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Worst Presidents

Worst American President(s)


  • Total voters
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And this is childish.
It's childish to state that rating any of our most recent presidents as the worst ever is hackery? Or is it only "hackery" and "childish" when someone who disagrees with your political leanings does it?
 
But but but that Messiah was going to save us (hope and change), and we let him spend $trillions....and yet things are worse. Obama is an imcompetent fool, and so is the Chicago crime machine he brought to DC with him.

We were going to spend trillions anyway, genius. We'd be saying the same thing about McCain if he had won the election. The size of the US government was already upwards of $1 trillion before Obama got into office, and since then the primary drive of the expansion of government and the debt has been healthcare costs.
 
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Why is Obama constantly under the lense for possibly being the worse president in history. There's 50 or whatever Presidents and many of them SUCKED, Obama should be nowhere in the running for this.

Guess what? I think that BECAUSE HE'S BLACK people are trying to somehow rationalize him being completely last in presidential history in order to push some underlined racist agenda that blacks can't hold up to the office of Presidency.

Yea I said it
There have been forty-three presidents and quite a few of them have ranged from lackluster to truly horrible. Serious-minded people who rate our current president among those do so on the basis of his record, not his skin color. Can you provide even anecdotal examples of anyone on this board who has said Obama is one of the worst presidents in history because he is black?
 
It is hackery; as much as the assertion that George W. Bush is the worst ever.

You are 100% correct on this. Again, we do not have enough time/perspective to accurately assess the impact of GWB's Presidency.
 
Yes, and I've heard Clinton say that one of his regrets was not getting Ben Laden. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, we will never know if that would have stopped 9/11 either.
Yeah, we'll never know that stopping the planner would have stopped the plan. :roll: The point is, you need to study more before blaming Bush for every ill. The housing problem started a long time ago, it doesn't happen in a couple years.
 
We were going to spend trillions anyway, genius. We'd be saying the same thing about McCain if he had won the election. The size of the US government was already upwards of $1 trillion before Obama got into office, and since then the primary drive of the expansion of government and the debt has been healthcare costs.
I am a genius, and don't you ever forget it. ;) Furthermore, stop defending Obama, he's a **** up and you know it. We told you not to vote for him. Now you're stuck with him, this should teach you a lesson.
 
I am a genius, and don't you ever forget it. ;) Furthermore, stop defending Obama, he's a **** up and you know it. We told you not to vote for him. Now you're stuck with him, this should teach you a lesson.

It never ceases to tickle me how people are so judgemental of Obama, immediately following a Bush for president. HE's the **** up? There are 5,000+ dead 9/11 victims who say otherwise.
 
It never ceases to tickle me how people are so judgemental of Obama, immediately following a Bush for president. HE's the **** up? There are 5,000+ dead 9/11 victims who say otherwise.

Wow! I don't like Bush in the least, but blaming 9/11 on him is just way over the top. The reality is that whoever was president at the time would probably have had the same success is stopping 9/11 as Bush. Thankfully we are better and more aware of the thread than we were then. Of all the things you could have picked to make a point, this was just about the worst possible one.
 
Wow! I don't like Bush in the least, but blaming 9/11 on him is just way over the top. The reality is that whoever was president at the time would probably have had the same success is stopping 9/11 as Bush. Thankfully we are better and more aware of the thread than we were then. Of all the things you could have picked to make a point, this was just about the worst possible one.

The heck it is yo! Do you have any grasp on how many solid Intelligence findings and warning flags were ignored by his administration? Enough to at least...DO SOMETHING...he allowed citizens to remain as sitting-ducks. I'm not blaming 9/11 on him, but I am blaming our complete vulnerability on the attack on him.
 
The heck it is yo! Do you have any grasp on how many solid Intelligence findings and warning flags were ignored by his administration? Enough to at least...DO SOMETHING...he allowed citizens to remain as sitting-ducks. I'm not blaming 9/11 on him, but I am blaming our complete vulnerability on the attack on him.

Yes, in fact I do. Do you know how easy it is to second guess? Do you know how many warnings would come down on a normal basis? Do you have any idea how easy it is to miss things in a bureaucracy? Do you have any clue whatsoever how many legitimate things there are to bitch about Bush doing/not doing?
 
