Which presidents, if any, are considered worse than George W. Bush by historians?

none. (so far)

Clusty says there’s over 1 million pages about it, and none of the top 10 are predicting a change in course for Bush .

There are no presidents that were worse than George W. Bush. He’s the number one loser for eternity. He sucked.

Harding, Nixon, Grant and Johnson are usually at the bottom of any ranking. I don’t think Bush will be put at the bottom of the list by historians in the years to come.

Agreed with @phoenyx .. while he may not have been the worst.. he may have been the easiest to make fun of.. something entirely different

Carter certainly sucked

Woodrow Wilson can suck my nooner. Nixon was a douche. I have some reservations about mostl presidents. I’m not sure any of them are “worse” than Bush Jr.

Looks like James Buchanan Wins

President Adolf Hitler of Germany
President Attila the Hun of the Hunnic Empire
President Marquis de Sade
and of course president Bush Senior

oh and Nixon was no angel either

Warren Harding was pretty bad. His pals were implicated in all kinds of looting and scandals.

@Jack79 : Well, aren’t you just clever!?

Quite a few. Harding was the inarguably the worst of the 20th Century, followed by Hoover, Nixon, and Taft. The 19th century has a slew of them, with Franklin Pierce topping the list. James Buchanan comes in a close 2nd, followed by Andrew Johnson, and U.S. Grant, whose administration became a model of corruption.

I am happy Bush is out, but it’s too early to figure out his rightful place on the list. History is sometimes kinder to ex-presidents than popular opinion. When Truman left office, he had the worst approval rate in history, but he’s widely regarded to have been a good president now. I don’t think Bush will fare as well but it’s going to take some time to see how bad he really was.

nope, I’m stupid, because I didn’t get what you meant. But I’ll survive I guess

@Jack79 : I was picking on your for thinking outside the box. Which is really (supposed to be) a compliment.

…but you were actually being sarcastic, right?

internet is so bad at this, isn’t it? Ah well, thanks for clarifying :)

@Jack79 : Hahaha.. yes. I wish I could convey certain inflections better. Sometimes I say something that, in my head, is winning an Oscar as I type it, but everyone else is like, “what the crap did she just say? Ohhhhh the accented word was supposed to be at the END of the sentence.”

@ubersiren , I’m interested in hearing your views on Wilson. He was instrumental in bringing about an end to child labor in the U.S., and in the establishment of the Federal Reserve. Some people felt betrayed that the U.S. entered WWI after he campaigned on the slogan, “He kept us out of war,” but most historians believe the U.S. could not have stayed out of it when our national interests were threatened.

Hahaha… yeah, he created the Federal Reseve! We see how that’s turned out. He also implemented income tax (which was supposed to be temporary). He’s like the super-democrat. As far as entering war after he voice opposition to it… well, that’s just Bush-like to me. You could say Bush had our national interest in mind when he went to war, but we all know that’s a crock. There aren’t many presidents I do approve of. Most of them accomplished something good while in office, but that doesn’t excuse the piles of crap they created.

Well, you can argue that the Red either moderates the economy by regulating the money supply, or constrains growth by strangling it. How do you tell? Lots of countries around the world have followed our model, controlling their currencies through central banks. Somebody thinks it’s a good idea.

An income tax was inevitable. If it had not occurred under Wilson, we’d have had it sooner or later, anyway. Look to the world once again.

I’m pretty sure that most historians put Nixon somewhere near the bottom of the list. It’ll be awhile before you can really say how awful Bush was, even if it is abundantly clear to all of us right now.

@IchtheosaurusRex : If the rest of the world jumps off a bridge…

I’m a human, not a sheep. I don’t know why income tax had to be inevitable. We were getting along just fine without it.

FDR. He lied us into a war that cost us 350,000 American lives (Afghanistan and Iraq are less than 6,000) and his New Deal, that cost us gobs of money boasted of a 19% unemployment rate after 7 years and turned the US into a nation of beggers

Carter

@ubersiren :

Whatever…

@TheIowaCynic , your children, if you have any, would be speaking German right now if it were not for FDR. Ditch the tinfoil hat and get with the program..

