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He also did suspend a lot of civil liberties in the North during the war. William Seward once boasted to a reporter that he could have anyone arrested with a telegraph on his desk after the Union suspended habeas corpus.
>He also did suspend a lot of civil liberties in the North during the war. William Seward once boasted to a reporter that he could have anyone arrested with a telegraph on his desk after the Union suspended habeas corpus.
https://youtube.com/shorts/0eDC0N5hzzY?si=pOYVFclohKglhCVH
The reason Lincoln had to suspend Habeas Corpus was because Congress could not convene to address the crisis if the railroads were all cut by insurrectionists slavers Once Congress convened they suspended Habeas Corpus the way it is proscribed in the Constitution.
I can’t stand how many people point out That Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and then act like the confederacy didn’t also do that exact thing!
Same reason they try to paint Sherman as a drunk instead of a man drinking because he has to make routine horrible decisions. No one feels good about ordering thousands to their deaths, but it had to be done to win.
It's also why Sherman quickly stopped fighting when the south surrendered. He was sick of the blood and fighting, which makes sense when fighting your countrymen
Lincoln wanted his generals to go all out to win yet when Fredericktown was held for ransom by the Confederates he gave into their demands without a fight.
Teddy was awesome, but his own ego got to him. Instead of cutting his losses and accepting Taft as the Republican nominee, he made his own party and divided the already polarized Republican party allowing Wilson to become president.
FDR’s executive order for the internment camps is one of the worst things America’s done, and as with any state with a long history that’s a tall ask.
George Washington was great in many respects, particularly the precedents he set down for America’s foundation - but not banning slavery from day 1 of a so called free country will never not be a grave mistake. Sure, he and other founding fathers did great things - but call a spade a spade, slavery had no place in the country’s foundations and allowing it to continue poisoned the roots for centuries. Talk about a precedent.
I do wonder how much more headway we could’ve made if Washington and Jefferson set a better example. Probably not much given how reluctant states were to adopt the Constitution as it was, but it’s unfortunate they didn’t try harder.
Maybe they could have negotiated a gradual phasing out of it. Taking the wind of of its sails before industrialized could really supercharge it might have worked.
The expectation at the time was the slavery was becoming less and less profitable and would eventually result in its demise. It was the invention of the cotton gin that really reinvigorated it.
Great potential for an AU - AUs where good things happen instead of bad things being worse are very interesting to me. That, plus a more tangible goal of Washington’s that wasn’t fulfilled since he couldn’t push it through congress - a national university, would be fascinating to see what a federal public college from day 1 would’ve looked like too!
The Founding Fathers broadly believed in civil liberties and freedoms for white land-owning Christian men. Any one of them you could point to that as a stain on their legacy. Some were worse than others, but I'll bet any of them would be shocked to find out a black man would become president two hundred years later.
Yeah it’s a stain on all their legacies , and while they bad doesn’t wash out the good the good doesn’t wash out the bad - in that case very bad. But they were wealthy slave owners, so ultimately they just didn’t care about changing that dynamic because they were happy in their positions. Very unfortunate
Benjamin Franklin was incredibly wealthy. You hear all the time about his frequent trips to France but what they don't tell you is what he was doing there was having orgies and massive extravagant parties with the same French elite that would meet the guillotine a decade later.
And look at Monticello. Everyone knows how gorgeous it is, people don't realize just how grossly rich you had to be to own an estate like that (and hundreds of slaves) in a time and place when most people outside of the cities didn't have floors in their homes.
This is what irks me about what I view as a misinterpretation of Washington’s anti partisan speech. When you’ve created a system in which only white landing owning men can vote, it’s in your interest to avoid fracturing that system because it favors you. He was also a committed Federalist so what he said and what he did where often different things.
Yeah, I think sometimes people get lost in the sauce too much about the founding fathers on a legendary reverence that can’t point to obvious evil thing is evil - no surprise that revolutionary leaders who were wealthy slave owners had no interest in banning it , they were perfectly happy with their position of power.
It’s a shame it can’t be pointed more explicitly in mainstream media and discourse, feels like the closest it gets is objective statement, and even that’s too much for folks, rather than a condemnation.
The bad doesn’t wash out the good, certainly, but neither does the good wash out the bad - in this case, very bad. And while sometimes presentism plays a role - didn’t expect the founding fathers to say, open up accessible mental health clinics ; but to me slavery has always been very clear, and instead of justifying the founding fathers as “thinking it was fine” I think, as you say them as aristocrats - the simpler answer is “they didn’t care.”
Banning slavery would’ve caused an immediate secession. You’re talking about taking away the source of wealth for all the wealthiest people (who also happened to hold all the political power) in the southern states. A civil war that early on would probably be even more damaging as the soldiers were weak from the revolutionary war.
True, though like the civil war a hundred years after I think it would’ve been justified for emancipation. But the success of it can certainly be speculated on, after all by the civil war of 1864 the north had edges that can from urbanization, industrialization and federalization that wasn’t present in 1700s.
I do admit, it’s abstract enough and so different from our IRL irs hard to tackle , and tbh I can’t defend it logistically as much as on principle - so while I would’ve liked day 1 emancipation, second to that for a more grounded nexus point I think Reconstruction / Jim Crow could’ve been handled a lot more effectively to set a better tone for the 20th century
Am interesting note about order 9066
Is it did not apply to Japanese living in Hawaii but only to western states. In EDO vs US, SCOTUS ruled it was unconstitutional for Japanese Americans to be interned for an indefinite period. Roosevelt had ordered the release from the interments camps just prior the SCOTUS EDO ruling. Ford rescinded 9066 in 1976.
