FDR
My votes, in no particular order and with reasons off the top of my head…
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Wilson - Federal Reserve, income tax, Versailles, League of Nations, WWI.
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Truman - National Security Act of 1947 creating the CIA.
3. Bush II – oh wait, we’re talking presidents.
- Cheney - the tools (preemptive war) and theories (Unitary Executive) he’s used to expand the power of the president and manipulate the reality most citizens are exposed to is more than a bit disturbing. The higher courts have been packed with long-time defenders of these ideas.
Going to change my vote again.[6]
Ronald Reagan. For perpetrating a hoax on the American people by making them think he was champion of small government and a true libertarian.
and Thomas Jefferson. For perpetrating the biggest hoax in history by making people think he was a (“the”?) father of Freedom and individual rights. I should be so lucky as to have hundreds of slaves and still be considered the greatest advocate of freedom the world has known. Anyone want to volunteer for the job of being my slave?
At least the rest of them didn’t try to hid it by pretending to be something they weren’t (okay, they did so I’ll go back to my second answer). [:P]
Dude! Spark up a fatty and chill! [H]
Lincoln and FDR, for taking a massive dump on the constitution. The shame!
I thought we weren’t talking about GW.
Can you at least admit that there are two sides to this question?
Pardon me, I realize I am showing my great ignorance by disagreeing with you, but the South did not decide to go to war, although individual Southern states decided to secede. The Constitution was an agreement entered into for mutual benefit of the states, and states retained the power to leave the contract should it no longer be beneficial. There was also a remedy for difficulties short of secession, namely nullification. When the Southern states nullified the tariff, Lincoln promised an invasion - for the sole purpose of collecting the tariff. He promised repeatedly that, if the tariff is collected, there will be no invasion, regardless of slavery.
To draw a parallel to your claim, imagine that a woman decides to leave her husband, and he in return beats her senseless. Will you inform us that she started the fight, that to blame him is wrong, and that “in actuality she was a hawk who started the fight by standing up to his abuses?”
And how did we arrive in a world where young men and women behave like this? I suppose it has nothing to do with government schooling, or the welfare state and its destruction of the family - and so the solution cannot be to eliminate government, can it?
I know I’m late to the game here, but I have to choose Woodrow Wilson for reasons mentioned already.
Lincoln, for sure. Welfare statist, racist, anti-immigrant, warmonger, kleptocrat… does he have any redeeming feature(s)? |
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I agree that all of the presidents mentioned were definitely all very bad, but I would have to say Colonel Edward Mandall House. He was a president…wasn’t he?
The consensus of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR is a good one. However, I’d submit that we still might be doing okay if not for LBJ. That was really a Great Leap Forward in federal power, which reminds me of another incompetent Texan who’s federalized vast swathes of public life…And somebody mentioned Reagan and the War on Drugs … Ah hell, gimme Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge and the rest are all uniformly awful.
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Lincoln - the Grandfather of big government and flagrant disregard for American lives.
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FDR - he gave half of christian europe to the communists.
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Woodrow Wilson - world democracy indeed
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Jimmy Carter - let’s show them what a Trilateral president can do!
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Taft. Just kidding. Dubya. At least Wilson didn’t giggle so much about it.
Harding or Nixon have to be considered the worst, while trying to control for one’s ideology.
Without trying to control for one’s ideological disposition, we gotta’ say {WWI}lson, don’t we???
LOL
Harding made my list of successful Presidents, #4 to be precise. He had no knowledge of Teapot Dome and in the scheme of things it was a relatively minor scandal anyhow. He kept his nose out of foreign entanglements and did basically NOTHING, other than to run the daily affairs of government. He did not try to solve America’s problems, he kept the government out of peoples business. Sounds like a DAMN fine President in my book. 
A lot of us liberal/libertarian folks forget what the Harding Presidency was really all about. It was never really about minimal gov’t, although after Wilson it’s easy to confuse it as being so designed. Harding was a man of average ability that stumbled into a job he neither really wanted nor was prepared for. Sort of a Dubya for the last century. As such an uninterested occupant, he had more scandals in his white house than any administration since…well, since this current abomination. If he, or dubya for that matter, were/are indeed unaware of what was going on around them well that still speaks to their ability. I cannot call that “successful” by any measure. And I don’t give brownie points to someone for being to blissfully benign.
Anyway, didn’t he support a world court just the same? I really think you’re giving him too much credit for an ideology that just didn’t exist - but I understand your perspective. After WorldWarWilson he can seem like a liberal at first blush.
