Who was the most generaly hated U.S. President from 1969-2005?

Great Debates
21

Bush certainly epitomizes much of what liberal America hates… religious and politically. He certainly is more hated than regular fare Republican presidents. But to win “most generaly” would require a wider variety of American to beleive that GWB lied about WMD and screwed up Iraq… and that isn’t the case yet.

For all his defects… Bush Jr does have a “common folk” touch that will make him difficult to be hated by regular joe guys. Despised ? Maybe. Thought of as a simpleton ? Probably… but HATED… that is harder to do versus bumbling Bush.

Nixon seems for the while to be the iconic scum…

22

I’ll join in on the piling on as George W. as the most hated.

2nd. Reagan. Very similar to George W. when he appointed right wing ideologists to the cabinet.

  1. Nixon. Opening of China was a good thing. Everything else was bad.

  2. Ford. The pardon to Nixon.

  3. George H W Bush. The first war in the Gulf was necessary. He did a good job with the fall of Eastern Europe. However, Clarence Thomas and Bush’s failure in domestic policy keep him as a low president.

  4. Carter. Camp David was a very positive step. Carter is a great person and has a great mind. I wish he was as politically astute as Clinton

  5. Clinton. Obviously one of the best Presidents the United States has ever had. He worked to enact many great laws such as NAFTA, Welfare to Work, Family Medical Leave Act, and the Brady law. Ended the ban on gays in the military. Advanced the the debate on national health care. Acknowledged his failure in Rwanda. Bill Clinton will go down with FDR as one of the best presidents of the United States in the 20th century.

This thread belongs in Great Debates.

23

I’m coming up on fifty. Lived though all of those on that list and more.

Amen. Period.

24

I didn’t consider the first ladies when responding and wonder how many did and why. I don’t remember Mamie at all. Jackie was the epitome of a graceful first lady, but lost a lot of luster in my eyes by marrying Ari, I never could figure what that was all about. Ladybird seemed to be the first of the first ladies with a cause, highway beautification. She seemed the nice grandmotherly type and at least in public never gave on if she knew about Lyndon’s sexual exploits. Pat Nixon doesn’t hold any strong memories. A lot of women may owe their lives due to the publicity that Betty Ford gave to breast cancer. Her substance abuse recovery showed perhaps for the first time that first ladies are as human as the rest of us. Rosalynn Carter seemed as honest and warm as her husband.

Nancy Reagan was my least favorite as first lady but I respect her tremendously now. Her desire for the Carters to move out early so that she could redecorate the White House was incredibly callous. Her standing by Ronnie and looking up with THE LOOK made me want to vomit. Her cuckoo beliefs in astrology and the way she started to run Ron’s presidency made me think she was a half bubble off plumb. In retrospect, I wager in Ron’s last couple of years she could sense that he was starting to lose it. BUT- the way that she has handled Ron’s disease with such grace and class and her standing up for stem cell research have made up for all of my previous bad feelings for her.

Barbara Bush. I remember thinking about George- “why did he marry his mom?” She seemed every bit the sweet old granny. Now, I see her as a vindictive and conniving shrew. Hillary of course inspires split feelings. Half of me is “why not dump his cheating ass?” I think she’s bright but ruthless and that she stayed married to further her own agenda. I may like what she stands for, but I sure wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.

Laura Bush is hard to get worked up about. I definitely think there was more than a little truth in her desperate housewife speech. How she loves such a little weenie is beyond me. She strikes me as the lonely wife with an ambitious husband who has found more than her share of companionship with bottles of liquor.

25

Based on the above, I’d argue that Reagan was the most hated AND most loved president. He tended to polarize. Unlike say Carter. Some liked Carter, but few loved him. And those who disliked Cater saw him more as incompetent than evil.

26

You forgot to mention Clinton’s brother Roger. Sometimes I think that’s a law that every American President has to have a brother that’s a total embarassment. GWB even has TWO!

27

But of course, with the user name “BobLibDem”, what else would you hope for/expect? :wink:

Too bad the time period in the OP doesn’t go back far enough to include LBJ, but within the stated period, I think Nixon wins as most generally disliked.

My personal feelings: Best=Reagan, Worst=GWB.

28

Actually, objectively he is probably right. Carter’s stock is pretty damn low. About the only potential is upside. And Reagan’s stock is high at the moment, and thus lots of downside potential. Bush II is too early to call.

29

Maybe it’s just me, but I think every President’s reputation goes up once he leaves office. Even the people who hated him can at least sigh in relief that he’s not still in office doing whatever it was they hated him for. So I think it’s unfair to compare George W. Bush to any of his predecessors.

30

I’m not so sure. JFK has come down a bit from the lofty heights of martyrdom. I wouldn’t say Nixon has made much of a recovery. Ford hasn’t risen much if at all since leaving office.

31

Should Ford even really count? He wasn’t in office long enough and he wasn’t elected.

32

Nixon, hands down.
Nixon was far, far worse than the current occupant in that he was seriously attempting to subvert the government, and not a lot of people doubt that he would have arrested his opponents given the chance.
The current occupant is spiteful, malicious, and crude, but in a politician’s sort of way; far as I can tell he simply takes it a degree further than most politicians, much like LBJ would have and did. Dubya’s treatment of Helen Thomas and the Plame affair are outstanding examples of the lengths he will go to against those he doesn’t like. Probably a Texas politician thing. Very similar to LBJ in a lot of other ways too, probably down to his cellar-like approval ratings. But not subversive of democracy in the way Nixon was.