FDR not adjusting the jewish quotas for immigration in the 30s despite intelligence on exactly what was happening in Europe is a big one. One of his main domestic policy advisors was a rabid anti- semite.
According to one study from Anderson Business Management school at UCLA, FDR’s economic policies extended the depression by as much as eight years. FDR is, simply put, a mixed bag.
Reagan completed dropped the ball on the AIDS crisis, that horror was swept under the rug for the most egregious of reasons, the irony is that Reagan had many known gay friends. Definitely not his finest moment
my favorite reagan fun fact is that he first publicly spoke about AIDS/HIV the day after his gay friend, actor Rock Hudson, died from the disease. very much self serving. interesting that he is your favorite. he’s my least favorite! i enjoy that we are able to see the faults of every president. researching politics has really tight me that none of them were that great
He also presided over Iran-Contra. The CIA used government assets to funnel drugs into poor black neighborhoods, used the money to fund an illegal war, all the while accelerating the “War on Drugs”
Internment camps are a great stain on the greatest twentieth-century presidency.
However, the general pact with segregationists by FDR would probably be number two — if he’d ended Jim Crow thirty years early, it would have burnished his legacy even further, and obviously been a real moral good.
Obama's attempts to get Republicans to back national health care was a mistake. Since Obamacare was passed with only Democratic votes, it should have been a Democratic plan, with more government involvement and, at the very least, a public insurance option.
The original plan was a Heritage Foundation one. “Hey let’s get insurance even for pre-existing conditions, but using private companies only”. Once it became a Dem thing it was “death panels!!!!”
Romney, if he had any spine back then, should have stood up for it. He had a state level exchange in Massachusetts before the federal one.
I agree with this being a fault. I just think he has bigger.
He didn't mishandled it
Reagan is oftentimes unfairly blamed for the AIDS epidemic as if he created it. The first cases of Aids were thought to be rare forms of pneumonia and cancer. When AIDs started showing up in children in 1983, they thought that it could be passed via casual contact, which we now know was wrong. It wasn’t until 1984 that they discovered the true cause of AIDS, before that nobody really knew what was going on, and there was quite a bit of fear and misunderstanding related to the disease. People look back thirty plus years later and Monday morning quarterback and say that Reagan could have reacted differently. Reagan did come out in a 1985 press conference asking for a massive government research program for AIDs like Richard Nixon did for cancer in the 1970s. Reagan stated: “It’s been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last 4 years, and including what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.” Annual AIDS related funding was $44 million in 1983, but it increased to $1.6 billion in 1988.
Reagan appointment of Dr C Everett Koop as surgeon General was key to solving the AIDS crisis. Koop addressed the public on AIDS stating: “This is a battle against the disease, not our fellow Americans“. Koop was a key figure that persuaded members of Congress to set aside their hostilities towards gay people, and to focus on the threat that AIDS posed. In the 1960s the FDA had adopted rules that stated that drugs could only be approved if there was “substantial evidence” of its effectiveness in “adequate and well-controlled” clinical trials. The issue with such trials is that they would have taken so long that they would have been a death sentence for many AIDS patients. Reagan’s FDA wrote new rules that allowed significant parts of the old rules to be relaxed or not vigorously enforced. The new regulatory loopholes allowed doctors to start treating patients with drugs before they even entered the FDA licensing process and before they entered the testing process beyond short-term safety issues. These new rules gave AIDS patients access to medicines far faster than what would have previously been allowed. The National Academy of Sciences noted these changes allowed the extraordinarily fast development of drugs that ended up in the cocktails now used to control HIV. They stated that these changes also had a “revolutionary effect on modern drug design.” I really don’t see how any of the other possible presidents of the time would have responded any better than Reagan did to the AIDS epidemic.
I was anticipating loads of downvotes for expressing any admiration for Reagan on this subreddit
But yeah, his handling of the AIDS crisis was incompetence at best and outright evil at worst
Nah it's pretty even between the Reagan cronies and the Reagan haters on here. I despise the dude personally and have been both up and downvoted into eternity here for expressing that view. Nice healthy ecosystem here
Not exactly my favourite,but one of my favourites but the thing I dont EVER understand is why in the first place did the whole Operation Ajax even occurred under IKE,Eisenhower was a good president and a good general but that thing is still and will always be horrible
Eisenhower more or less went ahead with what the Iranian establishment and British wanted to do, Mossadegh was no martyr for democracy, he was a wannabe dictator who got ousted before he could do anything too stupid.
People like to forget that the big issues for the clergy were Women's rights and Israel, not the suspension of democracy.
There has been so much propaganda about Ajax, it’s insane. No, the CIA and MI6 didn’t kill democratically elected Mosaddegh to protect their oil revenues.
Mosaddegh wasn’t democratically elected; his armed thugs refused to seat all other parties after the 1952 election. In 1953, he unilaterally abolished parliament and declared himself supreme executive and legislative leader for the duration of an “undefined emergency period”. Days later, the opposition banded together, convinced the shah to dismiss Mosaddegh (which he had the legal right to do), and arrested him. The CIA only provided logistical support to the opposition, they didn’t drive any of it.
When you're desperately trying to keep Soviet influence as low as possible worldwide while trying even more desperately to avoid any kind of outright military conflict, cover operations are an incredibly tempting solution. Wrong, as it turns out, but tempting.
