Worst U.S. Preznits Poll

Van Budren?

Landslide victory for W in this bitch.

I haven't made a life's study of the presidents and their policies, but from what I do know about all of them, our current resident rates at the bottom of the cesspool for sheer asshattery: political corruption, crazy ass borrowing and spending, and mass death-dealing for no earthly good anyone has yet to discover.

also johnson or harding

right answer probably is gwb tho

Harding was spectacularly bad, you have to admit.

Nixon wasn't too good, neither.

for all the corruption in w's administration, only harding had a cabinet member jailed

tho i have to imagine w has run the most corrupt administration in history

Harding, Buchanan, and Dubya will always be in the top three here just as Washington, Lincoln and FDR are on the other side

Johnson at his worst was nearly a match for G.W., but he is saved from utter ignominy by using the office to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Medicare. He also appointed Thurgood Marshall to the SCOTUS. So he has some weighty counterbalances to Vietnam and pandering to J. Edgar Hoover.

Harding was shitty, too, but at a time when the presidency had less power, plus he didn't stumble the country into a stupid bloody expensive war.

he is saved from utter ignominy by using the office to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965

true, but i'd argue this is the least i could do? i mean dude had a real chance to unite the north/south and instead he went around pardoning confederate generals who then made it back into the senate. and the voting rights act was functionally useless in many ways for many years.

lol least he* could do

sheesh

And years from now, when No Child Left Behind is the summit and centerpiece for the accomplishments of 8 years of Bushism, how well will it compare to the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

harding meant well -- it was his cronies that did the worst damage to the country (an excuse which would let reagan off the hook too, i suppose). plus he was somewhat progressive on racial issues for his time (he supported the end of lynching, though he didn't really press the issue).

hoover's problem wr2 the Great Depression were that his solutions were misguided, ineffective, or both -- he did what he could w/n his ideological parameters, he did not ignore the country's hardships out of malice.

long way of saying -- dubya's got it in the bag. only real competition would be either buchanan or fillmore.

dubya's maternal ancestor franklin pierce wasn't any great shakes either. plus, he looked like an hipster douchebag who can't admit to himself that he's aging:

http://www.seacoastsearch.com/nhlinks/people/franklinpierce/res/franklinpierce2.jpeg

Nixon. I remember the guy. Hated his guts more even than I hate Bush.

Nixon could have been the worst ever, but he was partially hamstrung by having an entrenched and active opposition among Democrats in the Congress. His Vietnam policies were slyer than Johnson's, but were if anything more morally bankrupt. He started the Southern Strategy and reaped the racist South into the Republican Party. Evil dude. Just evil. I still hate him. Makes my skin crawl even now.

should i repost hunter thompson's "eulogy" to nixon?

also, and here i quote my dad after nixon died: "they should've given him a presidential burial at sea; they should have flushed his corpse down the toilet."

Dubya doesn't seem as intelligent as Nixon was to be "evil enough" - he's more like an indifferent dunce who has evil cohorts. In a test of evilness however, Nixon faces good competition from Cheney

nixon nixon nixon

Sometimes the obvious choice is the right one.

nixon

jordan i think aimless means lyndon johnson, not andrew!

some of the notorious "bad" ones weren't really so bad -- harding wasn't personally corrupt, just a bit oblivious. grant was the last president for half a century who gave a shit about black people. the generally bland and ignorable taft actually busted up more trusts than any other president -- including "trust-buster" T.R.

Yes. And I actually hate some of "best" presidents for their racism/imperialism/assholeness even more (Andrew Jackson, "Teddy," etc here's looking at you)

jordan i think aimless means lyndon johnson, not andrew!

yeah my bad. 1965 :/

i've been hearing ppl complain about andrew jackson for so long i kind of forget he's considered a "great" president

He's still ranked in the top 6-10 range of the "greatest" by "academics"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents#Scholar_survey_results

guys this is easy. Its grant. The real "most corrupt administration in history"

it's interesting that scholars always rank Buchanan amongst the lowest but the average non-history major person doesn't really have much knowledge of (or has forgotten) his woeful inaction

buchanan = bachelor = our first gay preznit!

apropos to nothing (except maybe a laugh), here's a picture of buchanan's VP John C. Breckinridge:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/BreckTT.jpg

http://www.stereointeractive.com/ILM/Breck.01.72dpi.jpg

John C Breckinridge has Herpes

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7341273.stm

harding meant well -- it was his cronies that did the worst damage to the country (an excuse which would let reagan off the hook too, i suppose). plus he was somewhat progressive on racial issues for his time (he supported the end of lynching, though he didn't really press the issue).

