Whilst I don’t agree with it all, Eolbo, that was a very well written nomination. 
Chalk up another vote for Brian Mulroney
Do you mean me with Berlusconi? Coz I’d give you Chirac too, if you’d have him, but both of them are current.
However, with Mussolini, Franco and Hitler* in the running, continental Europe is kinda spoiled for choice.
*Yeah yeah, they weren’t all PMs. In fact I think only Mussolini was, and that only for a while.
Jacques Chirac isn’t a current Prime Minister but he was Prime Minister in 1974-1976 and 1986-1988 so he is eligible.
Hitler assumed the office of Chancellor (equivalent to Prime Minister), but I think dictators should not qualify - they automatically trump Prime Minister acting within a democratic constitution for the “worst” title.
Among German non-dictator Chancellors I’d nominate:
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in the Wilhelmine empire: Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1909-1917) whose mishandling of the Austria-Serbia crisis had a large part in leading Germany into WW I
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in the Weimar Republic: Franz von Papen (June - December 1932), a conservative who colluded with the Nazis (in hopes of their support) in first giving them control of the state of Prussia by a coup, lifting the ban of the SA and later persuading the President, Paul von Hindenburg, to appoint Hitler as Chancellor (Papen was vice-Chancellor under Hitler for a year).
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in the Federal Republic: Helmut Kohl (1982-1998) who made reunification into a longtime economic disaster in 1990 by running in the 1990 elections on a platform of reunification being financed without sacrifices on anyone’s part. West Germans would have been ready to retrench, but he chose to finance reunification by compromising the public social insurance system instead.
Among those three von Papen would be the most odious.
Diefenbaker is not well regarded primarily because he lost control of his own party. He was paranoid and bad at internal politics, and lost the confidence of his own party, so the impression people were left of him as a person was that he was kind of a nutty old man. This impression was magnified by the fact that he was followed by Mike Pearson, who gave the impression of being a genial uncle who maybe taught at a college, and Pierre Trudeau, a dashing, debonair sort of guy. Diefenbaker’s reputation after awhile was sort of like what you would think of Christopher Lloyd if he wasn’t tall or funny. It does not help
Dief is also still reviled by many Canadians for cancelling the Avro Arrow jet fighter project, which over four decades has transmogrified in the popular memory from being what it was (a wildly out-of-control spending fiasco that even the air force did not want) to being something it wasn’t (a super-weapon roughly on par with the X-Wing that would have made Canada an invicible army of cyborg super-warriors.) I don’t mean to sound mean about it, but the Arrow has become a Canadian myth of absolutely Bunyanesque proportions. I would guess that if you found 100 Canadians today who had something bad to say about Diefenbaker, 95% of them would bitch about him cancelling the Arrow.
In terms of his actual overall effect on the country, however, you would be hard pressed to say Diefenbaker was really all that bad. He did not handle external affairs all that well and was not as proactive with Quebec as he could have been. But he did begin the post-war championing of equal rights in Canada, his administration pioneered multiculturalism, and his economic policies weren’t disastrous or anything.
I understand the nominations for Billy McMahon, but I think he was simply too inconsequential to be named Australia’s worst PM. Like Eolbo, I am loathe to nominate an incumbent. Instead I’ll offer for consideration that great 20 year waste of space, the (not-so) closet-pom who held this country behind for an entire generation, Robert Menzies.
Considering that Menzies is John Howard’s political hero, I too think our current PM will not fare well in the annuls of history.
And while I for the most part agree with Elbo’s post, I have to disagree with this:
I feel it undermines the travesty that was Bush v Gore to compare it to the 1998 election. Sure, Howard was elected without winning the popular vote, but it was either Hawke (or maybe Keating) who had similarly done so a decade earlier. Sure, I Howard believed he had a far greater mandate than the election result would suggest, and that led to some truly awful changes, it doesn’t change the fact that in 1998, Howard was elected in accordance with our system. Bush, however, was nominated by the courts.
Howard got lucky. Bush usurped the Presidency. That’s the difference.
Hendrik Verwoerd - Prime Minister of South Africa - Architect of Apartheid
'nuff said.
Yep, good ole’ Lester Bowles “Mike” Pearson.
(Mike?)
Don’t ask me why he was called Mike, but he was. Even his own memoirs are entitled “Mike: the memoirs of the Right Honorable Lester B. Pearson.”
