Worst American president in history?

[Resawa]

Ok look
Obamas not the worst
At the least, he's mediocre, but a fantastic speaker

[Faith Hope Charity]

Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson, FDR, LBJ, Obama, GWB.

[WRIF Army]

Obama said that w/o the stimulus that unemployment would reach 8.5%. It reached 10% with it.

That pretty much tells me, the guy is clueless. But here is context for you:

That's GOVERNMENT job growth. When you have to make major cutbacks in the government (as he's had to do every single year since the GOP took over Congress), you tend to shed jobs in that sector.

Here's private sector job growth under Obama.

I don't think you can credit Obama for private sector job growth, when his sales pitch was education, social services, unemployment insurance, minimum wage.....

But here is a better indicator of how bad Obama's recovery compared to Reagan:



Also, I don't give high marks to a President whose main selling pitch is 'it was worse than we thought', 'blame Bush' then when things didn't improve, it was 'blame the Tea Party'.

And now, he is playing politics when the economy is finally about to recover by pandering to low info voters by peddling increases in minimum wage that we both know aren't going to help anyone but politicians buying votes.

I just don't think making excuses for every problem from the big guy in charge is indicative of an good president, much less an average one.

But hey, at least we both could agree that he would be better than Governor Krispy Creme.

[Freiheit Reich]

William Henry Harrison. All he did was catch pneumonia and die.

That makes him better than half the presidents. He didn't have time do too many bad things. He is much better than Obama, Bush, FDR, Wilson, and Jackson and many others for this reason.

[Vazdania]

Obama, because he lies, and has done little to try to aid the continuing divide between Republicans and Democrats.

...that's fucking it? You have dozens of mediocre and outright cataclysmic presidents to choose from, and you choose the slightly above average incumbent because he "lies" (that's gonna need a source) and "has done little to try to aid the continuing divide between Republicans and Democrats"? Does the South's secession ring any bells anywhere within your skull?

There's hyperbole, and then there's delusional exaggeration.

The south had the total and utter right to secede. Lincoln was also horrible.

[Frisivisia]

That's GOVERNMENT job growth. When you have to make major cutbacks in the government (as he's had to do every single year since the GOP took over Congress), you tend to shed jobs in that sector.

Here's private sector job growth under Obama.

I don't think you can credit Obama for private sector job growth, when his sales pitch was education, social services, unemployment insurance, minimum wage.....

But here is a better indicator of how bad Obama's recovery compared to Reagan:



Also, I don't give high marks to a President whose main selling pitch is 'it was worse than we thought', 'blame Bush' then when things didn't improve, it was 'blame the Tea Party'.

And now, he is playing politics when the economy is finally about to recover by pandering to low info voters by peddling increases in minimum wage that we both know aren't going to help anyone but politicians buying votes.

I just don't think making excuses for every problem from the big guy in charge is indicative of an good president, much less an average one.

But hey, at least we both could agree that he would be better than Governor Krispy Creme.

As it would turn out, it's easier to get out of a far far shallower recession with a cooperative congress. Holy shit.

I wouldn't say that acknowledging the fact that the Tea Party is actively sabotaging the government to get back at that nig- um, communist and that he was preceded by one of the worst Presidents in US history makes Obama a bad President, and I'd say that handling it as well as he has makes him look pretty damn good. It's easy to say things are bad and they used to be good, but trust me, Obama's doing a damn good job on a damn lot of fronts.

His sales pitch had to take a back seat to the biggest economic calamity since 1929 and after that he couldn't pass anything without the opposite party, which was and is trying desperately to hamper him at every turn, and given the fact that he's still managed to end one of the two wars he started out with and make America a far better presence around the world than it used to be means he's capitalizing on quite a few of his pitches.

But hating whoever's in charge at the moment is so hip, isn't it?

[Freiheit Reich]

Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson, FDR, LBJ, Obama, GWB.

Yes, our lists our identical it seems.

Any president that forces Americans to die in unnecessary wars is already a rotten president (LBJ, Obama, GWB).