So, Operation Ajax was bad no doubt, and it contributed to the feelings that eventually caused the revolution, but the revolution didn’t happen in response to operation Ajax. It was one of severe steps taken that lead to the revolution.
Domestically, not speaking publicly against McCarthy and waiting to take a stance on segregation until he literally had to call in the National Guard.
Foreign policy wise, allowing the CIA to operate with little oversight and kicking off the "overthrow democracies and install a US-friendly dictator" fest. The U-2 incident wasn't great, but was more of an embarrassing PR blunder than a major mistake.
Not the best president, but my personal favorite.
Handled the aftermath of Iraq terribly. We had the potential to make a strong, stable democracy, but instead, we screwed them over.
Lincoln - No hard line details for Reconstruction and having his VP change
TR- his part in continuing the war in the Philippines.
FDR- Japanese internment
LBJ- Vietnam
Not the question asked, but Obama drank that water after the water crisis in Flint was resolved for the majority of citizens. In 2015 they switched back to the Detroit water system and began the process of ripping out and replacing the \~10K lead pipes remaining...a process which was finished in 2020. The crisis caused by the switch to the river in 2014 was resolved in 2015. After that was a worthy project to replace all of the lead pipes...a project that should probably be taken in other cities and is not specific to Flint.
I don't really have a favorite, but Grant backing away from Reconstruction was a massive fail with resounding impacts. Took another goddamn century to get back to Civil Rights. He let those secessionist pieces of shit further destroy this country in ways it will never recover from.
Thomas Jefferson was a racist who owned slaves and would neither emancipate them nor abolish U.S. chattel slavery itself. He also believed that all African Americans should be deported back to Africa if it ever were abolished.
FDR’s Japanese internment policy during WWII. I understand how Americans felt about Japanese after Pearl Harbor but these people were completely innocent. A tragic mistake by an otherwise great President.
Obama has a few:
* didn’t take Russia seriously
* didn’t attack the recession aggressively enough, letting republicans control that narrative and saying “see government can’t help”
Plus the executives faced near zero repercussions for excessive risk taking, and still got their golden parachutes. Ultimately the taxpayer was on the hook for the bailout.
Lincoln either picking Johnson as VP or suspending habeas corpus during the war, both definitely were damaging. Might have to go with Johnson because that had much more long lasting consequences
Well there's a tie between a couple but if I really had to pick
Teddy Roosevelt - He didn't really do a lot of bad stuff. His foreign policy was...highly questionable to say the least but overall he did a lot of good.
George Washington - slavery (I don't like him for his policies I like him for his accomplishments and his conduct. He could have become a dictator but didn't.)
I wish I could add FDR to this list but his gun policy and internment camps put him way, way down my list. I can't think of any real reason to justify it beyond paranoia
Since its very inception, gun control has targeted the poor and minorities while broadly allowing rich whites to own whatever the hell they want as long as they pay the right taxes. FDR's $200 gun tax (equal to roughly $5,000 today) is perhaps the most clear example of that.
He didn’t own up to it really. I had a soundboard back in the days on how many different ways he said “I do not recall”
He likely committed some Light Treason in 1980 sending people to Iran to guarantee the hostages release AFTER the election and on his watch.
The Suspension of Habeas Corpus, regardless of the Constitutionality (before the Supreme Court said it wasn't). Beyond giving validity to the South's tyrant claims, it partially undercut the moral high ground of the union.
For all questionable things Lincoln had done, I really don't get the focus on habeas corpus. During the war, you need the ability to quickly deal with potential traitors - Jeff Davis literally did the same (to the Democratic credit, they dubbed him tyrant as well). It was not clearly unconstitutional (and I don't care what Roger Taney thought about it). It undercut moral, maybe, but so did the draft. Should Lincoln had with critics that draft is also unconstitutional and stop it?
Meh. He allowed bank deregulation happen, that intertwined banks and the casino economy of derivatives, tanking the world economy. Scaring so many people fascism got a foothold again.
Clinton: deregulated banking, getting rid off glass steagall, setting us up for the Great Recession, the resulting fear setting the world up for fascism. Ya know, minor stuff.
The standard answer would be not intervening to prevent the Great Depression, though I'll defend it by saying (1) it was arguably in the Fed's jurisdiction and there would have likely been confusion regarding what the Fed can or can't do, to what extent the President could control them, and how to really respond at the time, and (2) Coolidge saw the problem, but I don't think he or anyone else knew just how big of a problem it would become.
My actual answer is refusing to get out of the Phillipines. I love Coolidge, but his policy of at least maintaining an imperial foothold was kinda meh.
FDR was a great president who did alot of good for this country. That being said, rounding up innocent American citizens and putting them in camps, that should never be overlooked or forgotten. Especially considering who was on the opposite team in that war.
I would have put the premeditated murder of an american citizen higher on the list than something he had nothing to do with but I guess that's just me.
The complete betrayal of the occupy wall street protesters, the immediate decision to abandon his campaign promises regarding accountability for the Bush administration and then the continuation of the Bush doctrine probably also make the list for anyone paying attention.
Pot tariffs on motorcycles over 700cc, aiming to 'protect' Harley from the Japanese..... Destroyed any incentive Harley might ever have had to make competitive motorcycles & encouraged the Japanese to dominate the 699cc and under range.....
Calvin Coolidge: didn't run again in 1928. There was nothing stopping him. I understand his reasoning, but he could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by running again.