According to his biography at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade:
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/department/history/Pearson-en.asp
So he really was Lester Bowles “Mike” Pearson?
Well, that’s my recommended daily dose of weird shit right there. I’m going to bed.
**Governor Quinn **
Both Single Serving Friend and I nominated Jan Peter Balkenende.
We may be a small country, but we pay the most [per person] to the EU. I’m sad to say.
*And you’re not expecting any French, to nominate one of their own, are you? *
My apologies for what is probably continuing a hijack, but…
Which parts do you disagree with?
Germany has fallen into recession
France has fallen into recession
Italy has fallen into recession
And the UK has so far, despite Labours best efforts, managed to cling to growth by its fingernails. I believe, as your own figures show, that the UK also has lower inflation, and unemployment.
So whilst far from a thrilling economic powerhouse, the UK would appear to be healther than its European counterparts (for now at least)
Hijack over, I would have to cast my vote for Thatcher as worst PM. I don’t think I can ever forgive her for the way she treated Scotland, effectively causing almost certain devolution from the UK.
She used us as an experiment for the Poll tax. She spent oil industry profits to support her causes, then offered no support during the crash. She was an out and out little Englander, and helped bring about the death of the union.
Are you serious, Gary Kumquat?
And don’t take try to take what I said out of context either. This claim was made:
The GDPs of the three countries are virtually identical. The growth rates are all fairly small, and not too different from each other. The UK is where Germany and France are - especially when considered on the time frame involved. Thatcher’s magic policies have had 24 years in operation. Surely there should be some readily discernible effect on the comparative GDPs?
Please explain to me how adaher’s claim that “Britian would today be where Germany and France are if not for Thatcher” makes sense to you. And also explain why the difference in unemployment levels should properly be attributed to Margaret Thatcher, and no other more temporally proximate factor.
Erm, yes I was being serious. I also thought I was being fairly non-confrontational, so not quite sure what’s got you so steamed.
As for taking you out of context, I did actually quote your post in it’s entirety, so again not quite sure why you should accuse me of such a thing.
The only point of adaher’s I was defending (as I’d hope my condemnation of Thatcher makes clear) is that currently, the UK economy is in a healthier position than it’s European counterparts.
I provided 3 cites for this, and could provide quite a few more. By all the standard benchmarks - inflation, growth in GDP, unemployment - the UK is currently in a healthier state than France, Germany or Italy.
I really think this is a fair enough claim, but if you think I’m somehow misrepresenting the facts, I’d suggest a new thread, as we really do seem to be in clear hijack territory.
You say “by all the standard benchmarks”, when they obviously aren’t all the standard benchmarks.
The prime benchmark is GDP. The ones you claim as “standard benchmarks” are measures of past changes in GDP and predictors of future changes in GDP.
To omit the absolute level of GDP renders all of the other statistics useless as measures of overall economic health.
A country may have a growth rate of 10%, an unemployment rate of 1% and an inflation rate of 2%. Sounds rosy, doesn’t it? But if you omitted to state that the per capita GDP is $500, you would be painting an entirely false picture. A $500 per capita GDP is extreme poverty. The other figures just show that things may be getting better.
The bottom line is that the GDPs of the UK, France and Germany are pretty much the same. From the figures I quoted, the GDPs of France and Germany are slightly higher. But, the UK’s growth rate is slightly higher, so the UK should catch up a bit when the GDP figures are next calculated. And that’s all.
Unfortunately, I’m not well versed enough in Japan’s non-military 20th century history to say who’s the worst, but I guess I can give some background.
One reason it’s hard to pick out the worst is that since the end of the American occupation in 1952, there has been only one PM who wasn’t in the Liberal Democratic Party (Socialist Party Tomiichi Murayama in '94-95, recognizable by his gull-wing eyebrows), and those in the LDP managed to get where they were by obediently toeing the line. As a result, no one individual really stands out as exceptionally good or bad. There’s Kakuei Tanaka, who was forced to resign after getting busted on a number of scandals, and even went to jail, IIRC (he wouldn’t be the only Japanese PM to do so), but I have a gut feeling that his real sin was not playing along with the other members of the party (who were all doing the same things), so that when his activities were ‘anonymously’ leaked to the press, nobody was there to protect and support him.
As stated before, twice, I disagree. As also stated before, wrong thread.
I’ll set up a new thread for this as soon as time allows - unfortunately the straightdope is barred by websense, so my office browsing has been curtailed.