It's so easy to say "lol Harding" when his predecessor did the worst damage to American progressivism and civil rights in the 20th century. It's no surprise that I vote for Woodrow Wilson.

Also: from what I've read about Harding I rate him as average. He was personally magnanimous enough to pardon just about every man convicted under Wilson's loathsome Espionage Act (including Eugene Debs, with whom he personally met after pardoning him), and generally tried to make the White House more accessible.

I like Garry Willis' quote about Nixon: no president ever worked harder to undermine his own considerable intelligence.

for all the corruption in w's administration, only harding had a cabinet member jailed

HI DERE COME VISIT ME IN JAIL

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/impeachments/haldeman.jpg

Andrew Jackson is kind of the figurehead in my mind for all of that fun with the injuns, esp with the trail of tears episode being so tragic and evocative, so he gets my vote. everything i read about him makes me like him less. he was a cold, cynical muthafucka.

he's also the first "of the peepuls!" populist heros that i want to think is the real precursor to this silly "anti-elitist" = "anti-intellectual" conflation, and the origin of the sentiment that could even make GWB electable on the notion of "getting-a-beer-withism." Surely no one gave a fuck about drinking ale with John Adams

can't forget Polk

After the Texas annexation, Polk turned his attention to California, hoping to acquire the territory from Mexico before any European nation did so. The main interest was San Francisco Bay as an access point for trade with Asia. In 1845, he sent diplomat John Slidell to Mexico to purchase California and New Mexico for $20-30 million. Slidell's arrival caused political turmoil in Mexico after word leaked out that he was there to purchase additional territory and not to offer compensation for the loss of Texas. The Mexicans refused to receive Slidell, citing a technical problem with his credentials.

...

Slidell returned to Washington in May 1846, having been rebuffed by the Mexican government. Polk regarded this treatment of his diplomat as an insult and an "ample cause of war", and he prepared to ask Congress for a declaration of war.

the legend of his victory resulting in his followers standing on the white house posh furniture in their muddy boots for a victory rally and cheering him on, thus soiling it, make me like him less either. okay i guess i can knock him into my top 3 worst instead...

i wonder if i'm alone here in my other controversial hateful choices of disliking Teddy... but just because he dined with Booker T Washington in a PR stunt I don't believe him any less "racist" than Woodrow Wilson ...he had that annoying patriarchial quality on top of the imperialistic jingoism that makes him worse, imo.

I'm sure it can be argued either way - what isn't? Just look at the way this section of his wiki article is edited.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt#Views_on_race
Views on race
In The Winning of the West (1889–1896), Roosevelt's frontier thesis stressed the racial struggle between "civilization" and "savagery." He supported Nordicism, the belief in the superiority of the "Nordic" race, along with social Darwinism and racialism. Excerpts:
"The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages".
"The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages".
"American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, — in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people".
"..it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races".
"The world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests in alien lands; but the victories of Moslem over Christian have always proved a curse in the end. Nothing but sheer evil has come from the victories of Turk and Tartar".
What did not, however, conform to the views of Roosevelt's day was that race should never be the primary factor in someone of ability performing any job. Some notable events in Theodore Roosevelt's life included:
Developing a close relationship with the Hidatsa Indians that is maintained today in the oral tradition of the tribe.
Inviting reformer Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, an action which caused outrage among many newspapers in the American South, which objected to "mixing of the races on social occasions."
Openly supporting a bill in the New York State Assembly which allowed desegregation of schools in the state, personally noting that his children had been educated with other races and there was nothing wrong with it.
Appointed the Collector of the Port of Charleston post to an African-American, Dr. William D. Crum, and when he was urged to withdraw the appointment, wrote the following:
I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but I cannot consent to take the position that the doorway of hope - the door of opportunity - is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my contentions, be fundamentally wrong.
Defended the Postmaster of Indianola, Mississippi, Minnie D. Cox. She was an African-American, and on that basis alone she was threatened with mob violence and was forced to resign. Roosevelt took action by closing the post office there, ignored her resignation, and still paid her what she was due as if nothing happened.[24]

According to Richard Hofstadter, Jefferson's campaign managers used anti-elite jargon.

