Bush: The Worst Ever?

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Bush: The Worst Ever?

Postby Sparrowhawk » Sat Mar 17, 2007 12:42 am

From Drudge:
DONALD TRUMP: BUSH 'PROBABLY THE WORST PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES'

Donald Trump goes off on President Bush in a scathing attack during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on the Friday edition of CNN's 'Situation Room:

"Well, I think Bush is probably the worst president in the history of the United States. And I just don't understand how [the Democrats] could have lost that election. Everything in Washington has been a lie. Weapons of mass destruction, it was a total lie. It was a way of attacking Iraq, which he thought was going to be easy and it turned out to be the exact opposite of easy. He reads 60 books a year. He reads a book a week. Do you think the president reads a book a week? I don't think so. He doesn't watch television. Now, one thing I know is when I'm on television, I watch, or I try. You do. Your own ego says, let's watch. Whether good or bad, you want to watch. He doesn't watch television. He's on television being interviewed by you or someone else, he doesn't watch. Does anyone really believe that?"

On Saddam Hussein:

"Whether they like him or didn't like him, he hated terrorists. He would shoot and kill terrorists. When terrorists came into this country, which he did control and he did dominate, he would kill terrorists. Now it is a breeding ground for terrorists."
Well, it's an idea that's been bandied about since the initial invasion of Iraq. Is President Bush honestly the worst president in the history of these United States? I posit that it is a possibility; however, we don't have the same perspective on other president's that citizens of their time had. We can only look back on presidents like Filmore, Taylor, Taft and Franklin Roosevelt. While the latter is certainly a top 5 candidate for "worst ever", it's hard to compare say, Bush and he and make a determination of who was "worse." Both had (or will have) long-lasting negative impacts on both their nation and the world as a whole. Your thoughts?

I'd have made this a poll, but with all the bad President's we've had, there just isn't enough room. In my opinion, the top 5 worst presidents are, in no particular order: Clinton, Bush, Carter, Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." - Winston Churchill

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Postby hive_king » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:35 am

Not Reagan? Government spending grew more under him than any other president in history. (Bush might now be beating him, but I'd have to check.)
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Postby Sparrowhawk » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:40 am

What do you mean? "Not Reagan" as in, I don't have him on the list of the top 5 and you think he should be? Possibly. However, there are a great many bad Presidents in our history; while Reaganomics certainly took its toll, and Iran-Contra left its mark, etc, Reagan did have some positive influences on American and world politics - while these positive actions in no way erase his negative legacy, they mitigate his status as one of the "worst" Presidents. Perhaps he's still in the top 10, but the five I have ahead certainly are more "deserving."
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Postby hive_king » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:44 am

Also out of curiousity, why is Clinton on it? The whole thing with monica was sleazy, but he has the right to do his job while having a job done on him. Meanwhile, government spending and the deficiet shrunk under his watch, we successfully kept the balkans from ethnic cleansing, gays got at least a little more rights, and the economy was humming (though that was only marginally his doing. It was much more to silicon valley, but he at least kept a steady hand on the helm, so to speak.)
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Postby Sparrowhawk » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:53 am

Also out of curiousity, why is Clinton on it? The whole thing with monica was sleazy, but he has the right to do his job while having a job done on him. Meanwhile, government spending and the deficiet shrunk under his watch, we successfully kept the balkans from ethnic cleansing, gays got at least a little more rights, and the economy was humming (though that was only marginally his doing. It was much more to silicon valley, but he at least kept a steady hand on the helm, so to speak.)
- Initiated the Don't ask, don't tell policy toward gays in the military, 1993. (His handling of the issue garnered criticism from both the left for being too tentative in promoting gay rights and the right for being too insensitive to military life, typical of the kind of wishy-washy compromisism Clinton embodied)
- Twice vetoed welfare reform
- Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 - Raised income tax rates
- The Brady Bill
- Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, part of an omnibus crime bill, the federal death penalty was expanded to some 60 different offenses
- Communications Decency Act
- Defense of Marriage Act, allowed states to refuse recognition of certain same-sex marriages, and defined marriage as between a male and female for purposes of federal law
- NAFTA
- And of course, Kosovo.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." - Winston Churchill

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Postby the HiveQueen » Sun Apr 01, 2007 8:26 pm

I'm surprised no one has said Andrew Johnson, the only U.S. president besides Clinton to ever be impeached.

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Postby jotabe » Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:28 am

Franklin Roosevelt? Why?

I know that the "New Deal" possibly delayed a full economic recovery, but there was other economic concerns, besides how quick you can take your GNP to the 1929 level.
But in the international policies, he took the US to a war where they needed to be (even if they didn't really want to). The world might be very different today if he hadn't.

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Postby eriador » Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:36 am

How does that mean that we had to be in the war?

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Postby the HiveQueen » Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:09 am

How does that mean that we had to be in the war?
I agree: he died before the attack on Pearl Harbor, after all. He also tried to pack the Supreme Court.

The New Deal, however, was a pretty good way of dealing with the Great Depression, or at least is was much better than Hoover's "trickle down" method that left millions starving. It also laid the foundations for Social Security which I believe, though it's debatable, to be important.

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Postby jotabe » Mon Apr 02, 2007 10:14 am

Because if the Nazi regime was allowed to take all of Europe, then it would have become a threat to the US. An immediate threat, i mean.

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Postby piers_styx » Mon Apr 25, 2011 8:14 pm

Also out of curiousity, why is Clinton on it? The whole thing with monica was sleazy, but he has the right to do his job while having a job done on him. Meanwhile, government spending and the deficiet shrunk under his watch, we successfully kept the balkans from ethnic cleansing, gays got at least a little more rights, and the economy was humming (though that was only marginally his doing. It was much more to silicon valley, but he at least kept a steady hand on the helm, so to speak.)

People seem to forget that Clinton was ramping up the national debt until teh Republicans took Congress and forced him to cut spending and balance the budget before they'd pass anything of his through Congress. He didn't do it because he wanted to, he did it because the Republicans made him. Really they're more responsible for the better budget than Clinton was. Clinton also passed Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act, and only got involved in teh Balkans after the ethnic cleansing had been going on for awhile. He didn't prevent anything there. Also that was a NATO action, not a US solo one. He wasn't anywhere as good as people give him credit for.
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Postby piers_styx » Mon Apr 25, 2011 8:19 pm

Jimmy Carter. That man did nothing BUT fail. Repeatedly. His biggest legacy? Destroying the economy, failing to save Americans from Iran, and screwing up the oil market. There was a reason Reagan stomped him all across teh country and then walked that big ol'mud hole dry.

And speaking of Reagan, he gets a bad rap I think. Yes Reaganomics did increase the rich poor gap, but it also increased the number of poor who became rich higher than it had been since before the Great Depression. The economy exploded under Reagan, business exploded after Reagan through Bush I's single term, to Clinton, giving Clinton a hugely powerful business economy that for the first time since the 60s was expanding dramatically in all directions. He had failings, but I think he gets a raw deal on some things he really doesn't deserve.
"The consolations of philosophy are many, but never enough." -Mazer Rackham, pg. 161, The Shadow of The Giant


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