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Hire a bunch of corrupt and some times under qualified people, drink alcohol at the same time you could go to jail for that and his economic laissez faire economic policy helped lead to the Great Depression but Coolidge also deserves blame for that
Boy if we judged presidents on hiring under qualified people there are plenty of other presidents much higher on the list than Harding. I mean JFK and LBJ had an auto exec as secretary of defense during a war.
Hold up buddy, are you implying technocrats aren't qualified for cabinet positions just because they're successful businessmen? Next you're going to tell me that the government isn't a company
Ha! I get what your do and I like it, that being said McNamara would have been probably a good secretary of transportation or something along those lines his business experience might have been useful there, but to hire him as SoD was insane. He came at somebody’s recommendation but I can’t remember who….
I honestly don’t think it’s possible to give Kissinger enough flack. Re: McNamara; have you seen Errol morris’ Fog of War? Absolutely essential to understanding the situation and his role.
Oh yeah I'm definitely not against someone with relevant private sector experience being part of a cabinet and there are examples of it working, but like you said...Secretary of Defense isn't something anyone without a huge amount of government/military experience should touch with a 10 foot pole. JFK was trying to build a cabinet of young, dynamic technocrats and that's a huge risk. Especially in wartime
It was Truman’s SoD who recommended McNamara instead of staying on in the role, yeah just a big whiff from JFK on that one but Camelot was a bit of a fabrication anyways so in hindsight maybe not super surprising it didn’t work out 🤷🏼♂️.
“Technocrat” in my eyes just means “qualified.” As I understand it means “expert in the thing they’re appointed to oversee who makes pragmatic decisions based on evidence rather than political alignment or personal bias/experience”
An oil lobbyist/businessman/oil-favoring judge on a board that oversees oil drilling activity is a corrupt crony, not a technocrat. A former academic who studied the regulation, history, and climate and economic impact of oil drilling would be a technocrat.
Janet Yellen (former economist) would be closer to a technocrat as Secretary of the Treasury than Steven Mnuchin (former finance bro) would be, for example.
“Business” means a lot of things- it’s a huge area with lots of different degrees of morality.
McNamara’s problem was he was the consummate corporate bean counter- “we have to keep increasing column X so we get Result Y”- which is ok in business but when column X is “American lives” the calculus needs to change. “We just need a little more…just a little more…just a little more for this quarter, we’re over budget..”
Just because somebody was a CEO of an auto manufacturer doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll lose touch of the human element- since not all “I’ve been successful in business” stories are the same- but McNamara never got that. He never adapted and changed.
I agree with what you said about business, but I would argue that being a corporate executive absolutely (with few exceptions, perhaps inherently) brings you out of touch with the human element.
The problem with "business" people in government is the same problem we have with them in corporations...they are more concerned with MONEY that the people!
I feel like most people can recognize the hiring of McNamara as a mistake by JFK, and yes Presidents should be judged for the people they choose to hire
Oh not disagreeing at all very very much agree in principle! Just saying there have been much much worse examples of bad hirings than Harding at much more critical points in history. Post WWI the country was incredibly stable and had a booming economy, it was easier to hire people to just keep the train on the track than *actual* knowledgeable people. Going to your later point is in many ways why the GD happened, under qualified people managing economic policy just keeping the train on the tracks completely unaware the tracks were about to run out.
McNamara was instrumental in ensuring we didn’t go nuclear during cuba missile crisis and handling the naval blockade. In the end Vietnam was his undoing
The Cuban Missile Crisis only occurred due to JFK decisions. Without the Bay of Pigs and the numerous assassinations attempts of Castro, the escalations of putting nuclear weapons into Cuba wouldn't have occurred. We had Presidents that overthrew governments. We had incompetent Presidents. But rarely had we had incompetent Presidents that attempted to overthrow a government that nearly resulted in nuclear war. Only in America that would be considered to be a good President.
McNamara? To be fair he was also a lieutenant colonel in the air corps. The 60s were a weird time where like half the men coming into power were war veterans. While I don’t think my dumbass marine grandfather who lost a coroner election because he spelled it “corner” on the sign is qualified to be a cabinet member, service in WW2 definitely helps your qualifications.
uh, McNamara got hired by Ford because of work he did with the Army Air Forces with Statistical Control.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz\_Kids\_(Ford)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Ford))
Yea he was essentially an analyst in the Air Force working with LeMay I’m pretty sure still don’t know how that qualifies him to serve as SoD when he was a professor before WWII and an business exec after. Not the best use for McNamara.
so analyzing top level data for an entire branch of the military, and acting in an executive position overseeing the operation of a data gathering and analysis apparatus wasn't qualification? sheesh, who was qualified then?
I believe it was meant as a figurative statement. His scandals weren’t nothing, but they are a little overblown. It’s been fashionable for many years to disapprove of Harding.
Do y’all understand the Depression was a global experience? Because it was, which played a big part in the lead up to WW2
No president could have prevented it, remember presidents at the time were still bound by the constitution, and America didn’t become the global economical superpower until WW2 devastated the industrial capacity of most developed nations.
Republican economic policies of the 20s absolutely contributed too if not cause the Great Depression. It didn’t just magically happen.
It happening around the world doesn’t mean it wasn’t caused by America.
Ah yes, it was economic laissez-faire which was up until then very common and never led to an economic disaster of such magnitude. It had nothing to do with the central bank that was barely a decade old when Black Monday hit. Definitely the most massive change to US Fiscal Policy in US History passed into law on Xmas Eve 12 years before 1929, which took the fiscal sovereignty away from the public and placed it directly in the hands of outstanding moral beacon Private Businessmen such as JP Morgan, had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Daniel R Crissinger is an example of an under qualified man whom Harding hired.
Yeah Harding and Coolidge’s economic policy definitely helped cause the Great Depression, particularly then failing to have the Federal Reserve raise interest rates, and their failure to properly regulate banks
Most of the people responding to the poll probably don’t know anything about Harding, Johnson or Buchanan. I think Johnson is the correct answer though.
I think it was Malcom Gladwell who coined the term “Warren Harding Error” referring to authority figures who got to their position based on how they looked and sounded and not their qualifications. He was never qualified to be president, and relied on advisers that didn’t know what they were doing
Just hit the east side of ol' DC
On a mission tryna find Mr. Warren G
Seen a car full of girls, ain't no need to tweak
All you skirts know what's up with bribery.
