Jefferson Davis

officially recognized US Presidents

He is the founder of the "Southern strategy".

He haunts us to this day.

I knew he was bad at the time. I had no idea HOW bad.

I sensed that he was just in it for his rich fucking friends and as a 21 year old got into a big fight with my in laws because of it. As a result we didn't see them for 5 and a half years. Not til our first child was born and then we have only been back to see them about 10 times since. (Usually for wedding, funeral etc)

The turning point in American history is Reagan, the beginning of the Great Demise.

Not the starship, the organization behind the scenes doing Iran-Contra illegally selling US weapons to Mid East terrorists via the guy running the Syria opposition for the Saudi's today.

never what's the common good!

Thanks, Reagan!

However, Shrub was the worst ever.

Ronald Reagan is light years beyond the rest in terms of "worst."

Shrub might have been the worst president but St. Ronnie did the most lasting damage to the country, that we probably won't recover from in my lifetime.

Depression and Iran-Contra), with Shrub (Torture as norm and an entire city drowned) a close second and Harding (Teapot Dome) a distant third. Further back in the field were Grant and (not named) Buchanan (only Dem to make the field

in terms of hopeless incompetence - at least in the post World War II era it's of course George W. Bush

so in their honor I play this song in honor of Ronald Reagan -

Drugstore Truck Driving Man

Here's one I think you'll like

Not that there isn't a lot of overlap. I think they'd each get honorable mentions in each others' winning categories.

it's arguable that the Civil War would have happened anyway but Buchanan's inaction in the period between the 1860 election and Lincoln's inauguration made it inevitable...and his support of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas and endorsement of the Dred Scott decision and stated belief that the solution to the "slavery problem" was non-interference in slavery where it was legal, and allowing territories to decide whether to be slave or free, only served to exacerbate the tensions over slavery that led to Southern secession and war.

proposed not to interfere in slavery where it was legal, contrary to the intransigent Southern fireeaters' bullshit.

Iran-Contra isn't in the same league, and the worst recession since the Great Depression was in 2008, not under Reagan (and in any case the recession of the late 1970's and early 1980's was global, not limited to the US, nor tied to the policies of any one government, and had much more to do with the energy crisis caused by the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War).

With as much harm as various other presidents have inflicted, none of them lead us into a civil war.

possible, imho. Good poll, though.

But valid points have been made for Reagan

The amount of destruction caused by Reagan and Bush does not compare to the destruction of the Civil War. Everyone who asks why Lincoln didn't look for a diplomatic solution, doesn't realize that the deck was already set by the time he was inaugurated. Buchanan had the opportunity to do a lot of things that probably could've either avoided the Civil War or made it a lot shorter. He failed miserably.

Not arguing, just interested. I hadn't seen this line of thinking before.

Buchanan's position was that military action could not be used to stop secession. Andrew Jackson had no such position. He told South Carolina that if they went through with secession, he would send in the army and have all of their leaders hung as traitors.

Buchanan's position allowed the radical slavery fanatics in South Carolina and Mississippi to lure in the support of the rest of the south, because they didn't fear any consequences from the federal government. They were allowed to secede peacefully without any fear of consequences from the federal government.

Sam Houston a pro-slavery but anti-secession Governor of Texas was thrown out of office when Texas voted to secede in early 1861. Here's what he told the crowd as he was leaving the Governor's mansion...

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South."

Sam Houston knew precisely what was coming, but the vast majority of Texans didn't have the faintest clue. They believed southern independence would be an easy victory and they had every reason to believe it would be, because Buchanan did absolutely nothing to convince them otherwise. Federal troops showing up at South Carolina's doorstep upon their decision to secede could've convinced Texas and many other southern states to come around to Sam Houston's point of view well before it was too late.

quite interesting.

He at least negligently let 911 happen, then blew all the sympathy we got from the rest of the world, used 911 to pass the Patriot Act, basically turned a time that should have been for healing into a time of unnecessary war, went from surplus to debt, the unitary executive thing, the PNAC type thinking, Gitmo, torture - just a travesty.

His hated of the poor, the unions and the truth caused the continuing decline that is in force today.

He was an ignorant, silly, evil thing.

ooops. Thanks!

I actually find Reagan about half-way OK (for a Republican). And of course every since Junior, his dad doesn't stink nearly as much as he once did (though he is stuck with the stigma of being the father of you-know-who).