@IchtheosaurusRex

Please tell me that you don’t buy into the idea that Germany was going to Conquer the USA. Please tell me you’re joking. Please tell me you haven’t been so brainwashed as to think, that a country that couldn’t conquer the tiny British Isles with 1/5th the population, across 6 miles of ocean…......was a serious threat to a nation of 200 million, across 2,000 miles of Ocean and with 20 times the land mass…......not to mention, there is not a single, solitary ounce of evidence that Hitler ever WANTED to conquer America.

You’re kidding, right? It’s amazing that people still believe that.

@TheIowaCynic , Hitler was trying to develop an atomic weapon. But we don’t need to go there. The war in Europe was threatening U.S. interests. But no need to go there, either. The Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet Pearl Harbor, as well as U.S. controlled Manila in the Philippines on December 7, 1941, which brought about a declaration of war against Japan and their German Allies. This was an act of the U.S. Congress. But no need to go there, either.

Next you’ll be telling me the FDR knew about Pearl Harbor and wanted it to happen so he could go to war against Hitler. I just have this really, really, bad feeling you’re going to tell me that.

Don’t go there.

@IchtheosaurusRex I don’t need to go anywhere. Let me just quote you again.

“your children, if you have any, would be speaking German right now if it were not for FDR. Ditch the tinfoil hat and get with the program.”

Wrong. 100%, completely incorrect. There is not a credible scholar on the planet today that perpetrates this view. In fact, the 1941 “navy day speech” by FDR, where he told us that he had “In my hand and secret document from Hitler’s 3rd Reich, stating his plans to conquer South America before laying conquest to these United States”....blah blah blah “And to replace every cross and every bible in every church, with the Nazi Swastika and Hitlers Mein Kampf,” is known and acknowledged to have been a fraud and part of a larger program of lying us into the War. He made GW Bush look like honest abe.

What you are doing, when you’re saying that were it not for FDR we’d be speaking German, is perpetrating silly wartime propaganda.

Citation needed.

@IchtheosaurusRex What is needed is for your thinking to be corrected, in regards to this nonsense about Germany inevitably conquering the USA, were it not for FDR. Do yourself a favor and remember not to say that in future to avoid looking silly and we can all be happy

Your own words:

>FDR. He lied us into a war that cost us 350,000 American lives (Afghanistan and Iraq are less than 6,000) and his New Deal, that cost us gobs of money boasted of a 19% unemployment rate after 7 years and turned the US into a nation of beggers

Provocative, meritless, and unsupported by any historical reference.. You cannot libel a great man like FDR and expect no one to call you out on it. Either you have some profound bit of knowledge that you need to share with the rest of the world, or you’re just looking for a fight. Which is it?

@IchtheosaurusRex I’m not looking for a fight and I’d be happy to discuss the gargantuan unemployment rate that existed right up until world war 2.

My response to you was in regard to your utterly nonsensical claim…..let’s look at it again:

“your children, if you have any, would be speaking German right now if it were not for FDR. Ditch the tinfoil hat and get with the program..”

There is 0 evidence that Hitler ever had any intention or desire to invade the United States. As mentioned before, he was unable to conquer an island nation that was 6 miles across an ocean channel. The idea that, despite his failure here, he would have been successfully able to cross 2,000 miles of ocean to invade a nation with 5 times the population, 20 times the land mass and with the greatest industrial capacity of any nation in the world is beyond absurd. Furthermore, the idea that…..were this completely impossible event to materialize, we’d all be speaking German, is additionally stupid.

Here is a link to one of MANY copies of FDR’s “secret map” speech, spoken on October 27th, 1941.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/business/economy/27fdr.html?hp

http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=6736&page=1

Here is a link to a New York Times article, citing the 17% unemployment rate that remained throughout the entire decade of the 1930’s.

Now…....listen. I don’t enjoy making a person look stupid, like I have just made you look stupid. I don’t get pleasure from that.

I simply hope to have taught you something and prevented you from making a fool of yourself in the future.

Sorry, but FDR inherited his economic problems from Hoover. 17% was better than the 25% at the height of the Depression, when he took office in 1933. I could point you to any number of articles about that, but you have your mind made up about history, and you would filter out anything you don’t agree with.