33

At last count, there were 517 True Killer Rabbits and 1,374 True Blue Dresses on public exhibit.

34

Kennedy may have left office in a more dramatic fashion than most other Presidents, but keep in mind he was in Dallas because of serious concerns about his re-election. But a day later, he had become America’s beloved martyr. As for Nixon, nobody was talking about his statesmanship in August of 1974.

35

I’m 65—I (honestly) remember Truman and I well remember Ike. My vote goes to our current scumbag of a president.

36

Ah, I’m closing in on 50 too. From the sixties I only remember the really big stuff, and among those were two events from 1968: the Tet offensive and LBJ’s abdication. Truman was obviously before my time, as was Ike. While LBJ was hated for Vietnam, that was tempered by the good things he did at home - this is speaking from a liberal POV obviously. Reagan, Bush I and Bush II are all hated by the left, and Carter and Clinton by the right - speaking generally, of course. But of all the presidents, the only one in my lifetime who was considered a genuine threat to the republic was Nixon. With good reason.
Think about it: at the time of his funeral, there was a real question whether he would be treated with the same respect other presidents are accorded. Not officially - there was no question about that. It was the unofficial recognition: would the presidents from the other party show up? Would the presidents of his own party show up? As I recall, the question was answered when Clinton went and showed the respect that would have been normal for any other president.
No other president had such a cloud over him. Nixon was different, in a way that is hard to recall so many years later, but he really was. Me, I think he was genuinely evil, in that he didn’t even mean well. The only thing that mattered to him was whether his personal power would increase through whatever action he was contemplating. I can’t say that about any of the others, including the current occupant, and his spiritual predecessor, LBJ.

37

Whoa, whoa. When did this happen?

38

Oh, come on. Dick, hands down. Both for breadth and for intensity, because his negatives combined a loathing for what he stood for with loathing for him as a human being. Which is kinda rough considering the many policy achievements in his administration – and indeed enough people supported him to be reelected in a landslide just 2 years before bringing the house down onto himself. When people felt negatively about Nixon, it soaked them to the very core.

Too early to judge on Dubya, but it looks to me like although there may be great loathing and even hatred for what he does or stands for, on the personal level he is rather the target of being scorned or “despised” as a pigheaded intellectual lightweigh, rather than hated. However he still commands plurality support.

Bubba Clinton was widely popular, in terms of the Big Picture; however, for those who did/do hate him, the hatred burns like the fire of a thousand suns. Together with his First Family was a target of harsher personal insult than Reagan and his First Family in their time, but at the same time was top of the polls even more so than RR, all the way through-- best thing that can happen to a President is to have his 8 years coincide with a peacetime economic boom. The general view of Clinton is that of a bright guy with superstar charisma but fatally flawed character, while the Clintophobes see in Bill an abomination before the eyes of the Lord.

Poppy Bush: In the words of Roger Mudd, “the problem with George Bush is that he’s boring, boring, boring…”. He was not widely “hated”. He was not widely “loved”. He was just the President, and he really had nothing to offer beyond more of the same.

Ron: As far as I could tell, the people who felt negatively about Bonzo’s uncle, on the personal side were also of the not-so-much-hate as scorn or despise as an intellectual inferior, in a prefiguring of GWB; and on the policy side, for the greater number of Ronniephobes it was not so much hate as raw fear, namely that this red-baiting arms-racing supply-side cowboy would blunder us into WW3 and/or turn over the Judiciary to Jerry Falwell and/or just let people starve in the streets. Still, the Administration DID have a high “sleaze factor”, and there WAS a hard core of hard-line loathing of what Ron stood for, on the ideological left. But, again, the Gipper held top of the polls

Jimmy: Whenever, in the darkest days of Clinton, someone said that the People of America want a Presidents that tells the truth, I’m sure Mr. Carter punched the wall. Face it: the people of America will tar and feather any leader who gives them The Bad News. We want to be told we should win one for the Gipper even if it’s a bogus story. Carter had good positives as a human being even while in office, bless his lustful heart, but received lots of scorn, not all of it earned, as an executive.

Jerry Ford: Placeholder president. Not really hated or loved, tended to be ridiculed as a bumbler but considered meh as a leader, except that he earned a ton of negatives for pardoning Nixon… which was a lose/lose situation in any case. He caught only the start of the 1975-1980 period of American suckitude, leaving Carter to bear the brunt of it.

39

I think the most hated is also the most loved.

Basically presidents who changed things are the ones who caused such emotions. Carter was (IMHO) incompentant, and really didn’t earn either all that much. R.R. was very much loved by some, and hated by others. I think time has shown him to be very benificial and some of those who hated him have moderated their views. G.B. was also pretty ineffective (as seen by most), and falls into the J.C. catagory. W.J.C. I think on one hand as a happy go luckly guy, and people generally like that, so I really don’t see him as hated, though I do have personal beliefs that he has compromized US superpower status. GWB, due to energy prices and some people’s view of the war, I think would currently earn him the title, but only time will tell. Also we have potential president Hillary, which I think many would see her as arrogant and unfit for the presidency.

So right now I see GWB and HRC as the most hated. I do see as time goes on that GWB’s hatred mellows, HRC’s is an unknown.

40

Nope. He was a very popular President with high approval ratings.

Even LBJ won every state but one in the election in 1964.