Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson are two that immediately came to my mind.
Andrew Johnson’s caustic demeanor is often compared to Trump.
Andrew Jackson was a very violent dude. He attacked a would be assassin. Clubbed him with his cane. It’s lucky for CNN they weren’t around during his Presidency. LOL
How about Lyndon Johnson? He made Bobby Kennedy brief him on the toilet. Ah, the pungent whiff of bad news.
But, Johnson had been Senate Majority Leader and was masterful at working the phones.
How about Jimmy Carter? He was a very cold and calculating guy. Had a lot of trouble connecting to people. That lead to problems with Congress. I highly recommend this book.
I suggested a few names to get the conversation started.
Who would you list as Presidents even more unpopular and caustic than Trump?
While Trump is indeed very caustic and unpopular, the reasons for his unpopularity set him apart from all the others-his disregard for the truth and his lack of caring for anyone but himself. I can’t think of any other president who approaches his level of unintelligent self-servitude/vanity. Even Nixon, as shady as he was, actually tried to do good for his country(and succeeded at that more times then most people admit.
I had to look up “caustic” to understand its meaning better for this question. Definitions of the personality trait center on criticizing, often but not necessarily in a sarcastic way.
I can’t think of any other President who has criticized so many other people and other entities in such an extreme manner, nor made such criticism such a prominent feature of his activities. I don’t think he is sarcastic often, nor does he employ other kinds of expression that involve any subtlety. His criticisms are those of grade school children. But I think his criticisms still very much count as caustic.
None…one of the other reasons for Trumps unpopularity is that he is able to tweet to millions at a time. Jackson and both Johnson’s were caustic abusive assholes - but none of them had a platform that allowed them to let them public know in an instant just how much of a toxic individual they were. Thus their image was softened outside of their circles.
Trump in unique in that he communicates directly with the masses and has very little filter on what he says.
History tends to smooth over the faults of our leaders. Eisenhower could strip the skin right off a subordinate as he did in the Army. Truman’s threat to punch out a critic who panned his daughter’s performance is now described as “colorful.” Wilson was bigoted, cold, had few friends, demanded unquestioned loyalty, and couldn’t or wouldn’t compromise.
All previous presidents had at least something of an understanding of how to be president. No matter how odious their personality, they at least had something of a clue about government. Well, except maybe Warren Harding.
Trump is hated because he has no idea what the fuck he is doing, and he refuses to learn. He hates to read, and he cannot bear to listen to anyone who knows what to do because that would mean admitting that someone is smarter than him.
Other presidents were not emboldened to foreign powers and traitors to the best that America aspires to.
Johnson was a caustic politician, but no where near they hubris and abject grossness of President bone spurs. If you have to go back centuries to find someone more despicable, then the bar is too low and you’re trying to hard.
A lot of people forget just how much people hated George W Bush, Bush was basically getting all of the flack Trump was. A notable amount of people here were claiming Bush was going to suspend the 2008 election and declare himself President for Life. Bush was notable in uniting both the left and what would later become the alt-right in sheer hated of him. Alex Jones got his start claiming George W Bush was a complete monster who was going to round everyone up and put them in FEMA Death Camps.
Also Obama had an incredibly shaky middle period of his Presidency after the NSA stuff where even the American left (on the internet at least) was turning on him en-masse. When HuffingtonPost started to turn on Obama you know things were going bad.
George W was the Bud Lite of presidential hatred. Nothing, not even close, to President Bone Spurs.
And I write this as someone that took part in the free speech area of the Democratic National Convention when the largest number of protesters in San Francisco were arrested since IRC labor activities in the 1920’s. The Dicks, the Dead Kennedy’s and a bunch of other hardcore bands as well as about every punk rocker in Northern California joined in.
We thought George Bush was the anti-Christ and hated him with the passion of 100 suns. Little did we know he was just a hors d’oeuvre for the madness of Trump that we now face.
I don’t remember Jimmy Carter that much, but one thing I do vaguely recall was about the energy crisis. Basically, ‘Save energy. If you’re cold, put on a sweater.’ Americans like to be comfortable. We don’t want to put on a sweater! We want the right temperature in the house! (And we don’t want to pay more for it.) I think telling people how to save energy (and money) by just wearing warmer clothes made him seem out of touch.
FWIW, our house is heated with propane. I hate paying for it because it’s expensive. So I try to keep the thermostat at 65º. If I get chilly, I’ll put on a sweater. Mrs. L.A. likes to turn up the thermostat, even when the heater is already on. :smack:
Remember in school when you had to make covers for your text books? I decorated one of mine (algebra, I think) by drawing a cereal box on the front. I think the cereal was called Watergates. The bits were shaped like tapes (as shown by a drawing of a reel-to-reel spool with accompanying text – SHAPED LIKE TAPES!) You could see the box top in my drawing. The opening instructions were to insert a plumber’s wrench under the tab. On the back cover there was the back of the box, advertising a Watergate beach towel. ‘Cover all with your own Watergates Cover-Up!’ There were other topical drawings and text, but I can’t remember much more. Needless to say, I thought Nixon was pretty bad. But he removed himself from office and became (even more) the butt of jokes for decades.
Reagan was kind of scary. He’s ‘The Cowboy’ in Fun Boy Three’s The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum. But I was young and had other distractions.
Like many people, I thought Bush the Younger was a complete moron. Before he was elected I asked why anyone would want a bad businessman to run the country like a business? And then there was invading Iraq, when his father had very good, logical reasons not to invade Iraq, his acting like a buffoon, etc. Oh, and the whole Bush Recession thing. Nobody could be as bad as Bush 43, and Americans would be more careful in the future. Heck, Bush 43 is why Obama got a Nobel prize!
And then comes Trump. And then came the ‘smiling George W. Bush “Miss me yet?”’ meme. I didn’t think anyone could be worst than Dubya. Boy, was I ever wrong. Little Donnie Fail-Fail is The Worst President Of All Time. I hope I’m right this time, that nobody could be as bad as our current ‘president’.
Well, I’m guessing that someday, we actually WILL be saying, “God, I would rather have TRUMP than this guy!” You know what they say about “absence makes the heart grow fonder”?
(I swear I remember some Republican politicians saying how they’d prefer to have Clinton back, than Obama. Yeah, the same ones who did everything they could to nail him on some stupid technicality.)
I think one major difference between Bush and Trump is that you didn’t get a sense that Bush was a bad person. He was a shitty president, but he’d be a nice guy to hang out with, share a beer, you know? Trump’s a shitty president AND a shitty person.
Cites? I wasn’t an SDMBer in 2008; did Dopers really make that claim? I’m not faulting your memory, but would like to see the claims with my own eyes.
And the “Left” always tends toward criticism, but did they really “turn on Obama … en masse”?
IMHO, those who don’t think that the Trump Travesty is qualitatively different from all previous bad Presidents must be stuck in a FoxNews bubble or such.
I don’t know about Nixon- I understand Truman was more unpopular than Nixon when he quit (Nixon) and when Truman left office.
As for Churchill, I’m not sure any comparison to him is a great pat on the back. He was elected Prime Minister once and that was when he was 72 and his own doctor said he was past it. I know this is off topic but he was a constant meddler and lost the election after the UK was part of winning the war. His major achievement was keeping dialogue with FDR open.
It’s been said by someone about every presidential election since I’ve been on the internet. The Left were afraid that Bush would do it; the Right were afraid that Clinton and Obama would do it. All of them demonstrated what paranoid blithering idiots they were. We’ll get the same statements in 2020 no matter who is the president.