By late1944, the Nazis had developed jet aircraft, intermediate range ballistic missiles, and the Stg44 assault rifle that became the model for the Kalashnhikov AK-47. Allied bombing, mainly by U.S. B-17s, kept production of these weapons below levels where they could have made a difference. Had the U.S. stayed out of the war in Europe, Britain would have fallen, and eventually, the U.S. would have been drawn in to fight a much more fearsome enemy. As it was, Hitler murdered 10 Million people and left Europe in ruins.

I’ll leave it to the other readers here to decide who has made whom look stupid It’s generally easier to make a fool of yourself than it is to show up somebody else. Yours is a fringe position. Mine is not. Case closed.

@IchtheosaurusRex

Let’s look at your earlier quote again.

“your children, if you have any, would be speaking German right now if it were not for FDR. Ditch the tinfoil hat and get with the program..”

This is what got our conversation started and merited this thread. We could, if you’d like, have a very long conversation about the effects of the “New Deal.” That would be a wonderful and very subjective conversation. Suggesting that FDR made us a “Nation of beggers,” is admittedly, a very subjective position. You’re claim that he was a “great man” is also a subjective position and I dont’ suspect either of us will successfully convince the other.

Another VERY subject and “fringe position,” you have stated is that 1) Hitler would have eventually taken over Great Britain. He become progressively less and less interested in Great Britain by the beginning of 1940; effectively ending that attempt…...this was before we got into the war.

The rest of what you wrote was about how bad Hitler was and that he killed people…....a completely unsubjective position that neither I, nor anyone else disagrees with….

What is NOT SUBJECTIVE. What is truly “CASE CLOSED,” was your statement that Hitler was any threat whatsover to the mainland United States of America. That is not a “fringe position,” any more than “the earth is flat,” is a fringe position. It is a position held by uneducated people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Neither is it subjective that FDR lied to us, to get us into the war. This is also not a subjective position. This is 100% beyond doubt. The “secret document,” speech I gave to you is one of many examples of absurd lies that FDR sold to the American public.

So, in regards to the main statement you have made that began this conversation, the case is absolutely closed.

I hope I’ve saved you some embarassement in the future and given you reason to rethink some rather antiquated positions.

I’ll leave you with this before I turn in:

> ”...he was unable to conquer an island nation that was 6 miles across an ocean channel.”

The Strait of Dover, which is the narrowest point of the English Channel, is 21 miles wide. If you don’t understand basic geography, I’m afraid I can’t help you very much with History.

@IchtheosaurusRex

OK…...I was under the impression that the nearest point between the continent and GB was 6 miles, but I did some research and you correct. I was mistaken. The shortest distance from the continent to GB is 21 miles, so allow me to rephrase:

Hitler was unable to conquer an island nation across 21 miles of ocean with a population of 47 million people on 94,227 sq mi of land.

It would therefore be absolutely foolish to make a statement like

“your children, if you have any, would be speaking German right now if it were not for FDR. Ditch the tinfoil hat and get with the program..”

As this would have involved Hitler attacking a Nation across 3,201 miles of ocean (most eastern point of U.S. to most western Point of Europe) with a population of 132,164,569 people on a landmass of 3.79 million square miles…......that also had the largest industrial capacity in the world.

Thank you for correcting my error on the distance across the English Channel.

@TheIowaCynic, if you really knew anything about WWII, you would not have needed to look up that number. The Germans expected – and were decieved to believe – that the Allies would attack at Calais, at the channel’s narrowest point, instead of Normandy.

You have some other things wrong as well. U.S. military dead in WWII came to about 416,000. Of those, approximately 108,000 occurred in the Pacific. Where did you come up with 350,000? Even if you are right about anything else, your math is screwed up there, too. If you meant to count the Pacific deaths in your number, you’re sort of forgetting that Japan attacked us. Should we have just licked our wounds and stayed out of the Pacific, too? Incidentally, German U-boats attacked the U.S.S. Kearny and the U.S.S. Reuben James in October, 1941. These were acts of war in themselves, which would have justified America’s entry into the European war.