(xxpost)

x-post - i'm talking about Jackson here

the legend of his victory resulting in his followers standing on the white house posh furniture in their muddy boots for a victory rally and cheering him on, thus soiling it, make me like him less either. okay i guess i can knock him into my top 3 worst instead...

Jefferson was still quite an effete-intellectual compared to war-hero Jackson

I wrote in the other recent preznit thread that Teddy was a more loathsome president-in-waiting and ex-president.

i've got an idea: let's all carry on as if property is something other than theft!

I mean, Jefferson was populist in all his anti-Hamiltonian ardor and championing agrarian values and all sure, but I just think of Jackson as the first real break from the perception of erudition or "men of learning," the founders had, into the popularity afforded a "one of us!" war-hero driven campaigns surrounded by hate of John Quincy Adams...who, eccentric as he was, is quite an interesting figure

>I wrote in the other recent preznit thread that Teddy was a more loathsome president-in-waiting and ex-president.

Oh yeah? How do I search for it...it's so hard to find things in nu-ilx

I've just never liked Teddy. Maybe I've always unconsciously reacted against his great popularity, like never buying into why his face is on that mountain with those other dudes. When I was 16 in history class I raised my hand and said I thought he's a blustering, war-mongering imperialist regarding the Philippines / Spanish-American war, and was met with an inscrutable look from the teacher.

He just seems like the first - maybe only? - jocko-president who was also a wannabe-cowboy, who did more to celebrate militarism than any other. I don't care how many books he read a day!

He just seems like the first - maybe only? - jocko-president who was also a wannabe-cowboy,

http://www.lagop.com/img/reaganprint.jpg

I voted Old Hickory; we have a personal vendetta going way back.

x-post to Jackson bashers above

W.H. Harrison probably ran the first modern "man of the people" campaign, as in "who would you rather drink hard cider with?" Also, first guy to actually *campaign*, rather than be all "If the people should choose me, I will submit."

Granted, I've got a grudge...

Andrew Jackson requested to be wrapped in an American flag in his coffin with a copy of the U.S. constitution under his head.

Rutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield
Chester Arthur
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland

None of these presidents even register with me (neither do Taft or Coolidge for that matter). Garfield is buried one mile from me and I couldn't tell you one thing about him. Clearly they didn't try hard enough.

I'll go with Buchanan as worst.

Aw, Arthur's OK. He reformed the patronage system.

the post-Civil War pre-McKinley presidents are a forgettable bunch, a taxonomy I prefer to "horrible." You could make a case that Cleveland's stubborn honesty, poor imagination, and fealty to unfettered capitalism led him to suppress the Pullman strike, let the Panic of 1893 unfurl, and appoint some of the most reactionary Supreme Court justices of all time (most of whose decisions were later abandoned by the New Deal court).

Ooh, I think we need a worst SC justices poll!

i might have to go with johnson over bush, basically for fvcking up post-civil war reconstruction so horribly that we're still living with (and dying by) the consequences

Johnson's program left the decision of how to cope with emancipation completely in the hands of white Southerners. Northerners justifiably feared that freedmen's basic rights of citizenship would not be recognized, and considered it unsafe to restore the Union until that discrimination was ended. Therefore the Republican majorities in Congress refused to agree that the Southern states were ready to assume their rights and did not seat the Southern congressional representatives. This strained Johnson's relations with his party and convinced him that the entire federal system, with its strict limits on national power, was in danger. When Congress passed laws to protect the rights of the ex-slaves in 1866, he vetoed them as unconstitutional and broke with the Republican party completely rather than endorse a new constitutional amendment granting blacks the rights of citizenship. Thenceforward Johnson's relations with the congressional majority deteriorated. He questioned Congress's right to legislate without the presence of Southern representatives, and he tacitly encouraged Southern opposition to congressional laws.

