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1. Bill Clinton - Impeached liar 2. Jimmy Carter – Do nothing feel good President 3. FDR - New Deal start of the lazy American
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Jay, when are you going to wake up and realize it's not 1998? Taking jabs at Bill Clinton is not even remotely funny, the Drudge Report is irrelevant and driving by yourself in an SUV makes you look like an elitist asshole.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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-Drudge Report is basically a list of daily news and columnists (on boths sides of issues). So how is that irrelevent?
-Driving a Volvo (fav lib-mobile), a Mercedes, or a BMW makes one look like an elitist asshole.
I've italicized the parts that prove you are either out of touch with reality or are severely lacking in the funny.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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1) Warren G. Harding 2) Andrew Johnson 3) Franklin Pierce 4) Lyndon Johnson 5) James Buchanan
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Martin Van Buren - Made a bad situation worse by continuing Jackson's failed domestic economic policies. Other than that a do nothing, though he did avoid war with Mexico by refusing to annex Texas, and was an ardent anti-slavery activist.
Millard Fillmore - Put a bandaid on the problem of slavery and successionist threats rather than actually solving it. He did do some good, by getting California admitted as a free state, but he could have done a lot better.
Franklin Pierce - Let himself get manipulated by his cabinet. A do nothing, useless, bad president.
James Buchanan - Horrible do nothing president. He basically just floundered around waiting for Congress to implode.
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Lyrhawn, I'm going to have to disagree with you on Van Buren and Fillmore. In fact, Van Buren's on my "best" list.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Why does it bother you that Clinton lied about his sex life, yet it doesn't bother you that Bush lied about WMDs and terrorists in Iraq. Is it because
1. You are still under the dillusion that there were WMDs and Al Qaida traing camps in Iraq even though the Bush administation has now stated there were not.
2. You think that Bush was simply fooled by bad intelligence so he never technically lied about Iraq.
3. You think that lying about sex is wrong but don't think lying about your reasons for starting a war that will kill thousands is wrong.
4. Clinton was impeached for lying and Bush hasn't been, yet.
5. Lying to a grand jury is wrong, but lying to congress and the American people is OK.
6. Its wrong for democrats to lie, but OK when Repubs do it.
7. Other
If your reasons is one, then you are admitting that you are a fool. If it is 2, you are admitting that Bush is a fool. If your reasons are 3 - 6, then you have serious problems with ethical consistency. Which leaves other.
If you have an other explanation, please tell me.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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George W. Bush - Tax cuts for the rich combined with unnecessary and badly implemented war make for explosive national debt. Equivocated on torture issues. No Child Left Behind leaving many children behind. Flip flopper. And he won't stop smirking, the arrogant bastard.
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Juxtapose, You forgot to mention Blue Skies, Healthy Forest, Arsenic, Mercury, the roadless initiative, and the Yellowstone Winter use plan.
You forgot to mention Bush's opposition to the ABM treaty, the Kyoto treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the International Criminal Court, the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, START II, and the Land Mine Ban.
You forgot to mention that he opposed the UN declaration on children's rights, opposed sex education in developing countries, banned the use of USAID in clinics or by doctors that encourage condom use or even mention abortion,
You forgot that Bush has abandoned diplomacy as the keystone of foreign policy. The official position of his administration is that we "don't talk to our enemies'. We refused to talk with the Taliban, refused to talk with Hussein and we are now refusing to talk with Iran.
You forgot that he has authorized the kidnapping and torture of terror suspects, flaunted the Geneva convention, held hundred of people indefinitely without charges, authorized warrantless spying on American citizens, and overseen an unprecidented expansion of executive power.
You forgot that his administration ignored warnings of the 9/11 terror attacks and levi breaches New Orleans.
Oh, and you forgot that he started a war of agression against a country that posed no real threat to the US or her citizens. A war that has cost thousands of US lives and hundreds of billions of US dollars.
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Well, if Regan was on the list, I would vote for him. Otherwise, none of them are the best, but none are the worse either.
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1. Nixon, for Watergate and his "plan" in Viet Nam, which esentialy involved bombing the hell out of the North Viet Namese, with a deliberate attempt to kill civilians, involving Cambodia and then leaving, after having declared a victory with no basis in reality.
2. Pierce, a blatant slavery surporter and yet another who did little.
3. Harding, fed jobs to corrupt cronies and seemed totaly removed from "normalacy."
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I would vastly prefer an ineffective president who accomplished little, over an effective president who accomplished alot of bad things.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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*not because they're Republican (I'm not a conservative-basher type)... But probably a good helping of "because they're recent/current enough that I have a fair understanding of their good points and bad points." They're more on my mind than other past terrible Presidents might be.
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In my eyes, that means less likely to increase the size of the federal government or overstep executive power, so that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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Hrm... for actively trying to destroy the United States, subvert the Constitution, and flaunt the rule of law, I'd have to go with Lincoln.
Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2005
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I'd probably pick a couple of the presidents that came before Lincoln. Appeasement and complacency in the face of a developing crisis underscore their ineptitude as leaders.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Palliard: Hrm... for actively trying to destroy the United States, subvert the Constitution, and flaunt the rule of law, I'd have to go with Lincoln.
If he wanted to actively destroy the US, he would have let the south secede without putting up a fuss. That would've done it right there.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Not at all. What was left would have been the United States. You can argue that the United States would not have been able to continue as it had before, but it would have lived or died according to the principles on which it was founded.
What Lincoln did was create a new thing entirely. He kept the name "United States of America", and many of the trappings of that glorious experiment. But he transformed it into an empire. One which could only be kept alive by conscript troops and massive taxation.
Don't get me wrong. It's still better than anything else out there. In the same way that a glass of half water/half poison is better than a glass full of poison.
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Besides, war was inevitable. Even if they had left the United States and Lincoln had left them alone, there would have been war eventually.
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The choice Lincoln had was between a war of reunification and one of conquest against a hostile foreign country. There was no viable "no war" option.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I've always heard Harding listed as the worst President ever (which Tom also picked). But I don't remember from my history class why that was so. Maybe I'll go read up on his presidency now...
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Two aggressive expansionist countries on the North American continent with a history of antagonism, one of which lacked much manufacturing ability and the other that would need increased argicultural output. The growing division between abolitionists and slavers would be further exacerbated when abolitionist groups were helping slaves escape across country as opposed to state lines. The Union was also not about to give up strategically important sites and forts in the South. Plus, there was the ever-present threat of anti-Union European interference. All of this taking place within the economic climate of the latter half of the 19th century.
The Union would not and could not abide a direct competitor. For that matter, neither would or could the Confederacy. It would have been war no matter what.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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sL: while conscription did occur in the United States (as well as the Confederacy) during the civil war, the vast majorities of both armies (over 80%, I think around 90%) were volunteers.
I'm somewhat amused that Jackson hasn't appeared in this thread. While the results of his record viewed from a distance are somewhat muddled, there are specific actions that certainly make him a candidate, notably explicitly disobeying a Supreme Court ruling in order to steal land from sovereign nations in violation of United States treaties, then evict the inhabitants at the cost of many thousands of lives. While he's popped up in the other thread, this particular offense hasn't.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Bush won't stop smirking becasue he can't. He's been pithed. And I think I see Cheney holding an ice pick behind his back...
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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In that case, it's not an ice pick. It's a lever that got broken and permanently stuck on the "smirk" setting. Maybe Cheney was trying to fix it?
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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