Who was the worst president of the past fifty years?

Two weeks ago, I created this popular thread about who the best president of the past fifty years was: http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=320193

I loved checking the statistics. Reagan is currently smoking the other presidents with his votes around 40%. I know he's an instant favorite among many conservatives, so I'm not surprised, although I thought more people would Kennedy, who's sitting at 20%. Bill Clinton was a surprise, although I think people look back on his presidency with a sense of nostalgia, regardless of how good or bad he was as a president. He also has a share of the votes at 20%. The other seven presidents all share the remaining 20%.

I now want to flip that question and instead ask who the worst president of the past fifty years was.

For me, it's a tie between Nixon, George W. Bush, and Obama. I dislike Nixon mostly because of the Watergate scandal, George W. Bush because of the patriot act, and Obama because of his blatant disrespect for the American peoples right to privacy, as well as his smug and arrogant attitude.

Overall, though, I'm gonna have to go with Obama, because I wasn't alive during Nixon's time in office, and was in elementary and middle school during the Bush years and therefore wasn't interested in politics at the time, and because Obama's presidency began when I was 16, so I've been old enough to follow his entire presidency. So perhaps I'm a little more biased against him than the other candidates on here, but that's just how it goes.

So who do you guys think was the worst president of the past fifty years?

 

George W. He won by a technicality and then was asleep at the switch when the US suffered the worst terrorist attack in the world history, after which he used his own mistake to erode our freedom and bankrupt the country by attacking the wrong country to enforce an ideology that was outmoded before he was even in office. He also purged the Republicans of anyone not his personal sycophant so that his policies continue to ruin us to the present day. He should have been impeached in 2003 and handed over to the Hague for War Crimes prosecution

 

Unquestionably George W. Bush (2001-2009) but that is reflective of the fact that each successive president is typically worse than their predecessor.

George W. Bush was worse than Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton was worse than George HW Bush who was worse than Reagan who was worse than Carter, etc..

President Obama still has a few more years to be worse than Bush so we can't count him out of the race yet although Bush set a pretty high standard when it comes to being the worst President in the last 50 years.

 

Bush the Lesser got us into two wars in which his closest advisors showed absolutely no capabilities in war planning, allowed corporations to gain far more power than any rational society would permit and handed his successor a crap sandwich for which there seems no remedy, and left us open to all manner of terrorists both foreign and domestic.

He would have been of far more use to the country had he just stayed drunk and not bothered people.

 

LBJ was the worst, followed by Obama and Bush II tied for second place.

 

Obama, without any doubts!

 

LBJ wasn't bad; the country was fairly prosperous and he did sign the Civil Rights Act. On the other hand, he lied us into a war and he assassinated JFK.

 

Obama and then Carter.

Reagan was good for obvious reasons. Clinton was good on the domestic front but sucked balls on the security front. Someone said 9/11 was Bushes fault which is funny considering that all the planning and training on US soil had happened during the Clinton years and the same damn buildings were bombed in 93 yet very little was done by Clinton to change the national security apparatus. You can disagree with what Bush did but you can't say that he sat around and did nothing unlike Clinton. George H Bush was only in office for one term and frankly nothing much happened during his time except what might be considered histories most lopsided military victory ever. Nixon was the most amazing president ever, his mistake was covering up a tiny insignificant issue of some of his workers accidentally going into the wrong building at night. Who hasn't done that at some point in their life?

Obama has turned the presidency into a joke and his loyal followers into clowns although the second part wasn't that hard to do. The same people that ripped on Bush for the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay and heavy handedness on terrorism were virtually silent when Obama does exactly the same stuff Bush did and in fact more with is tremendous increase in drone strikes. It took Obama threatening a completely unnecessary war with Syria with sketchy evidence and absolutely no international support to wake some of these people up and yet I still see people defending this buffoons foreign policy even after Putin completely embarrassed Obama.

Obama is also presiding over the longest recession in the history of the US and it does not look to improve anytime soon and will in fact get worse once Obamacare starts being implemented more and more.........unless of course they want to delay it till after the 2016 elections and not just the 2014 elections.

 

Nixon. He was even more corrupt than Bush.

Few presidents have abused their power to the extent that he did, and that's why he was forced to resign. He was also extremely paranoid.

 

Take that back.

 

W obviously, he's vying for the worst ever.
I think as time goes by Reagan will be seen as the president who did the most damage to US economy and the middle class, and will be close to the bottom.
But W is clearly the worst of the last 50 years.