[Frisivisia]

William Henry Harrison. All he did was catch pneumonia and die.

That makes him better than half the presidents. He didn't have time do too many bad things. He is much better than Obama, Bush, FDR, Wilson, and Jackson and many others for this reason.

No, yes, no, no, and no.

[Neo Industrium]

Andrew Johnson

[Yumyumsuppertime]

That's GOVERNMENT job growth. When you have to make major cutbacks in the government (as he's had to do every single year since the GOP took over Congress), you tend to shed jobs in that sector.

Here's private sector job growth under Obama.

I don't think you can credit Obama for private sector job growth, when his sales pitch was education, social services, unemployment insurance, minimum wage.....

But here is a better indicator of how bad Obama's recovery compared to Reagan:



Also, I don't give high marks to a President whose main selling pitch is 'it was worse than we thought', 'blame Bush' then when things didn't improve, it was 'blame the Tea Party'.

And now, he is playing politics when the economy is finally about to recover by pandering to low info voters by peddling increases in minimum wage that we both know aren't going to help anyone but politicians buying votes.

I just don't think making excuses for every problem from the big guy in charge is indicative of an good president, much less an average one.

But hey, at least we both could agree that he would be better than Governor Krispy Creme.

Oh, goodie, goalpost moving.

I'm not trying to say that Obama is a great President. He isn't. He's pretty good in some areas, and in over his head in others. The best that can be said about him is that I find him preferable to his predecessor. But what I am arguing is that if you're calling him the worst, then you lack historical knowledge, perspective, or both. Compare him to Pierce, to Garfield, to Hayes, to Coolidge, or to any one of a number of utter disasters.

[Frisivisia]

Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson, FDR, LBJ, Obama, GWB.

Yes, our lists our identical it seems.

Any president that forces Americans to die in unnecessary wars is already a rotten president (LBJ, Obama, GWB).

Because Americans are more important than dirty foreigners.

...that's fucking it? You have dozens of mediocre and outright cataclysmic presidents to choose from, and you choose the slightly above average incumbent because he "lies" (that's gonna need a source) and "has done little to try to aid the continuing divide between Republicans and Democrats"? Does the South's secession ring any bells anywhere within your skull?

There's hyperbole, and then there's delusional exaggeration.

The south had the total and utter right to secede. Lincoln was also horrible.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

[Frisivisia]

Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson, FDR, LBJ, Obama, GWB.

What a passe rightist list that ignores actual consequences in favor of ideology. Yawn.

[Freiheit Reich]

That makes him better than half the presidents. He didn't have time do too many bad things. He is much better than Obama, Bush, FDR, Wilson, and Jackson and many others for this reason.

No, yes, no, no, and no.

Jackson-Trail of Tears, disobeying the supreme court and acting like a dictator, strongly pro-slavery.

He was not only a bad president, he was a twisted and evil human being.

Bush and Obama-thousands of Americans killed in unnecessary foreign wars. Not to mention the billions spent on these useless wars.

FDR-high taxes, more govt. regulation, wrongful internment of Japanese, anti-business rules. FDR loving liberals forget that FDR was a racist.

Wilson-curbing civil liberties (using the war as an typical excuse to take away liberties), greatly increasing the US debt and taxes, getting us involved in a foreign war in which thousands died.

[Gauthier]

1) So Obama gave tax cuts to the rich at the same time he waged two wars in the Middle East?

2) Military families are one of the biggest dependents of SNAP assistance. And contrary to popular beliefs, whites tend to be the biggest dependents.

3) Proof of massive poverty?

4) You mean the unemployments that Obama wanted to fix with job bills that Congress blocked because Republicans have negrophobia?

5) Because toppling an admittedly stable dictatorship to open up a country to sectarian influence and half-assing a justifiable invasion to let the Taliban rebound from extinction in the same breath was a sign of success.

6) Proof Obama is more unpopular than Bush in the world?

