New Bush Press Secretary is former Fox News Host

[Art Sandusky 0]

Yeah, I think one reason we're seeing the seemingly invincible Right collapsing in the last year or so is that more and more of their own are starting to ask the same question. He's not the worst ever (no such judgment can be made until after he's out of office for a while in the first place), but he certainly isn't one of the great ones. America as a whole is starting to feel like they're been asleep the last few years and when on my petitioning job I heard a general sentiment of "man, what were we thinking?" from the super conservative voters around here.

[EricMM 0]

I don't think Bush could touch Jackson, but he could maybe make top 10.

 

I mean for me, as a conservationist, he's already there, along with his father and Reagan.

 

But for all of America? We'll see what he does with his last three years *cry*

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

My take on the Bush presidency is pretty similar to that of the Powerline blog:

 

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

 

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/011183.php

 

[snuffbox 0]

Worst presidents ever...

 

1.Richard Nixon

2.James Buchanon

3.Lyndon Johnson

4.George W Bush

5.Herbert Hoover

 

I strongly disagree with anyone who puts WG Harding in the top 5 worst presidents ever.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

I'd actually rank Buchanan as #1 because his incompetence led the country into the friggin' Civil War. Then again, I guess you can debate whether or not he was totally responsible since the compromise list of presidential choices since the Compromise of 1820 basically took the legs off of most presidents and made them ineffective.

 

I think Harding deserves to be put up there due to the fact that his administration was so friggin' corrupt. You had the Teapot Dome scandal as well as numerous affairs he had with other women (leading some historians to believe that his wife poisoned him). If he was president today the country would tear him apart but I guess in the 1920s you didn't have a ravenous press core following you anywhere so you could get away with what you wanted.

 

It's hard to judge Bush's current place in history at the moment because of the harsh political climate we're in. After all, everyone wanted to kill Reagan too but after two decades people can step back and make some fair judgements of his administration both good and bad.

 

Also, was LBJ THAT bad? I mean at least with him we got the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voter Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid. I mean Vietnam was a mess but that shouldn't overshadow everything much like Watergate shouldn't overshadow Nixon's foreign policy victories with China.

[snuffbox 0]

Harding was a great man. When he found out about the scandals of his Veterans Bureau secretary he kicked his ass in the White House. He died before he could get to the rest of the idiots in his cabinet.

 

Nixon is worst by default...he stepped down in shame (along with our Uncle Agnew), and nothing can be worse than that.

 

Yes, LBJ was that bad. Vietnam was remarkably horrible...thousands of dead Americans, so many injuries (and an Agent Orange problem that will persist for a long time yet), a draft that split the country, huge amounts spent (this did more to damage his 'Great Society' than Nixon as LBJ refused to raise taxes as he felt such a move would show the country there was a serious problem in Vietnam), a bad result, etc. "I wont send American boys to do what Asian boys can do themselves," was the worst broken campaign promise in American history. He was personally corrupt, wheras guys like Grant and Harding were damaged by their own cabinets. Ran some of the dirtiest campaigns of modern times.

[SuperJerk 0]

Harding was a great man. When he found out about the scandals of his Veterans Bureau secretary he kicked his ass in the White House. He died before he could get to the rest of the idiots in his cabinet.

What the fuck kind of bizarro-world history books have YOU been reading????

[snuffbox 0]

"The next afternoon a visitor to the White House with an appointment to see the President was directed by mistake to the 2nd floor. As he approached the Red Room he heard a voice hoarse with anger and on enetering saw Harding throtling a man against the wall as he shouted: 'You yellow rat! You double-crossing bastard! If you ever...' Whirling about at the visitor's approach, Harding loosed his grip & the released man staggered away, his face blotched & distorted. 'I am sorry,' Harding said curtly to his visitor. 'You have an apt. Come into the next room.' On leaving the WH, the visito asked a doorman who it was who had just gone out after he came in, and the doorman replied: 'Colonel Forbes of the Veterans Bureau'

-Shadow of Blooming Grove, WG Harding in His Times Francis Russell, pg 558

[SuperJerk 0]

Harding was a great man. When he found out about the scandals of his Veterans Bureau secretary he kicked his ass in the White House. He died before he could get to the rest of the idiots in his cabinet.

What the fuck kind of bizarro-world history books have YOU been reading????

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

snuffbox how many books about presidents have you read?

[snuffbox 0]

Several. Many more to go though...

[snuffbox 0]

Harding was a great man. When he found out about the scandals of his Veterans Bureau secretary he kicked his ass in the White House. He died before he could get to the rest of the idiots in his cabinet.

What the fuck kind of bizarro-world history books have YOU been reading????

 

He would have cleaned house of his cabinet, including his trusted friend/AG Daugherty, and probably won reelection (though he might have had to leave the front porch for the '24 campaign) but he died during his trip to Alaska. The only scandals that actually involved Harding were the theory that he was 'part Black' ("the shadow of Blooming Grove") and his extramarital affairs.

 

Harding was a pretty good guy, by my count. He answered his own White House correspondence, he spoke out for civil rights (in 1921!), created the VA and actually roughed up its director upon learning of scandal, and was quite popular at the time of his death in office (and before the scandals of his cabinet caught the public attention). He was also known to write love letters to his mistresses up to 50 pages long...he was our only Poet President.

