Who's the worst American president ever?

Great Debates
101

[QUOTE=Steve MB]
Er, if you’re trying to defend him, maybe you ought to ix-nay on his ontempt-kay for the Onstitution-Kay…
[/QUOTE]
Hey, I said I wasn’t a fan of the guy. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s consistently ranked as one of the ten best, and his achievements were monumental. Much of the way the world works today was as a direct result of decisions made during the Wilson administration. In fact, if you think of the presidents who did most to shape the world we live in, he would *have * to be in the top ten.

[QUOTE=Steve MB]
A “passenger ship” carrying munitions in a war zone makes itself a legitimate target.
[/QUOTE]
Except that it wasn’t carrying illegal munitions. It was only carrying small arms munitions which was perfectly legal, and it wasn’t a secret - in fact they were listed right on the shipping manifest.

I know I know… everyone thought it was carrying illegal munitions. I was even taught it as fact in high school history. The proof everyone quoted prior to 1993 is that the when the German torpedo hit the boat, and there was a second ‘sympathy explosion’ from inside the boat, presumably from some explosive agent carried aboard. The Germans claimed the second explosion proved the evidence of significant munitions. Problem is, when divers got down to the Lusitania in 1993, they found the storage holds intact. Nothing being shipped exploded. Current evidence suggests a coal dust or steam explosion were responsible for the explosions. There were no illegal munitions despite the fact that older history books or badly updated sources continue to insist there were.

It’s also important to understand that even though Germany claimed there were munitions *after * the sinking, they made no such claim *before * the sinking, and in fact were very clear that they felt justified in sinking **any ** ship, even passenger ships without any military purpose, that came into British waters.

[QUOTE=IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY,]
TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
Washington, D.C. April 22, 1915
[/QUOTE]

So the Germans felt they could sink civilian non-military ships at will if they were close to Britian. Ask yourself if you think we would stand for this today, under any circumstances. Wilson didn’t ask to get into this situation - Germany dragged the US in.

102

[QUOTE=Steve MB]
A “passenger ship” carrying munitions in a war zone makes itself a legitimate target.
[/QUOTE]

That simply was not the understanding, or the prevailing standard, of the time. And Lusitania wasn’t the only act of war the Kreigsmarine committed against the United States

103

[QUOTE=RickJay]
That simply was not the understanding, or the prevailing standard, of the time. And Lusitania wasn’t the only act of war the Kreigsmarine committed against the United States
[/QUOTE]

Thats true on both counts. Certainly it wasn’t the prevailing wisdom at the time in the US that Lusitania was carrying munitions…and certainly the German navy committed other hostile acts both against the US navy and against our citizens. However…were they sufficient to justify our entry into the war? I don’t think so, personally. Nor do I think that, without a certain propaganda manipulation of information and slant, would the American people have thought so either. In fact, I’m uncertain if the majority of American’s DID think we should go to war in a purely European conflict. I wonder if there were any accurate polls available on actual public sentiment for or against the war?

Not that it matters in the end…Wilson WANTED to go to war, and so we did. Leaving aside all his other unsavory things, I think this manipulation puts him squarely in the bottom tier of US presidents…as well as getting quite a few of our soldiers killed for, in the end, nothing. Since the Euro’s fucked up the ‘peace’ and we ended up getting entangled again a few decades later anyway.

-XT

104

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Thats true on both counts. Certainly it wasn’t the prevailing wisdom at the time in the US that Lusitania was carrying munitions…and certainly the German navy committed other hostile acts both against the US navy and against our citizens. However…were they sufficient to justify our entry into the war? I don’t think so, personally. Nor do I think that, without a certain propaganda manipulation of information and slant, would the American people have thought so either. In fact, I’m uncertain if the majority of American’s DID think we should go to war in a purely European conflict. I wonder if there were any accurate polls available on actual public sentiment for or against the war?

Not that it matters in the end…Wilson WANTED to go to war, and so we did. Leaving aside all his other unsavory things, I think this manipulation puts him squarely in the bottom tier of US presidents…as well as getting quite a few of our soldiers killed for, in the end, nothing. Since the Euro’s fucked up the ‘peace’ and we ended up getting entangled again a few decades later anyway.

-XT
[/QUOTE]
Wilson didn’t want to go to war, he put it off as long as he could.

To your other points, I only repeat this rebuttal: The Germans sank a passenger ship and killed 1200 people, including over a hundred children. If terrorists were to do this today, what would our reaction be?

105

[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
LBJ’s war, despite its scale and disastrousness, was still balanced by a very substantive set of social-policy achievements domestically (yes, the RW ideologues will dispute that).
[/QUOTE]
So, the millions of dead due to the Vietnam war is “balanced” by some laws he signed in the US?

I suppose this means you would forgive Iraq, which has caused a mere fraction of the death and destruction of Vietnam, if Bush would just pass some laws you like. Hey, that sounds a whole lot like this last election, bang up job there, dontcha think?

106

To some rough degree, yes, there’s a balance between LBJ’s Vietnam disaster and his making the Civil Rights Act of 1964 happen. But the balance isn’t perfect, obviously - and the net is very difficult to calculate. LBJ was, as has been noted, a complicated person who left a complicated legacy.