You’ve stated your case with an awful lot of bluster, but not much substance. Foolish? Stupid? I’ve been called worse. You can get even more abusive if you like, but it isn’t going to make you look any smarter. I’m sorry if I offended you with the “tinfoil hat” remark, but your statement about FDR was so outrageous that I sort of shot from the hip. And since you can’t count either miles or bodies, why should I believe you know what the Thousand Year Reich’s intentions might have been in the Americas?

@IchtheosaurusRex Let’s look at your statement again:

“your children, if you have any, would be speaking German right now if it were not for FDR. Ditch the tinfoil hat and get with the program..”

This is not a “fringe position” ichtheosaurus. This is not a “fringe position,” at all. This is a “non position”.

You made a statement only believed by people who uncritically accept lies.

When you ask “And since you can’t count either miles or bodies, why should I believe you know what the Thousand Year Reich’s intentions might have been in the Americas?”

You’re showing a lack of ability to form a cohesive argument.

How do you know that the island nation of Tahiti, isn’t going to conquer the U.S? hmmm? It might! In fact, it seems like such a sure and inevitable thing, that we should attack them now, as we’re not sure what their plans are….....

if we don’t, your children and grandchildren will be wimpering at the hands of their Tahitian overlords and speaking Tahitian.

Now back to serious land…...it is also beyond any question, as I provided evidence of FDR’s “secret document” speech, that he was a liar and lied us into the war.

Case closed. You lose.

@TheIowaCynic , you can go away thinking whatever you want to think. What you seem to have been saying all along here is that the U.S. ought to have stayed out of the conflict altogether, to have let the Nazis overrun Europe. You will find very little support in the world for such an extreme view.

The New York Times article you linked above makes no mention of FDR’s speeches about German aggression. It does, however, affirm my position that the 25% unemployment rate that the country experienced in 1933 was Hoover’s fault (if it was any President’s fault), not FDR’s. The economy recovered during his administration, by fits and starts, to be sure, and not without problems, but it did recover.

The other website you linked me to won’t load, but I doubt I’ll find much there that supports your point of view. Lots of sound and fury, but no substance. If you were writing a term paper here, it would come back with a giant red F written and circled with a jumbo magic marker. You can’t support an argument with attitude alone, and that’s about all you’ve got.

@TheIowaCynic

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p125_Weber.html

There are a million copies of it available if you’d like to verify, online. This was the first one that came up in my google search. If you’d like to reference it, it was given on October 23rd, in 1940

It clearly shows FDR Lying.

Now thank you for telling me what I “seem” to have been saying. It’s nice that we can talk about how things “seem,” but the point of this thread and my response to you, was to point out that

1) Germany was never any threat to the USA and had no ability to attack us.

2) FDR lied us into WW2 and

3) His New Deal policy did not sweep the nation out of the depression as people.

Now, on point 3, we could go back and fourth all day long. You have your opinion and I have mine. 17% unemployment after 9 years is a pretty lousy record if you ask me

Points 1 and 2 are not arguable. They are absolutely provable….so again,

I hope I’ve helped to not make a fool of yourself in the future by suggesting that we’d be speaking German, were it not for FDR.

OH PUH-LEEEEEEEASE. MARK WEBER?? THE HOLOCAUST DENIER? That guy is certifiably batshit crazy. If you believe a word he says, you’re there too.

I’ll take that back about the tinfoil hat. I’m not sorry I said it.

@IchtheosaurusRex

This is what makes you a bit hard to deal with. I’m not asking you to believe what Mark Weber says. That was the first site that came up, I’m asking you to read the speech yourself. Pay no attention to what website is quoting it. If I had time, I’d look it up in the presidential archives. It was given on October 23rd of 1940.

Speaking clearly and accurately that the Nazi’s were never a threat to invade the United States and saying that our president and government lied to us when they said that they were is not shilling for anybody.

It is true, it is factual and it should anyone who is generally worried that our government lies to us in the name of constantly continued militarism.

In fact it should concern anybody and everybody at all. When governments are able to deceive their populations into war, it’s no longer really a democracy.