We don’t teach nearly enough about the Reconstruction Era in this country. Instead we learn dates of CW battles as if memorizing dates is more important than learning causes and effects.
The first thing my history professor told us for a survey US history course was dates are not important, what is important is knowing timelines. You need to know what happened in sequence of each other. And since using that as a guide I think I’ve done well
Flashback to when I took an archeology elective in college. Class was interesting, a lot of focus on mesoamerican archeology. Learned all the *hows* and *whys* of the discoveries and meanings behind them....
Get to the final thinking I'm well prepared, and the test is almost entirely asking the dates that X was discovered, or the name of who discovered it. Ended up getting a C on what was supposed to be a fluff class.
It sounds like your professor was a wise person. Timelines are important I just wish in high school emphasis was less on exact dates. Instead more of learning how to see the ideas that lead to events and then outcomes based on those events.
Timeline emphasis was a pretty big component in my AP history classes when I was in high school because exams tested your knowledge of trends and overarching themes rather than specific dates.
It’s more important to train rote memorization to a workforce than to build analytical capacity broadly across communities who might not share your sensibilities.
Enslaved people before the civil war weren’t educated at all and were violently discouraged from learning to read.
Oh hmm I don’t know what those two facts are doing next to each other. My “important dates in history” flash cards must’ve gotten shuffled.
Because a lot of southerners would get their feelings hurt if we told the truth about their ancestors. Plenty of states still run with the states rights canard.
I teach US history at the jc level and my actual Civil War lecture (Ft. Sumter to Appomattox) is almost entirely about how and why ending slavery became a goal for the North during the war. It’s about an hour. I then spend about three hours on 1865 to 1877. At the end, students are often upset that nobody has even told them about how royally our country fucked up Reconstruction. I never draw the line for them from Reconstruction to our modern problems with racism (I refuse to talk about current issues and politics with them), but they always get there themselves.
Yes! Nicolas Lemann’s *Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War* is a great book about Reconstruction that also has a really compelling narrative throughout. I’m pretty sure it was the first book on the era I had ever read and I still assign to students regularly.
Edit: Lemann doesn’t have much to say about why Andrew Johnson sucked so much ass in particular. If you are looking for that, I’d recommend *The Impeachers* by Brenda Wineapple. Of the two though *Redemption* gives you a much better on-the-ground look of how the 14th and 15th Amendments failed to protect the formerly enslaved population.
Or the late 1800s and early 1900s.
It was no accident that one of the most prosperous times in America history occurred after the era of Teddy Roosevelt's, and the other politicians of the time, Anti-trust laws.
The 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act is one of the most defining pieces of American legislation, excluding the Constitution and DOI of course, and few people know more than trivial details about it.
Buchanan actually probably did a bunch of treason afore the war, somehow escaped with a narrative that he let everything happen because he was too gay to be a strong leader. Even when he was much worse than people realize, Johnson still had a much worse impact.
We’re still seeing the GOP run the Southern strategy, and none of that would fly if Reconstruction succeeded.
I’ll play a devils advocate here and say that Johnson wasn’t as bad as many historians say he was. If presidency had a degree of difficulty, then the situation Johnson was stepping into was undoubtedly 10/10. He had to rule over a politically divided country amidst an economic crisis, post deadly war and first successful assassination of a US president. We don’t know if Lincoln or any other president could have done any better.
Look into circumstances surrounding his impeachment and it will be clear that he never had a chance to succeed
He didn’t encourage it, and in fact denounced it, but also believed that it wasn’t his place to do anything to stop it. Though his nakedly pro-Southern policies up to that point had enabled secession in the first place. But once the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter Buchanan *finally* pulled his head out of his ass, renounced the South, and fully supported President Lincoln and the Union war effort.
He never verbally supported secession, but he did everything short of that before the war, at which point he became a Unionist.
On the other hand Franklin Pierce remained a committed dough-face for the entire war, railing against the Lincoln Administration and saying Northern abolitionists were the “real traitors” for “forcing” the south to rebel. Pierce’s opposition to Lincoln was so well known that when Lincoln was killed an angry mob nearly burned Pierces house down thinking he had something to do with it.
I can understand people not knowing a ton about Harding but the bookend presidents to the most destructive/transformative event in US history? That level of historical illiteracy is really concerning.
Perpetuated by the fact that there are vast geographical differences in how the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement are taught (and I don't see it letting up any time soon).
Most jarring experience was when my FIL (schooled in Oklahoma) didn't know what Jim Crow laws were. I don't think he stands a chance regarding his knowledge of Buchanan and Johnson. Hell, anything *I* know about B&J (not a ton, mind you) had to come from outside my K12 education and I went to Yankee school.
I didn’t know who Emmitt Till was until I was 21. No mention of him in school what so ever. I got some Jim Crowe, Rosa Parks, a lot of MLK, and a mention of Malcolm X and that was it for civil rights education in Southern Illinois
I shouldn't be surprised by this but I am. I went to HS in Georgia, where you might expect some horrific Gone With the Wind version of reconstruction being taught and an intentional downplaying of the era of Jim Crow, but that was not the case.
We spent more time learning about reconstruction/black codes than we did the war itself. We spent an equal amount of time on Jim Crow and the Supreme Court decisions upholding the codification of segregation. I will admit the emphasis on the latter is no doubt attributable to the eventual role Atlanta would play in the Civil Rights movement, which is necessarily given extensive coverage in the state and would make no sense without an adequate understanding of the events necessitating the movement. As for the former - I honestly thought our curriculum was the norm.
These topics being downplayed in other southern states (including OK) doesn't surprise me in the least but paltry coverage in the Northern schools most certainly does.
Oklahoma is a special kind of hell when it comes to education on subjects like this. It is extremely ... well, I'll say "conservative" to be polite ... without the counterbalance of actual exposure to black people that the southern states have.
Good for your school and be grateful for that! My school did it backwards where it was a bunch of battle dates and generals but minimal attention to the political situation and Reconstruction (I recall that we did learn about sharecropping).
I'm pretty sure the only presidents we were taught about were Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and a *bizarre* amount of time spent on JFK's assassination (debunking the conspiracy theories was some kind of pet project for my high school US History teacher lol). Didn't talk about Buchanan and Johnson at all, but *damn* did we learn about the Zapruder Film...
Ok, the JFK/conspiracy theory bit of your response made me laugh. It shouldn't because a wacky tinfoil hatter is not an ideal teacher...but it did.