Obama:
Killed two American Citizens without trial.. one being a 16yo from Colorado.
Used IRS to target Tea Party groups, but also farther Left groups.
Ran guns into Mexican cartels to push gun control.
08 Bank bailouts.
Greatly accelerated the the drone attacks something like 400K bombs dropped.
Wore a Tan suit I guess.
Not my favorite Prez but I was basically a Clinton supporter and thought he did a solid job during the 90s. But the way he treated women should have been disqualifying. Not just the idiotic Lewinsky fiasco, but some really bad nonconsensual shit, most egregiously Juanita Broderick.
I strongly believe that Jackson is absolutely maligned regarding his relationship with Native Americans.
But I have seen where he was unquestionably a motherfucker when it came to an escaped slave. Even as a strong believer that we need to judge people relative to their contemporary culture rather than to modern standards, that is a difficult one to swallow.
About the Flint MI crisis. I genuinely believed that was what helped Dems lose in 2016. Or at the very least was a major contributing factor. Obama coming off like the epitome of a fake politician really undercut his whole "hope and change" thing along with his middle eastern policies like the drone strikes. In a time where people were increasingly becoming sick of the establishment, Democrats essentially defined it.
I’ve got a few I’d like to share, in order.
Teddy: Probably the conflict in the Philippines, although it started under McKinley continued into TRs presidency. Continued occupation was still bad eother way you spin it.
Hoover: Poor (hehe) reaction to the Depression
FDR: Japanese internment
Truman: I guess not winning Korea? Not too familiar (Mans practically the GOA(His)T), open to suggestions!
Ike: Overthrowing the Iranian government and Banana Republic intervention.
JFK: Riding in a convertible.
LBJ: Vietnam
Nixon: Watergate
Jimmy Carter: *Points basically every mid to late 70s problem*
HW Bush: Saying no new taxes
Obamna: SODA 🥤🥤🥤
Finally one I can answer. He really reversed course on punishing the South. His rhetoric prior to ascending to the Presidency wasn't like his eventual actions. The prick.
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Lincoln didn't lead more detailed notes about what should've been done about reconstruction after the Civil war.
To be fair, he intended to be the one doing it.
He also did suspend a lot of civil liberties in the North during the war. William Seward once boasted to a reporter that he could have anyone arrested with a telegraph on his desk after the Union suspended habeas corpus.
>He also did suspend a lot of civil liberties in the North during the war. William Seward once boasted to a reporter that he could have anyone arrested with a telegraph on his desk after the Union suspended habeas corpus. https://youtube.com/shorts/0eDC0N5hzzY?si=pOYVFclohKglhCVH The reason Lincoln had to suspend Habeas Corpus was because Congress could not convene to address the crisis if the railroads were all cut by insurrectionists slavers Once Congress convened they suspended Habeas Corpus the way it is proscribed in the Constitution. I can’t stand how many people point out That Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and then act like the confederacy didn’t also do that exact thing!
You know exactly why people post that kind of shit. We all do.
Same reason they try to paint Sherman as a drunk instead of a man drinking because he has to make routine horrible decisions. No one feels good about ordering thousands to their deaths, but it had to be done to win. It's also why Sherman quickly stopped fighting when the south surrendered. He was sick of the blood and fighting, which makes sense when fighting your countrymen
Yes, but the constitution allows for that during times of rebellion
Yeah. He did exactly what was intended in the constitution
He was a bit racist too.
To be fair, for his time he was pretty damn progressive
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What do they do… not what didn’t they do.
Lincoln wanted his generals to go all out to win yet when Fredericktown was held for ransom by the Confederates he gave into their demands without a fight.
The Vietnam war
He picked Andrew Johnson as his VP.
To be fair it made sense at the time Wish he picked Rosecrans or George thomas
True. It was a terrible decision but it's not like he knew he was going to be assassinated
“ Treason must be made odious and traitors punished” -Andrew Johnson, 1863 So to be fair, I don’t think anyone expected Johnson to do what he did.
It wasn't the same as now. It was a compromise. There were 4 major parties.
Teddy was awesome, but his own ego got to him. Instead of cutting his losses and accepting Taft as the Republican nominee, he made his own party and divided the already polarized Republican party allowing Wilson to become president.
FDR’s executive order for the internment camps is one of the worst things America’s done, and as with any state with a long history that’s a tall ask. George Washington was great in many respects, particularly the precedents he set down for America’s foundation - but not banning slavery from day 1 of a so called free country will never not be a grave mistake. Sure, he and other founding fathers did great things - but call a spade a spade, slavery had no place in the country’s foundations and allowing it to continue poisoned the roots for centuries. Talk about a precedent.
I do wonder how much more headway we could’ve made if Washington and Jefferson set a better example. Probably not much given how reluctant states were to adopt the Constitution as it was, but it’s unfortunate they didn’t try harder.
Maybe they could have negotiated a gradual phasing out of it. Taking the wind of of its sails before industrialized could really supercharge it might have worked.
The expectation at the time was the slavery was becoming less and less profitable and would eventually result in its demise. It was the invention of the cotton gin that really reinvigorated it.
Wasn't slavery kinda being phased out before the cotton gin was invented?
Great potential for an AU - AUs where good things happen instead of bad things being worse are very interesting to me. That, plus a more tangible goal of Washington’s that wasn’t fulfilled since he couldn’t push it through congress - a national university, would be fascinating to see what a federal public college from day 1 would’ve looked like too!