Here is a part of this speech if you’re rather not look it up yourself

http://www.usmm.org/fdr/kearny.html

I got the date wrong earlier. It was given on October 27, 1941

You’ll see what a bunch of nonsense it is and how insane the lies we were told were. Don’t stop your research there, however. A brief overview of WW2 propaganda will make you laugh.

“For example, I have in my possession a secret map made in Germany by Hitler’s government—by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it. Today in this area there are 14 separate countries. The geographical experts of Berlin, however, have ruthlessly obliterated all existing boundary lines; and have divided South America into five vassal states, bringing the whole continent under their domination. And they have also so arranged it that the territory of one of these new puppet states includes the Republic of Panama and our great life line – the Panama Canal.

That is his plan. It will never go into effect.

This map makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America but against the United States itself.

Your Government was in its possession another document made in Germany by Hitler’s government. It is a detailed plan, which, for obvious reasons, the Nazis did not wish and do not wish to publicize just yet, but which they are ready to impose a little later on a dominated world—if Hitler wins. It is a plan to abolish all existing religions – Protestant, Catholic, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.

In the place of the churches of our civilization, there is to be set up an international Nazi church—a church which will be served by orators sent out by the Nazi government. In the place of the Bible, the words of Mein Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols—the swastika and the naked sword.”

Sorry, now that I know what you are, we are done here.

@IchtheosaurusRex

You know what I am? Out of curiosity, what am I?

I’m sorry I made you look so stupid and you have no facts to back up your case, but will instead reach for stupid and meaningless accusations, like suggesting that because I thought the English channel was 6 miles and not 21 miles across….....you win the argument and I lose.

You’re dear Wrong Ic.

I hope in the future I prevent you from making yourself look stupid by saying something as dumb as

“your children, if you have any, would be speaking German right now if it were not for FDR. Ditch the tinfoil hat and get with the program.”

Case Closed

Just google for that speech you keep wagging about, and everything you find points back to Weber. You’re either one of his, or very, very gullible. Either way, I don’t think we have much to talk about.

@IchtheosaurusRex You’re attempting to make this conversation about something it isn’t because you have clearly had your butt handed to you in this argument. This has absolutely nothing to do with Weber…....When I googled “FDR, ‘secrete document’ speech,” that was the first thing that came up.

Here are a few more references to the same, historical, well documented speech, given by FDR on October 27th, 1941.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1941/411027a.html

http://www.usmm.org/fdr/kearny.html

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/

These will all reference the SAME SPEECH. They will all reference the SAME SPEECH given by FDR, where he clearly lied to the nation.

Case Closed. You lose. Sorry

@TheIowaCynic, More bullshit. There are dickhead right-wing websites all over the Internet, thousands of them. You’ve proved nothing by making the same vapid argument over and over again.

However, So far, we have established:

• You don’t know how wide the English Channel is.
• You don’t know how many U.S. casualties there were in WWII.
• Out of the hundreds of speeches FDR gave, the only one you’re using to support your case is the same one held out ad nauseam by Neo-Nazi groups.

And yet you claim to be an expert on the Wehrmacht’s capabilities and intentions??? The sad part is, I’m convinced you believe it.

Oh, and in the heat of our discussion, I forgot this gem:

> a nation of 200 million…

The U.S. population according to the 1940 census was 130,962,661 people. I don’t know about history, but you sure suck at math.

@IchtheosaurusRex – Don’t bother. He’s gone from Fluther and searching for a new soapbox, I imagine.

@fireside , I was sort of wondering about that. His profile seems to have vanished. Just when I had him by the nads, too.

@Halliburton_Shill , I apologize for what my little to-do with the late TheIowaCynic has done to your thread, but I was not gonna let somebody diss FDR without a fight.

@IchtheosaurusRex – I marked your responses to it as great. You outed him for what he was: profoundly ignorant and stupid or insane. I imagine Bush/Cheney supporters are already trying to blame the housing and financial collapse on Obama. It’s not surprising you have people ignoring history and trying to blame FDR for another president’s mess, not to mention trying to excuse Hitler for the torturing and experiments he did.