Yes, in fact I do. Do you know how easy it is to second guess? Do you know how many warnings would come down on a normal basis? Do you have any idea how easy it is to miss things in a bureaucracy? Do you have any clue whatsoever how many legitimate things there are to bitch about Bush doing/not doing?

Question 1: Yes
Question 2: Yes
Question 3: Yes
Question 4: Yes
 
So that makes your wild appeal to emotion even more sad.

nah you're missing the point. what im saying is I've already considered the factors you mentioned, and my comment still holds true. they dropped the ball......you're acting like it's OK to dismiss possible threats and advance warning signs, because they happen everyday.

if that's the fact we don't need an Intelligence faction and I fear for America.

"Oh, another terrorist threat...yeah just file it in the archives with last weeks..."
 
nah you're missing the point. what im saying is I've already considered the factors you mentioned, and my comment still holds true. they dropped the ball......you're acting like it's OK to dismiss possible threats and advance warning signs, because they happen everyday.

if that's the fact we don't need an Intelligence faction and I fear for America.

"Oh, another terrorist threat...yeah just file it in the archives with last weeks..."

We do not act on every possible threat. Ever. There are simply too many of them.

What makes this whole thing even more sad is there are literally hundreds of things that Bush did wrong that another president would not have. But you have to go for the appeal to emotion instead of logic.
 
We do not act on every possible threat. Ever. There are simply too many of them.

What makes this whole thing even more sad is there are literally hundreds of things that Bush did wrong that another president would not have. But you have to go for the appeal to emotion instead of logic.

What is this "appeal to emotion" you keep referencing? I'm about as emotional as a stick lodged in a dead rats ass. LOGIC says, if you receive credidble Intelligence that literally says terrorists are seriously looking into the idea of hijacking airplanes and using them as projecticle missiles ....maybe check it out....ya know, just in cause their not bullsh**ting.

Or we can do what all Bush-sympathizers do, say, "oh well, other Presidents in history have sucked too. He's not the only one."
 
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What is this "appeal to emotion" you keep referencing? I'm about as emotional as a stick lodged in a dead rats ass. LOGIC says, if you receive credidble Intelligence that literally says terrorists are seriously looking into the idea of hijacking airplanes and using them as projecticle missiles ....maybe check it out....ya know, just in cause their not bullsh**ting.

Or we can do what all Bush-sympathizers do, say, "oh well, other Presidents in history of sucked too. He's not the only one."

It's an appeal to emotion because you went for the example that would get an emotional reaction.

We do not go after every bit of credible intelligence because there is simply too much of it. This is not complicated. This is not to say mistakes where not made, but the mistakes where ingrained in the system from long before Bush ever became president. We have learned and gotten better.

I am not a Bush sympathizer. I voted against him twice, think he was probably the worst president in my lifetime, and think we will be a long time recovering from the damage Bush did to this country in a large number of areas. However, I think it is important to go after him for rational reasons, not emotional ones.
 
The heck it is yo! Do you have any grasp on how many solid Intelligence findings and warning flags were ignored by his administration? Enough to at least...DO SOMETHING...he allowed citizens to remain as sitting-ducks. I'm not blaming 9/11 on him, but I am blaming our complete vulnerability on the attack on him.
Totally unjustified ! But even if Bush was a poor leader, he had the ignorance and apathy of the Congress and the American people to overcome...
IMO, an impossible task.
IMO, since day one, we have not respected the Arab and Islam...this was destined to back-fire on us sooner or later...
Truly great leaders such as Carter and Obama may be aware of this. All the others, I do not know about.
 
It's an appeal to emotion because you went for the example that would get an emotional reaction.

We do not go after every bit of credible intelligence because there is simply too much of it. This is not complicated. This is not to say mistakes where not made, but the mistakes where ingrained in the system from long before Bush ever became president. We have learned and gotten better.

I am not a Bush sympathizer. I voted against him twice, think he was probably the worst president in my lifetime, and think we will be a long time recovering from the damage Bush did to this country in a large number of areas. However, I think it is important to go after him for rational reasons, not emotional ones.

You're repeating yourself. When I mentioned 9/11 victims hun, it wasn't to create a tear-jerker. It was to illustrate the tragedy and horror that can come from a severe strategic and Intelligence-error. In this case, not acting on information.