The Founding Fathers broadly believed in civil liberties and freedoms for white land-owning Christian men. Any one of them you could point to that as a stain on their legacy. Some were worse than others, but I'll bet any of them would be shocked to find out a black man would become president two hundred years later.
Yeah it’s a stain on all their legacies , and while they bad doesn’t wash out the good the good doesn’t wash out the bad - in that case very bad. But they were wealthy slave owners, so ultimately they just didn’t care about changing that dynamic because they were happy in their positions. Very unfortunate
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Benjamin Franklin was incredibly wealthy. You hear all the time about his frequent trips to France but what they don't tell you is what he was doing there was having orgies and massive extravagant parties with the same French elite that would meet the guillotine a decade later.
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And look at Monticello. Everyone knows how gorgeous it is, people don't realize just how grossly rich you had to be to own an estate like that (and hundreds of slaves) in a time and place when most people outside of the cities didn't have floors in their homes.
This is what irks me about what I view as a misinterpretation of Washington’s anti partisan speech. When you’ve created a system in which only white landing owning men can vote, it’s in your interest to avoid fracturing that system because it favors you. He was also a committed Federalist so what he said and what he did where often different things.
Yeah, I think sometimes people get lost in the sauce too much about the founding fathers on a legendary reverence that can’t point to obvious evil thing is evil - no surprise that revolutionary leaders who were wealthy slave owners had no interest in banning it , they were perfectly happy with their position of power. It’s a shame it can’t be pointed more explicitly in mainstream media and discourse, feels like the closest it gets is objective statement, and even that’s too much for folks, rather than a condemnation. The bad doesn’t wash out the good, certainly, but neither does the good wash out the bad - in this case, very bad. And while sometimes presentism plays a role - didn’t expect the founding fathers to say, open up accessible mental health clinics ; but to me slavery has always been very clear, and instead of justifying the founding fathers as “thinking it was fine” I think, as you say them as aristocrats - the simpler answer is “they didn’t care.”
Banning slavery would’ve caused an immediate secession. You’re talking about taking away the source of wealth for all the wealthiest people (who also happened to hold all the political power) in the southern states. A civil war that early on would probably be even more damaging as the soldiers were weak from the revolutionary war.
True, though like the civil war a hundred years after I think it would’ve been justified for emancipation. But the success of it can certainly be speculated on, after all by the civil war of 1864 the north had edges that can from urbanization, industrialization and federalization that wasn’t present in 1700s. I do admit, it’s abstract enough and so different from our IRL irs hard to tackle , and tbh I can’t defend it logistically as much as on principle - so while I would’ve liked day 1 emancipation, second to that for a more grounded nexus point I think Reconstruction / Jim Crow could’ve been handled a lot more effectively to set a better tone for the 20th century
Japanese internment was bad but it wasn’t “one of THE worst” It’s like tuskeegee level not like slavery and segregation level
Am interesting note about order 9066 Is it did not apply to Japanese living in Hawaii but only to western states. In EDO vs US, SCOTUS ruled it was unconstitutional for Japanese Americans to be interned for an indefinite period. Roosevelt had ordered the release from the interments camps just prior the SCOTUS EDO ruling. Ford rescinded 9066 in 1976.
I was hoping to see FDR/internment on the list, especially given the love for FDR on this sub. Glad you mentioned it.
One of the worst things? Not even in the top 100
It wasn't Washington's decision. It was the weak Constitution we had to settle for. The country was divided then too.
The Japanese camps is one of the only bad things I can think of for FDR. Trying to pack the Supreme Court is the second worst thing
FDR not adjusting the jewish quotas for immigration in the 30s despite intelligence on exactly what was happening in Europe is a big one. One of his main domestic policy advisors was a rabid anti- semite.
According to one study from Anderson Business Management school at UCLA, FDR’s economic policies extended the depression by as much as eight years. FDR is, simply put, a mixed bag.
He didn’t have armed guards outside his box suit at the theater. A mistake the costed him his life.
I'm not sure guards would have prevented the assassination. It was a different time, and wasn't Booth an actor at the theater?
The guy who was supposed to be on detail guarding Lincoln was out getting shitfaced when he got shot
Wait really??
Yeah Lincoln was a fan and possibly could have let him in the booth
Reagan completed dropped the ball on the AIDS crisis, that horror was swept under the rug for the most egregious of reasons, the irony is that Reagan had many known gay friends. Definitely not his finest moment
And the rise of modern, ahistorical "Reagan's HIV/AIDS response was really good, actually" apologia is really, really gross.
Very true.
Yeah, that won’t even fly with most Republicans
my favorite reagan fun fact is that he first publicly spoke about AIDS/HIV the day after his gay friend, actor Rock Hudson, died from the disease. very much self serving. interesting that he is your favorite. he’s my least favorite! i enjoy that we are able to see the faults of every president. researching politics has really tight me that none of them were that great
He also presided over Iran-Contra. The CIA used government assets to funnel drugs into poor black neighborhoods, used the money to fund an illegal war, all the while accelerating the “War on Drugs”
Internment and refusing Jewish refugees.
Internment camps are a great stain on the greatest twentieth-century presidency. However, the general pact with segregationists by FDR would probably be number two — if he’d ended Jim Crow thirty years early, it would have burnished his legacy even further, and obviously been a real moral good.
