I’ll name two right of the top of my head:
Mitch McConnell
Nancy Pelosi
Who else? Doesn’t have to be today, and doesn’t have to be nationally recognized or even American - international contributions welcome.
You didn’t screw around with Lyndon Johnson. He wouldn’t necessarily go after you directly, but you’d find your district’s pet project disappeared from the appropriations bill, or that important committee you thought you’d be appointed to turned out to be Post Office and Civil Service Oversight. An even then, you still couldn’t get funding to build a new post office in your district.
Great first post, and I totally agree. LBJ’s mastery of power has been chronicled by famed author Robert Caro. The guy just knew how to win and how to make his enemies pay.
Teddy Roosevelt.
Full Stop.
Greg Gianforte
Vladimir Putin
I probably wouldn’t want to face that guy in the octagon, but I’m not sure he’s as menacing in the political arena.
His path to power is quite a story indeed. He survived criminal investigations related to his time in St Petersburg, and then he started going after his investigators once he became president.
Huey Long
Erdogan in Turkey and Duterte in the Philippines are two deplorable thugs that I wouldn’t mess with
Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey’s pugnacious president Turkey's Erdogan fighting to stay in power after 20 years - BBC News
Sharice Davids would make mincemeat of gianforte.
The Clinton’s supposedly had a behind the scenes political machine that they used to intimidate people who thought to support their opposition in the democratic primaries of 2008 and 2016. Of course she lost both times and never became president, so there is that.
When I think of a competent democratic (as opposed to authoritarian) politician I think of LBJ.
For sure - his political machine took several decades to untangle.
I would be terrified to cross Duterte. He just seems like he’s got a lifetime of rage built up in that small frame and now he’s unleashing his fury on anyone who even looks at him the wrong way. He’s like a Sheriff Joe Arpaio but with deep anger issues.
Erdogan, by contrast, is a semi-democratic system who rose as a politician and is now using his insider knowledge of Turkey’s politics to rig the system in his favor. He has survived a jail term. He has had political allies turn into bitter enemies, and he has ultimately either jailed them or chased them out of the country. He uses polarization to his advantage, somehow getting away with nullifying elections in which his party loses.
Andrew Jackson. You do not, under any circumstances, fuck with Andrew Jackson.
The avuncular, approachable, well liked Liberal-Democrat politician Paddy Ashdown seemed like a decent chap to share a pint with, and I’m sure he was. He was also a Royal Marine and special forces veteran and a secret-service operative, diplomat and politician. I rather suspect that, if that friendly pint turned sour, he could seriously fuck you up.
Kim Jong-un. 'Nuff said.
That one strikes me as someone that you wouldn’t even need to fuck up with.
Honest Abe
If you are looking for democratically elected despots then Malaysia’s Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad is a pretty good candidate. Being 93 and the worlds oldest national leader, he’s been at the top of his game for quite a while.
Having your deputy and anointed successor convicted on trumped up charges of sodomy over a difference in monetary policy shows his focus to his own cause.
Indonesia’s first President Sukarno was another who wasn’t one to mess with though the notion of democratic is loosely applied.
Anybody who ruled Russia or the Soviet Union, from the Tsars to the communist dictators to the ‘presidents’.