 

He atleast had the dignity to resign.. unlike obama

 

If we base our vote purely on factual results and historically accurate evaluation of the entire term as President, we cannot yet pick Obama for any reason other than animosity. A few months after he leaves office we can give an honest opinion of his performance and then do a comparison. Clearly the damage done to this country across the board by W is by far the worst....perhaps in our history.

 

Funny thing about Carter is everyone said he was such a bad president but how many Contras, Iraqs, ect did he have putting america's national security in danger? NONE.

 

Here's the thing with Obama, he will forever be associated with national health care, which will be one of the most popular government programs going into the future. Like FDR and Social Security, it's a favored place in history.
For all the delusional ranting of the right wing jihadis, national health schemes are extremely popular parts of advanced democracies wherever they exist, and there is no reason to believe that the American People are exceptional, and prefer to pay twice as much for half the benefit, as the lunatic fringe would have you believe.

 

Presidents get national security briefings every day. He left an important one on his desk so he could cut brush in Crawford in peace.

 

He also destroyed our healthcare system and gave us institutionalized poverty.

 

Dignity wasn't part of it. Nixon resigned, because that decreased the likelihood of him going to jail.

 

Toss up between Reagan and Bush II

 

Angry White Guys will instantaneously assess all US presidents objectively and dispassionately and single out the Black guy but, of course, that's merely a one-in-forty-four coincidence.

Of course.

Of course.

Bush the Lesser's fraudulently-pretexted, bloody Iraq fiasco that stands as the greatest foreign-policy disaster in US history (Love that Vatican City-sized "embassy"!), his squandering a hard-won budget surplus via his two trillion dollar oops! war, his irresponsible tax cuts to the wealthiest, and his windfall gift to Big Pharma, all of which destroyed the US economy, as well as his incompetent crony Michael "Heck of a job, Brownie!" Brown's deadly FEMA snafu in the wake of Hurricane Katrina all form a resumé that merits serious consideration.

 

$10 Obama can end world hunger and these same people will think hes the anti-christ.... makes you wonder if people in america are getting an education at all.

 

Well, Obama doesn't have to worry about that I guess since the whole system is corrupt now adays. But really, what Obama has done is one a much worse scale in my view.

- - - Updated - - -

Are you starting out with the assumption that all presidents are equal? Well, that's simply false. Also consider that the current president will always be more hated or loved simply because he's the current president, and is active, regardless of skin colour. And there's plenty of reasons to dislike obamas presidency that doesn't have to do with race. To be honest, I think the race card used here is pathetic and silly.

 

I readily accept the thread's inherent premise that presidents are not "equal." Otherwise, it would be an automatic ten way tie.

Of course you do. As I noted, the fact that some angry White guys might single out the single Black President as being the worst ever suggests merely a one-in-forty-four chance coincidence.

Of course.

The estimation of who was the worst president of the past fifty year is a subjective one, and whatever value such an exercise may have is in making cogent arguments in defence of one's opinion, not just in an arbitrary final score.

Not unexpectedly, Karl "Turdblossom Rove and I are of differing opinions, vested interests aside:

Turdblossom's admission that accurate assessment of intelligence regarding the imaginary WMD stockpiles would have avoided the fiasco in Iraq speaks for itself, but concerning the disparate issue of al Qaeda, his claiming that "every effort" was being made to bring to justice the criminal behind the murder of nearly three thousand Americans does not comport with the Bush's attempt to minimize his failure to track him down:

[video=youtube;4PGmnz5Ow-o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PGmnz5Ow-o[/video]​

In the aggregate, coupled with the Bush's undeniable transformation of the American economy over his two terms and his FEMA's squalid failure to carry out its stated mission after Hurricane Katrina, I proffer my choice for the "Worst President of the Past 50 Years" and welcome alternative picks with relevant supportive data.

 

And bush is tied with Obama on being the worst as of now, so what seems to be the problem? Bush and Obama are the latest and most relevant presidents to people, and Obama is the latest democrat and Bush is the latest republican. It's rather evenly split between dems and GOPs, and both presidents can easily be seen as bad, so of course most people would pick one of them. So.. It's because he's actually a bad president, AND because he's the most recent one, and the most recent dem one which will make the GOPs vote him the worst.

Your talk about race is still, just silly.

 

LBJ hands down.

Anyone who thinks Iraq was worse then Vietnam needs to get their head examined.

Anyone who thinks obamacare is worse then the war on poverty/great society programs is a racist.

Reagan and Ike were the best, I extended the timeframe because I am a greedy republican.