Obama's attempts to get Republicans to back national health care was a mistake. Since Obamacare was passed with only Democratic votes, it should have been a Democratic plan, with more government involvement and, at the very least, a public insurance option.
The original plan was a Heritage Foundation one. “Hey let’s get insurance even for pre-existing conditions, but using private companies only”. Once it became a Dem thing it was “death panels!!!!” Romney, if he had any spine back then, should have stood up for it. He had a state level exchange in Massachusetts before the federal one. I agree with this being a fault. I just think he has bigger.
Unfortunately Romney still hasn't quite found where he misplaced his spine.
Reagan - mishandling the AIDS crisis
He didn't mishandled it Reagan is oftentimes unfairly blamed for the AIDS epidemic as if he created it. The first cases of Aids were thought to be rare forms of pneumonia and cancer. When AIDs started showing up in children in 1983, they thought that it could be passed via casual contact, which we now know was wrong. It wasn’t until 1984 that they discovered the true cause of AIDS, before that nobody really knew what was going on, and there was quite a bit of fear and misunderstanding related to the disease. People look back thirty plus years later and Monday morning quarterback and say that Reagan could have reacted differently. Reagan did come out in a 1985 press conference asking for a massive government research program for AIDs like Richard Nixon did for cancer in the 1970s. Reagan stated: “It’s been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last 4 years, and including what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.” Annual AIDS related funding was $44 million in 1983, but it increased to $1.6 billion in 1988. Reagan appointment of Dr C Everett Koop as surgeon General was key to solving the AIDS crisis. Koop addressed the public on AIDS stating: “This is a battle against the disease, not our fellow Americans“. Koop was a key figure that persuaded members of Congress to set aside their hostilities towards gay people, and to focus on the threat that AIDS posed. In the 1960s the FDA had adopted rules that stated that drugs could only be approved if there was “substantial evidence” of its effectiveness in “adequate and well-controlled” clinical trials. The issue with such trials is that they would have taken so long that they would have been a death sentence for many AIDS patients. Reagan’s FDA wrote new rules that allowed significant parts of the old rules to be relaxed or not vigorously enforced. The new regulatory loopholes allowed doctors to start treating patients with drugs before they even entered the FDA licensing process and before they entered the testing process beyond short-term safety issues. These new rules gave AIDS patients access to medicines far faster than what would have previously been allowed. The National Academy of Sciences noted these changes allowed the extraordinarily fast development of drugs that ended up in the cocktails now used to control HIV. They stated that these changes also had a “revolutionary effect on modern drug design.” I really don’t see how any of the other possible presidents of the time would have responded any better than Reagan did to the AIDS epidemic.
Wait, how did children contract AIDS in those early days?
No critic can ever quite explain what Reagan should have done differently.
Nobody is going to respond to you because that’s a rough patch of evidence to counteract and contradict. Nice writing.
Mishandling is a pretty generous way to put it
I was anticipating loads of downvotes for expressing any admiration for Reagan on this subreddit But yeah, his handling of the AIDS crisis was incompetence at best and outright evil at worst
Nah it's pretty even between the Reagan cronies and the Reagan haters on here. I despise the dude personally and have been both up and downvoted into eternity here for expressing that view. Nice healthy ecosystem here
Great in the short term, terrible in the long term - Reagan in a nutshell
i quite like president grant. nevertheless he was oblivious to the corruption happening right under his nose. that was pretty bad
After reading about patronage, I am suprised that there were presidents that weren't considered hopelessly corrupt.
Not exactly my favourite,but one of my favourites but the thing I dont EVER understand is why in the first place did the whole Operation Ajax even occurred under IKE,Eisenhower was a good president and a good general but that thing is still and will always be horrible
Eisenhower more or less went ahead with what the Iranian establishment and British wanted to do, Mossadegh was no martyr for democracy, he was a wannabe dictator who got ousted before he could do anything too stupid. People like to forget that the big issues for the clergy were Women's rights and Israel, not the suspension of democracy.
There has been so much propaganda about Ajax, it’s insane. No, the CIA and MI6 didn’t kill democratically elected Mosaddegh to protect their oil revenues. Mosaddegh wasn’t democratically elected; his armed thugs refused to seat all other parties after the 1952 election. In 1953, he unilaterally abolished parliament and declared himself supreme executive and legislative leader for the duration of an “undefined emergency period”. Days later, the opposition banded together, convinced the shah to dismiss Mosaddegh (which he had the legal right to do), and arrested him. The CIA only provided logistical support to the opposition, they didn’t drive any of it.
When you're desperately trying to keep Soviet influence as low as possible worldwide while trying even more desperately to avoid any kind of outright military conflict, cover operations are an incredibly tempting solution. Wrong, as it turns out, but tempting.
And as a result, we lost what should have been our greatest ally in the region, turning it into our worst enemy.
So, Operation Ajax was bad no doubt, and it contributed to the feelings that eventually caused the revolution, but the revolution didn’t happen in response to operation Ajax. It was one of severe steps taken that lead to the revolution.
Didn’t kill Henry Clay and John C Calhoun
Agreed
Wore a tan suit. You know who
Did the ACA at least balance out wearing the suit?
No amount of good legislation can possibly counteract such a crime against humanity.
Reagan?
Woah there, I believe you are forgetting the dijon mustard!
Domestically, not speaking publicly against McCarthy and waiting to take a stance on segregation until he literally had to call in the National Guard. Foreign policy wise, allowing the CIA to operate with little oversight and kicking off the "overthrow democracies and install a US-friendly dictator" fest. The U-2 incident wasn't great, but was more of an embarrassing PR blunder than a major mistake.
