18-Till-I-Die wrote:Is there any reason why i should think the folks on that list are even half as shity as Bush?
Let's see, has Bush's completely irresponsible fiscal policy all but destroyed the country's banking system and led to one of the worst economic crises in the country's history? Jackson's did. Bush just happened to come into office during a period where the economy was weak (and it has been getting better since); Jackson, on the other hand, enacted policies that directly caused the depression of 1834 and the panic of 1837.
Jackson also introduced the "spoils system" which remains a divisive curse on America politics to this day, as well as forming his "Kitchen Cabinet" an unofficial group of advisors to the president (i.e. Jackson's cronies) and set the precedent for influence peddling in government.
Jackson invaded Florida (still Spanish at that time) without authorization, and created an international crisis, not to mention sparking off the first Seminole War. This action was sharply condemned by Congress. And of course, last but most certainly not least, there was the infamous Trail of Tears - the forcible removal of all Cherokee Indians west of the Mississippi. True, this move was initiated by the State of Georgia (which broke a treaty with the Cherokee to do it), but when the Supreme Court under John Marshall declared the action unconstitutional, Jackson thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court and aided Georgia in defying it. The Cherokee men, women, and children were taken from their land by the army, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities and food, then forced to march a thousand miles to be resettled on rather desolate land west of the Mississippi. About 4000 Cherokee died on the trail of Tears, and it remains one of the blackest stains on American national honor.
If you can honestly come up with misdeeds of Bush that even remotely equal this record, then I'll consider putting Bush on this list.
And how about U.S. Grant? He wasn't the villain I think Jackson was. He seems to have been an honorable man himself personally, but he accepted some handsome presents while in office. He flat out did not understand politics, and seemed befuddled most of the time, like a man faced with a problem he doesn't understand. His presidencey was plagued with financial scandals, and he had one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history.
Warren G. Harding was also no stranger to corrupt associates, and financial scandals were again the result. Only his death in office spared him trouble by the exposure of the Teapot Dome scandal and the humiliation of seeing his appointees Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall and Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty brought to the bar of justice.
Lyndon B. Johnson deserves to be considered one of America's very worst presidents. Johnson engineered the "Great Society" reforms, almost all of which proved dismal, costly failures, and we're still dealing with the aftermath today, especially the sense of entitlement to government largesse. Johnson's "Great Society" failed because his conceptions of what produced poverty were naive and heavily influenced by left-wing ideology. Having never held a job outside politics during his adult life, he had no grasp of the realities of economics. Under his programs, trillions of dollars were channeled into social services under programs that were to produce few results - aprat from a demand for increasing these programs when they became looked upon as entitlements.
In opposing Barry Goldwater (a former general, who actually had some grasp of military realities) whose view on the situation in Southeast Asia was: get tough or get out, Johnson portrayed Goldwater as an dangerous, militaristic warmonger. Johnson would stand before crowds and declare, "As long as I'm president, no American boys will ever die in Viet Nam." Then, of course, came the Gulf Tonkin resolution.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was portrayed as an "unprovoked attack" against a U.S. destroyer on "routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2 -- and that North Vietnamese PT boats followed up with a "deliberate attack" on a pair of U.S. ships two days later. The reality is that the U.S. destroyer
Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers, which were simultaneous with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. Those attacks were part of a campaign of increasing military pressure on North Vietnam which the United States had been pursuing since early 1964. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution essentially gave Johnson the power to wage a war without getting a declaration of war from congress. and it was based on a dishonest representation of the facts. This was just the beginning of a consistent pattern of lying by the Johnson administration about the war.
Johnson was an arrogant man of basically bad character, who loved power and wanted the presidency. A seemingly small incident is very revealing about the man. Johnson would drink beer and urinate indiscriminately on the White House lawn, while Secret Service men would gather around to shield him from onlookers and cameras (at least
they had a sense of decorum). On one occasion, a rather stiff wind was blowing and one of the Secret Service men complained to Johnson that the president was urinating on his pants leg. Johnson's reply was, "I know, son. That's my prerogative." That was the way Johnson looked at life and power.
Basically everything that you villify George W. Bush for - arogance, cowboy diplomacy, lack of class, profligate spending, damaging the United States' international standing, and lying to the American people - LBJ was guilty of, only his actions were far worse than anything Bush has done yet.
And then, of course, there is Jimmy Carter. Morally, he's not nearly the swine Johnson was, but he was just one of the most ineffectual presidents in U.S. history. Here was a president with a situation absolutely tailor made for success. He enjoyed a congressional House majority of 292-143, and a Senate majority of 62-38 in favor of his own party. He also had a mandate to do most anything he wanted, as he was swerpt into office with the approval of a public fed-up with the years of corruption and lies that had been fed to them from Vietnam to Watergate. This should have enabled him to get just about anything he wanted done. And yet he managed to alienate both the liberal and moderate/conservative elements of his party, and alsmost totally destroy their willingness to cooperate with him.
Militarily, Carter was recklessly dovish. He gutted the military budget, and during his first 24 hours in office, he ordered a unilateral pullout of all nuclear weapons in South Korea - a decision he made without consultating the Joint Chiefs, Congress or any American allies including South Korea. He signed away the American built, American financed Panama Canal - an important strategic asset. And he did absolutely nothing to prop up the traditionally friendly Shah’s regime in Iran when it came under threat by the Ayatollah Khomeini (and I grant you the Shah was dictatorial, but can you honestly say the theocracy Iran has had since the Shah fell has been any better?).
In 1980, Henry Kissenger stated: “The Carter Administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.” Carter was not a bad man, like LBJ or Andrew Jackson, he was just an abject failure, and as such deserved to be considered one of the worst presidents.