It’s just another conservative republican trying to say that it’s Clinton’s fault that Bush didn’t read the intelligence memo on Osama’s impending attack.

@Halliburton_Shill , it’s pretty typical for fanatics to cherry-pick little bits and pieces out of history to find ways to support their causes. I’ve heard a lot lately about some of FDR’s less-than-successful efforts to battle the Depression, like the N.R.A., precisely because of the parallels between that crisis and this one. However, this is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest we shouldn’t have entered the European war in 1941. The only people who believe that are Neo-Nazis, and that’s what I think we are dealing with here. Conservative Republicans are misguided, but not to that extreme.

All of you who hate different Presidents can take this for what it is worth. No matter who we select for President, they get the briefings and follow the same policy. Probably nobody likes President Obama’s war plan better than President Bush (either and both).

So why is it you can never get a President to do what you want?

Who is wrong?

But who is better informed?

Herbert Hoover was one of the, if not THE most, maligned US President in history. It was widely regarded as his fault that the US experienced the Great Depression. The truth of the matter was the he inherited the mistakes of the previous regimes and couldn’t recover. The only thing that brought the US out of the Great Depression was the manufacturing boom that resulted from the US involvement in the second World War.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic , I have not heard that about Hoover. It’s more generally accepted that FDR inherited his economic problems from Hoover, although the Coolidge administration shares some of the blame, for the economic bubble of the Roaring 20’s that burst in 1929.

Hoover responded to the Great Depression by doing nothing, confident that free market forces would soon bring about an end to it. “Prosperity is just around the corner” he proclaimed. From 1929 to 1933, the U.S. GDP plummeted by more than $200B, and unemployment rose to 25%. Whether or not he was to blame for this, it happened on his watch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gdp20-40.jpg

Even though the New Deal didn’t get everything right, he economy began to recover after FDR took office. By 1936, the GDP had recovered to its pre-crash levels, but in that year, FDR was pressured to balance the budget, and things got worse again.

Hoover was indeed maligned. Deservedly so.

@IchtheosaurusRex I’m not going to champion Hoover by any means but he was dealt a bad hand. Unfortuantely, he decided to fold.

anyway, you’ll be hard pressed to find any passionate anti-Hoover people in our society today but he was pretty well despised back in the day.

Just a comment or two – not enough time to write a “book.”

But this is amazing: “there is not a single, solitary ounce of evidence that Hitler ever WANTED to conquer America.”

You do know that they captured people who had been trained to administer the occupational government of the USA. Each had an assigned region to govern. You can look up their interrogation reports.

As for President Bush being worst, that is false. He lead the national to war when most of the Congress approved. It become difficult and many decided it was time to give up. He could have stayed popular had he done what Reagan did and pulled all our troops out. But he persevered and won the war. Many will not forgive him for not giving up when they did. Supporting factors – he was never good at explaining his actions. He just did what he thought to be right. Many do not like that sort of attitude.

But history will do better by him.

@gary4books , Iowa was kicked out of here for being a nut job, probably a neo-Nazi. Everything he said was “amazing.”

It will probably take 20 or 30 years before history finds a proper role for Bush 43. I agree that it was right for him to push hard on Iraq when the war was in the toilet. It was wrong of him to stand on the deck of that carrier proclaiming “Mission Accomplished!” I think even he admits that. The question remains of how much he knew about Saddam’s WMD programs, or lack thereof, when he went to Congress for approval to invade. Did he have a hidden agenda? Did he just have an itchy trigger finger after 9/11; god knows I did. And Saddam was a pig. I’m glad the bastard is dead; I just don’t like the cost of the bullet.

However, I don’t see Iraq as being his biggest failing. He appointed people like the Chris Cox at the SEC, who were essentially told to look the other way while Madoff plundered and Bear Stearns, et. al. ran themselves to ruin “running Wall Street like a casino.” He does not shoulder the blame alone – but it happened on his watch. I think that when the history books are written, W’s domestic policies will be criticized more than anything he did in the Middle East.