What simply AMAZES me to no end, is your position, or at least insinuations, that we shouldn't act on Intelligence because we get too much of it. You will never work in any security agency with an attitude like that.
 
Totally unjustified ! But even if Bush was a poor leader, he had the ignorance and apathy of the Congress and the American people to overcome...
IMO, an impossible task.
IMO, since day one, we have not respected the Arab and Islam...this was destined to back-fire on us sooner or later...
Truly great leaders such as Carter and Obama may be aware of this. All the others, I do not know about.

I'm sorry yo but I have NO IDEA if you're rebuttling me or agreeing with me.... lmao (???)
 
You're repeating yourself. When I mentioned 9/11 victims hun, it wasn't to create a tear-jerker. It was to illustrate the tragedy and horror that can come from a severe strategic and Intelligence-error. In this case, not acting on information.

What simply AMAZES me to no end, is your position, or at least insinuations, that we shouldn't act on Intelligence because we get too much of it. You will never work in any security agency with an attitude like that.

Why you mentioned 9/11 is because it is emotional. Your reason you give here is a perfect example of that.

Now you are building straw men. I never said nor claimed nor think we should not act on information. I said we could not act on all of it because the sheer volume is too great. It is and was a practical matter. We are able to act on more now, and things like 9/11 are much less likely to happen. That is how things work in real life. Something goes wrong, you learn from it and improve.
 
Presidents don't elect themselves. They are placed in office by uninformed, and gullible people.

There use to be grave conversations about how countries like Russia and China perpetrated such extreme political propaganda on their people. We have been taught for the last couple decades that the US is above such tactics by our government and political machines. The old communist regimes ain't got **** over the U.S.'s political structure when it comes to brainwashing the citizens.

We teach our children about our government political systems in the same fairy tale manner as we do about Santa Clause.
 
To me, Bush was the worst in my time.
Out of curiosity, how many presidents does "your time" encompass?

A few reasons are:
1. He didn’t heed warning about Ben Laden (9/11 could have happened anyway) but we’ll never know. He was warned.
The warning Bush received about al Qaeda was vague and inconclusive and I have yet to hear from anyone beating this particular dead horse what effective course of action they would have recommended on the heels of that intelligence briefing, one of hundreds Bush received since taking office earlier that year. President Clinton, on the other hand, repeatedly ignored, mishandled and neglected al Qaeda, including opportunities to take bin Laden into custody and/or take him out. While bin Laden's capture might not have prevented an attack on the United States, it certainly would have crippled al Qaeda's ability to plan, fund and execute such an operation. Clinton's inept response to every terrorist attack from the World Trade Center bombing to the U.S.S. Cole to the embassies in Kenya are what empowered and encouraged al Qaeda to go further. If any president bears "responsibility" for 9/11, it would rest squarely on the shoulders of Bush's predecessor. Bush is less responsible for 9/11 than FDR was for Pearl Harbor.

2. Sent troops to Iraq starting war which killed something like 8,840 Americans, and ran up a huge debt. That cost wasn't added to his national budget.
Name a war whose commencement had previously been calculated in any president's budget. The financial cost of the war (as with all wars) has certainly been added to the budget and budgeted for since it began, but wars are not exactly predictable expenses in the way wages and administrative overhead costs might be for the federal budget. Of course few government programs of any kind on the domestic front have ever come in on or under budget either so I'm not exactly sure what your expectations of Bush were here. Iraq War casualties for U.S. troops are listed as approximately 4,500 dead and 32,000 wounded. We toppled a hostile dictator who had been a threat to our national interests for many years, removing his ability to acquire, develop or deploy WMDs and liberating 31 million people from a brutally repressive regime in the process. Are you opposed to wars in general or this war in particular? Do you oppose expensive wars verses inexpensive ones? It's hard to tell what you're upset at Bush for that many other presidents haven't done from this section of your post. Would you please elaborate on what you find so objectionable?