[SuperJerk 0]

Except, you know, his economic policies helped create the economic environment that allowed the Great Depression to occur, and his isolationism and trade policies encouraged the conditions that would help lead to World War II. Creating the Dept. of Veterans Affairs hardly makes up for that.

 

Saying he would have cleaned up his cabinet is like saying John Kennedy would have gotten us out of Vietnam, or Lincoln would have had an inclusive reconstruction. The simply fact is that he did not do it, and we can never for certain what he'd have done had he lived. In fact, he's the person who appointed all of these crooks in the first place, right? Everything I've read suggests he was simply a crooked politician who was appointed the nominee via backroon deals, and gained the White House in the general election by exploited the public's paranoid overreaction to America's involvement in global affairs during the Wilson Administration.

[snuffbox 0]

I highly recommned Francis Russell's book...a real encyclopedia of Harding that stretches all the way back to the Pannamite War. And, it isnt nearly as boring as one might think...I put it on the same level as the equally thick bio of RFK by Artie Schlesinger.

 

Blaming WG Harding for the Depression & WW2 is really stretching it...

[SuperJerk 0]

Harding's encouragment of American isolationism and the protectionist Republican economic policies that helped lead to the Great Depression created the environment in which something like World War II could occur. That's not the same thing as blaming it on Harding. It just shows what a massive failure, in the long term, Harding's policies were.

[EricMM 0]

Andrew Fucking Jackson.

 

Yeah.

 

Trail of Tears?

 

Yeah.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Andrew Fucking Jackson.

 

Yeah.

 

Trail of Tears?

 

Yeah.

 

Yea, Jackson was nuts but he was seen as the first "common man" president and sort of ushered in U.S. democracy as it is today so that usually gets him a pass off of the worst list.

 

I actually forgot some stuff about Harding like civil rights (although there is a historical rumor that he had black heritage) but I'm still iffy on his policies because I haven't read a lot about him in many, many years.

 

Someone who should be in the top 5 is Jimmy Carter. Sure, he had the foreign policy based on human rights that was very friendly to the world and he got Israel & Egypt to agree to peace but the guy was just out of his element as president. In fact, Carter has done more outside of the White House than he ever did inside of it. High oil prices, a malaise hanging over the American people, the Iranian hostage crisis, etc. The guy had some good ideas and meant well but he just tried to micromanage everything when he really didn't know how to manage it (unlike Clinton who used the same model). I don't necessarily see him as a top 3 worst guy but maybe a 5.

[EricMM 0]

No, Jackson committed genocide.

 

Common man or not, Genocide.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

I'm not justifying genocide. I'm just saying that Jackson is usually seen as historically significant in the textbooks because of ushering in a larger share of democracy which the writers believe trump his battles with the Bank of the U.S., his defiance of the Supreme Court, and his genocide of Native Americans.

[EricMM 0]

Oh he is signifigant.

 

But genocide makes him one of the worst presidents, top 5, easily.

 

*shrug*

[Vampiro69 0]

Let us not forget that Harding also killed a Black prostitute and threw her out a window while visiting San Fransisco.

 

Worst Presidents

1. Warren G. Harding

2. U.S. Grant

3. Jimmy Carter

4. Thomas Jefferson (extremely overrated, nearly lost our entire navy in battle to a group of pirates in Africa)

5. Richard Nixon

6. Andrew Jackson

[EricMM 0]

See, I cannot believe people are still putting Nixon or Carter ahead of Jackson.

 

Really.

[Vampiro69 0]

Well 3-6 for me change all the time. It depends upon my mood at the time I type something like that.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Jefferson in the bottom 5 is being contrary for the sake of being contrary. Much like Eric, I can't believe you'd put him down as a worse president than Nixon AND Jackson.

[snuffbox 0]

Let us not forget that Harding also killed a Black prostitute and threw her out a window while visiting San Fransisco.

 

Now we're gettin somewhere...

[SuperJerk 0]

Point of comparison here...

 

Polk stole a lot of land from Mexico, and Jackson stole a lot of land from the Native Americans.

 

Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, and actually PAID FOR IT.

[SuperJerk 0]

The thing you got to remember about when historian rate presidents, is they generally like to use words like "effective" and "leadership" instead of best and worst. That way you can have someone like Jackson on a top list because he was an effective leader, even if he did some horrible things in office.

[Danville_Wrestling 0]

Point of comparison here...

 

Polk stole a lot of land from Mexico, and Jackson stole a lot of land from the Native Americans.

 

Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, and actually PAID FOR IT.

 

Yea Jefferson doing the LA Purchase keeps him off of the bad list entirely. Much of Jefferson's legacy comes in his pre-presidential years than when he actually took office but his election was crucial to the presidency because it showed that the country would practice what it preached by having a peaceful transfer of power from the Federalists to the Democratic-Republicans.

[Gary Floyd 0]

Now that was some funny, funny stuff. Someone actually compared Clinton to Hitler. Incredible.

I take it you've never seen the boards at Free Republic.

[SuperJerk 0]

Point of comparison here...

 

Polk stole a lot of land from Mexico, and Jackson stole a lot of land from the Native Americans.

 

Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, and actually PAID FOR IT.

 

Yea Jefferson doing the LA Purchase keeps him off of the bad list entirely. Much of Jefferson's legacy comes in his pre-presidential years than when he actually took office but his election was crucial to the presidency because it showed that the country would practice what it preached by having a peaceful transfer of power from the Federalists to the Democratic-Republicans.

Also good points.