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Well, he's certainly on track to achieve one of the "ten worst" spots. Here is what the Germans think about his 2010;
SPIEGEL's Washington correspondent Marc Hujer writes on SPIEGEL ONLINE:
"Barack Obama was the biggest loser of 2010. He allowed the angry Tea Party movement to grow powerful, he did not pass any decent laws despite his majority in Congress and he was aloof, elitist and indecisive. He had to accept a formidable, yet entirely understandable, defeat in the midterm elections as a result. No one expected much from Obama, at least not during the rest of this year."
Amazing. All of a sudden conservatives care what the rest of the world thinks of us.
Clinton will rank as one of the best President for his smooth handling of the economy, his charisma, his expert handling of the military and his ability to never squander lives in wars of his own making, and many other attributes.
Expert handling of the military? We lost most of our experienced, veteran troops under Clinton. Good thing we never had to deal with any major wars, because we would have been screwed under Clinton's military.
Clinton may have been considered a good president back then, but history will remember his allowing the housing bubble to propagate in 1997, stripping intelligence agencies of their ability to gather data, providing aid to the Taliban government, and turning a near decade long blind eye to terrorism.
Lincoln did what he did to hold the country together. I'd blame the previous three presidents for not addressing the slavery issue when it could have been resolved responsibly and ethically.
The greatest statesmen of the time didn't know how to resolve it responsibly and ethically. Please enlighten us.
I agree that this was a collosal error. We should've separated from the South to prevent the collosal vile ignorance that defined their culture from spilling over into the rest of the nation. We as a nation have been suffering ever since. Lincoln ended slavery and this I commend him for. Some of the others on the list allowed it to exist, and they certainly belong on any list of worst presidents.
I've said on other threads, cotton, rock and roll and Ron White are the only worthwhile things ever to come out of the American South.
Slight correction though: Lincoln didn't end slavery, although he certainly hoped to. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in December, 1865. Lincoln "freed" all the slaves who were not actually in his power to free, i.e. those in Confederate-held territory.
I can't get the list to open but if Roosevelt is listed in the top ten for having "ended the Great Depression" he should NOT be. He actually made it worse and made it last longer by expanding the government and spending money it didn't have on huge programs ....just the way the Obama administration is doing now.
Since the Federal Reserve Act was passed on Pres. Wilson's watch and considering Ben Bernanke has more power than Congress and the President put together with his ability to expand the money supply and dilute the value of our money, Wilson should be considered one of the worst.
Harding's actions, cutting back on taxes and on government spending during "The Forgotten Depression of 1920" and letting businesses fail resulted in this depression being over almost as soon as it started. This depression was actually worse, with higher unemployment rates than the one in 1929. He should be thought of as a great President but history doesn't give him the credit he deserves.
None of our Modern Presidents since JFK are top ten material. They were actually all just puppets and under their administrations the federal government just got bigger and bigger with more and more regulations. Our food supply (while kept pure in Europe) declined rapidly with all the addititives and unnecessary poisons and technologies being used on our foods. As our food has gone downhill so has our health. In the early 1900's we had a 1 in 2000 cancer rate. Now it is 1 in 2 ! We've gone from having the best schools in the world in the 1940's to now where 11 other nations do a better job educating kids with less money than we do.
Additionally we have started wars and allowed President Bush and President Obama to trample on our Civil rights and negate the Constitution with the Patriot Act (which is hardly patriotic).
On 9/11 we didn't even have any military respond to the "attacking plane"! We are supposed to have the best military in the world! I thought the point of having a military was to protect the citizens of the country. Where were they on 9/11 when it appeared we needed them?
Certainly none of this is anything we can be proud of.
Certainly NO PRESIDENTS who were in office while these things were going on and not only allowed them but facilitated their taking place deserves to be anywhere close to being in the top 10.
Expert handling of the military? We lost most of our experienced, veteran troops under Clinton. Good thing we never had to deal with any major wars, because we would have been screwed under Clinton's military.
That was Clinton's military that Bush went around using, you know. All that smart-technology stuff? All Clinton's. Just as all the stealth-technology stuff was the result of Carter's lead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117
Clinton may have been considered a good president back then, but history will remember his allowing the housing bubble to propagate in 1997...
Sorry, no housing bubble in 1997. That had to wait for somebody's tax cuts for the rich to fail so miserably that the Fed had to freeze interest rates at about zero. That was a big part of how we got to here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117
...stripping intelligence agencies of their ability to gather data...
That was HW Bush's baby. Part of the "peace dividend". No USSR to focus on anymore. Wouldn't be prudent to keep spending all that money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117
...providing aid to the Taliban government...
And we should instead have been supporting the Iranian-backed Ahmed Massoud or the al Qaeda-connected Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? Which way would you have gone at the time, considering that in those early days, the Taliban was a nascient people's movement, one that had gained much popular support after opening the roads and allowing food to travel to people starving in the wake of a civil war?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117
...and turning a near decade long blind eye to terrorism.
Seemingly not blind enough, as Republicans called every anti-terrorist action a meaningless wag-the-dog distraction from the REAL issue -- Monica Lewinsky. Yet another case of the right-wing putting partisan politics ahead of the national interest. They've made quite a habit of that over the years. And who was it that was handed boxloads of files and told that terrorism would be the #1 problem on their watch, and then promptly washed their hands of the USS Cole bombing on the grounds that the issue was stale and wasn't really their problem to begin with? You're right...that would have been Bush and Cheney. Too busy for terrorism. Until 9/11.
I can't get the list to open but if Roosevelt is listed in the top ten for having "ended the Great Depression" he should NOT be. He actually made it worse and made it last longer by expanding the government and spending money it didn't have on huge programs ....just the way the Obama administration is doing now.
Maybe you should cancel your membership in the Mises Institute. Here's a nice chart of how much worse FDR made things...
Quote:
Originally Posted by emilybh
Since the Federal Reserve Act was passed on Pres. Wilson's watch and considering Ben Bernanke has more power than Congress and the President put together with his ability to expand the money supply and dilute the value of our money, Wilson should be considered one of the worst.
Can you tell us how many functional economies do NOT have a central bank? Can you tell us how many are still on the gold standard? Can you tell us why -- until W came along -- recessions had been so rare and mild since WWII?
Quote:
Originally Posted by emilybh
Harding's actions, cutting back on taxes and on government spending during "The Forgotten Depression of 1920" and letting businesses fail resulted in this depression being over almost as soon as it started. This depression was actually worse, with higher unemployment rates than the one in 1929. He should be thought of as a great President but history doesn't give him the credit he deserves.
The Depression of 1920-21 lasted 18 months (just as long as the Great Bush Recession), and perhaps it gets forgotten in part in that it was so closely foillowed by the Recessions of 1923-24 and 1926-27. Then of course came 1929. As for Harding, post-WWI government cutbacks had been already accomplished by Wilson, and while the 1921 tax bill lowered rates, it greatly expanded the tax base, ending up in being a substantial tax increase. Perhaps you have been reading the twisted history of Thomas Woods and therefore have no clear understanding of the era?
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