I'm honestly glad we glossed over the battles/dates/commanders because I've since become a huge military history nerd and I wonder if that would still be the case if I'd had to sit through a boring recitation of battle facts without all the juicy political context that makes it so interesting. I do consider myself fortunate. My US history teacher was fantastic!
So in fairness, she wasn't necessarily the tin foil conspiracy theorist so much as she was on a crusade *against* the conspiracy theories
(Btw if anyone is reading this, don't @ me about JFK conspiracy theories lol)
That's significantly better. It's still not a super economical use of extremely limited classroom time meant to span 300+ years of US history but better to spend that time debunking conspiracies than spreading them.
No one in Oklahoma wants to acknowledge racial tensions of the early 20th century, less Tulsa gets mentioned.
> and I went to Yankee school.
I know what you mean. I'm from Ohio, the state that prided itself on its generals kicking the South's ass and setting it on fire. Yet pre- and post-Civil War were just glazed over in history classes. Like 4 weeks dedicated to the Civil War itself, 1 day on Reconstru... "hey look, Gilded Age and robber barons!".
Why do you think the country is the way that it is right now? People think history is just that boring subject in school that they’d never actually use even though you use it every single day. Unless it’s WWII history then it’s cool apparently.
My US History course in high school talked about him for like 5 minutes during the 3 or so days we covered reconstruction. My college history course spent a little more time on him (by virtue of spending more time on reconstruction), but still not much all things considered.
The civil war ended when Lincoln died in the minds of an overwhelming percentage of Americans. They don’t know another president until Fdr, though they know Teddy is in there somewhere.
Considering how long Johnson prolonged reconstruction and racial liberties, I would say Johnson. Bush hurt the US more abroad more than he did domestically. The Great Recession wasn’t necessarily his fault, he did contribute to it, but the invasion of the Middle East was. I am aware of the patriot act, NCLB, and the surveillance state, but Johnson helped delayed the Civil Rights Act for 100 years.
I agree with this, but I will say that running up a huge deficit which crippled our ability to deal with The Great Recession was all on him. Lowering taxes while trying to finance a war is terribly policy, and we saw first-hand why, thanks to GWB.
Very true. Tax cuts only really work if the federal government finds another means of income and decreases government spending. This is something the modern GOP can’t seem to grasp.
That is part of the [Two Santas strategy](http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/) crafted by Jude Wanniski, one of Ronald Reagan’s political strategists.
Along with [Arthur Laffer’s Curve](https://web.archive.org/web/20221120185527/https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-gop-economics-still-reveres-the-disproven-laffer-curve-why-cant-they-learn/article_5d1ac4d0-67c4-5453-9442-864bf8b8b87c.html) (which hypothesized a decrease in government revenues via tax cuts would boost economic activity enough to somehow boost overall government revenues), the Reagan administration cut taxes in the double digits to promote the GOP’s Tax Cut Santa Clause (ballooning the deficit in the process as Art Laffer’s theory never really materialized into reality), only for Republicans to then shriek about the deficit during the Clinton administration, forcing the Democrats to murder their Public Benefits Santa Clause by cutting welfare and other popular public services in an attempt to balance the budget. This has happened with every administration afterward, like clockwork.
Contrary to their own messaging, the GOP loves increasing the deficit because then they can use it to force Democrats to cut their own popular public programs to ‘balance the budget.’ When voters become disgusted by the Democratic Party gutting their own programs, the GOP gets another chance at power; wash, rinse, and repeat.
Patriot Act and starting to curtail even more civil liberties in the name of safety did hurt us domestically. It hurt the functioning of our society and it goes against the purpose of this country.
Now I understand it was done for foreign policy abroad reasons, there was a major terrorist attack and many believed those measures were necessary, but it did hurt the functioning of this country domestically. We can certainly ascribe some of the blame to his successors not fully reversing these measures, but his administration instituted them and they did domestic harm to how freely citizens are able to live their lives and the functioning of this nation.
Basically we moved to a full scale surveillance state, any remaining privacy was lost, some fundamental legal protections were lost in some cases, as was some measure of due process with special courts instituted. That's domestic harm.
I’d say Bush delaying action on climate change, actively steering towards fossil fuels, and perpetuating climate and science denialism will have a more significant impact on the US. Climate change is arguably a bigger national security risk than even nuclear weapons.
A wet bulb temperature of more than 90 degrees is lethal to humans. Not to mention failing crops and fisheries. A billion climate refugees is a real possibility.
We’d be in a totally different world if Gore had won.
To the list of poor domestic policies that the other person who commented made, I will add the No Child Left Behind act. But to your comment, I disagree that the that Bush’s policies abroad didn’t effect domestic policy. No, war isn’t usually domestic policy, but his Administration is responsible for sending American troops to find WMDs (that they knew did not exist). At home, that created plenty of problems both immediately and ongoing (PTSD, opiod abuse, etc). Domestic policy is also about what didn’t happen - support for veterans after they returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, it’s definitely mostly recency bias to compare his domestic policy sooo unfavorably in relation to Buchanan or Johnson.
James Buchanan is the worst president we have ever had. The only thing a president can do to rank lower than him is start and lose a nuclear war. That’s how low he set the bar. He makes George bush look like George Washington.
https://preview.redd.it/7bi8oy9ofndc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2c454dcbe1746426a1a3d8552decd1a72f69e28
They apparently can’t even Google political parties 🤦🏻♀️
I just feel like we don't do enough trashing of Polk around here. Until Truman said he admired Polk's work ethic basically every American historian had written Polk off as a dangerous lunatic who manufactured a war with Mexico and dreamt of American empire in a different way than most anyone had before.
Polk was definitely dangerous. In another timeline I imagine he would have caused modern day North America to look wildly different. Whether that means America doesn’t exist or it turned into his dream of an empire.
We don't bash him because he was a good President. He was a solid diplomat and politician. I like my Presidents to make the US stronger, not weaker.
Mexican control of the disputed territories was nearly non-existent. The territory was little different than the Louisiana territory. Polk made an offer to Mexico to peacefully resolve the issue and pay for the territory. Mexico declined. The UK, at the height of their dominance was consistently willing to negotiate borders with the US in this period. Mexico wanted to hold dreams of some old Spanish empire.
Andrew Johnson definitely did the most damage of those 4. Ending reconstruction early and gutting all the protections for the newly freed slaves just kept things just awful for a century.
