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Worst US President?

Worst US President

  • Warren G. Harding

    Votes: 4 7.8%
  • Andrew Johnson

    Votes: 4 7.8%
  • James Buchanan

    Votes: 6 11.8%
  • Herbert Hoover

    Votes: 1 2.0%
  • Franklin Pierce

    Votes: 2 3.9%
  • Ulysses S. Grant

    Votes: 2 3.9%
  • Franklin Roosevelt

    Votes: 9 17.6%
  • Barack Obama

    Votes: 6 11.8%
  • George W. Bush

    Votes: 13 25.5%
  • Other

    Votes: 4 7.8%

  • Total voters
    51

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We have a poll for the best, which has mostly devolved into a thread about the worst president anyway.

My personal choice is Andrew Johnson, who massively screwed up Reconstruction and whose effects were worse than some other incompetent presidents around the time.

Options chosen from those who are traditionally seen as the worst presidents, along with some names mentioned by DP members in the other thread.
 
Eh, I'm no history buff so I'm left with those presidents in my lifetime. It's almost a tossup between Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, but since Bush had twice as long to **** things up and got us into two decades-long wars, George W. has my vote.
 
I voted for Grant, though Taft had a pretty ****ty presidency as well. I don't even know why Bush or Obama are there. They pale in comparison to the worst of the worst, and neither one was/is really that bad.
 
Eh, I'm no history buff so I'm left with those presidents in my lifetime. It's almost a tossup between Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, but since Bush had twice as long to **** things up and got us into two decades-long wars, George W. has my vote.

some have argued that if Carter had squashed the violation of our sovereignty we'd have far less cockroaches pissing on our boots over there now
 
I voted for Grant, though Taft had a pretty ****ty presidency as well. I don't even know why Bush or Obama are there. They pale in comparison to the worst of the worst, and neither one was/is really that bad.

I completely agree, but in every thread there are people who want to vote for them, so I figured I'd put them as options.
 
some have argued that if Carter had squashed the violation of our sovereignty we'd have far less cockroaches pissing on our boots over there now

He was a complete *****. And that was his best quality. That's why he's on my short list. ;)
 
James Buchanan.

The mess that George W. left for Obama? Magnify that times about a hundred, and that's what Buchanan did to Lincoln.
 
He was a complete *****. And that was his best quality. That's why he's on my short list. ;)

if you knew the stuff he threatened to do to our Olympic team if they tried to get around his boycott you would think that asshole was a jack booted fascist
 
James Buchanan.

The mess that George W. left for Obama? Magnify that times about a hundred, and that's what Buchanan did to Lincoln.
]Obama seems to have messed up what Pelosi and Dingy Harry started
 
We have a poll for the best, which has mostly devolved into a thread about the worst president anyway.

My personal choice is Andrew Johnson, who massively screwed up Reconstruction and whose effects were worse than some other incompetent presidents around the time.

Options chosen from those who are traditionally seen as the worst presidents, along with some names mentioned by DP members in the other thread.

LOL I was just about to set this up. I agree, Johnson was the worst.
 
I know why President Obama was included, but really he shouldn't have been. You just can't evaluate a sitting president in terms of best and worst. It takes some cooling down and a few decades for the real story to be seen beyond the partisan flak. Nixon is a great example.
 
in terms of impotence-Johnson and Harding are close

In terms of corrupt administrations-Grant and Harding again

In terms of long lasting damage to the USA, FDR and Wilson
 
I know why President Obama was included, but really he shouldn't have been. You just can't evaluate a sitting president in terms of best and worst. It takes some cooling down and a few decades for the real story to be seen beyond the partisan flak. Nixon is a great example.

I agree that it does, but other people on here don't, and I wanted to put up the options most likely to get chosen.
 
Interesting you didn't put Nixon on there as an option. Nixon actually was definitely not the worst, but even 10 years ago, he would have probably won the poll. Certainly 20 years ago he would have. I guess time heals all wounds.
 
Interesting you didn't put Nixon on there as an option. Nixon actually was definitely not the worst, but even 10 years ago, he would have probably won the poll. Certainly 20 years ago he would have. I guess time heals all wounds.

I was actually going to put Nixon on there, but I decided to remove him when I remembered I needed to include an "other" option. I don't think he was close to the worst president though in terms of policy, just gets a bad rap due to Watergate.
 
