Meanwhile, fire off your votes for Worst of the Rest. Of course, it’ll be a Democrat – I mean, duuuuh – but the question is, which Democrat? And that’s a toughie, given how awful they all were, with the honourable exception of Harry S Truman.
OK, OK, you can suggest Republicans too, if you must. I just hope the NSA isn’t reading this…
FDR swears in that paladin of public service, Joseph Kennedy, as ambassador to Great Britain in 1938. Yes, FDR is tempting, but is he really the worst? After all, there’s always JFK. You decide…
16 comments:
getin a lota milage outa these eh? mind u ive no right to be critacl.
id vot for crater but i genuinly hate im. evan more then i hate all the othars.
hoabout mckinley.
No worries - last vote, then a blow-off tomorrow so everyone can unload their favourite Bush or Clinton joke. After that, normal service shall be restored :)
McKinley it is then - bit of an outsider, but you did call it with Coolidge...
Dammit, I hope this time my man pulls it off. Here we go again--Tricky Dick, that's my nomination.
And now let people more impartial than me speak on his behalf:
Mort Sahl: "Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference."
Bob Dole, while attending a soiree at the White House, upon seeing former presidents Carter, Ford, and Nixon having a drink, said: "There's see no evil, hear no evil, and... evil."
--Desargues
This is a tougher one. There have been so MANY bad Presidents (bad in one sense or another) that it's hard to choose. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to go with the only fellow Pennsylvanian on the list, James Buchanan (he lived around here, actually). Rather a wimp: stuck his fingers in his ears when the South was causing trouble and went "NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA" until he realized that there was a real chance that they were going to start a war. Then he told them they shouldn't leave the union, and pretended to prepare the military to do something about it.
Also possibly a bit of a ponce.
So it's between Buchanan, McKinley and Nixon. Interesting - only one Democrat so far.
Nixon will be a popular choice, I think, but I like the way you're thinking, xpanxpunkx, with Buchanan. To paraphrase Harold Wilson, "Have you noticed how we only get into savage and bloody Civil Wars under a Democrat administration?" Can anyone else beat Buchanan's record balls-up?
Actually Andrew Johnson wasn't that bad. He was hated for following through with Lincolns benevolent Reconstruction Policy which kept us from turning into Yugoslavia. My vote is group vote of all the clowns between Tyler and Lincoln, i.e. Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan, who fiddled away while the country sank into Civil War.
Cheers.
Oooo, that's cheating, Randall - I'm going to have to press you to pick one. Buchanan is edging out in front at the moment, but don't feel pressured to follow the herd...
Let's go with Buchanan then. He was a pro-slavery Democrate who thought that he could divert the nation's attention from the issue by sending an army to crush the polygamists in Utah.
It didn't work.
Cheers.
Not that crushing polygamists in Utah doesn't have any intrinsic merit. But you're right, there's a certain whiff of a scapegoat pharmaceutical factory in Sudan about it. Perhaps Slick Willie wasn't so original after all...
Walt Disney. Left a whole planet wired up on saccharine fairy stories. Real life doesn't have happy endings. The man should have been shot at birth.
What do you mean, he wasn't President either?
Now then, Aunty M, don't tell me you didn't dress up as a princess when you were younger.
I'm told I made a good frog, but that was just coincidence.
Dunno if I get to vote, being an ignorant Brit, but I'd go for Lyndon Johnson for screwing up Vietnam.
I'm dithering between JFK and Nixon. Nixon because he played dirty and JFK because he was heroic with feet of clay. And that is so disappointing.
Foot eater of course you are allowed to vote especially as an ignorant Brit. We have been invited.
And boys do feel free to have a go at our shower across the pond.
Hi Foot Eater - vote with a clear conscience - you can't be more ignorant than your average punter over here :)
And Pi - because it's you (and because it's results time) I'll save you the agony of choice and count both votes. But I'd go with JFK for sure. He and his dad stole the 1960 election right out from under Nixon, and who knows - perhaps Nixon might have been a better president when he finally won if he hadn't had that bitter memory fuelling his paranoia. After all, in the word of Golda Meir, "even paranoids have enemies"...
Hey, what about the hottest first lady award?
Worst president....
Nixon, who finally abandoned the gold standard (along with surrendering in Vietnam, Watergate, and kissing up to Mao)?
Johnson and his permanent institutionalization of a whole class on the permanent dole?
FDR, with his putting millions on the dole?
No, they are close- WILSON is the worst. I submit-
The Federal Reserve system.
Unnecessary entry into the First World War, and the death, debt, and waste flowing therefrom.
Creation of totalitarian institutions for "fighting the war", not used much by him but much used by FDR, Johnson, and Nixon to wreck independence and liberty.
Officially segregating the federal civil service as a reward to the solid south.
Doing his best to get us ensnared in the League of Nations.
Hi Staghounds - sorry - I see your vote came in the very moment I was posting the results. It's a well-argued case, tho' I'm not a strict isolationist myself. I will update the final scores accordingly to include Teddy Roosevelt's *other* slimy relative...
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