The more I think about it though, the more he does remind me of Dubya. The only reason I didn’t mention THAT clown is because my vision is a little blurred with disgust right now.
God of the Machine,
What exactly were the scandals in the Harding administration? I’d bet they killed a lot less people than the Civil War, or consumed a lot less national wealth than the Great Society.
Byzantine,
If you re-read my original post you’ll see that I gave two set’s of answers.The first set of answers, which included Harding, was judging Presidents more on standards outside of ideological judgements. So your second question is either misguided or simply an intentional strawman - because it is quite easy regardless of political ideology to judge Harding as an incompetent, negligent, philandering, drunk.Hopefully, you can see the difference.Concerning the historical record of harding, where to begin…….The non-ideological based issues relating to Harding’s ethics and/or competence:1). Thomas Miller, Harding’s Chairman of the office of Alien Property, was found guilty of selling the assets (essential intellectual property) which he was assigned the fiduciary responsibility to return after the WWI to American business interests.2). Hired cover-up, like Jess Smith, on the taxpayer’s bill in order to follow him around and cover-up for his personal trangressions. In the Jess Smith case primarily regarding his prolific philandering activities. Smith was facing criminal charges and choose to execute himself instead of standing trial. It’s worth noting that he was almost certainly the homseexual lover of the very married Harry M. Daughtery also, and most likely facilitated his bootlegging ventures.3). Charles Forbes, director of Veteran Affairs (which it is notable that this was a federal bureau created by Harding himself), was found guilty of embezzling approximately $250 million dollars from the agency he was hired by Harding to manage and secure. For my dollar, this was the worst scandal of the Harding side-show.4). Harding and the Republican Party paid “hush money” to Caroline F. Phillips in order to guarantee her silence regarding her affair with Harding during his Senate years.5). Albert Fall, Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, accepted bribes from oil companies in order to obtain access to lands understood to possess oil and was convicted and sent to prison. It’s also pretty obvious that he obstructed the investigation by destroying evidence over the long period of time that the investigation took place. In today’s environment, he would still be serving time.6). Bureau of Investigation (the precursor to the FBI) agent Gaston Means, is on record claiming that Harding was present at the manslaughter/murder of a prostitute who was hit in the head with a bottle thrown during a “table dance”.7). Hired bootleggers, most notable Mort Mortimer, to illegally run liquor to the white itself – whilst it was of course enforcing a prohibition on the plebes! 8). Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and Jess Smith were involved in a scandal accusing them of accepting bribes from bootleggers. Although neither was ever convicted since Smith committed suicide before charges were pressed (although Daugherty was still tried twice I believe for defrauding the government).Again, aside from any ideological judgments, Harding remains the most personally immoral character imaginable. He was a philandering, lying (in his personal life-not just pblic, where we expect as much), incompetent, criminally negligent (imo), drunk; who showed no respect for himself, the office he held, or the heritage he represented. Unless one finds these traits honourable, it’s difficult to accept Harding as anything but another dismal blotch in Presidential history.And now to again shift back to the ideological front, he was amidst all this no defender of liberalism. He voted in favor of entering WWI (I’m 99% certain of this), supported a , pandered to nativist tendencies, and through his administrations history of cronyism prepared the public opinion to eat up anti-business/pro-statism crap that was coming during the Great Depression. GotM
“A moral stream cannot rise above its source.”
Lincoln was the worst because his presidency fully realized the nationalism of Hamilton & Clay. TR, Wilson, FDR, et. al. merely carry the apostasy to further manifestations.
GoM,
You have got to be kidding me. I’ll take a hundred times those pecadilloes over the Civil War, WWI, the Federal Reserve, WWII, Social Security, the Great Society, and a lot of other shit we’ll never finish paying for any day.
Re-animate Harding’s corpse and I’ll vote for it.
I’m glad to see someone finally fingered the false libertarians in the bunch. We can debate for hours as to which commie (FDR) or fascist (Lincoln & Bush 2) did the most dammage. However, we should all be particularly incensed when, under the banner of Liberty, a politician (or anyone else for that matter) promotes policies which are diametrically opposed to the concept of Liberty. I venture to say that we have not seen the last of such hoaxes.
While we’re at it, let’s add Jackson. No true libertarian could ever condone the Indian Removal Act.
And how about a few non-presidential political figures: Gingrich, McCain, Schwarzenegger, Greenspan, Bernacke. The Republican Party is as full of false libertarians as the Democratic Party is of closet commies. (Okay, now I’m just ranting and getting off subject…but it needed to be said.)