Worst President of the 20th Century
 

Who do you think was the worst US President of the 20th Century? Please disclose your reasons for believing so.

Although Wilson seems to be the doctrinal genesis of so much of why people detest the modern US government, surely he achieved things domestically?

Ronald Raygun, though. War on Drugs, Central America, supply-side economics, SDI, deliberate hamstringing of the conservation movement, wanting to test a nuke in the Tasman. Massive faggot. The shitcunt grin never helped either.

Wilson tends to get a free pass for Women's Suffrage but among the things he accomplished domestically included firing blacks from Federal positions and imposing full segregation in DC. Of course, hardline racists didn't like Wilson because he didn't oppress blacks enough, and Wilson ended up being the classic example of the overt racist with black friends.

He also repressed free speech through the Espionage and Sedition acts in unprecedented ways to help fight a war we shouldn't have been in.

Lots of presidents have had terrible foreign policy, but I don't think anybody can claim to have damaged international relations for eight decades like Wilson did.

Yeah, I recall reading of unprecedented interracial tension during his government. Didn't lynchings shoot right up throughout the '20s to numbers that hadn't been seen for decades?

Wilson and the Espionage/Sedition Acts reminds me of Billy Hughes and conscription, actually. The zealotry of their interest in Europe's war not tempered even by the prospect of career destruction... Or perhaps it wasn't as big a threat in Wilson's situation; I've NFI what the US electoral attitude was to the First WW.

It was also what sparked the tremendous resurgence of the Klan, and while Wilson stated publicly that they were annoying, he didn't do anything to stop them, of course.

Leading up to the war attitudes were divisive, but once Wilson framed it as a religious war for the security of Democracy, legislators who opposed the war were accused of being traitors.

Wow all those comments about Wilson sound eerily familiar.

I really can't comment on worst president of the 20th century because I'm not at all that familiar with many of them. I guess I could go with Richard Nixon for the usual reasons.

You mean resumed good relations with China, established a peaceful period during the Cold War with detente, pulled us out of Vietnam with reasonable success, established the EPA and OSHA, and successfully enforced school integration in the south?

That bastard.

Well, there was also the whole bombing Cambodia thing and starting The War on Drugs, but I wouldn't really call Nixon the worst president either. Watergate was what really sank him.

How in the HELL can you say Ronald Reagan is the worst president of the 20th century? The man is easily in the Top 3 (FDR and Eisenhower the only ones I could conceivably put ahead of him).

With that said -- Jimmy Carter has to be the worst president of the 20th.

People inclined toward the left often do. Foreigners of that inclination even more so.

That said, I'm inclining towards Lyndon Johnson in this poll. Vietnam figures prominently, in that Johnson both got us heavily involved in that war, and then managed to lose it by halting the pursuit after Ia Drang, overruling his commanders. This let the Communists get away without suffering further casualties. It also, by allowing them to escape into Cambodia, established that country as a safe haven and set Nixon up for all kinds of hell when he tried to do something about it years later.

He was also responsible for the expansion of federal power over domestic policy that the Great Society brought.

Carter has basically gone completely insane and said terrible things in public while in far-away countries about the country he formerly served. That, right there gentlemen, makes him incredibly worse than anyone else on the list.

Despite all his bullshit, *at least* Nixon went to China.

(I'm not sure about Johnson. I think its a bigger error to not know when to leave a war than it is to get involved. He certainly did some things I don't like, but that can be said about practically every president I know anything about - save Roosevelt.)

I can't decide between Bush or Reagan. I voted for Bush; I suppose I'm biased, though, because I have a more vivid impression of the presidents who were in office during my lifetime. Truman is in the race as well, since he eventually made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.

Yeah no shit. Bush was one of the least eventful Presidencies in history, Gulf War aside.

This is perfectly understandable. My point wasn't that he got us involved, per se, but that he (with no small amount of assistance from Robert McNamara) set us up for failure in Vietnam and all the misery that resulted from it. If you're going to do something as important as fight a war, do it right.