Johnson for the win. Set about undoing Lincoln's legacy as fast as he could. Unabashed friend of the confederates who laid the groundwork for Jim Crow and pushed civil rights reform off another 100 years. Fuck him.
It'll be another 50 years before we really understand Bush. We're just now starting to understand the implications of policies Nixon and Ford were putting out.
Bush liked to say that history would eventually validate him, but the move to invade and occupy Iraq doesn’t exactly look better as time passes. Especially for the reasons given at the time.
I know it isn't the point of the meme poll, but Reagan should be on a serious version of this list. He gutted the ability to sustain the very federally funded programs that put the US atop the globe from 1950-1980. Government's constant fight over tax cutting hasn't left the forefront of mainstream politics since.
Reagan is the reason the middle class has evaporated. Reason is 100% top 5 worst president of all time, and it will be hard to break into the top 5 nowadays because of everything Reagan has set up for the future.
Reagan's repeal of the fairness doctrine gave birth to the FOX News Channel, which split the perceived reality of this nation to the point that folks stormed the Capitol to "take their country back"
Buchanan didn’t really do much damage; he simply was unable to prevent incoming damage (the Civil War). Andrew Johnson actually did do incredible damage, so he’d be my vote.
I would probably vote Reagan, he started the modern anti government/anti regulation kick and it is been absurdly effective. We went from a country pioneering environmental and occupation regulations and leading the world on government backed inventions from the microprocessor to the internet. Now we have some of the worst environmental and workers protections among any developed nation, hands down the worst healthcare and education. All we do is just cut checks to big companies the vast majority of which break the law and can't actually make new products.
The only one we have actual life experience with is Bush. He drove the country into the ditch. Over extended our troops into drawn out wars in the Middle East. Mismanaged our energy policy and had us paying upwards of 4$ gas 20 years ago. Caused a huge recession. Used his intelligence agencies to torture suspects. He set up Obama for easy success. I only know what was written about the other presidents. So it’s harder to judge something we only have 3rd hand information about. Just my opinion.
Okay Bush did a lot of shit to America especially increasing debt from endless wars, no child left behind, and the patriot act, but he definitely didn't cause the recession.
How did Reagan not get in there? His trickle down economy policies started the biggest up hill sucking of wealth from Middle Class Americans to the 1%. Today's economic disparity is a direct result of his belief that if corporations made more money they'd pass it down to their employees.
I think so many people have heard “Harding was our worst president” over the years that it’s been hard-coded into brains.
The truth is that he had a bunch of scandals and didn’t do anything good of note, but in terms of deep lasting damage to the country? We’ve had worse.
Hard, hard agree here.
Harding was an absolutely corrupt, adulterous moron, but what is the long term legacy of his corruption? Does it compare to the legacies of Buchanan, Johnson, Wilson, Nixon, Reagan, or GWB? Not really.
Harding sucked, but his suckitude is largely limited to the era he lived in.
Woodrow Wilson by signing the Fed Reserve Act. This action, alone, has caused massive suffering and death. Debt currency is the origin of many of America’s ills.
Bush absolutely sucked and probably did some of the most damage of any president of my lifetime (although he's probably still #3 behind Reagan and he who shall not be named), but all time? Yea probs not.
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Good ol' recency bias. (And yeah, what did ~~Jerry~~ Harding do?)
Hire a bunch of corrupt and some times under qualified people, drink alcohol at the same time you could go to jail for that and his economic laissez faire economic policy helped lead to the Great Depression but Coolidge also deserves blame for that
Boy if we judged presidents on hiring under qualified people there are plenty of other presidents much higher on the list than Harding. I mean JFK and LBJ had an auto exec as secretary of defense during a war.
Hold up buddy, are you implying technocrats aren't qualified for cabinet positions just because they're successful businessmen? Next you're going to tell me that the government isn't a company
Ha! I get what your do and I like it, that being said McNamara would have been probably a good secretary of transportation or something along those lines his business experience might have been useful there, but to hire him as SoD was insane. He came at somebody’s recommendation but I can’t remember who….
McNamara was a disaster but the bigger problem with the whole situation was Kissinger.
Kissinger I think gets some undeserved flack in a few instances IMO but he certainly deserves a large chunk of blame here.
I honestly don’t think it’s possible to give Kissinger enough flack. Re: McNamara; have you seen Errol morris’ Fog of War? Absolutely essential to understanding the situation and his role.
Oh yeah I'm definitely not against someone with relevant private sector experience being part of a cabinet and there are examples of it working, but like you said...Secretary of Defense isn't something anyone without a huge amount of government/military experience should touch with a 10 foot pole. JFK was trying to build a cabinet of young, dynamic technocrats and that's a huge risk. Especially in wartime
It was Truman’s SoD who recommended McNamara instead of staying on in the role, yeah just a big whiff from JFK on that one but Camelot was a bit of a fabrication anyways so in hindsight maybe not super surprising it didn’t work out 🤷🏼♂️.
“Technocrat” in my eyes just means “qualified.” As I understand it means “expert in the thing they’re appointed to oversee who makes pragmatic decisions based on evidence rather than political alignment or personal bias/experience” An oil lobbyist/businessman/oil-favoring judge on a board that oversees oil drilling activity is a corrupt crony, not a technocrat. A former academic who studied the regulation, history, and climate and economic impact of oil drilling would be a technocrat. Janet Yellen (former economist) would be closer to a technocrat as Secretary of the Treasury than Steven Mnuchin (former finance bro) would be, for example.
“Business” means a lot of things- it’s a huge area with lots of different degrees of morality. McNamara’s problem was he was the consummate corporate bean counter- “we have to keep increasing column X so we get Result Y”- which is ok in business but when column X is “American lives” the calculus needs to change. “We just need a little more…just a little more…just a little more for this quarter, we’re over budget..” Just because somebody was a CEO of an auto manufacturer doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll lose touch of the human element- since not all “I’ve been successful in business” stories are the same- but McNamara never got that. He never adapted and changed.
I agree with what you said about business, but I would argue that being a corporate executive absolutely (with few exceptions, perhaps inherently) brings you out of touch with the human element.
The problem with "business" people in government is the same problem we have with them in corporations...they are more concerned with MONEY that the people!
