The worst president?

Status
Not open for further replies.

rockin'robin

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2007
Messages
24,433
Reaction score
544
Wow. A reputable poll shows that the public believes Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II. Worse than Richard M. Nixon, driven from the presidency by Watergate? Much. Worse than Jimmy Carter, for decades the very symbol of the feckless chief executive? Loads. Worse than George W. Bush, still a lightning rod on the left and a symbol of disappointment on the right? Definitely.

These startling poll results set loose the predictable reaction: A flurry of told-you-so nods on the right and a fusillade of this-tells-us-nothing assertions on the left. For once, they're both right.


Related Stories

U.S. poll: more voters see Obama as worst president in modern times Reuters
Confidence in the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court all plummets Christian Science Monitor
Obama's Terrible Approval Numbers Are Terrible The Atlantic Wire
Obama is the worst president in 70 years, says America The Week (RSS)
Obama Worst President Since World War II: Poll The Fiscal Times

Obama is in trouble, no matter how carefully you peel through the Quinnipiac University poll that is causing such a firestorm. There's almost no good news there, or anywhere else, for the president. Then again, this worst-president poll sheds little light. Almost every veteran observer of polls and presidents will likely attest to that.

First, the trouble.

Obama has it, in several dimensions. The public is split evenly -- 48 percent to 48 percent -- on whether the president is honest and trustworthy. It's split fairly evenly on whether he has strong leadership qualities, with a slight advantage to those who think he doesn't. The same for whether the president cares about "people like you," with the same slight advantage this time to the president.

Here's the big one. By a fairly substantial margin (45 percent to 38 percent), the public believes the nation would be better off had former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts been elected two years ago rather than Obama.

No one can possibly argue that these figures are good news for the president, who is dealing with an immigration crisis at the Mexican border, a crumbling Iraq, an uncertain Afghanistan and an economy that hasn't bounced back fully. How Barack Obama, employing the idiom of hope and change, would love to run against an incumbent president with a portfolio like that!

Now, the sobering bucket of cold water for the Obama critics.

With the exception of three occupants of the White House (all war presidents), presidents tend to grow in stature as their administrations grow more distant in the rear-view mirror. The exceptions, according to Gallup figures in The New Republic, are three of the most beleaguered modern presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson (Vietnam), Richard M. Nixon (Vietnam) and George W. Bush (Iraq and Afghanistan).

Foreign crisis doesn't assure that phenomenon, however. Jimmy Carter is rated substantially more favorably today than he was when he was in office, and he dealt with a hostage crisis in Iran that persisted for 444 days and, arguably, doomed his presidency. George H.W. Bush is also more favorably regarded today than he was while in office, and he was a war president (Desert Storm).

The canary of caution in this political coal mine is the poll rating for Harry Truman, who left office with a 32 percent approval rating -- and a 56 percent disapproval rating, according to Gallup. That represented, by the way, a substantial improvement from his ratings (23 percent approval, 67 percent disapproval) a year earlier, just before Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee upset Truman in the New Hampshire primary and prompted the president's withdrawal from the 1952 race.

But the country, which was, as the phrase went, mild about Harry and had concluded, as another aphorism of the time put it, that to err was Truman, changed its mind, albeit slowly.

One of the signposts along that journey was Merle Miller's "Plain Speaking," an oral biography of the 33rd president that emphasized his down-home attitudes and attributes, a marked contrast at the time of its publication (1974) with Nixon, who resigned that year. Indeed, it is instructive to realize that "Plain Speaking" reached booksellers' shelves just a year after Arthur M. Schlesinger published his "The Imperial Presidency," aimed in large measure at Nixon.

Truman's revival was sealed less than two decades later when the historian David McCullough published his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the man whose hometown of Independence seemed to be a description of his character. Suddenly Truman, regarded as an accidental president who was also accident-prone, took on a heroic aura, one that persists to this day.

In the Quinnipiac survey, zero percent of Americans singled out Truman as the worst of the last dozen presidents. That figure applies to Republicans as well as Democrats.

Now have a look at George H.W. Bush, who was soundly defeated for re-election only 22 years ago, dismissed as a fusty symbol of the past and considered out of touch with the public, a hopeless elitist with an awkward bedside manner. This summer, Bush, at 90 a beloved figure and an unassailable symbol of American prudence, wisdom and grace, was considered the worst president by only 2 percent.

The same phenomenon applies to the man who defeated him in 1992, Bill Clinton, who left office with unusually high ratings for a president who had been impeached. Eight years ago, 16 percent of those surveyed considered him the worst president. This summer, only 3 percent do.

