This is a close match between GW Bush for things he did wrong, and that weakling, Jimmy Carter, for doing nothing when a real leader would have acted. At least, though the results were disastrous, Bush acted, while Carter uttered pieties, weeped, lamented “mailais” as a rallying cry( !), and retired to his bedroom and prayed. I give Nixon a pass because apart from the tapes that implicated him, I doubt he was markedly more corrupt that many others. Carter, by the way, is also our worst Ex- president, pathetically scrambling to rewrite his place in history.
lbj
-Imp
LBJ? He’s generally considered “a flawed Giant”. He dealt with Congress with repeated success: A multi-billion dollar education program to improve schools and libraries at all levels, expansion of social security to provide medical care to people over 65, a massive anti-poverty program and his major feat, a civil rights bill to insure the rights of blacks to register to vote. Like his predessor and successor, he fell for the domino theory and escalated the flawed mission in Vietnam. He saw the folly in it and passed on running for re-election. JEC & GWB
no, he began the democRAT destruction of freedom for americans by enslaving them in a socialist quagmire. he didn’t fall for the domino theory, he made his party into another domino… he was nothing like jfk who believed in letting people keep their own stuff.
he didn’t run for re-election because he knew he couldn’t have won
-Imp
You could retain some credibility by refraining from excessive expressions like “socialist quagmire”. The current president has run up spending to astronomical heights. What do you have to show for it? LBJ was a man of conscience. Would rather they never passed the civil rights act?
the republican senate did just fine passing the civil rights legislation; however, the civil rights act has nothing to do with the poison of democRAT socialist totalitarianism.
-Imp
Wasn’t Carter the one who set up the Taliban?
I’m old enough to remember the details of the Carter Admin, and although I wasn’t in the US at the time, I remember it well.
He was odd in that he seemed very nervous, had a 70s American hippie approach to policy, and had an extreme problem with the bureaucracy due to an insult so he couldn’t get anything done. Finally, he got humiliated by his attempts in Iran, which weren’t his fault but no one cared.
Actually, I recall more about that. I believe that equipment failure was behind the Iran rescue attempt. That was linked to his lack of spending on the military and belief about peace.
Believing in peace is great but you can’t all of a sudden get ready for it when many others aren’t. So, he’s is and was a good person, but not presidential material.
Reagan brought us crack, aids, and cheapened the the office of the presidency by being a bad actor.
I remember his State of The Union where he introduced those policies. Everyone seemed to like it at the time. Oh well, that was the 80s for yah.
You need the perspective of history to judge them, you have to consider the times, world events & how they handled them, what was going on in the Congress, the economy. So it’s too early to say whether or not Bush is the worst. But I can certainly see him being judged not just the worst since 1950, but one of the worst ever. But he shouldn’t be pilloried alone, because he had a terribly corrupt and enabling Congress that allowed his worst behaviors to dominate. I’ve read that he was able to manage better in Texas when he was reined in more.
Other than Bush, I’d say the most destructive to American society overall was Reagan. Carter sure was ineffective, although he’s been a decent statesman since then which should count for a little. JFK was the best, Clinton a distant second. (I’m referring to the male Clinton.)
Reagan is the one who first gave my generation the notion that we can do whatever we want because we have the most bombs. Bush just took that idea and ran with it.
We’ve had this battle already. I’ll write an essay some other time, maybe.
Jimmy Carter sucks too. Who elects a peanut farmer? This is a clear illustration of a major problem of free elections and representative democracy. He’s about as far from a philosopher king as you can get. On top of that, like someone said, he’s out here all the time trying to undermine the authority of our fearless leader while advancing his own agenda of selling books and getting old.