Finally, in 1867, Congress set aside the governments Johnson had created in the South and put Southerners under military supervision until new governments based on equal civil and political rights were established. To Johnson this marked the total subversion of the federal system, and he resisted—cooperating with Democrats to encourage Southern resistance, promoting a political reaction in the North, and hindering the army's enforcement of the laws in the South through his power as commander in chief. When Johnson tried to gain control of the army in February 1868, removing the secretary of war in apparent violation of law, he was impeached by the House of Representatives and tried before the Senate. The excellence of Johnson's lawyers, the ambiguity of the law, the cessation of his interference in the South, the establishment of new governments there and the admission of their representatives to Congress, and divisions among Republicans all led to a verdict of not guilty. Johnson served out the remainder of his term quietly.

stalling progress isn't nearly as bad as reversing it

When Johnson tried to gain control of the army in February 1868, removing the secretary of war in apparent violation of law, he was impeached by the House of Representatives and tried before the Senate.

Well, don't forget the infamous, unconstitutional Tenure of Office Act, passed over Johnson's objections by a Senate filled then with the most pompous asses who ever assembled in a public space.

George W. Bush hasn't done ANYTHING good! He is so ridiculously the worst president in the history of the United States, including the future! You can't possibly do a worse job as prez than he has. I can't believe people think this is even debatable.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

WE NEED MORE WILSON VOTES

OR VAN BUDREN

John McCain

GWIB

Reagan.

chimpo

He may not be the worst in all history, but he's the worst for my life.

Bonzo gets an honorable grave-pissing.

this is between Nixon and Reagan I think and Nixon takes it for the sheer numbers of young men he sent off to be slaughtered

why did people stop naming their kids Millard? Coz of this guy? Eh?

LMAO @ Pillbox' Breckinridge manip

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow Reagan beat Nixon.

Haha Kennedy 4!

About fucking time.

Yeah Kennedy's skated on that massive head wound and Peace Corp thing for TOO LONG. He needs to be taken down a notch.

I think the 22nd Nov 1963 did that pretty well, u savages

lol at Peace Corps when he's committing advisors to Vietnam, authorizing the Diem coup, and dithering much too long in committing to civil rights.

He's not terrible, but he'd top my Overrated Preznit list.

I would agree with overrated, but worst. . . I mean compared to Johnson and Nixon the Vietnam stuff was positively tame and he was far from the first (or last) to dither on civil rights.

Agreed.

jfk 4? lol

So, GWB gets his majority!

Jimmy Carter = worst? Really?

as a communicator only Dubya's surpassed him in the inept department.

Nixon takes it for the sheer numbers of young men he sent off to be slaughtered

uh, didn't LBJ send more?

More John C. Breckinridge luv:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/General_John_C_Breckinridge.jpg

How could one really make an argument for Reagan for this honor in lieu of his great successor Dubya?

reagan paved the road for nearly every awful thing bush has done -- good to remember when you hear ppl like andrew sullivan go on about how bush has betrayed "reagan conservatives."

true.

so perhaps Reagan was the enable,s the one with the knife or the shovel, but Bush and his (Reaganite) cronies actually actually the ones who committed the murder, the ones who dug the grave for America's respectability. Also perhaps it's just an age thing but Reagan only evokes pity, looking back and not the loathing that Bush does. Maybe we still need the benefit of historical distance from the heir

enableR not enablr,s

pity? PITY??

wtf

awww poor widdew old most powerful man in the world fucking over the poor and minorities and gays and god knows who else

gimme a fucking break

so perhaps Reagan was the enable,s the one with the knife or the shovel, but Bush and his (Reaganite) cronies actually actually the ones who committed the murder, the ones who dug the grave for America's respectability.

You're forgetting: Clinton stabbed the victim. Finally, Bush finished the job by taking a shit on the twitching corpse.

the contemptuous type of pity, not the sympathetic type. i didn't really think of the sympathetic type really, since the word is often used in its denigrating context, a la pitying the fool