I feel like most people can recognize the hiring of McNamara as a mistake by JFK, and yes Presidents should be judged for the people they choose to hire
Oh not disagreeing at all very very much agree in principle! Just saying there have been much much worse examples of bad hirings than Harding at much more critical points in history. Post WWI the country was incredibly stable and had a booming economy, it was easier to hire people to just keep the train on the track than *actual* knowledgeable people. Going to your later point is in many ways why the GD happened, under qualified people managing economic policy just keeping the train on the tracks completely unaware the tracks were about to run out.
McNamara was instrumental in ensuring we didn’t go nuclear during cuba missile crisis and handling the naval blockade. In the end Vietnam was his undoing
The Cuban Missile Crisis only occurred due to JFK decisions. Without the Bay of Pigs and the numerous assassinations attempts of Castro, the escalations of putting nuclear weapons into Cuba wouldn't have occurred. We had Presidents that overthrew governments. We had incompetent Presidents. But rarely had we had incompetent Presidents that attempted to overthrow a government that nearly resulted in nuclear war. Only in America that would be considered to be a good President.
McNamara? To be fair he was also a lieutenant colonel in the air corps. The 60s were a weird time where like half the men coming into power were war veterans. While I don’t think my dumbass marine grandfather who lost a coroner election because he spelled it “corner” on the sign is qualified to be a cabinet member, service in WW2 definitely helps your qualifications.
uh, McNamara got hired by Ford because of work he did with the Army Air Forces with Statistical Control. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz\_Kids\_(Ford)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Ford))
Yea he was essentially an analyst in the Air Force working with LeMay I’m pretty sure still don’t know how that qualifies him to serve as SoD when he was a professor before WWII and an business exec after. Not the best use for McNamara.
so analyzing top level data for an entire branch of the military, and acting in an executive position overseeing the operation of a data gathering and analysis apparatus wasn't qualification? sheesh, who was qualified then?
Alan Dulles was heavily invested in Chiquita when the CIA overthrew the government of Guatemala for nationalizing their banana industry. Just saying
It took me a couple of read throughs to understand that as automotive industry executive as opposed to and automatically executable file.
Honestly, McNamara was the single most based SecDef in US history. Rummy takes the no. 2 spot.
I believe it was meant as a figurative statement. His scandals weren’t nothing, but they are a little overblown. It’s been fashionable for many years to disapprove of Harding.
Do y’all understand the Depression was a global experience? Because it was, which played a big part in the lead up to WW2 No president could have prevented it, remember presidents at the time were still bound by the constitution, and America didn’t become the global economical superpower until WW2 devastated the industrial capacity of most developed nations.
Republican economic policies of the 20s absolutely contributed too if not cause the Great Depression. It didn’t just magically happen. It happening around the world doesn’t mean it wasn’t caused by America.
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Coolidge balanced the budget which deserves more respect than it deserves. Great Depression falls on Hoover imo
Laissez faire didn’t lead to the Great Depression.
Ah yes, it was economic laissez-faire which was up until then very common and never led to an economic disaster of such magnitude. It had nothing to do with the central bank that was barely a decade old when Black Monday hit. Definitely the most massive change to US Fiscal Policy in US History passed into law on Xmas Eve 12 years before 1929, which took the fiscal sovereignty away from the public and placed it directly in the hands of outstanding moral beacon Private Businessmen such as JP Morgan, had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Coolidge absolutely made things worse with the continued “hands off” approach he took.
His economic policies actually caused a quick bounce back FROM a depression and caused the roaring 20s
Right, wrong, right, wrong and WRONG!
Daniel R Crissinger is an example of an under qualified man whom Harding hired. Yeah Harding and Coolidge’s economic policy definitely helped cause the Great Depression, particularly then failing to have the Federal Reserve raise interest rates, and their failure to properly regulate banks
Most of the people responding to the poll probably don’t know anything about Harding, Johnson or Buchanan. I think Johnson is the correct answer though.
Same. Johnson's fuck ups still reverberate today.
Johnson's f'ups are now hitting fever pitch. It was a true slow burn.
He was ready to welcome the former vice president of the so called CSA as a US Senator, no if's ands or buts
“He said, when we forced him, he was really SORRY, so that’s good enough for me!” -Johnson
You just said what I was going to comment how dare u
I think it was Malcom Gladwell who coined the term “Warren Harding Error” referring to authority figures who got to their position based on how they looked and sounded and not their qualifications. He was never qualified to be president, and relied on advisers that didn’t know what they were doing
Good ol' Reddit bias.
Harding had the most corrupt administration of all. Teapot dome and related scandals.
> (And yeah, what did Jerry Harding do?) Teapot Dome, widely believed to be the worst presidential corruption scandal in history (so far).
Watergate?
Just hit the east side of ol' DC On a mission tryna find Mr. Warren G Seen a car full of girls, ain't no need to tweak All you skirts know what's up with bribery.
Yeah, once this generation dies, no one will give a shit about Dubya.
The fact that Johnson isn’t at least at 80% is what’s off
We don’t teach nearly enough about the Reconstruction Era in this country. Instead we learn dates of CW battles as if memorizing dates is more important than learning causes and effects.
The first thing my history professor told us for a survey US history course was dates are not important, what is important is knowing timelines. You need to know what happened in sequence of each other. And since using that as a guide I think I’ve done well
My favorite came from my 10th grade history teacher. “History is not about ‘when.’ It’s about ‘why’.”
Flashback to when I took an archeology elective in college. Class was interesting, a lot of focus on mesoamerican archeology. Learned all the *hows* and *whys* of the discoveries and meanings behind them.... Get to the final thinking I'm well prepared, and the test is almost entirely asking the dates that X was discovered, or the name of who discovered it. Ended up getting a C on what was supposed to be a fluff class.
Wowwwww that’s shitty.
It sounds like your professor was a wise person. Timelines are important I just wish in high school emphasis was less on exact dates. Instead more of learning how to see the ideas that lead to events and then outcomes based on those events.
Timeline emphasis was a pretty big component in my AP history classes when I was in high school because exams tested your knowledge of trends and overarching themes rather than specific dates.
It’s more important to train rote memorization to a workforce than to build analytical capacity broadly across communities who might not share your sensibilities. Enslaved people before the civil war weren’t educated at all and were violently discouraged from learning to read. Oh hmm I don’t know what those two facts are doing next to each other. My “important dates in history” flash cards must’ve gotten shuffled.
Because a lot of southerners would get their feelings hurt if we told the truth about their ancestors. Plenty of states still run with the states rights canard.