3. Took a budget surplus and, during his administration, changed it into a huge debt, for the next president to inherit.
Bush stepped into office inheriting the Clinton recession and was waylaid with 9/11 just seven months into his term. The tech bubble had burst, leaving Bush to inherit a budget which could no longer be balanced by increased revenues from a burgeoning economy. The biggest growth in federal spending during the Bush years was not defense spending, but entitlement and discretionary spending, something that has gone up under virtually every president in modern times (including Clinton). Furthermore, in the 20th Century, virtually no presidents have had a budget surplus of any kind so while Clinton may stand out for that, Bush is no more culpable for "turning it into a huge debt" than all the deficit-only presidents before him. Additionally, if you don't like Bush's debt, you must deplore Obama's deficits and debt policies.

4. Encouraged the trend to ship more of our jobs overseas. Although, Obama hasn’t done much to correct this.
What encourages American jobs to be shipped overseas is the high cost of doing business in the United States; chiefly a business/industrial climate of high taxes, burdensome regulations and unions run amok. Bush lowered taxes and regulations and didn't expand union power during his tenure. Clinton and Obama both pushed for higher taxes, increased regulations and catered to unions. Clinton signed NAFTA and Obama just ratified the South Korean, Columbian and Panamanian Free Trade Agreements, which demonstrate that, addressing your concern Bush was did more to retard this trend than the guy before or after him. Of course, you apparently believe globalization is a bad thing for the U.S. whereas I do not and I happen to believe the free trade record of Clinton and Obama are actually checks in their "pros" column.

5. Relaxed regulations on banks and Wall Street, which led to the current housing crisis and damaged the economy.
Again, you need to read some history. The Carter administration enacted policies which coerced lenders to make risky loans to people who can't afford it. President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Congressional Democrats stonewalled investigations into unsound loan practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the Bush administration. The housing crisis was a bipartisan-created crisis. You can't blame Bush for the bubble bursting any more than you can blame Clinton for the tech bubble bursting under his watch.

6. Although he had authority over a huge nuclear arsenal, he could never say it correctly. It’s “new-cle-er,” dammit!, not “new-que-le-er”. But, that’s just a small personal annoyance I had with him.
I'm not even going to address this one.

Your loosely grounded claims tend to boil down to giving Bush an inordinate amount of credit for an unpopular war and a bad economy while expunging equally or in some cases more culpable presidents from the same.
 
I can agree with you on most points.
I would like to add to your Iraqi War point however. Granted war is not really an expense you can plan, but Bush could have taken some precautionary actions. History has proven that in times of war and economic decline, which America was going through both, the government needs to have greater control. Bush, lessened the government's control and we payed for it. One step he could have taken to have lessened the current debt is to leave taxes alone. Not neccesarily raise them, but not to cut them. Secondly, after we ended the Hussein Regime in Iraq, we should have packed up and left. When there is a gap in power, someone (or a group of people) will fill the gap. There is no way to stop the civil war from taking place, yet we spent billions (maybe even trillions) of dollars trying to prevent the inevitable.
Bush did take steps to encourage business to stay in America, but it wasn't enough. There was no possible way to compete with a nation that "hires" children and pays them practically nothing and then exports into an unprotected market. We need to get rid of all Free Trade Agreements and impose a tariff. Historically, a tariff has proven to be beneficial for American industry despite the huge controversy that has followed nearly all tariffs.
I'm not saying that globilization is all bad; however, we must make sure that we don't over globalize. There is no reason to have so many military bases world wide. We are becoming an empire whether we want to or not and you can't name me one empire that hasn't fallen because there isn't one. George Washington was on the right track when he said that we should avoid alliances. Although I do think we have helpful allies and said alliances are important, I also think we have some allies that are more of a burden than a help.
 
Why you mentioned 9/11 is because it is emotional. Your reason you give here is a perfect example of that.

Now you are building straw men. I never said nor claimed nor think we should not act on information. I said we could not act on all of it because the sheer volume is too great. It is and was a practical matter. We are able to act on more now, and things like 9/11 are much less likely to happen. That is how things work in real life. Something goes wrong, you learn from it and improve.

I really gotta figure out how to use this system better...I forgot we were debating. Is there any way I can receive a notice when someone replies to my comments specifically, so I can go in and rebuttle.

As far as us, I think our debate has sizzled out. It's a you say tomato, I say tomato' kinda thing. I understand your point: we get too many threats to act on 'em all. Why did we even start debating yo
 
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