1. Sen Obama voted with Bush to bail out Wall St with Main St wealth, that kinda of sucks.

2. I don't know why you brought up skin color ?

3. Record long term unemployment, food stamps, welfare recipients, debt, income inequality, wage stagnation....

4. Funny, that Obama said economy would suffer because of government shutdown since Tea Party gained power and yet we grew over 4% last quarter.

5. Stable dictatorship ? Saddam invaded, gassed two countries without provocation. Also he was working to acquire nuclear weapons: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... hawie.html

6. http://www.salon.com/2011/07/13/arabs/ Jeez, even in the Middle East, Bush is more popular than Obama !

1) 4 words: Too Big To Fail. Letting those companies tank would have destroyed the American job economy and possibly the world's as well.

2) Because there's nothing racial about calling Obama "The Food Stamp President". Nope nope.

3) Correlation =/= Causation unless you have solid proof Obama directly contributed to those.

4) Standard & Poores said the shutdown cost the economy $24 billion.

S&P Says Government Shutdown Cost U.S. Economy $24 Billion

5) With chemical weapons sold to him by the Reagan Administration. And one of those countries was Iran, which the United States was buddy-buddy with Saddam and sold him the chemical weapons as a counterbalance to.

Oh good God, you're linking to Hitchens' Yellow Cake Swan Song? Here's something you might want to read:

Sorry, Hitch—You're Wrong About Niger

It's now accepted by the U.S. intelligence community that there was nothing to the Niger charge. Even the White House in July 2003 disavowed its use of the allegation. Proponents of the war in Iraq no longer cite it as justification for the invasion. But there is one holdout: Christopher Hitchens. In a series of Slate columns, this champion of the war in Iraq has asserted that Iraq unquestionably did seek uranium from Niger in the late 1990s. He is wrong—that is, if one bothers to consider the actual evidence.

Why does this one slice of Bush's prewar case—which was, as our book demonstrates, entirely wrong—matter so much? Hitchens waves the Niger flag in an effort to prove that the accusation that Bush aides falsified the case for war and the subsequent Plame leak scandal are nothing but folly. The Niger charge is his linchpin. But the facts do not support his campaign. They destroy it.

Hitchens bases his entire Niger case essentially on one fact: that in 1999, Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican, paid a call on the prime minister of Niger. The rest of his argument is supposition, and his chief deduction is that there was only one matter that could have prompted Zahawie's trip to Niger: Saddam's desire to stock up on the single major export of that African country—yellowcake uranium.

For what it's worth, Zahawie says he has a simple explanation for the trip: He'd traveled to four African nations—not just Niger—hoping to convince the leaders of these countries to visit Saddam in Iraq to end the Iraqi dictator's diplomatic isolation. Hitchens does not buy this. Not because he has evidence to the contrary, but because years earlier Zahawie was an Iraqi envoy for nuclear matters. Ipso facto, Hitchens charges, Iraq was, beyond any doubt, surreptitiously seeking uranium in Niger in 1999. End of story. All else is rubbish.

But Hitchens leaves out of his supposition-driven narrative other relevant (and undeniable) facts. First, there's the question of whether Saddam had a need for this yellowcake. The 2004 report of Charles Duelfer, the final head of the Iraq Survey Group (which the Pentagon and the CIA created to search for Iraq's WMDs after the invasion), concluded that Iraq's WMD capability "was essentially destroyed in 1991." Specifically on Iraq's nuclear program, Duelfer noted,

Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.

According to the Duelfer report, Saddam had no need for tons of uranium from Niger in 1999.

Perhaps Hitchens might argue that a prudent Zahawie was in Niger shopping in advance for uranium—looking ahead to some time in the future when Saddam might revive a nuclear program. But for Hitchens to promote this notion to proven fact, he must ignore other facts. Foremost, there's this: Duelfer—who was quite the hawk when it came to Saddam and WMD before the war—reported that the "ISG has uncovered no information to support allegations of Iraqi pursuit of uranium from abroad in the post-Operation Desert Storm era." Let me emphasize that: "no information." (Duelfer, of course, was aware of the Zahawie trip.)