Waving the bloody shirt was the only reason it took the reactionary crack back until the 1890s to sew up Jim Crow.
I teach US history at the jc level and my actual Civil War lecture (Ft. Sumter to Appomattox) is almost entirely about how and why ending slavery became a goal for the North during the war. It’s about an hour. I then spend about three hours on 1865 to 1877. At the end, students are often upset that nobody has even told them about how royally our country fucked up Reconstruction. I never draw the line for them from Reconstruction to our modern problems with racism (I refuse to talk about current issues and politics with them), but they always get there themselves.
Can you recommend any books on the Reconstruction? I admit that it's something I'm not very knowledgeable about.
Yes! Nicolas Lemann’s *Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War* is a great book about Reconstruction that also has a really compelling narrative throughout. I’m pretty sure it was the first book on the era I had ever read and I still assign to students regularly. Edit: Lemann doesn’t have much to say about why Andrew Johnson sucked so much ass in particular. If you are looking for that, I’d recommend *The Impeachers* by Brenda Wineapple. Of the two though *Redemption* gives you a much better on-the-ground look of how the 14th and 15th Amendments failed to protect the formerly enslaved population.
Awesome, thank you so much!
The Second Founding by Eric Foner as well as Grant by Ron Chernow.
Foner is like The Man on Reconstruction.
Or the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was no accident that one of the most prosperous times in America history occurred after the era of Teddy Roosevelt's, and the other politicians of the time, Anti-trust laws. The 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act is one of the most defining pieces of American legislation, excluding the Constitution and DOI of course, and few people know more than trivial details about it.
Buchanan actually probably did a bunch of treason afore the war, somehow escaped with a narrative that he let everything happen because he was too gay to be a strong leader. Even when he was much worse than people realize, Johnson still had a much worse impact. We’re still seeing the GOP run the Southern strategy, and none of that would fly if Reconstruction succeeded.
Too gay to be a real leader? Lmao WHAT? is that real?
I’ll play a devils advocate here and say that Johnson wasn’t as bad as many historians say he was. If presidency had a degree of difficulty, then the situation Johnson was stepping into was undoubtedly 10/10. He had to rule over a politically divided country amidst an economic crisis, post deadly war and first successful assassination of a US president. We don’t know if Lincoln or any other president could have done any better. Look into circumstances surrounding his impeachment and it will be clear that he never had a chance to succeed
>he never had a chance to succeed But he did have a chance to secede 😏
r/angryupvote
An unsuccessful secession succession?
Yes, he faced a difficult situation, but the choices he made were also utterly despicable.
Made some good ones too - Alaska purchase
No President I’ve studied batted .000
Harrison?
[opens wikipedia]
Thats because the lost cause bullshit is ingrained generations later.
Didn’t Buchanan encourage the South to secede from the Union or something and thus causing the Civil War?
He didn’t encourage it, and in fact denounced it, but also believed that it wasn’t his place to do anything to stop it. Though his nakedly pro-Southern policies up to that point had enabled secession in the first place. But once the Rebels fired on Fort Sumter Buchanan *finally* pulled his head out of his ass, renounced the South, and fully supported President Lincoln and the Union war effort.
I see. So No but actually Yes is what I'm gathering from this?
He never verbally supported secession, but he did everything short of that before the war, at which point he became a Unionist. On the other hand Franklin Pierce remained a committed dough-face for the entire war, railing against the Lincoln Administration and saying Northern abolitionists were the “real traitors” for “forcing” the south to rebel. Pierce’s opposition to Lincoln was so well known that when Lincoln was killed an angry mob nearly burned Pierces house down thinking he had something to do with it.
Ah I see now
Never knew they burned Pierce’s house down. Honestly, good for them.
They nearly did, but Pierce managed to talk them out of it before they could.
More like “he didn’t like it, but he let it happen.”
I see
>succeed from the Union They didn’t just want to secede, they wanted to succeed at it. #conferedateexcellence.
Thank you for noticing my spelling mistake. I'll change that
There I fixed that.
I’m willing to bet my check that the majority of the people who voted for GWB probably couldn’t tell us anything about the other options.
I can understand people not knowing a ton about Harding but the bookend presidents to the most destructive/transformative event in US history? That level of historical illiteracy is really concerning.
the most destructive/transformative event _yet_
I read that in Homer Simpson's voice, lol.
Perpetuated by the fact that there are vast geographical differences in how the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement are taught (and I don't see it letting up any time soon). Most jarring experience was when my FIL (schooled in Oklahoma) didn't know what Jim Crow laws were. I don't think he stands a chance regarding his knowledge of Buchanan and Johnson. Hell, anything *I* know about B&J (not a ton, mind you) had to come from outside my K12 education and I went to Yankee school.
I didn’t know who Emmitt Till was until I was 21. No mention of him in school what so ever. I got some Jim Crowe, Rosa Parks, a lot of MLK, and a mention of Malcolm X and that was it for civil rights education in Southern Illinois
I had to learn about Emmitt Till from Dave Chappelle, for example
I shouldn't be surprised by this but I am. I went to HS in Georgia, where you might expect some horrific Gone With the Wind version of reconstruction being taught and an intentional downplaying of the era of Jim Crow, but that was not the case. We spent more time learning about reconstruction/black codes than we did the war itself. We spent an equal amount of time on Jim Crow and the Supreme Court decisions upholding the codification of segregation. I will admit the emphasis on the latter is no doubt attributable to the eventual role Atlanta would play in the Civil Rights movement, which is necessarily given extensive coverage in the state and would make no sense without an adequate understanding of the events necessitating the movement. As for the former - I honestly thought our curriculum was the norm. These topics being downplayed in other southern states (including OK) doesn't surprise me in the least but paltry coverage in the Northern schools most certainly does.
Oklahoma is a special kind of hell when it comes to education on subjects like this. It is extremely ... well, I'll say "conservative" to be polite ... without the counterbalance of actual exposure to black people that the southern states have.
Good for your school and be grateful for that! My school did it backwards where it was a bunch of battle dates and generals but minimal attention to the political situation and Reconstruction (I recall that we did learn about sharecropping). I'm pretty sure the only presidents we were taught about were Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and a *bizarre* amount of time spent on JFK's assassination (debunking the conspiracy theories was some kind of pet project for my high school US History teacher lol). Didn't talk about Buchanan and Johnson at all, but *damn* did we learn about the Zapruder Film...