Bush/Cheney were so bad and their installation proved America had definitely followed Rome from being a republic to being an empire. Bush/Cheney can't be compared to previous American president very well but must compared with Roman emperors and such.

"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.""
Suskind, Ron (2004-10-17). Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush. The New York Times Magazine.

Manifest destiny was used to allow for all sorts of BS policies and his actions also helped speed up the civil war.

LBJ should not be on this list.

Cheney

Reagan delayed US action on AIDS for 8 years, started practice of massive modern deficit spending in the US, viciously opposed Labor, etc.

And of course 'W''s team ignoring warnings re: 9/11, also vituperatively anti-gay, turned surpluses into massive deficits, knowingly went to war on a lie, tortured, etc.

Very hard to choose between those two.

The USSR and the US were pushing against each other. After the USSR collapsed, the US should have stepped back. Instead, Bush Sr. pressed forward, which will lead to our stumbling forward and collapsing.

Many come close, but Buchanan defines "worthless."

-- Mal

Literally. More than once. I am not kidding. If people had known they would have been terrified. It's still scary if you served under him in MI.

As it is, his policies have led to the slow, agonizing death of a lot of things we hold dear.

Only he wasn't smart enough to realize it. At Bush GW Bush knew he was a buffoon.

1. Hoover not on the list? Come on. Just mention his name to someone who remembers him. I dare you.

2. Buchanan. The one before Lincoln. Had he done something other than sit on his ass a few hundred thousand soldiers who lost their lives in that war might have lived.

3. Woodrow Wilson. Ah, Woodrow Wilson. Where to begin?

World War I was a catastrophe of epic proportions. First he got us involved in the first place. Had that not happened, the belligerents might have been forced to come to an understanding of how to live with each other, and WWII might never have been. The French and British were exhausted before we got in, and would have been forced to deal with Germany far more mercifully than they wound up had they not had the fresh forces coming in from the US to back them up.
Then he screwed up the peace talks, and made WWII almost inevitable. Amazingly, that catastrophe wound up being many times worse.
Then there were his interventions. Lots and lots of em. He attacked Mexico a few times, as I recall, trying to make it conform to his image of the correct country, or something. Sent US soldiers into the nascent USSR to fight there. And of course WWI itself.

No list of worst presidents is complete without these Three Stooges.

nt

should also be considered. As should Wilson. I know that this is a minority opinion, no need to point it out.

Buchanan came in dead last in the surveys of both 2000 and 2009. Link: 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey.

Anyone who wants to pursue the question further will find it considered in depth in the Wikipedia article "Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States". One point I found interesting was that JFK, while mentioning Buchanan, was against the whole enterprise. He's quoted as saying: "No one has a right to grade a President—even poor James Buchanan—who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made his decisions."

Wilson was a megalomaniac whose self-righteousness and refusal to compromise--at all--destroyed himself and his Presidency. He could have gotten his League with just the slightest give-and-take, and he refused. He was also a determined racist, taking away rights blacks had already gained--the only President to do that since the crushing of Reconstruction. There also was his farcical "neutrality" as World War One progressed, and his decision--wrong and mad, in my view--to get us involved in the charnel house of the Western Front at all...though this one can be debated. Above all, he was the closest thing to a genuine dictator this country has ever known. The Bill of Rights were essentially cancelled after we got into the war...and they were not resuscitated, even *after* the war was over. The Red Scare came almost immediately after the Armistice, and the US remained a de facto tyranny for another two endless years. The mental atmosphere in WWII, under FDR, was much freer than under Wilson in WWI, despite the danger to the country being infinitely greater... Add it all up, and Wilson, I think, wins fairly easily.

He botched reconstruction hard. The civil rights movement may well have accomplished its goals decades earlier if not for his incompetence.

Honorable mention goes to the three pre-Lincoln presidents, Harding, and of course, Bush Jr.

that was rolled daily by the parasites he surrounded himself with. But of course, there are so many other worthy candidates to choose from that picking only one is difficult.

Surely the shrub was the stupidest man to ever sit in the Oval Office, Taft the most blatantly corrupt, Nixon can claim several categories of terrible, and of course reagan did so many awful things he has to be on all the lists.

and I would agree in that they were easily the two least able men to ever hold the office - they were completely out of their depth and the scandal ridden administrations that resulted were the inevitable consequence. There were presidencies that certainly had far worse consequences (Buchanan), but with Grant and Harding, you are literally talking about a ship without a captain.