Reagan
this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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George W Bush Jr.
Yes I am handing him the worst president title, even over Trump.
Because, it was his mishandled War on Terror, that plunged the country into massive national debt. He crashed the housing market. He literally had waged a war on obese people, minorities and other things as distractions from his failure to capture Osama. He allowed American Surveillance with Patriot Act I and II. His cabinet were all crooks and he was just a dumb puppet.
He is essentially the ripple effect of everything we're dealing with today and Trump is merely the symptom of that.
Trump is definitely in the bottom quintile, but also anyone putting him in the bottom 5 is just recency bias.
Most people who argued for Trump said it's because of Jan 6th and his other felonies and that he was allowed to run again and became reelected (even tho a partition of the us citizens are to blame for the latter). I also think people already value him lower because of Project 2025 and out of fear what will happen during his 2nd term.
Ronald Reagan did more damage to this country than any president before or after him.
I'm continually shocked by how often I learn of some structural systemic issue, pull the thread to see where it started and- oh, surprise, it was once again Reagan.
It's no coincidence that Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had such a close relationship - they thought alike.
In Britain, Thatcher is still reviled by many for sweeping changes. Killed the coal industry without giving support to the many thousands employed there and put the North into recession, took milk away from children, depowered the unions (which were too powerful at the time, tbf) and generally put the Tory Party on the London & Banks first mantra that they've been on ever since.
Before or after him so far
I feel like the "so far" is implied...unless you've somehow figured out how to 100% accurately predict the future and you haven't told anyone.
...By the way, if that's the case, rude.
Wasn't it Nixon who sold the americans out? Or Truman?
I would hire nucular George every day for the next 4 years to get rid of the orange dipshit.
It is absolutely fuckin bonkers that Trump is so bad that a person can say they yearn for the good old days with Dubya without a hint of sarcasm
While W. sucked in many ways, there is no way he is the worst. Off the top of my head I can easily think of four better contenders: Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan (both guilty of pro-slavery fuckery before the Civil War), Andrew Johnson (fought to let the Confederates off the hook after the war and opposed the 14th amendment), and Donald Trump (first president to be impeached twice, first to be convicted of a felony, and may be remembered by future historians as the spark that ignites the next Civil War).
Andrew Jackson???
Andrew Jackson was also a bastard, especially for his treatment of natives. But I meant Johnson.
I know you did, I was just adding 1
Ah, gotcha. I misunderstood.
donvict ain't done yet, either. i think the damage and legacy he leaves behind, leaking out that giant diaper, will be the worst of the bunch.
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Plenty of choice. In my view, most presidents were rambling reeking right wingers in some way or other, save for FDR and Teddy Roosevelt, who were the two presidents I'd actually call capable and outspoken on civil rights (rather than just pragmatical like Lincoln). They did have their blemishes, but less than e.g. Andrew Jackson.
So many presidents were terrible for one people or another.
Andrew Jackson? Held hundreds of slaves and quite literally led an ethnic expulsion against Native Americans (the Trail of Tears).
Lincoln? Mostly good, but did not forbid slavery in the form of penal labour. If one were to abolish slavery, why not go the full mile?
Wilson? Rabid antisemite, pretty much.
Hoover? Might've tried to tackle the Great Depression -- but did so by allying with large coorporations, effectively being corrupt and choosing bribery.
Truman? Dropped nukes and set the stage for "we support any government that hates people being remotely leftist".
Nixon - corrupt and wanted to sidestep the rule of law, all for his own profit: to stay in power. Other than thaf, decent, but that's a big "other than that".
Reagan - enough said. Ultracapitalist, misleading, made the US economy far worse by accruing debt like there's no tomorrow, and shoving it onto the poor -- typical oligarch behaviour! Militaristic, power-hungry. And no, he did not end the Cold War: Gorbachov did.
JFK: socially pretty good, actually. But economically, the cutting of the top rates made the richest keep more money. At least it wasn't down below 50%, but still. Had that happened, I think the tax rates would've allowed wealth accumulation.
And so on.
So, in my view, it's hard to focus on who is the worse, and better to rather focus on what is the best. Ted would be my candidate. Not only social progress, but also economical, and in a way that favour the worker -- and he also was environmentally aware. That is a good president.
FDR and Teddy Roosevelt, who were the two presidents I'd actually call capable and outspoken on civil rights (rather than just pragmatical like Lincoln). They did have their blemishes
Blemishes? FDR seized the property of 200,000 Americans and threw them into concentration camps because of their race. The guy's bottom 10 if not bottom 5. He's easily the worst Democrat of the last 100 years.
It's tempting to pick someone recent, but the real answer is probably Andrew Jackson. He successfully engineered a genocide, trampled the Constitution and human rights, and was actively hostile to limits on Presidential power.
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lol trump is bad but not like Andrew Jackaon bad.
Probably
- Andrew Jackson - Crimes against native people
- Andrew Johnson - Fucked up reconstruction
- Ronald Reagan - Trickle down economics
- 45/47 ๐คฎ - We all know why...
- Richard Nixon - The Infamous Crook
Might have some memory gaps, but these are what I can remember from the top of my head.
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andrew jackson (or johnson can never remember which) for the trail of tears. absolutely awful
Andrew Jackson was Trail of Tears, but I actually think Andrew Johnson was arguably worse. He was Lincoln's Democrat vice president (he was brought on to help "balance the ticket" instead of sticking with his strongly abolitionist first term VP Hannibal Hamlin), who started dismantling reconstruction and giving the power back to the former slaveowners.
You can pretty much lay Jim Crow at his feet.
kinda hard to argue apartheid is worse than genocide imo
I'm not really trying to weigh and decide if 6000+ deaths and forcible removal of 100k+ people from their homes is better or worse than 100 or so years of systemic oppression followed by more, quieter oppression. Instead, I'm looking at this from the perspective of alternatives.
After the Civil War we very nearly had a moment when we could have maybe did something real for racial equality beyond anything we've seen even up to the present day. The Freeman's Bureau was fighting for wages for former slaves, and was generally a force for working class empowerment. Black congressmen were already being voted into office rapidly. If it were left to do its work, it might even have helped to innoculate the Irish- and Italian-Americans against future union busting on Black/White racial lines a few decades down the line.
Instead, after only about a year, Andrew Johnson started fighting and dismantling the Bureau, placing the former slaveowners back into a de facto master/slave relationship with their former slaves, giving the old Southern Democrats back their political power, and generally restoring the status quo as much as possible. The Bureau itself lasted only 5 or 6 years, don't remember. The KKK rose up because reconstruction wasn't there anymore to prevent it, because the Democrats wanted so bad to just put all of the states back in the union and go back to bad old days, and so on.
That was never a realistic moment that I know of in American history where people against war with the native tribes of this land had outsized power and influence. Jackson completely ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling was awful, but while the ruling was grounded in good moral and legal principles, it was, like it or not, extremely unpopular. There wasn't an entire party with a supermajority in Congress that could have kept up the pressure on this issue.
To only count the direct deaths of the forced march and not the deaths resulting in having your land stolen and along with it your ability to reproduce your society is straight up genocide denial.
After the Civil War we very nearly had a moment when we could have maybe did something real for racial equality beyond anything weโve seen even up to the present day.
And this is absolving responsibility of all the people who maintained slavery, which one could argue is even worse than jim crow.
This question is too difficult, there are too many candidates...
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