True. I voted for Buchanan, but given a chance at voting for the top five I could add other clear contenders – I’d probably pick Pierce, Wilson, and Harding (dithering between GW Bush and Jefferson for the final one – the former doesn’t have enough historical perspective, and the latter’s contributions elsewhere tend to obviate his poor performance as President).
Truman got a lot of heat over Korea at the time. I think the main thing that restored his reputation over the incident was the developing realization that he had done all that could be reasonably expected. People in 1950 felt that America could do anything and a stalemate must be a result of poor leadership. Since then we’ve come to understand there are limits to what we can do in the world.
Plus, I think the population of South Korea was solidly opposed to the invasion. There was not any widespread desire to come under the Communist regime. So we were fighting alongside a people who wanted our help. In Vietnam, there were many South Vietnamese who didn’t support the Southern government and would have preferred to be unified under Hanoi. So we were fighting to save a country for people who didn’t want it saved.
Nitpick: He wasn’t *there *there when they wrote the bill of rights. He was in England. But he was a founding father, of course.
As was that precocious son of his.
Truman got much more heat for the post WWII recession. All of those GIs returning home and no jobs for them. The guy ends the war, then takes heat for the resulting downturn in the economy: no win.
As for Vietnam: the Vietnamese I talked to about it said that they had been under warlike conditions for decades and we were just another occupying army and they just wanted it all to stop. They really didn’t care who ran the country, as long as they could grow their rice and live in peace.
Yes, I did. I understand that this goes radically against the prevailing American mythology. As any detailed treatment would be long and contentious, I won’t get into it in this thread.
But in brief, and simply for the benefit of those who have no idea what somebody could be thinking to suggest this: I count the War and its particular consequences* as the greatest catastrophe** in American history, for the death and destruction, and for certain of the political and cultural effects. Lincoln was the man at the very fulcrum of history at that most critical of moments. There did not need to be war, and at that moment when only one person in the world could individually choose, he chose to make war.*** The various bases for Lincoln’s choice were mistaken in either fact or principle, in my view.
I’m sure there have been many occupants of the office of the President who were Lincoln’s inferior in various ways. I’m sure many of them, given the opportunities, could have fucked us up worse. I’m just reflecting on what did happen, with of course the great benefit of hindsight. If there have been Presidential decisions of greater consequence for Americans than Lincoln’s in the early spring of 1861, I judge they were made better (there was no nuclear war with the Soviet Union, et cetera).
- By “particular consequences” I mean those that came only from the War. I do not count the ending of slavery among these, because I believe slavery could have and would have been ended without any war (as it was in most countries).
** I am not here including what I’d describe as institutionalized crimes against humanity, such as slavery itself, or forced displacement and genocide of Natives. These weren’t catastrophes for America; alas, they were part of America.
*** Interpretations like “the South…decided they wanted that war” strike me as arrant propaganda, or the result of it. Presumably most peoples are willing to fight if their home territory is invaded on any basis. But it defies reason to say that Southerners at the time wanted that invasion–that they would have been unsatisfied with a U.S. President who said, “we disagree with and lament your decision, but it is not for us to force you otherwise. Go in peace.”
Buchanan was not a good president, but he was in an unmanageable situation. A split between the North and South was inevitable at some point. I think if you put most president’s in his position the exact same thing would have happened.
Harding may have appointed corrupt people but what lasting damage did the Teapot Dome scandal do? He also restored the civil liberties lost under Wilson.
Grant was way too trusting but the Civil War had led to an explosion in the size of the federal government without a corresponding increase in the ability to monitor corruption. Corruption was inevitable and he did alot for Civil Rights in the south.
Truman is given a pass over the Korean War for the same reason FDR is given a pass over WW2, it was a just war that was won by our guys. Every person living in South Korea in the last 60 years has benefited from the Korean War as has everybody who has bought a product made in South Korea. JFK and LBJ took what should have been a winnable war for a good cause and made a hash of it.
Wilson resegregated the government setting the civil rights movement back 30 years. He got us into WW1 so that he could be at the table at the armistice trying to remake the world. That place at the table cost Americans 117,000 killed and 250,000 wounded about the same as Korea and Vietnam combined. It also helped bring the Spanish Flu to the States. With that place at the table Wilson did essentially nothing except create the League of Nations which did bupkus. If the US did not enter the war Germany may have gotten a better deal at the armistice table and WW2 may have been averted. Thousands of people were arrested and put in jail for execrcising free speech and speaking out against the war. There was also a depression he handed over to Harding that started on his watch. Someone mentioned the creation of the Federal Reserve as a point in his favor but the economy suffered the Great Depression less than 10 years after Wilson left office, so that creation did not accomplish what it was supposed to do. Everything every knuckle dragging leftist thinks George W Bush did, Wilson in reality actually did double that.
As I’m not an American I voted on the basis of “worst” from a world-perspective rather than a USA one - and on that basis probably only considered Wilson onwards.