I was actually going to put Nixon on there, but I decided to remove him when I remembered I needed to include an "other" option. I don't think he was close to the worst president though in terms of policy, just gets a bad rap due to Watergate.

Agreed, that and his propensity for taping got him in trouble (he cursed a lot - a much bigger thing back then). But that's why he makes such a great example. In another thread I noted that he was the one who made the executive order banning work on bio weapons. That's something we never had the chance to know (classified), until another president undid it (Clinton), decades later.
 
I was actually going to put Nixon on there, but I decided to remove him when I remembered I needed to include an "other" option. I don't think he was close to the worst president though in terms of policy, just gets a bad rap due to Watergate.

Yeah. I agree. His administration accomplished a lot on foreign policy, but was quite oppressive domestically. IMO Watergate was pretty minor compared to cointelpro and the really shady infiltration of lots of peaceful domestic political organizations. But what really crucified him politically with Watergate is that he very publicly and arrogantly took a "I'm the president, the law doesn't apply to me" stance. Certainly not the worst though. He made breakthroughs with China that nobody thought were possible. Although really that's more Kissinger.
 
We have a poll for the best, which has mostly devolved into a thread about the worst president anyway.

My personal choice is Andrew Johnson, who massively screwed up Reconstruction and whose effects were worse than some other incompetent presidents around the time.

Options chosen from those who are traditionally seen as the worst presidents, along with some names mentioned by DP members in the other thread.
My vote is Barack Obama. He must be the biggest finger pointer in the entire history of the White House. He also golfs too much.
 
One quibble - the "infiltration of lots of peaceful domestic political organizations" - that was Hoover and started well before Nixon took office. J. Edgar had the nuclear option to hold over multiple presidents, including Nixon.
 
Carter and Obama ... worst ever!
 
Agreed, that and his propensity for taping got him in trouble

Yeah, the collection of whitehouse tapes from JFK, LBJ and Nixon that they released maybe 8 years ago is amazing. The LBJ ones are by far the most fascinating of the three. Every single conversation he had with anybody at all he used both the carrot and the stick. A veiled threat combined with a promise of rewards if they did what he wanted. Like some of it was serious political negotiations where he would say that he had found out that the FBI was tailing the senator he was negotiating with the other day when he was at a hotel with a woman not his wife and of course he would never let them release something so incriminating against his good buddy senator so and so... And then he'd mention that he was considering getting behind the bill the senator was pushing for more pork for his state... Oh, and by the way, how were you going to vote on this other bill that LBJ wanted? But then even like his secretary would bring him a cup of coffee and he'd say that it was really great the way that the coffee was always hot when she brought it in, unlike the last secretary who he had to fire because the coffee wasn't hot enough... It was just totally ingrained in his personality. It's really something to check out whether you love him or hate him. A natural political animal. There is probably nobody in US political history that I would want to have out to get me less than LBJ.

Oh, and there is the conversation JFK had with Governor Wallace where Wallace was insisting he would not allow the integration of the schools in Alabama. JFK backed him down by essentially threatening to invade the state of Georgia if he refused to follow the order of the Supreme Court. That one makes the hair on your arms stand up when you hear it.
 
One quibble - the "infiltration of lots of peaceful domestic political organizations" - that was Hoover and started well before Nixon took office. J. Edgar had the nuclear option to hold over multiple presidents, including Nixon.

Yeah Hoover for sure too. Nixon did some very, very, bad things on that front though. Sending people into anti-war organizations, getting them into leadership positions, and then having them try to incite violence to discredit the movement. To such an extent that there were reportedly meetings of anti-war organizations where they would eventually realize that every single person there was actually a federal agent. Having agents sell drugs in the ghetto and claim to be Black Panthers to discredit them. It is pretty clear that he ordered at least a few Black Panthers who had committed no crime to be murdered as well. Hoover was more about using domestic spying to manipulate other politicians. Nixon was trying to manipulate the people. I don't know which is worse...
 
some have argued that if Carter had squashed the violation of our sovereignty we'd have far less cockroaches pissing on our boots over there now

Yea and if Bush didn't oust Iran's biggest enemy and hand Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter, maybe those cockroaches wouldn't be building a Nuclear weapon.
They'd still be too worried about Sadaam.
Bush could do nothing right and could never admit any wrong. But historians are better at it than me.

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”
“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”
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Worst. President. Ever.?By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)
 
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It's telling that people voted for W or B-rock the Islamic Shock.

Obviously, Andrew Johnson beats Buchanan, but not by much.
 
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