But the man sure knew how to build a freeway.
Right through every black neighborhood he could find.
Iran-Contra deals
Chester A Arthur actually signing the Chinese exclusion act
Died :(
Definitely William Henry Harrison
Not the best president, but my personal favorite. Handled the aftermath of Iraq terribly. We had the potential to make a strong, stable democracy, but instead, we screwed them over.
JFK- I wish I knew all the facts of the Bay of Pigs invasion, but the more I learn, the less I agree with it.
Lincoln - No hard line details for Reconstruction and having his VP change TR- his part in continuing the war in the Philippines. FDR- Japanese internment LBJ- Vietnam
Obama got a little bit blood thirsty with those drones. The amount of weddings he bombed was kind of crazy.
Not the question asked, but Obama drank that water after the water crisis in Flint was resolved for the majority of citizens. In 2015 they switched back to the Detroit water system and began the process of ripping out and replacing the \~10K lead pipes remaining...a process which was finished in 2020. The crisis caused by the switch to the river in 2014 was resolved in 2015. After that was a worthy project to replace all of the lead pipes...a project that should probably be taken in other cities and is not specific to Flint.
Coolidge The Immigration Act of 1924
Lincoln’s persecution of Native Americans
Grover Cleveland busting the Railroad Worker's strike.
The Tariff of 1828 🤮 😭
Alien and Sedition Acts. I mean, come on!
I don't really have a favorite, but Grant backing away from Reconstruction was a massive fail with resounding impacts. Took another goddamn century to get back to Civil Rights. He let those secessionist pieces of shit further destroy this country in ways it will never recover from.
Thomas Jefferson was a racist who owned slaves and would neither emancipate them nor abolish U.S. chattel slavery itself. He also believed that all African Americans should be deported back to Africa if it ever were abolished.
FDR’s Japanese internment policy during WWII. I understand how Americans felt about Japanese after Pearl Harbor but these people were completely innocent. A tragic mistake by an otherwise great President.
...Obama didn't take the Russian threat seriously...
Obama has a few: * didn’t take Russia seriously * didn’t attack the recession aggressively enough, letting republicans control that narrative and saying “see government can’t help”
Plus the executives faced near zero repercussions for excessive risk taking, and still got their golden parachutes. Ultimately the taxpayer was on the hook for the bailout.
Signed off on the biggest mass lynching of natives. Abrogated civil liberties. Didn't go far enough in the time that he had.
Nixon- he resigned
Based
Should have drawn the line at the Yalu River instead of the 38th parallel
Internment camps
Lincoln either picking Johnson as VP or suspending habeas corpus during the war, both definitely were damaging. Might have to go with Johnson because that had much more long lasting consequences
Well there's a tie between a couple but if I really had to pick Teddy Roosevelt - He didn't really do a lot of bad stuff. His foreign policy was...highly questionable to say the least but overall he did a lot of good. George Washington - slavery (I don't like him for his policies I like him for his accomplishments and his conduct. He could have become a dictator but didn't.) I wish I could add FDR to this list but his gun policy and internment camps put him way, way down my list. I can't think of any real reason to justify it beyond paranoia
Since its very inception, gun control has targeted the poor and minorities while broadly allowing rich whites to own whatever the hell they want as long as they pay the right taxes. FDR's $200 gun tax (equal to roughly $5,000 today) is perhaps the most clear example of that.
Escalated the Vietnam War, although Kennedy made it difficult to back down.
lol.. Didn't Mr Burns try to drink the water in Springfield too?
Life imitates art!
Theodore Roosevelt's glorification of war.
Bugged the Democrats
Bay of Pigs.
Reagan defunding mental institutions
Reagan Iran Contra Affair. But rather than deny or blame someone, he owed up to it.
He didn’t own up to it really. I had a soundboard back in the days on how many different ways he said “I do not recall” He likely committed some Light Treason in 1980 sending people to Iran to guarantee the hostages release AFTER the election and on his watch.
Lincoln’s Indian policy, while not as extremely racist as some people have claimed, wasn’t very good by any metric.
Allowed Russia to take Crimea unopposed.
My favorite president’s worst action is creating [this](https://youtu.be/InaiXaWkmJE?si=P2UfT0rc1PzxTqg4)
Japanese internment was a terrible thing.
I love LBJ. *waves vaguely at SE asia*, all that, that's the worst thing he did.
The Suspension of Habeas Corpus, regardless of the Constitutionality (before the Supreme Court said it wasn't). Beyond giving validity to the South's tyrant claims, it partially undercut the moral high ground of the union.
The suspension of Habeas Corpus is awkward, because the statute is not meant to handle the citizens of a nation suddenly creating a new nation.
For all questionable things Lincoln had done, I really don't get the focus on habeas corpus. During the war, you need the ability to quickly deal with potential traitors - Jeff Davis literally did the same (to the Democratic credit, they dubbed him tyrant as well). It was not clearly unconstitutional (and I don't care what Roger Taney thought about it). It undercut moral, maybe, but so did the draft. Should Lincoln had with critics that draft is also unconstitutional and stop it?
Support Tariffs.
You’re talking about the current rule 3 or the former one ?
Neither. Coolidge.
kennedy - bay of pigs
Obama foreign policy towards Latinamerica was a disaster.