(Yes, this same criticism can and should be leveled against George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.)

Johnson also made the mistake of appointing Ramsey Clark as Attorney General.

That's pretty shaky reasoning; by that logic, Clinton should be on your list, too.

I wouldn't really consider McKinley for the 20th century since he wasn't around for long. Regardless, I would probably say the presidents that were around in the 20s, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were probably some of the worst presidents of the 20th century. I would put them along along with Carter and probably Johnson as well, though Johnson did pass some good civil rights legislation. Oh, and yes Wilson was a racist, but he was still a progressive that cracked down on trusts and so forth, and he had some good ideas too, like the League of Nations.

He was still technically a 20th Century president. Not only that, but the Spanish-American War sparked the beginning of the United States as an imperial, or interventionist global power, which set the tone for T. Roosevelt, Wilson, and the Cold War.

Truman's choice was either drop the bomb or invade Japan. While only estimated, the fact that the Japanese army would've surely "dug in" on their home turf would have extended World War II for much, much longer and it's been estimated another 500,000 to over a million more American soldiers would have been lost - God only knows if the Japanese culture would be alive today if the invasion happened, given the fanatacism of its people.

The point of the bomb wasn't to kill people, but scare the government into surrendering and saving far more lives - which it did.

You forgot to mention it also inadvertantly inspired one of the greatest rock anthems of all time - "Crazy Train".

Wilson cracked down on trusts, but not any more significantly than Taft or Roosevelt. In fact, Taft was the one who extended trust busting across the board while Roosevelt simply targeted trusts he thought were illegal, so he should be your boy.

It's also easy to say that the League of the Nations was a good idea without also considering the fact that it was a disaster which amounted to a First World Boys Club.

I always saw Harding as the worst president. The man himself questioned how the hell he got elected (there's a quote of it somewheres), and he was just charismatic. People liked him, but in those days, folks didn't have such extensive access to the president's every move like we have today. Let's not forget the Ohio Gang's crookedness and what-not. Briberies, kick-backs, corruption, and crony-ism galore.

But Carter is also high up on the list of my most disliked presidents. Smart man, but the presidency requires a number of attributes beyond just that.

Traveller87 --
In regards to the criticism surrounding the usage of Little Boy and Fat Man, you need to take a number of things in to account. Firstly, our firebombings of Tokyo amassed far more deaths than the two bombs combined, but those are swept over in most peoples' minds. Let's also think about how the Japanese were treating the Chinese in the territories they had occupied during the war. Add the high possibility of an invasion and the subsequent aftermath that would've come, should the Russians have tried making a land-grab at Japan amid this chaos, things could've ended up as one huge clusterfuck.

Plus, even if we had a supreme tactical advantage in every battle and obliterated the Japanese forces, the Japanese people would've most likely taken their own lives as we had seen previously in the war.

Most folks don't like hearing it, but the usage of those two bombs were the best possible choices. They were a slap in the face and a reality check. Exactly what the Japanese needed.

These don't actually excuse the use of atomic weapons, but people should bear in mind that the terror bombing criticism also applies to FDR, who also has the little (big) concentration camp fiasco.

I'm actually going to have to vote for Ford in this regard, simply because I believe that his pardoning of Nixon for Watergate has done more than any one event to create the distrust and apathy for federal government that we have today.

I also fully expect Lord Styphon to prove me wrong immediately.

Moreso than Watergate itself?

I vote for Reagan. Because I'm a leftist leaning foreigner.

Also because the war on drugs and Reaganomics... Do you have any idea how much those idiotic concepts have hurt you in the eyes of the outside world? And come on, hurt the environment and drained money on godawful, stupid programs. Absolute rubbish.

Hey, all that wasted money scared the shit out of the Soviets, so bite your tongue, commie. :9/11:

I think you've got the wrong Bush, if your birth date is any indication of how old you really are.

At any rate, I'm going with Johnson. I am a faggot for Texas but he stunk.