“There is 0 evidence that Hitler ever had any intention or desire to invade the United States”

We were very close to loosing the war. If Hitler’s “war machine” was a little bit quicker in putting certain planes into mass production and if they built the bomb first.
We would have had total annihilation of the troops over seas. And as large as our country is/was. With most of our military wiped out. Invasion would have been an easier task.

He wanted to rule the world. He intended to enslave any one who wasn’t a pure “Aryan” and force them into hard labor.

President Taft is generally considered to be the worst by historians.

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv , I won’t disagree that Taft was a stinker. He stole the Republican nomination from T. Roosevelt in 1912, driving the progressives out of the party – for good. However, we got Woodrow Wilson because of that bit of dirty business, so in a way, he did some good.

Harding still gets the award for the 20th Century, at least.

Why do I suddenly have a craving for Goldfish cheddar crackers?

Pierce, Buchanan, Harding.

@IchtheosaurusRex is doesn’t matter whether FDR lied in one speech or not. The Nazi plan was to conquer the world. Hitler never needed to invade the U.S. to win. He wanted England to join him because he saw the English as his Aryan brothers, many in England agreed.

If the U.S. had not intervene, the U.K. would have fallen. The rest of the world, except Russia would soon follow. What that means is that the U.S. would be isolated and eventually have to reach an accommodation with Hitler. I don’t think that would have been hard in the land of the KKK.

Further FDR’s banking law kept us from crisis because they separated commercial banks from investment banks. Clinton and Bush signed laws eliminating this division, allowing the disaster we had today. In the end Bush far outweighs any president in history for completely screwing up the country.

Some got us into unnecessary wars, some allowed robber barons to run rampant, some presidents had no idea how to run a country. Bush was the trifecta, he did all of these things. When he dies, his headstone should be a urinal so that all of us can piss on his grave.

@Ron_C , I won’t argue with you about Bush, but I contend that it does matter about FDR. The Nazis had significant influence in Latin America at the time; indeed, many policy makers in the U.S. feared that Fascism would take root there and eventually become the dominant political force. Did he really have a map? Maybe, maybe not, but I think he was right about Nazi designs on the Western hemisphere.

And – the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act did a lot worse than to allow commercial and investment banks to engage in the same lines of business. Under that horror, almost any business could declare itself to be a bank. Toss in an administration that hobbled regulators, and you were bound to see a disaster like this. What frightens me is that GLB and other Bush-era gimmes for the financial industry are still on the books, and the window of opportunity for meaningful financial reform is closing. Once the Democtrats lose their 60-seat caucus next January, we’re due for at least two years of legislative gridlock during which the robber barons you speak of can regroup and fuck up the country even more.

@IchtheosaurusRex two items.

1. I’m not saying that Hitler didn’t have plans to invade the U.S.(he was obsessive compulsive) I’m just saying that he didn’t have to. Isolating the U.S. would have forced them to cooperate with the new Nazi world. Also many powerful people like the Henry Ford and the Bush family were Nazi sympathizers. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to flip them allowing a bloodless take over and preserving American resources. It would have been wasteful to take over the U.S. by force and I think Hitler understood that.

2. As the the banking “industry”, I think it is telling that congress rushed to bail out the banks without the accompanying reform legislation. Congress knows where their bread is buttered. I want a clean sweep, election reform with publicly paid campaign funds. I want all lobbyists out of Washington. It should be reserved for legislators only. Let the people lobby congress by email or on their visits home.

3. Corporations are NOT people and do not deserve the rights of people. Therefore they have no right to pay support for political campaigns. ALL corporate money must stop flowing to the district of Columbia.

This is the only thing I can find wrong with George W Bush!

http://i40.tinypic.com/qzr6no.jpg

@BoBo1946 I understand that Bush “wrote” a book. It may end up in a library where you will be able to find other things to dislike about him. I wouldn’t however buy it, you don’t want to encourage that type of behavior.

Of course had he been a liberal democrat and performed the exact same actions he would’ve received universal praise.

“Of course had he been a liberal democrat….” You are absolutely wrong about that! @Exitor98

Many of use progressive liberals also speak out about Obama’s use of drones. That is a major fault, Bush has many more. In fact, almose every thing he did was wrong, harmful to the middle class, or murderous.