One final example: Dwight Eisenhower, regarded as a duffer at his departure from the White House, so much so that John F. Kennedy, who tried to make vigor a qualification for leadership, used Eisenhower as a foil. Today, only 1 percent of Americans surveyed consider Eisenhower the worst president. The revival of his reputation was begun by Fred I. Greenstein's "The Hidden-Hand Presidency" -- and by the realization that, aside from wrapping up the Korean War, which he inherited, he sent few Americans into combat during his two terms in office.

The message here is not that Obama isn't troubled as he rounds the clubhouse curve and heads toward his seventh year in office. It is that Americans' judgments aren't final.

"I knew from the bitter experience of all public men from Washington on down, that democracies are fickle and heartless, for democracy is a harsh employer," said the 31st president after he was defeated for re-election. Herbert Hoover, who lost the 1932 presidential race to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is still waiting for redemption. But most of his successors have won it. So, too, might George W. Bush and Barack Obama -- both hired twice by the country's harshest employers.
THE WORST PRESIDENT?
 
My vote is for Jimmy Carter. No president can do anything if he doesn't have a congress that he can work with and the republicans are paying the democrats back for how they didn't work with George Bush and no matter who gets voted in as president in a couple of years we are in for more of the same. The only way to end it and get a government that works is to send all the members of congress home and put new members in their office that want to work for the people.
 
My vote is for Jimmy Carter. No president can do anything if he doesn't have a congress that he can work with and the republicans are paying the democrats back for how they didn't work with George Bush and no matter who gets voted in as president in a couple of years we are in for more of the same. The only way to end it and get a government that works is to send all the members of congress home and put new members in their office that want to work for the people.

I am sick of both parties pointing fingers at one another and blaming one another for things . They all needs to shut up and try to work together for the better of the country.
 
10500401_1477718705801035_7413302416701294051_n.jpg
 
And if commit a crime and go to jail you get free health insurance .
 
And if commit a crime and go to jail you get free health insurance .
True because of human rights. We are not allowed to leave them to rot to death. That's America. I don't know about other countries.
 
And if commit a crime and go to jail you get free health insurance .

I heard about medical care in jail/prison are piece of shit, even in some cases, you won't receive medical treatment at all.
 
True because of human rights. We are not allowed to leave them to rot to death. That's America. I don't know about other countries.

That's standard for all developed countries, like US, Canada and Europe.
 
what she do to end up in prison
According to the link:

. . . The former intelligence analyst was sentenced in August for six Espionage Act violations and 14 other offenses for giving WikiLeaks more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents, along with battlefield video, while working in Iraq in 2009 and 2010….

In other words, spying and aiding the enemy in time of war.
 
Oh wow, that's surprise because of law.

I'm more loathe to murderers and rapists than anyone commit spy or leak the classified documents for foreign government or other media.
The leak of classified documents to the enemy during war can have much more devastating and deadly consequences than what individual murderers and rapists can do. It's an extremely serious crime, and military people know that.
 
The leak of classified documents to the enemy during war can have much more devastating and deadly consequences than what individual murderers and rapists can do. It's an extremely serious crime, and military people know that.

Oh really, any example about devastating and deadly consequences? like repeat of mistake from Vietnam War that we failed to protect South Vietnam from take away from communist guerrillas?
 
Oh really, any example about devastating and deadly consequences? like repeat of mistake from Vietnam War that we failed to protect South Vietnam from take away from communist guerrillas?
I don't want to go off topic here but in general, sharing classified info with the enemy during wartime can cause the deaths of many people and/or the destruction of much property. For example, it could aid the enemy in attacking a military facility or ship, or reveal the identities of undercover teams, which would result in their deaths.
 
I don't want to go off topic here but in general, sharing classified info with the enemy during wartime can cause the deaths of many people and/or the destruction of much property. For example, it could aid the enemy in attacking a military facility or ship, or reveal the identities of undercover teams, which would result in their deaths.

You can explain to me via PM.

I understand about what you means now.
 
I heard about medical care in jail/prison are piece of shit, even in some cases, you won't receive medical treatment at all.

Not in California, prisoners get top tier health care. We've had former convicts commit a crime so they could go back to prison because they needed health care.
 
I am sick of both parties pointing fingers at one another and blaming one another for things . They all needs to shut up and try to work together for the better of the country.

I agree with you and the only way we will get a congress that works is to vote these idiots out and start over.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top