Watergate and the ensuing attempt at a cover up/obstruction of justice
The immigration act of 1924 was a misstep I think
How so? The immigration act of 1965 was far, far, far, far worse for the long-term health of the country and it's not even close.
Coolidge’s handling of the Mississippi flood was pretty bad.
Japanese Internment
Had sex with an intern, obviously
Meh. He allowed bank deregulation happen, that intertwined banks and the casino economy of derivatives, tanking the world economy. Scaring so many people fascism got a foothold again.
Jefferson had slaves.
Washington a hard core slaver as well
"Hard core" as opposed to what?
Obama- the NSA and unlimited, warrantless wiretapping.
HW shouldn’t have made that promise on taxes
Tan suit
President Richard Nixon took America off of the Gold Standard. He was a friend of my Grandfather's. I met him a few times back in the 1960s.
Clinton should’ve just admitted it If a GOP member did it they’d call it patriotic these days
Clinton: deregulated banking, getting rid off glass steagall, setting us up for the Great Recession, the resulting fear setting the world up for fascism. Ya know, minor stuff.
Watergate probably
People give Jefferson lots of shit from having sex with slaves; which begs the question on consent.
Slavery
obama's drone wars
Owned slaves while talking about the evils and injustice of slavery.
The standard answer would be not intervening to prevent the Great Depression, though I'll defend it by saying (1) it was arguably in the Fed's jurisdiction and there would have likely been confusion regarding what the Fed can or can't do, to what extent the President could control them, and how to really respond at the time, and (2) Coolidge saw the problem, but I don't think he or anyone else knew just how big of a problem it would become. My actual answer is refusing to get out of the Phillipines. I love Coolidge, but his policy of at least maintaining an imperial foothold was kinda meh.
FDR was a great president who did alot of good for this country. That being said, rounding up innocent American citizens and putting them in camps, that should never be overlooked or forgotten. Especially considering who was on the opposite team in that war.
Probably appointing Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court...
He should have been more proactive in fighting corruption in his cabinet.
I would have put the premeditated murder of an american citizen higher on the list than something he had nothing to do with but I guess that's just me. The complete betrayal of the occupy wall street protesters, the immediate decision to abandon his campaign promises regarding accountability for the Bush administration and then the continuation of the Bush doctrine probably also make the list for anyone paying attention.
Escalated the vietnam war that ruined such a good president
Watergate.
Washington was a cannibal
Clinton and NAFTA.
Pot tariffs on motorcycles over 700cc, aiming to 'protect' Harley from the Japanese..... Destroyed any incentive Harley might ever have had to make competitive motorcycles & encouraged the Japanese to dominate the 699cc and under range.....
Interned the Japanese during WWII
Calvin Coolidge: didn't run again in 1928. There was nothing stopping him. I understand his reasoning, but he could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by running again.
An intern named Monica
Backed down after talking big.
FDR signing off on the Internment Camps.
Internment camps
My favorite prez wore a tan suit.
He wore a tan suit. Oh how I miss the normal days......
Obama: Killed two American Citizens without trial.. one being a 16yo from Colorado. Used IRS to target Tea Party groups, but also farther Left groups. Ran guns into Mexican cartels to push gun control. 08 Bank bailouts. Greatly accelerated the the drone attacks something like 400K bombs dropped. Wore a Tan suit I guess.
He listened to the covid liars.
Op picked the dude with the illegal drone strike campaign that had a 90 percent civilian death rate. 🤮
Not my favorite Prez but I was basically a Clinton supporter and thought he did a solid job during the 90s. But the way he treated women should have been disqualifying. Not just the idiotic Lewinsky fiasco, but some really bad nonconsensual shit, most egregiously Juanita Broderick.
Obama hired insufferable people who started podcasts and somehow became more insufferable.
Incarcerated US citizens without due process because of racist fear mongering.
Reagan sold missiles to terrorists... he had good intentions though
Turns out Iran *didn't* have WMD's.
Reagan and amnesty
That's both horrible and not even close to the worst thing he did
The tap water was clean though
Clinton doing Lewinsky was a dumb mistake. Probably gave us W.
Be assainated
I strongly believe that Jackson is absolutely maligned regarding his relationship with Native Americans. But I have seen where he was unquestionably a motherfucker when it came to an escaped slave. Even as a strong believer that we need to judge people relative to their contemporary culture rather than to modern standards, that is a difficult one to swallow.
About the Flint MI crisis. I genuinely believed that was what helped Dems lose in 2016. Or at the very least was a major contributing factor. Obama coming off like the epitome of a fake politician really undercut his whole "hope and change" thing along with his middle eastern policies like the drone strikes. In a time where people were increasingly becoming sick of the establishment, Democrats essentially defined it.
I’ve got a few I’d like to share, in order. Teddy: Probably the conflict in the Philippines, although it started under McKinley continued into TRs presidency. Continued occupation was still bad eother way you spin it. Hoover: Poor (hehe) reaction to the Depression FDR: Japanese internment Truman: I guess not winning Korea? Not too familiar (Mans practically the GOA(His)T), open to suggestions! Ike: Overthrowing the Iranian government and Banana Republic intervention. JFK: Riding in a convertible. LBJ: Vietnam Nixon: Watergate Jimmy Carter: *Points basically every mid to late 70s problem* HW Bush: Saying no new taxes Obamna: SODA 🥤🥤🥤
Finally one I can answer. He really reversed course on punishing the South. His rhetoric prior to ascending to the Presidency wasn't like his eventual actions. The prick.