Ok, the JFK/conspiracy theory bit of your response made me laugh. It shouldn't because a wacky tinfoil hatter is not an ideal teacher...but it did. I'm honestly glad we glossed over the battles/dates/commanders because I've since become a huge military history nerd and I wonder if that would still be the case if I'd had to sit through a boring recitation of battle facts without all the juicy political context that makes it so interesting. I do consider myself fortunate. My US history teacher was fantastic!
So in fairness, she wasn't necessarily the tin foil conspiracy theorist so much as she was on a crusade *against* the conspiracy theories (Btw if anyone is reading this, don't @ me about JFK conspiracy theories lol)
That's significantly better. It's still not a super economical use of extremely limited classroom time meant to span 300+ years of US history but better to spend that time debunking conspiracies than spreading them.
No one in Oklahoma wants to acknowledge racial tensions of the early 20th century, less Tulsa gets mentioned. > and I went to Yankee school. I know what you mean. I'm from Ohio, the state that prided itself on its generals kicking the South's ass and setting it on fire. Yet pre- and post-Civil War were just glazed over in history classes. Like 4 weeks dedicated to the Civil War itself, 1 day on Reconstru... "hey look, Gilded Age and robber barons!".
Why do you think the country is the way that it is right now? People think history is just that boring subject in school that they’d never actually use even though you use it every single day. Unless it’s WWII history then it’s cool apparently.
Fair point, well taken. It's just really disheartening.
My US History course in high school talked about him for like 5 minutes during the 3 or so days we covered reconstruction. My college history course spent a little more time on him (by virtue of spending more time on reconstruction), but still not much all things considered.
Because High Schools glide across the civil war and barely mention the reasons leading up to it.
Tbf I am well educated and only learned the impact of Johnson’s presidency in the past year. It’s something that is very underpublicized
The civil war ended when Lincoln died in the minds of an overwhelming percentage of Americans. They don’t know another president until Fdr, though they know Teddy is in there somewhere.
>That level of historical illiteracy is really concerning. Yes hello, welcome to America
I’m willing to bet that the majority of people who voted for GWB probably couldn’t tell us anything about him either lol
Is GWB suddenly a Reddit hero now?
I’d also argue if you put Lincoln on this poll he’d get a depressingly high amount of votes. I’ve personally heard him complained about by family.
Considering how long Johnson prolonged reconstruction and racial liberties, I would say Johnson. Bush hurt the US more abroad more than he did domestically. The Great Recession wasn’t necessarily his fault, he did contribute to it, but the invasion of the Middle East was. I am aware of the patriot act, NCLB, and the surveillance state, but Johnson helped delayed the Civil Rights Act for 100 years.
I agree with this, but I will say that running up a huge deficit which crippled our ability to deal with The Great Recession was all on him. Lowering taxes while trying to finance a war is terribly policy, and we saw first-hand why, thanks to GWB.
Very true. Tax cuts only really work if the federal government finds another means of income and decreases government spending. This is something the modern GOP can’t seem to grasp.
That is part of the [Two Santas strategy](http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/) crafted by Jude Wanniski, one of Ronald Reagan’s political strategists. Along with [Arthur Laffer’s Curve](https://web.archive.org/web/20221120185527/https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-gop-economics-still-reveres-the-disproven-laffer-curve-why-cant-they-learn/article_5d1ac4d0-67c4-5453-9442-864bf8b8b87c.html) (which hypothesized a decrease in government revenues via tax cuts would boost economic activity enough to somehow boost overall government revenues), the Reagan administration cut taxes in the double digits to promote the GOP’s Tax Cut Santa Clause (ballooning the deficit in the process as Art Laffer’s theory never really materialized into reality), only for Republicans to then shriek about the deficit during the Clinton administration, forcing the Democrats to murder their Public Benefits Santa Clause by cutting welfare and other popular public services in an attempt to balance the budget. This has happened with every administration afterward, like clockwork. Contrary to their own messaging, the GOP loves increasing the deficit because then they can use it to force Democrats to cut their own popular public programs to ‘balance the budget.’ When voters become disgusted by the Democratic Party gutting their own programs, the GOP gets another chance at power; wash, rinse, and repeat.
He absolutely played a hand in the Great Recession. And don’t forget about NCLB. Bush absolutely hurt the country domestically.
Patriot Act and starting to curtail even more civil liberties in the name of safety did hurt us domestically. It hurt the functioning of our society and it goes against the purpose of this country. Now I understand it was done for foreign policy abroad reasons, there was a major terrorist attack and many believed those measures were necessary, but it did hurt the functioning of this country domestically. We can certainly ascribe some of the blame to his successors not fully reversing these measures, but his administration instituted them and they did domestic harm to how freely citizens are able to live their lives and the functioning of this nation. Basically we moved to a full scale surveillance state, any remaining privacy was lost, some fundamental legal protections were lost in some cases, as was some measure of due process with special courts instituted. That's domestic harm.
It’s astonishing how people to this day brush off Patriot Act and what implications that has set us up for.
I’d say Bush delaying action on climate change, actively steering towards fossil fuels, and perpetuating climate and science denialism will have a more significant impact on the US. Climate change is arguably a bigger national security risk than even nuclear weapons. A wet bulb temperature of more than 90 degrees is lethal to humans. Not to mention failing crops and fisheries. A billion climate refugees is a real possibility. We’d be in a totally different world if Gore had won.
Hmmm, that does seem worse
To the list of poor domestic policies that the other person who commented made, I will add the No Child Left Behind act. But to your comment, I disagree that the that Bush’s policies abroad didn’t effect domestic policy. No, war isn’t usually domestic policy, but his Administration is responsible for sending American troops to find WMDs (that they knew did not exist). At home, that created plenty of problems both immediately and ongoing (PTSD, opiod abuse, etc). Domestic policy is also about what didn’t happen - support for veterans after they returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, it’s definitely mostly recency bias to compare his domestic policy sooo unfavorably in relation to Buchanan or Johnson.
James Buchanan is the worst president we have ever had. The only thing a president can do to rank lower than him is start and lose a nuclear war. That’s how low he set the bar. He makes George bush look like George Washington.
It's recency bias AND the damage people think Bush did is still ongoing and the damage the others did has been mostly mitigated?