The Duelfer report did note that the ISG discovered that in 2001, a Ugandan businessman approached the Iraqis with an offer to sell Baghdad uranium, reportedly from the Congo. But the Iraqi Embassy in Nairobi turned the fellow away.

And there's this fact: The flawed National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD, produced in September 2002, reported that Iraq already had "about 500 metric tons of yellowcake and low enriched uranium." Duelfer's ISG noted that Iraq had purchased 485 tons of uranium from Portugal and Niger from 1980 through 1982.

The question then becomes, why would Zahawie travel to Niger in pursuit of uranium when Iraq had no program that could use it, no plans to revive the program, and already possessed stocks of yellowcake? (In an April 10, 2006, column, Hitchens gladly cited the Duelfer report regarding the 1981 Niger transaction, but he neglected to mention the report's more relevant conclusion that there was no evidence that 18 years later Iraq eyed Niger as a source for more uranium.) It's theoretically possible—in the anything-is-possible realm—that Zahawie and Iraq were up to something in Niger. But nothing backs up Hitchens' assertion. The International Atomic Energy Agency obtained excerpts of Zahawie's travel report, and these records contained no reference to any talks about uranium.

Hitchens' case is an air ball. Even the Republicans of the Senate intelligence committee in a recent report approvingly referenced the Duelfer report's conclusions that Saddam had no nuclear weapons program after the first Persian Gulf War and that there's no evidence Iraq sought uranium in Africa or anywhere else after 1991. Hitchens' Zahawie-centric tale rests upon nothing but speculation and is undermined by established facts that he disregards in favor of his own hypothesis.

Hitchens further argues that Bush was correct to say in his January 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had been looking to obtain uranium in Africa—because Bush's speechwriters attributed this claim to a British intelligence report. But as our book details, the speechwriters initially placed the uranium-in-Niger charge into the speech on the basis of intelligence contained in the National Intelligence Estimate. And this intelligence was based on the forged documents. Though this allegation had appeared in the NIE, the CIA (as the Senate intelligence committee documented) had repeatedly warned the White House not to use the unsubstantiated charge in any presidential speeches. Yet Bush's speechwriters—eager to concoct as frightening a case against Saddam as they could—included it in the draft of the State of the Union address.

In the final phase of the speechwriting process, the line was changed to attribute the charge to a British white paper that had been released in September 2002. But on Oct. 2, 2002, John McLaughlin, the CIA's No. 2, had testified to the Senate intelligence committee that "we've looked at those [British] reports [claiming Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa] and we don't think they are very credible." So, whether that one sentence in Bush's State of the Union speech was predicated on the British white paper or on the Niger documents, it was tied to flimsy intelligence doubted by the government's experts.

A few more words about the phony Niger documents: the fact that the U.S. intelligence reporting on the purported Niger connection was based on these poorly forged papers has led most observers and experts—including IAEA investigators—to dismiss the Niger charge as total bunk. Hitchens has another take. In the aforementioned April 10 column, he suggested the documents were not forged merely for financial gain by grifters working in the Niger Embassy in Italy (the conclusion reached by FBI investigators, as our book reports). Instead, Hitchens alleged that the documents were fabricated (badly, on purpose) so they would be used to discredit the real Niger-Iraq connection (established during Zahawie's trip). Yes, the forgeries were cleverly crafted by these same scammers to distract all (but Hitchens). What's his evidence that the fraudulent documents were actually sophisticated disinformation? Oh, that's a fool's question. Isn't it obvious?

[Gauthier]

I don't think you can credit Obama for private sector job growth, when his sales pitch was education, social services, unemployment insurance, minimum wage.....

But here is a better indicator of how bad Obama's recovery compared to Reagan:



Also, I don't give high marks to a President whose main selling pitch is 'it was worse than we thought', 'blame Bush' then when things didn't improve, it was 'blame the Tea Party'.