What’s to Bush’s credit, by comparison? Helping the Northern Alliance drive the Taliban out of Kabul, sure, even if he hasn’t followed up. Saying some of the appropriate things about not hating Muslims, too. But that doesn’t offset very much of the damage he’s done and still doing.

Would you like to slam me for defending McKinley’s warmongering, or others for defending Wilson’s, on the grounds that theirs was successful? Or deny that Bush wouldn’t be on the list of nominees if his own was successful, either? Morally it doesn’t matter, right?

107

[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
Would you like to slam me for defending McKinley’s warmongering, or others for defending Wilson’s, on the grounds that theirs was successful?
[/QUOTE]
Don’t drag me into your side argument, and don’t call Wilson a warmonger. There’s plenty to criticize him for without distorting his reluctant entry into conflict into warmongering. We’re trying to fight ignorance here.

108

[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
Now change the name to Lyndon Baines Johnson and add 55,000 people and it’s just as accurate. How is it that LBJ gets so much love when he more than any other precipitated a war that killed so many? Jesus, even if you believe that Bush started a war for oil it STILL had more purpose than Vietnam.
[/QUOTE]

Well stated. LBJ was a thief on a grand scale. People loved him because he spread the loot around. And he was a fool on an even grander scale: Vietnam and the Great Society. Anyone remember his quote on Medicare: “It will never cost more than $9 billion a year”?

109

Rereading that Airman post:

a) I can understand your frustration, however
b) to LBJ and just about everyone in 1964, with the exception of a few left-wing nutters, communism was the number one threat, and the cost-benefit analysis of getting into Vietnam was way over on the side of benefit. Even by 1966 this was looking dubious, and by 1968 it was looking really bad. But even though I was a child during that decade, others who were older would be able to tell you this: the Sixties were a very fast-moving decade. Two years in that decade defined the difference between being wise and being a fool. There is simply no way to define this to someone who hasn’t lived through a time like that, but the first few pages of Only Yesterday, a book about the Twenties, will give you some idea of just how fast things changed in every possible way in that decade.
I well remember the first time I read that book, and getting chills from how accurately it described living through a time when everything changed so fast it was impossible to keep track or keep up with it.
In 1964, you didn’t want to give dictatorship a chance: WWII had taught everyone that lesson. By 1968, the conversation had changed to why anyone would want to get caught up in trying to change a society with a culture and history completely different from yours, and to pointing to the French colonial experience in Indochina and how badly it had gone for them. On top of that, in 1964 race riots were completely unknown and MLK was a dangerous revolutionary; by 1968, they were an expected part of the summer, and MLK, at the time of his assassination, was downright old-fashioned; whites who hated him in 1964 regretted his death in 1968. And then the campuses blew up in the Spring, and suddenly it appeared that the years would have seasons of riots: the campuses in the spring, the cities in the summer. Everything was being questioned, and the air seemed like it was filled with talk of revolution in everything, from sex to race to government.
In the background, economic progress was extremely rapid; orphanages were becoming a thing of the past, homelessness already was, with the exception of a very few bag ladies, and the idea that poverty could be eliminated didn’t seem outlandish at all.
It was, even now remembering it, an amazing time. The Twenties seem like they came close, but of course I wasn’t there for that party.

110

[QUOTE=Leviosaurus]
Wilson didn’t want to go to war, he put it off as long as he could.
[/QUOTE]

Thats contrary to my understanding of history. MY understanding is that, like Roosevelt, Wilson WANTED to go to war…unfortunately the American people didn’t want to go to war so they needed to be preped so to speak. If I’m in error, by all means show me some cites…I can be taught. :stuck_out_tongue:

[QUOTE=Leviosaurus]
To your other points, I only repeat this rebuttal: The Germans sank a passenger ship and killed 1200 people, including over a hundred children. If terrorists were to do this today, what would our reaction be?
[/QUOTE]

Hard to say. Its also not a good parallel IMHO…terrorists are not nation states. And Germany was not a ROGUE state but a powerful nation state in its own right. Nor was the sinking arbitrary (to the Germans). Then there is the whole ‘state of war’ aspect. It really doesn’t work.

Instead: Lets say that, today (or in the near past) what would we do if a nation state shot down an airliner full of civilians? We actually have some good examples of this, though they were in quasi-peace time. What did we do? To expand, lets say that the US was neutral and two countries were at war and one nation state deliberately shot down an airliner full of civilians (men, women and children) some of who were US citizens. Would this drive us to toss out our neutrality and go to war today? I don’t think so…ymmv.

-XT

111

As yet, the worst president by far was Jesus H. Christ.

112

[QUOTE=Captain Carrot]
Really? Killing hundreds of thousands of civilians who weren’t even drafted and igniting a multilateral civil war is better than Vietnam or WWI?
[/QUOTE]

Better than Vietnam by almost any measure imaginable. I concede that WWI may be construed as better, depending on one’s values.

113

[QUOTE=Clothahump]
LBJ was a thief on a grand scale.
[/QUOTE]

:rolleyes: Taxation != theft.

114

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
:rolleyes: Taxation != theft.
[/QUOTE]
Sure, but what about that rumor that he took all the toilet paper with him when he left the white house?

115

[QUOTE=Squink]
Sure, but what about that rumor that he took all the toilet paper with him when he left the white house?
[/QUOTE]

Maybe he just wanted to show Ellie May and all the folks back home what it was like up in the big white house… :wink: