who is the worst President in US history?

Great Debates
121

I think that the whole Zimmerman Telegram thing has been blown out of proportion; it was no more a “smoking gun” than the sinking of the Lusitania. Rather, it was just one MORE indication that, even though we weren’t at war with Germany, they essentially were already at war with us.

pantom’s suggestion that the threat of war with Mexico could have easily been forestalled is just more pursuit of a red herring. Sure, we could have gone to war with Mexico AGAIN, and in fact almost did shortly before war broke out in Europe, but Mexico was in a state of near-total anarchy and really was not a serious threat circa 1917. Sure, Germany didn’t realistically stand to gain anything from Zimmerman’s proposal, but they sure weren’t running much of a risk by extending it. So the US joins in the war? It was going to happen anyway.

The real reason that Wilson didn’t have any choice was because of Germany’s repeated renewal of their commitment to unrestricted submarine warfare. The German Navy demonstrated time and again that they were willing and able to disregard traditional rules re. noncombatants and civilian shipping (admittedly due to some compelling tactical limits of submarines themselves). This put Wilson in an untenable situation, as it would have done to ANY president in office at the time. To put it bluntly, the only way he could have avoided going to war with Germany would have been to forbid ALL American vessels, civilian or military, to enter or leave ANY foreign port for the duration of the war. That’s a little much to ask, I think, and I’m not going to blame Wilson for his decision.

Heck, if you really want to blame him for any mistakes that hindsight reveals, you should jump on his failure to go to war promptly after the Lusitania’s sinking in 1915, when public opinion was unified and the influx of US troops on the battlefield would have made a decisive difference, undoubtedly saving many lives by shortening the war.

Again, I’m not really that crazy about Wilson; lord knows I ain’t happy about what happened to civil rights in this country during WWI, and I’m not really that familiar with his administration aside from the aspects dealing with the war. I just don’t think its fair to call him “the worst president ever” because of a naive commitment to isolationism. He was a decent man who did an honest and sincere job to keep the country out of war and to restore peace to Europe. When he did commit the nation to war, it was because the alternative was simply not acceptable; let’s not forget, also, that he didn’t railroad the country against its will. Congress was overwhelmingly in support of his actions, and what political opposition was raised had very little to do with isolationism or pacifism.

Besides, all this beating up on Wilson takes the limelight away from the real winner in this contest, Warren G. Harding! Innefectual and comical at best, criminally negligent at worst, and one of our nation’s most hilarious public speakers (through no intention of his own).

Oh, finally thanks to Mehitabel for the thoughtful welcome. It’s nice to finally be involved instead of just thinking of clever things I could have said…

122

Montresor, I have no idea what you mean by this sentence: “pantom’s suggestion that the threat of war with Mexico could have easily been forestalled is just more pursuit of a red herring.” The comment I made about Mexico was in the context of Wilson being a “serial intervener”, and in the context of trying to explain why the Zimmermann letter had such power to persuade. Allow me to elucidate.

So, even before WWI, we have Wilson sending U.S. forces into Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and, importantly, Mexico.
Four freakin’ countries already, but of course he was only warming up. The Big Show was just around the corner.
On to WWI: as I said, and you carefully ignored, the situation was exactly analogous to the situation George Washington faced with France in the 1790s. I got my timing a little off: the limited naval war happened when his successor, John Adams, was in office. As to Washington, he insisted on and got a strict neutrality with France during his term, which enraged Jefferson, and it was in the context of his insistence on that neutrality that it becomes useful to understand his comments in his Farewell Address about the U.S. having strictly commercial relations with other nations. He was speaking from experience.
That passage was also the one in which he famously said “Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
That wise advice was of course ignored by Wilson. Having given into temptation on four different occasions prior to Germany’s renewed attacks on our shipping in 1917, there was no way he was going to pass up another opportunity to “make the world safe for democracy”. Unlike Washington and Adams before him, for the first time in the history of this Republic he sent troops to fight in Europe on one side of a European conflict.
As I said in my post above, while there is no way to know how different the world’s history after out involvement in World War I would have been, it’s very hard to imagine it turning out worse than it did. A quick summary of the aftermath is in order.
Five different European countries suffered from hyperinflation, as this table, from http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/hyper.htm shows:

Germany: 1920-1923, 3.25 million percent
Russia: 1921-1924, 213 percent
Austria: 1921-1922, 134 percent
Poland: 1922-1924, 275 percent
Hungary: 1922-1924, 98 percent

After this came the rampant speculation of the late 1920s. After that came the Great Depression, the rise of hypermilitarism in Germany, Japan, and Italy, and of course World War II.
On top of all of this, just to add some icing to this remarkably bloody cake, Wilson sent American troops into the nascent USSR to fight in their civil war, on the royalist side. (From http://www.mmmfiles.com/archive/civilwar.htm "At the end of may, 1918, and before he had learned of the fighting between the Bolsheviks and the Czechs, Wilson told a British representative that he was prepared to “go as far as intervention against the wishes of the Russian people knowing it was eventually for their good, provided he thought the scheme had any practical chance of success.” ", proving that the road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions.) Including World War I itself, that’s six distinct instances of military intervention in the affairs of other countries, on two different continents. I believe that constitutes a record. It certainly constitutes a complete, utter, absolute and total rejection of Washington’s doctrine of non-interference.
He was by far the most dangerous and certainly the worst President we have ever had. He has provided the excuse to every power-hungry, war-mongering President who came after him, up to and including the current vomitacious example. A few more well-intentioned Presidents like him, and we might as well give up the ghost.

123

I was speaking of my own conviction that, while the Zimmerman telegram was probably real enough, it was never intended as anything more than a long shot, Hail-Mary pass by Germany. Germany knew that we were almost in the war anyway, and Japan and Mexico never really had any plans to take the idea seriously. Its real impact, at most, was to galvanize public opinion behind the idea of war.

And while I have serious doubts about how realistic it would have been for the US to get involved with the Great War in a “limited naval” fashion, I will at least propose that this avenue of involvement would have limited the US’ ability to attempt to influence peace negotiations, which if taken seriously by the Allies may very well have mitigated the laundry list of tragedies which followed the war.

I think the major issue here is that I don’t share your deep-seated philosophical opposition to the very idea of interventionism. I think isolationism was a wonderful idea, and I deeply wish that it was at least considered as an option in contemporary foreign policy, but I’m not willing to condemn Wilson in such a wholehearted manner. I feel, as I stated above, that he was inherently a decent and moral man who found himself at the head of a nascent world power and felt he owed a moral obligation to the citizens of the nation and world.

I think its a tad disingenuous to take Wilson to task as you did in your cite above while completely ignoring the preceeding paragraphs which speak of the interventionist policies pursued in the Western Hemisphere by other Progressives like Roosevelt, Monroe, and Taft (who was responsible for getting us embroiled in Nicaragua; placing all the blame for that on Wilson is not unlike blaming Nixon for getting the US mixed up with Vietnam). To say nothing, again, of Fillmore (opening Japan) and McKinley (the freakin’ Spanish-American War! The US Navy in Manila!).

And finally, pantom, even the paragraph you quoted above describes Wilson as “an idealist and humanitarian, (who) disliked imperialism and rejected dollar diplomacy.” I believe that to be quite accurate, and I feel your assesment of him as “far the most dangerous and certainly the worst President we have ever had,” “power-hungry (and) war-mongering,” is very unfair and not borne out by your own references.

As I said above, however, I can certainly appreciate your philosophical opposition to the very idea of American overseas military involvement. I also agree that its net effects have been very unfortunate, ethically and politically, for the world at large.

But its important to remember that World War One was, as Niall Ferguson so succinctly put it, a mistake. It should never have happened, and it changed the entire world and the course of history for every person on the planet, in ways that are still happening.

While I respect the ethical strength of your position, and agree with it to a large degree, I think that Wilson is an arbitrary and undeserved target in this debate. I also question whether or not we’re ever going to reach any agreement on this issue…

124

So FDR’s socialism is justified by an incompentent who doesn’t come along for another 60+ years?

You do realize that the depression went on for several years during FDR’s reign, right?

125

Montresor: I’ll agree to disagree.
Good debate, btw. You’ve got a future here in GD. How you managed to lurk without posting is beyond me; it shows a self-restraint that I sure lack.

126

Wow, such tact and graciousness… I certainly do appreciate it. I still think you’re wrong, of course, but its quite decent of everyone here to be so accepting of debate and discussion, without undue personal rancor.
And I wouldn’t say self-restraint per se; I have a rewarding hobby of angry-letter-writing, directed at local government bodies and newspaper columnists, that keeps my anger at a reasonable level.

127

Can’t say about presidents, but I can offer up that Thomas Jefferson is generally considered one of the worst vice presidents (at least according to Bland Ambition). That factoid amuses me to no end. :smiley:

Esprix

128

“…airtight alibis back to junior high.”: that’s about right, I suppose.
I like golf, but I’m not exactly what you’d call good at it. I wonder if I could still make Veep?

129

While he may not be the worst of all, Franklin Pierce has got to rate pretty high on the worst-of list. When you’re the only president from your state and school children in said state are taught that you are one of the antecent causes of the civil war and also utterly inept at the job, you’ve got to be a pretty bad president…

130

Posted by pkbites:

No, pkbites, FDR’s socialism is justified because it was socialism. To the extent it was socialism at all, that is. It was really Keynesianism more than anything else. As for the Depression continuing during his administration, it would have been even worse if he had just left the healing process to the free market.

131

Cite?

132

Posted by pkbites:

We’re talking about hypothetical situations; how can cites be relevant? Just look straight at what the New Deal accomplished: It provided lots of Americans with jobs outside the market system, and it extended electric power and public services to regions that had never known them. All that planted seeds for later prosperity even if things didn’t turn around right away. It also provided the conditions that made it possible for us to win World War II – an effort, by the way, which required temporary “war socialism” on a scale far vaster and more pervasive than the New Deal. Do you honestly believe the private sector could have accomplished as much, if Hoover had been re-elected in 1932?

133

There is nothing hypothetical about the excessive government and taxation we have here. Excessive government that was greatly endorsed by FDR. Hoover isn’t completely off the hook though: his tax increases helped kill off what was left of the economy, helping to usher in FDR to balloon the over all size of the federal government.
The debate probably ends here. I stated who I felt was the worst President, and why. Nothing will change my mind.
(at least not until Howard Dean is elected.:smiley: )

134

slaverey was surely contracting as folks were being sold down the river will evidence . the soil was wearing out ,new lands had to be opened.Lincoln opposed the Mexican War as a congressman. Therfore I would like to put James K Polks name in nomanation for the worst.This war almost guaranteed the civil war which ‘fretted’ many latter administrations.

also I recommend biographical pursuit of Hebert Hoover.
among other things he could have been pres earlier if he had ran and he and his wifes treatise on mining is probably the most significant scientific work by an american politico ,if that is the right word,since Ben Franklin.