Which US President

Atavachron wrote: I think it's pretty obvious GWB is the most disastrous president we've ever had, at least in the last few generations    ..Ivan I'm curious; is your reference to Kennedy in regard to Viet Nam or the Missile Crisis?

omri wrote: The real problem of the TV era is that you must have a president that looks like a movie star while your last good president was a cripple (thank god there was no TV in the days of world war II).

that's a very good point.  I think that the tie-in between image and the media could be used to explain some of the popularity of...say....Regan and Clinton. 

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: I don't believe Nixon was catasteophic before Watergate.   I believe Kennedy was worst than Nixon.   Iván

Kennedy is well worshipped which is odd considering his foreign policy was one failed experiment after another. And he didn't even finish a full term, so it seems odd people would put him so high on a pedestal.

JFK certainly was a mixed bag as a president.  The Bay of Pigs was a plan his administration inherited.  He could have stopped it, but that would be "being weak on Communism".  He did happen to be the right man for the right time during the Cuban missile crisis.  If things had been escalated the way the US brass wanted to it probably would have resulted in nuclear war.  From what I've read even though he started the intervention in Vietnam, he was about to pull out.  He was a bit of a foot dragger when it came to civil rights and ironically his assassination allowed Johnson ram through civil rights legislation.  That also started the process of the polar shift of southern racist democrats going over the republican party.  Nixon started using the right buzzwords to get them to support his presidency.  It would still take them a while to get over the party of Lincoln to turn republican on a local level.  Regan brought the process along further which finally completed itself under the Clinton administration.

Edited by Slartibartfast - September 26 2008 at 19:00

well that was part of the problem, they had grown from a small information gathering arm of the President to an active, even pro-active agency ..that was not the original intention when the OSS was developed in 1942 though it quickly started backing political aims






 

Edited by Atavachron - September 27 2008 at 03:41

HughesJB4 wrote: NaturalScience wrote: Bush should be remembered as one of the worst, if not the worst leaders. I don't agree with him perhaps as the worst, many famous dictators come to mind as being worse, and I would easily say in the present day, Mugabe is worse. Sheesh Pat, you haven't been gunned down for stating an opinion on Bush, he can't be worse than Mugabe who probably would have had you gunned down by now by one of his goons One of the worst? That's more like it. Hang on, we talking about in terms of the US only?

Of course, read the title of the thread you n00b!

crimhead wrote: So how many here believe that Reagan spent the USSR into bankruptcy or it was the oil market that cause the USSR to go under? I heard recently that the USSR is sitting on a reserve that is bigger than Saudi Arabia but back in the 80's when oil bottomed out it cost the USSR more money per barrel to produce it than it was worth. Now the USSR is oil rich.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: I don't believe Nixon was catasteophic before Watergate.   I believe Kennedy was worst than Nixon.   Iván

Much worse presidents than either of these two. They're policies are just natural outgrowths of policies set into motion by far worse presidents.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: (snip) The people of Cuba: People in that beautifuk country, don't deserve the suffering they had for soi many years, most surely if Fidel had been overthroned long time ago, the situation would be normal for people there.

Great idea, because since WWII the U.S. track record for removing despots (either directly or behind the scenes) and replacing them with great leaders is flawless.  Maybe we could have supplied Cuba with a Noriega, Pinochet or Hussain.