Yep, the Shrub. Worst President in memory.
Vincent Siew is one of the more embarrassing politicians of Taiwan. But if Sean Lien had been elected of Taipei, he would have been by far the most embarrassing politician of the island. Rich, out of touch, full of himself, I have a hard time seeing how he would ever have made a good mayor.
I very much dislike President Ma Ying-Jeou, but he’s not embarrassing, he just has a very destructive agenda - destructive to Taiwan, that is.
Incorrect. Harding himself was honest, but he had astonishingly poor judgment in choosing his associates.
G-Dubya:
Man, I hated, hated him back in his day. After years now, and seeing him at least trying to remain presidential I’ve softened a bit. I still think most of his decisions were terrible and led to enormous suffering from innocent people, but the real monster was his VP, Dick Cheney. Dubya at least still tries to be presidential (in a post-presidential way) Cheney, on doubling down on every recent torture accusation thrown at him, is pure evil.
Agreed. Which is why GWB still counts.
I’m not American, so wouldn’t nominate him myself, and TBH I can’t think of any UK leaders since WWII that have been embarrassing. Bad, yes (Thatcher far more than anyone else), embarrassing no. The closest I can come is Prince Phillip, who is famous for his gaffes, but he’s not an actual head of state and I doubt very much that his wife (who has little real power anyway) listens to him in anything political.
My feelings for Dubya have been documented here on the Dope. Absolute embarrassment.
For Canada, at least recently, I would say Brian Mulroney. Not a terrible PM, but had a grossly inflated sense of privilege and just came across as personally sleazy. Even if there might be no real basis for the various corruption charges levied against him, he certainly skated very close to the edge in some of the cases. He also seemed to have chosen more than the usual number of ministers who subsequently disgraced themselves. He ended up widely disliked for both his personal and his political actions, which was probably the main cause of his resignation as leader and his party being reduced from being the government to a two-MP rump in the subsequent election.
Mackenzie-King might be a contender, except that most of the embarrassing stuff about his strange private life didn’t become public until after his death.
Mackenzie-King’s dog at least had some good policy ideas, and if you don’t speak French and only listen to him speaking in French so you don’t understand anything he’s saying you can enjoy Mulroney’s excellent speaking voice.
Trudeau was enough of a Magnificent Bastard to get away with his stuff, so for the purposes of the thread I think we are left with Diefenbaker and Chretien. Chretien has the benefit of speaking neither official language and his hands-on approach to personal security, but Dief actually took himself seriously. Joe Clark gets a sympathy vote, having to face a press gallery that had survived Trudeau.
If we are going to ignore the OP and just go for the worst one, I am hard pressed to find anyone to compare to the current dead eyed “psycho Mr. Rogers” looking motherfucker. Good thing we don’t need science or census data or a competent civil service or anything.
The harsh peace of Versailles happened in spite of Wilson who wanted genuine reconciliation while the League was weakened by domestic opposition to Wilson’s proposal for America to enter it.
Truman wasn’t a reactionary at all (unless you are Henry Wallace who thought not being a Soviet dupe meant you were a reactionary) and continued FDR’s domestic New Deal legacy while going further than his former boss in some respects (ie desegregating the military). The Cold War, obviously, was a necessary response to Stalinist aggression.
Well anyways, I suppose, in recent times our most embarassing President undoubtedly has been George W. Bush.
I agree with pretty much all of this. Especially the bit about Bush the elder being a competent Prexy. He never got the credit he deserved.
Why so many people miss the Obama-as-containment-strategy angle is beyond me. It’s so obvious.
GWB. I’m only counting people who were UK PM until 1996 or POTUS from then until now.