And from that point onwards to anywhere in Central or South America United Fruit coincidentally had an interest.
And let’s not forget the ‘Balsa Wood Drones of Death’ poised ready to swoop on the continental United States at 15 minutes notice. No -wait - that was Bush.
The Civil War was always going to happen; it was just a question of when. Jefferson wrote about the likelihood and causes of such a conflict, nearly fifty years ahead of time.
Blaming the Civil War on Buchanan is like blaming WWI on the guy who shot Archduke Ferdinand. But Bush has been The Decider for pretty much all the bad stuff in his Presidency except 9/11 itself, and there’s a good argument that his nonresponse to repeated warnings about the danger that bin Laden and al-Qaeda represented, allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen.
Bush is the worst.
I was discussing this with someone at work yesterday: I’m old enough to have hated Nixon, but thought he was a basically smart, capable guy who had some serious mental and emotional issues. I disagreed strongly with Carter, Reagan and Bush Sr. on many issues, but thought they were decent guys trying to do their best, who had no business in the White House. They’d make nice next-door-neighbors or uncles, but . . .
But the current Bush? Even I have trouble analyzing my visceral hatred of him. I literally lunge for the remote when he comes on TV so I don’t have to see his face or hear his voice.
That’s the story of GWB’s whole life. He screwed up everything he ever tried. When his companies were on the verge of bankruptcy, Daddy’s pals swooped in and made everything happy again.
Nixon had to resign because he was about to be impeached for warrantless wiretaps on his political enemies. When GWB was caught doing the same thing, the Rubberstamp Congress cooked up a law making it all legal. If Nixon had a Rubberstamp Congress, he would have finished his second term with impunity.
Nixon was crazy, and he had no reservations about breaking the law when it suited him. He tried to keep it secret, though. When he violated people’s constitutional rights, he didn’t have the chutzpah to cast it into the concrete of law. Some of his pals may have gotten favored treatment, but he never had the blatant, naked profiteering we have seen under GWB. I hated Dick Nixon, but George W. has strived to push the envelope beyond Nixon’s treachery.
If we’re talking about unnecessary loss of life and irreparable damage to American prestige and credibility, why don’t we go right to the number 1 person: Lyndon Baines Johnson. Can anyone say “Gulf of Tonkin” with me? How about 58,000+ American deaths and many millions of Vietnamese/Laotian/Thai/Cambodian deaths? Oh, yeah, let’s not forget the civil rights riots and draft riots here at home.
Bush, my friends, is a piker in the face of that. A mere amateur, a wannabe. I’m certainly not defending the man, but let’s keep things in perspective here. I would be hard pressed to argue that Bush doesn’t belong somewhere near the bottom of the list, but he is objectively NOT the worst President we’ve ever had. No way.
Harding might give him a run for his money, though. He’s long been my benchmark of Presidential incompetency.
Not looking for a fight, but I am interested in hearing why you think Carter had no business being in the White House (absolutely no argument on Reagan; very, very little on Bush Sr.).
You’re right. Still, he’s working at it. He’s not gonna get that many U.S. soldiers killed but he’s fucked Iraq up pretty well, although I don’t know enough about current Vietnam society to contrast and compare. Depending on the source some 1-1.5 million Iraqis had fled the country (often the most educated), 500,000 dead, bare bones or no infrastructure depending on the locale, and who knows how many wounded/ruined families.
We’re getting into a groove. Just let it simmer for a another five years or so and we can play catch up.
I do not blame Buchanan for the War, I blame him for his fiddling inaction & indecisiveness. I envision him in the White House, wringing his hands, & going: “Oh dear! Oh my!” :smack:
Thank you. I’m not trying to defend GWB either, but some of you folks need to pick up some history books.
There’s more than a few people still alive that blame FDR for turning the federal government into Santa Clause and creating the entitlement mindset in the USA.
Look up Credit Mobilier’ (sp?)
I apologize, [BOLD]Asknott[/BOLD], I misread “he never had” as “we’ve never had” when I directed your attention to Credit Mobilier’.
I’ll give you Vietnam, but civil rights riots? The Civil Rights Acts would never have passed without LBJ’s ability to manipulate Congress. JFK got nowhere on them. They were nowhere near a sure bet, especially with the senior Southern Democrats in Congress. That alone is enough to keep him off the bottom - what has Bush done nearly as important for the country?
You mean…THAT MAN in the White House? That class-traitor?
[sub]I understand his name is actually Franklin Delano ROSENFELD.[/sub]
I can see that for Carter and Reagan, but Bush I? He arguably had the best background of any President since LBJ. Disagree all you want, but he was CIA director, amabassador to China, and Vice President, not a shoddy resume. And remember, he was smart enough not to go after Saddam after Gulf War I, showing he and Powell were a lot smarter than the neocons. Much, much smarter than his incompetent son.
Johnson is a good case. I think he was a much worse President than Nixon was, but compared to Bush, I am not so sure. He pushed through much of the Civil rights reforms that Kennedy tried to get in. This helps balance his terrible Vietnam policies to some extent.
I would have to put a lot more thought into Johnson, I think Bush is worse, but much of this is Bush’s poor speaking skills, disregard for rights and deceptively getting us involved in the Iraq war and abusing the good soldier Colin Powell and destroying his very good reputation to further the corrupt policies of the Bush administration.
I think Johnson was corrupt, but the sweetheart deals made by the current admin to friends of the current admin, harkens back more to the Teapot Dome scandal than anything more recent.
Bosda, I cannot agree Buchanan was worse. He was even more inept, I will give you, but his administration did not start the war and did not meet the corruptness of the current admin.
Jim
I’m not speaking for Eve on this, but I remember Carter’s election being a reaction to Nixon and the damage he had done to the Presidency. These men are polar opposites of each other - in appearance, beliefs, in every way imaginable. Carter was a true outsider unblemished by the shit that just gone down for the previous 8 years. But the man was very ineffective in taking the reins in hand and moving on. He, like Ford before him, just reacted to what was happening in the country instead of taking steps to change things.
Yeah, I saw Carter as a good person, but naive and too soft.
What’s the standard of badness, here? Regardless what the end result of Johnson’s policies were, and whether they were right at the time, he did get things done. He got both sides to work together on civil rights — how many times has Bush been the uniter and the politicker Johnson was?
I put Bush down there with Buchanan: both took a strong stand based on their personal morals, and bankrupted the credibility of their political party through pointless infighting while accomplishing pretty much bugger all.
Not quite. Nixon pulled the troops out, but promised S. Vietnam that we’d come to their aid if the Vietnamization effort proved insufficient to stave off an invasion from the North. But, after Nixon resigned, Congressed passed a bill forbidding the US to re-engage in Vietnam. It’s unclear if the N. Vietnamese could have won the war if we had honored the promise that Nixon made.
Also, keep in mind that the Democrats controlled the Senate (not sure about the House) for the entire time Nixon was in office. Quite a bit of a different situation that our own GW Bush found himself in for the last 6 years.
n.b.: I’m not saying we should have gone back in to Vietnam, but the war wasn’t lost simply because we left-- it was lost because we left and stayed out, which wasn’t Nixon’s fault, but Congress’.