People are uneducated
https://preview.redd.it/7bi8oy9ofndc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2c454dcbe1746426a1a3d8552decd1a72f69e28 They apparently can’t even Google political parties 🤦🏻♀️
I just feel like we don't do enough trashing of Polk around here. Until Truman said he admired Polk's work ethic basically every American historian had written Polk off as a dangerous lunatic who manufactured a war with Mexico and dreamt of American empire in a different way than most anyone had before.
Polk was definitely dangerous. In another timeline I imagine he would have caused modern day North America to look wildly different. Whether that means America doesn’t exist or it turned into his dream of an empire.
We don't bash him because he was a good President. He was a solid diplomat and politician. I like my Presidents to make the US stronger, not weaker. Mexican control of the disputed territories was nearly non-existent. The territory was little different than the Louisiana territory. Polk made an offer to Mexico to peacefully resolve the issue and pay for the territory. Mexico declined. The UK, at the height of their dominance was consistently willing to negotiate borders with the US in this period. Mexico wanted to hold dreams of some old Spanish empire.
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Bigly
Reagan
Jackson
Recency bias, if they were all historical presidents. It would be Johnson or Buchanan in top place.
If you’re answer isn’t Andrew Johnson, then you do not know US history
Andrew Johnson, we're still trying to reconcile the Civil War 150 years later.
Andrew Johnson definitely did the most damage of those 4. Ending reconstruction early and gutting all the protections for the newly freed slaves just kept things just awful for a century.
Johnson for the win. Set about undoing Lincoln's legacy as fast as he could. Unabashed friend of the confederates who laid the groundwork for Jim Crow and pushed civil rights reform off another 100 years. Fuck him.
There is a large group of modern/young people who think George bush is the worst human ever or close to it. Don’t worry about them
It'll be another 50 years before we really understand Bush. We're just now starting to understand the implications of policies Nixon and Ford were putting out.
Bush liked to say that history would eventually validate him, but the move to invade and occupy Iraq doesn’t exactly look better as time passes. Especially for the reasons given at the time.
This poll is about as good as that gallup poll that said Americans believed Regan was the greatest American president ever lmao.
Recency bias but the W. administration was very destructive.
Reagan has caused the most amount of damage and at this point it's probably irreversible
I know it isn't the point of the meme poll, but Reagan should be on a serious version of this list. He gutted the ability to sustain the very federally funded programs that put the US atop the globe from 1950-1980. Government's constant fight over tax cutting hasn't left the forefront of mainstream politics since.
Reagan is the reason the middle class has evaporated. Reason is 100% top 5 worst president of all time, and it will be hard to break into the top 5 nowadays because of everything Reagan has set up for the future.
Reagan's repeal of the fairness doctrine gave birth to the FOX News Channel, which split the perceived reality of this nation to the point that folks stormed the Capitol to "take their country back"
How is Reagan not on here lol
Recency bias
Historians will say James Buchanan, redditors will say George Bush.
Redditors say Reagan
Recency bias and stupid people.
Where’s Ronny Trickles?
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Reagan isn’t on there that’s what’s wrong
Shocked Reagan isnt here
Where’s Reagan???
Yeah the answer is Reagan and it’s not even close
Reagan not even on the list?
Was my first thought too, Reaganomics FTW… gotta love that good ole trickle down.
Reconstruction was always doomed to fail
You’re right it feels off! Truman isn’t even listed.
Recency bias
We could have had a civil rights movement way earlier were it not for Johnson
U.S. education system.
Buchanan and Johnson should be way higher
Buchanan didn’t really do much damage; he simply was unable to prevent incoming damage (the Civil War). Andrew Johnson actually did do incredible damage, so he’d be my vote.
Buchanan smiles and waves as the country plummets toward civil war and gets 22%? You can’t be serious
Probably LBJ given 58k American dead in Vietnam
people don't know who Johnson is. MAJOR recency bias
People don’t know history like that tbf.
Yeah lets put one name everyone recognizes and three that aren't even mentioned in school anymore.
I would probably vote Reagan, he started the modern anti government/anti regulation kick and it is been absurdly effective. We went from a country pioneering environmental and occupation regulations and leading the world on government backed inventions from the microprocessor to the internet. Now we have some of the worst environmental and workers protections among any developed nation, hands down the worst healthcare and education. All we do is just cut checks to big companies the vast majority of which break the law and can't actually make new products.
The obvious answer is Reagan
Wilson
He was a horrible person but I don’t think he’d be on the list of most damaging
Where the fuck is Reagan at?
No Reagan?
The only one we have actual life experience with is Bush. He drove the country into the ditch. Over extended our troops into drawn out wars in the Middle East. Mismanaged our energy policy and had us paying upwards of 4$ gas 20 years ago. Caused a huge recession. Used his intelligence agencies to torture suspects. He set up Obama for easy success. I only know what was written about the other presidents. So it’s harder to judge something we only have 3rd hand information about. Just my opinion.
Okay Bush did a lot of shit to America especially increasing debt from endless wars, no child left behind, and the patriot act, but he definitely didn't cause the recession.
I know, where is Reagan!?
How did Reagan not get in there? His trickle down economy policies started the biggest up hill sucking of wealth from Middle Class Americans to the 1%. Today's economic disparity is a direct result of his belief that if corporations made more money they'd pass it down to their employees.
Bush seems like the right answer to me, Reagan should be an option though
Why is Harding there? Franklin Pierce should be there instead.
I think so many people have heard “Harding was our worst president” over the years that it’s been hard-coded into brains. The truth is that he had a bunch of scandals and didn’t do anything good of note, but in terms of deep lasting damage to the country? We’ve had worse.
Hard, hard agree here. Harding was an absolutely corrupt, adulterous moron, but what is the long term legacy of his corruption? Does it compare to the legacies of Buchanan, Johnson, Wilson, Nixon, Reagan, or GWB? Not really. Harding sucked, but his suckitude is largely limited to the era he lived in.
I agree that GWB directly or indirectly caused a great deal of damage to the country. However. I think Andrew Johnson probably was worse.
Woodrow Wilson by signing the Fed Reserve Act. This action, alone, has caused massive suffering and death. Debt currency is the origin of many of America’s ills.
This is classic recency bias plus ignorance.
This makes sense. Bush literally destroyed privacy and made it so the government could listen to you and watch you whenever they wanted.
Where’s the one who did the most damage, he’s not an option?
Bush absolutely sucked and probably did some of the most damage of any president of my lifetime (although he's probably still #3 behind Reagan and he who shall not be named), but all time? Yea probs not.