General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMove over, President Buchanan
Last edited Wed Mar 18, 2020, 12:47 AM - Edit history (3)
We now have a new leader for "worst President in U.S. history." Trump was always bad, intellectually incurious, an ineffective negotiator, a shoddy statesman, a pathetic rhetorician. He is divisive, mistake-prone and emanates falsehoods like a dog sheds hair. He is one of only four Presidents to ever march the path to impeachment.
But he always had the economy to hang his hat on. No longer. He has now overseen a historic stock market plummet and most of it can be traced back to his approach to a pandemic. The fact he had two months' advantage of watching the virus' approach from the other side of the globe only magnifies his ineptitude.
It's bad enough already but isn't over. In the first two and half months of the new year he has tanked the economy and thrown the nation into panic. In the seven months remaining until the culmination of his re-election campaign he is capable of far more missteps, some even more drastic than many imagine.
James Buchanan may have accelerated the nation's path to Civil War but Trump might do something similar. His reflexive reliance on divisive tactics and speech could play into any attempt at enacting the Stafford Act or otherwise attempting to stave off imminent defeat in November. His most loyal states could attempt to follow his lobbying for delay while others push forward to remove Trump at the polls. The fallout could be calamitous.
Good job, Donnie Two Scoops. You've run your presidency like the rest of your life. Too bad so many will end up paying for it.
Watchfoxheadexplodes
(3,496 posts)Like sun block on a treeless 99 degree day
TrishaJ
(798 posts)Freddie
(9,273 posts)Lancaster PA. Interesting tour. He had a long and distinguished career in local and state politics and was a Senator (I think) before his unfortunate presidency. He was from old money but considering the number of relatives and servants living in the house it was not THAT big. Descendants of his nieces and nephews make sure the furniture etc is authentic. No longer the Worst President Ever!
Capt. America
(2,478 posts)Demonaut
(8,926 posts)use the mouse wheel to zoom on the USA
MrModerate
(9,753 posts)Thanking Trump for the restoration of the general's reputation.
So much winning!
misanthrope
(7,428 posts)on behalf of the entire clan, thanking the 45th POTUS for the legacy assist.
NNadir
(33,544 posts)He was, in my opinion, the second most essential President of the 19th century after his mentor, Abraham Lincoln.
Basically his big problem was that he worked to maintain the things won by the Union in the Civil War, and was almost certainly the least racist President up until Lyndon Johnson.
He created new mechanisms for international law, successfully suppressed the Ku Klux Klan, worked to establish the rightful citizenship of African Americans, and utilized his great Prestige to keep the rebellion from resuming.
He was the first US President to show any interest in the human rights of Native Americans.
On leaving office, he toured the world, feted by leaders everywhere, from Bismark to Queen Victoria, to the Emperors of China and Japan.
It is unfortunate that a coalition of racists and would be autocrats conspired to do their best to undermine his historical reputation.
His writings are considered literary classics of the highest order; none other than Mark Twain called his memoirs the greatest military history since Caesar's Commentaries.. Many modern literary critics agree.
Modern historians are waking up and reassessing this tremendous figure.
I note that his contemporaries understood what he had done and who he was. The entire nation held its breath as he succumbed to cancer, many former enemies came to pay their respects at his deathbed, and his death brought on a period of tremendous national mourning in a United Nation. By public subscription, they built what became the largest Mausoleum ever to honor a former President.
William Seger
(10,779 posts)In test after test, he has failed to rise to the level of even acting like a decent human being.