism. I think that is bunk, so downward he falls on my list.

re "[Wilson] created the federal reserve system, which while the kooks don't like it, is critical to running a modern economy.

The kooks like to blame Wilson for the income tax and for the Fed. Both were products of their ages, and both were spurred by Taft as well as by Wilson. While Wilson sponsored and signed the first personal income tax, Taft launched the 16th amendment that made it constitutionally clean. (The entire movement was launched by Democrats in the 1890s, pushed foward by TR; while Taft did not like the personal income tax, he exchanged the 16th amendment for a new tariff -- a much larger story).

As for the Fed, Wilson's principal contribution to it was to be there when the bill hit the Oval Office. A Democratic Congress sent him the bill, but they inherited the idea and its core form from Taft and Nelson Aldrich, the supposed reactionary Senator who launched the whole idea back in 1908 and in 1912 proposed legislation that marked its essential and enduring form.

I guess, in some sense, Aldrich can be blamed for the Great Depression...

On the co-option theory... I'll grant that one can never prove a negative. We cannot, for example, say what might have been had TR not "co-opted" part of the leftist reform movement of his day. Or, we cannot say what would have happened had Taft not stood for constitutionalism in 1912. I do know that Taft's stand was an important, crucial counter-weight to the extremes of progressivism. I cannot disprove the co-option theory any more than it can be sustained. That said, I reject it.

Huey Long was more scary to FDR within his own party than for governing generally. FDR understood that Long threatened his own base, which, if taken, would empower Republicans. A Long candidacy in '36 would have been damned more interesting than what it was without him. If he had lived to make the run he would have been a far larger threat to FDR than to Landon.

We can say now that the US was far from revolution or dictatorship in the 1930s. But things looked very different to many people at the time. They judged on the basis of what had happened in Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain and elsewhere, and also what they'd seen in our own country.

The old line that "Franklin Roosevelt saved the US from violent revolution or dictatorship" is one that people can't toss around as easily today as they did in previous years. But the danger to us is that we have become too complacent and assume that such things can't happen here. Things weren't fated to end up as they have. They could have turned out much worse.

FDR's significance may have been more international in the end than domestic. It may be that Americans don't go in for revolution, dictatorship, or socialism, but that hasn't been true of much of the rest of the world. Roosevelt might have pursued a policy more akin to that of Britain in the 1930s with better economic results.

But British leaders -- McDonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain -- weren't especially charismatic figures on the international scene and couldn't match the appeal of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin to many. Even Churchill's appeal was limited by the continent's dislike for British Toryism and imperialism.

We needed much wider support to rebuild Europe and Asia and make a common front against the Soviets. FDR's attractiveness to foreigners had a lot to do with what we were able to achieve later on, and it was precisely some of the things that American conservatives deplored about the New Deal that made many Europeans and Asians look to America with hope.

So the West may have been fortunate in having a figure like Roosevelt who had an attraction across a wider spectrum of opinion. It may have been a cheap magic, and it didn't always work, but it did have its successes.

The other thing is that America had its 20th century "revolution" in the New Deal, and a rather moderate revolution it was. We went through it and saw its weaknesses and failings. So we weren't inclined to major changes after the war. That wasn't true of Britain and much of the rest of the world. They were still hungry for fundamental changes after WWII, and they got them.

I doubt many people are going to agree with the last generation of liberal historians that FDR was our greatest president. But simply because we got through our greatest Depression and the world's most important war with Roosevelt in the White House, there's a limit to how far FDR's stock can fall.

Googling around, though, I found out that in 1942 FDR ordered a 100% marginal tax rate on income over 25,000 dollars. Every dollar you earned above that would go directly to the federal government. Of course, $25,000 was a lot more money then. And there was a war of great significance going on. The tax didn't last. Congress settled for a 90% top bracket. It stayed in effect for some time after the war (though there were those loopholes). But it's a good indication why liberals love Roosevelt and conservatives don't, and why it won't do to get too sentimental about the man.

100% rate.... love it! Any stats on compliance along with that one?

I loathe the high/higher tax rates of the 30s/40s/50s. Rather than raise revenue it only served to reinforce existing wealth and limit its new creation. On the corporate side, it enhanced the position of existing companies and stifled new competition. One of the more painful results of the New Deal was the hardening of big business -- ahh, that old progressive ideal!

Good thoughts on FDR. I do not think, though, as many put it, that Americans don't like revolutions. More accurately, it is that our core ideas are incompatable with drastic change, and, most importantly, don't need it. Often, those core principles must be reinforced, and it is a great service of those leaders who render it. Ultimately, Americans are, at heart, very, very American -- this is the legacy of the Founding.

This Americaness, I believe, is both the larger impulse against "change" and the basis of American distaste for radicalism. That is, ultimately, Americans believe in themselves, so they more readily return to their beliefs rather than seeking new canons. Above all, I do not believe that we must adopt radicalism in order to defeat it. That's lame and weak rationalization for bad politics -- and demagogues.

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