On that basis my bottom five would have to include:
Wilson - war aims and isolations
Hoover - the great depresssion
Kennedy - fraudulantly elected and war-monger
Nixon - crook, criptofacist and war-monger
GW Bush - war-monger and the great depression
Nixon gets it by a short head.
No, the origins of the flu was the good of U S of A (Haskell Country, Kansas). Overseas, the virus mutated to a more deadly strain.
No, he was Vice President.
Really? Bush is the only president that you could see being convicted of crimes against humanity? The Trail of Tears isn’t? The suspension of Habeas Corpus isn’t? Japanese internment camps aren’t? Seriously, Bush was a terrible president, certainly in the bottom 10, maybe even 5, but a lot of the stuff he did is still fresh in our memories and don’t have the historical perspective of how they worked out. Generally, I don’t think presidents who served any more recently than the least recently served president that is still alive should be elligible because it’s difficult to put them in historical perspective. To that end, I wouldn’t consider Jimmy Carter or anyone more recently.
In my eyes, the one president that I’m most ashamed of is Jackson for the Trail of Tears. He blatantly spat in the face of the constitution and the Supreme Court and was just a flat out vicious man. I also put Lincoln and FDR right behind for similar reasons, though their crimes aren’t as bad and were in times of war. I’m often tempted to put Lincoln lower, but it’s difficult to know if another president might have been able to avoid war. That is, I blame him more for being short-sighted rather than straight out evil. And as corrupt as Bush was, it’s difficult to see him as more corrupt than the likes of Grant or Johnson or Harding.
That’s what I get for trying to be a pedant. I stand corrected.
What’s your solution? It seems there were 2 ways to avoid war.
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Allow the South to have Slavery for a much longer period, or forever (Lincoln did not have the power to do this singlehandedly, but he could have tried to drive the discourse that way)
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Let the south secede without a fight.
What’s behind door #3?
My vote is W,. I HAVE TRILLIONS of reasons. Him and the Fed are in bed.
For as much as Andrew Jackson isn’t well regarded as a president, he was such an important figure in the development of the Democratic Party that the big annual fundraising dinner in many states and localities is still called Jefferson-Jackson Day, or some variant thereof.
Reagan played a similar role in the revitalization of the Republican Party and his name is being appended to Lincoln dinner fundraisers in many localities.
All presidents have careers that include accomplishments outside of or apart from their years in the White House, and many of these were considerable. For better or worse, party building ought to be included among these.
Not that I’m defending Harding, but in a historical perspective, is the Teapot Dome scandal really that big of a deal? A cabinet member got caught taking bribes. Certainly not good, but it kind of pales in comparison to a lot of other events mentioned in this thread.
(2) is the correct answer. I can understand why some Americans have trouble accepting this, but from outside it’s blindingly obvious. It was, after all, less than 100 years after the US was born in a fight to do things their way, not somebody else’s, and to then refuse to allow certain states to go their own way on principle was unpleasantly hypocritical. Bear in mind that, within a few years, the CSA would have become untenable for economic reasons, and also bear in mind that the particular approach used to get rid of slavery in the US caused problems that happened in no other (western) country.
That’s not to say Lincoln is the worst President - his pure motives make that impossible - but any argument that his actions were right or necessary doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
Harding’s appointments in general were pretty bad. His Attorney General, Harry Daugherty, was a slippery crony who was constantly under investigation, although I don’t know that he was ever convicted of anything. There were other scandals associated with the veteran’s bureau and disposition of wartime property.
And of course, Harding died before he could build much in the way of accomplishments to offset this. Furthermore, both parties dumped on him after he was dead. This was before Presidents hand-picked their Vice-Presidents, so Coolidge wasn’t particularly close to Harding and had no need or desire to defend his administration.
Still, in his brief time in office, Harding lowered taxes and presided over a sharp economic recovery. He organized a successful naval disarmament conference. He supported an antilynching bill, although there was no chance that it would pass the Senate. And he showed considerable courage in pardoning Eugene Debs, who had been convicted under Wilson’s asinine wartime Sedition Act.
So yeah, he was corrupt . . . but he wasn’t into war or ethnic cleansing, like some of the other entrants in this competition.
To anyone pretending GWB might not be the worst President ever, I want to ask
*Have you read *The Price of Loyalty ?
Let’s be clear. O’Neill is no “Lefty.” He was an eminent right-wing economist and businessman, friend of Dick Cheney, and chosen for one of the top Cabinet posts.
Those who mention Teapot Dome in the same sentence as GWB’s crimes, as though there were any basis for comparison, obviously have a lot to learn about the Bush-Cheney Administration.
(The question in my first sentence is serious. Be sure to quibble with me snarkily, but do please tell us if you read that book.)
And Roosevelt could have avoided fighting in World War II by surrendering to Japan and Germany in 1941. But both men took an oath to defend the country and the Constitution. And both men were doing what the people wanted.
Lincoln didn’t see his primary goal as avoiding war. He wanted to avoid war if possible but he saw his primary goal as preserving the country. He succeeded in what he set out to do.