The Political Asylum

Vintage Girl · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 11:57 pm Post subject: 10 Worst Presidents

Do our American members agree with this list or would you have voted differently.

JuanaLaLoca · Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject:

American presidents is not one of my better subjects, and usually provokes groans in me when it is a category on Jeopardy! (not quite as bad as vice presidents, though). I know very little about many of those listed.

But where's George W. Bush????? Mad

poppycock · Inmate of the Asylum Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Posts: 533

kitchenwitch · Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 4:34 pm Post subject:

I'm not up to snuff on my presidents either, although I thought Nixon should be higher than 9. The whole Watergate scandal and his methods of doing business pretty much opened the door for the graft and corruption that is politics today. (Not that politics are ever a bastion of truth and beauty.)
I agree that history will not be kind to Dubya and he can be in the top ten of worst presidents without having to wait for independent confirmation.

adrien · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 5:13 pm Post subject:

It's interesting to see that most of the Presidents in this list have been in power in the mid XIXth century, either in the ten years before, or in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Now I don't know much of US history - to be honest I could hardly comment more on a list of the worst French Presidents. I actually knew four names in that list, though : Buchanan, Grant, Hoover and Nixon.

It seems that you have to be long forgotten history to qualify as "worst President". Poor William Harrison can hardly qualify as one of the worst presidents in my opinion, since he's hardly been a President at all.

So in my opinion this list is very, very consensual. It would be more interesting to have a list of the 5 worst Presidents of the XXth century...
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BlueEmperor · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 12:45 am Post subject:

I would certainly say that the current US President is the worst in my lifetime, though there have only been four in that time (Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr and Reagan). I agree that an analysis of 21st-Century presidents would be most interesting (though there is no denying that, for the purposes of a list like this the 19th-C produced some truly terrific duffers).

The first president of the 21st-C was William McKinley, by all accounts a fairly decent president until he was assassinated by an anarchist. He was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps one of the greatest US presidents. President Roosevelt was succeeded by Wm. Howard Taft - notable for serving as 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after his presidency.

President Taft was succeeded by Woodrow Wilson, in my opinion one of America's worst presidents - not only because of his role in the Treaty of Versailles and the creation of the doomed 'League of Nations' but because of his dubious record on race. It was interesting to see President Wilson's successor - President Harding - in the list above. He is consistently voted low down in list like this despite the fact that he was actually extremely popular when in office. Having said that, of course, President Harding's administration was notoriously corrupt. His successor, Calvin Coolidge deserves some credit for restoring trust in the White House. President Hoover totally deserves his place on the list - being the father of 'prohibition' and president during the Great Depression.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - I am going to assume - needs no vote of confidence from me, being as he is surely undisputedly one of the greatest US presidents of all time. His successor, Harry S. Truman was also, in my view, a great president. I am a great admirer of General Eisenhower but, while he himself later recanted, I think from my point of view his failure to support my country in Suez was unforgivable. John F. Kennedy might have been one of the greatest US presidents of all time (or the worst) were it not for an assassin's bullet. God knows his successor - Lyndon B. Johnson - was bloody awful (not to mention President Nixon after him)!

I would generally rate Gerald Ford as a fairly good president - though he didn't run a successful economy and his decision to pardon his predecessor, President Nixon, remains dubious. President Ford was the longest-lived president in history (he died in 2006 aged 93 years) and also the only US president never to have been directly elected. It has certainly always been my impression that President Ford's successor, Jimmy Carter, was an unqualified disaster and I've never seen any serious attempt to correct that impression. His successor, President Reagan, remains a controversial figure but, personally, I'm a huge fan.

I didn't really like either George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, so I guess I'd have to vote for FDR as the best and President George W. Bush is the worst.

B.E.
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The doctor is in!

JuanaLaLoca · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 3:30 pm Post subject:

I was surprised not to see Jimmy Carter on the list, as he was a particularly ineffective president, but since I didn't know so much about the others, I figured they may have been still worse. However, I do think that Carter is one of the best ex-presidents that we have had. His humanitarian and political work, through the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity, has made a big difference in the world, I think. I find the contrast between his presidency and what has come after very interesting.