And now, he is playing politics when the economy is finally about to recover by pandering to low info voters by peddling increases in minimum wage that we both know aren't going to help anyone but politicians buying votes.

I just don't think making excuses for every problem from the big guy in charge is indicative of an good president, much less an average one.

But hey, at least we both could agree that he would be better than Governor Krispy Creme.

Oh, goodie, goalpost moving.

I'm not trying to say that Obama is a great President. He isn't. He's pretty good in some areas, and in over his head in others. The best that can be said about him is that I find him preferable to his predecessor. But what I am arguing is that if you're calling him the worst, then you lack historical knowledge, perspective, or both. Compare him to Pierce, to Garfield, to Hayes, to Coolidge, or to any one of a number of utter disasters.

Obama could have been a much better President with better choices in some areas, not to mention a Congress that wasn't infected with negrophobia.

[Costa Aluria]

William Henry Harrison.

Guy couldn't even last a month. It's fair to say he accomplished nothing.

[Freiheit Reich]

Yes, our lists our identical it seems.

Any president that forces Americans to die in unnecessary wars is already a rotten president (LBJ, Obama, GWB).

Because Americans are more important than dirty foreigners.

The south had the total and utter right to secede. Lincoln was also horrible.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

I am thinking from an American perspective. If the Americans were not sent to the war than the foreigners would not have to die in the first place. Among the foreigners it is harder to tell who is good and bad, most Iraqis hate all non-Muslims so most of the are bad people, same for Afghans. My belief is that if we go to war than we should go in 100% and we should kill much more and take resources to profit from the war. Our soft approach means that the USA gains nothing and just loses things. If you win a war than you should get spoils from it, otherwise the war is useless and a waste of lives.

Either go to war to win or don't bother going at all. Most American presidents are too stupid to understand this simple principle.

[Blakk Metal]

Starting point = Great Recession, two wars, rising distrust of government in general and rapidly escalating income inequality.

Starting point = from greatest economic juggernaut in history, unparalleled military power to record food stamps, poverty, long term unemployment, two lost wars, chaos in Middle East, disrespected/hated more than even Bush.....

Need I say more, my good man ?

The decline of the US started in the late Sixties.

[Freiheit Reich]

William Henry Harrison.

Guy couldn't even last a month. It's fair to say he accomplished nothing.

This is 'worst president' thread. Not 'most meaningless president' thread.

By your statement it seems that you believe every president has had a net positive effect on the USA. Harrison had basically a 0 effect. However, I think some presidents have had a negative effect on the nation, many presidents enacted harmful policies that made killed thousands and made Americans suffer for many years.

[Gauthier]

Starting point = from greatest economic juggernaut in history, unparalleled military power to record food stamps, poverty, long term unemployment, two lost wars, chaos in Middle East, disrespected/hated more than even Bush.....

Need I say more, my good man ?

The decline of the US started in the late Sixties.

Obama time-travelled to the Sixties and mind-controlled LBJ. Didn't you know?

[Norstal]

The decline of the US started in the late Sixties.

Obama time-travelled to the Sixties and mind-controlled LBJ. Didn't you know?

Obama literally Hitler. He literally went to the 1930s and took over Germany.

[Castille de Italia]

Jimmy Carter. The Iran Hostage Crisis was handled terribly, and waiting in long lines for rationed gas was mind-numbingly boring and horrific.

[Seattile]

This is almost like saying "Best American president in history", so hard to chose. I want to say James Buchanan for not trying that much to stop the Secession of the South.

[Castille de Italia]

William Henry Harrison.

Guy couldn't even last a month. It's fair to say he accomplished nothing.

That's not really fair to say. He died of a very common sickness in that time.

[Gauthier]

Obama time-travelled to the Sixties and mind-controlled LBJ. Didn't you know?

Obama literally Hitler. He literally went to the 1930s and took over Germany.

So *that's* why all those time travel Hitler assassinations fail. They go in the wrong direction!