well, of course i have two obvious responses to that: 1. i dont equate polls with reality. 2. that poll will be necessarily skewed to the present. nobody knows anything about the old presidents. hell, i took a course in college on the american presidency, memorized all of them in order, and learned what all of hem did, and i still cant really remember a damn thing about william mckinley. for all i know, he could have been spectacular or terrible. only a really fantastic historian really knows enough to comment. certainly regular peeps dont know enough for anyone to draw conclusions about their opinion. in school i was always told that andrew johnson was the worst, corrupt and incomptent and awful, but i still feel sort of at the mercy of historians making judgements i might not agree with. presidents are hard to judge against each other because there are so few during our lifetimes and the things that make them good and bad are so complicated.
Sure, any such comparison is skewed by the time and the criteria. Worse, some presidents are both good and bad depending on the criteria. Clinton and Nixon were both brilliant individuals but woefully lacking moral character. Nixon was worse because his moral failings led him to get involved in national political shenanigans, while Clinton's were about getting himself laid.
during his presidency, reagan was considered to be one of the worst as well, wasn't he? imho, he was one of the very best!!
My list... LBJ # 1 for the war effort in Vietnam along with his great society of spending. Jimmy Carter # 2 it was a disgrace the way he served being president. Mainly the US hostages were held for about a year and it took RWR to get the hostages released. His attitude was that he was scared he would get the Iranians mad at us and they would do something else to harm us and he wanted to be friends with everyone in the world including enemies. This is why Democrats can't defend America, Bill Clinton included. Today Carter acts like he knows everything but when he was president he knew nothing. Bill Clinton is # 3 for not defending America, to busy in the bedroom plus he lied, then tried to revise history with Sandy Burger stealing documents. Just as guilty as Nixon in my view for scandal and cover ups. George Bush would probably be in the top 20 for me. I like him and am glad for the response in Afghanistan but I don't think we did enough, invade Pakistan for instance. Iran ok but we should've done a better job once we won the war. Also George Bush is no fiscal conservative, according to the Cato institute he has spent more money than LBJ. You might say that is because of the war on terror but that doesn't include the defense budget. The house and senate are the Republicans to lose and they just might lose it. http://www.nrbookservice.com/produc...lib.org/archives/2006/08/the_libertarian.html http://www.catostore.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&pid=1441325
How did Clinton not defend America? He maintained a no-fly zone over Iraq for eight years, ruining their air defense. He bombed them twice for trying to assasinate Bush I and violating UN inspections. He bombed Al Qaida twice in Afghanistan trying to kill bin Ladin years before 9/11. He foiled the Millenium bombings. He won the war with Serbia without a single US casualty and sent Milosovich to war crimes trials. He took over the war in Bosnia from the bumbling Europeans and got it stopped. He backed the North Koreans down and got them to sign a nuclear agreement that they violated under Bush. He did NOT expose our military weaknesses by getting us mired in another unwinnable Vietnam-like guerrilla war in Asia.
True, he didn't expose our military weaknesses......mainly by doing nothing at all in response to multiple terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of Americans.
Let me re-phrase this then... He was timid at best when dealing with terrorism according to the 9/11 commission and he certainly didn't do enough in my view. Lobbing a few bombs, I know one of those was for show only from what I understand. The Millenium bombing foiled, we were lucky, plain and simple. Bill Clinton could've gotten OBL if he wanted too, most people understand this now. He did win the war in Serbia without a casualty, give credit where its due, May never happen again. I say this was the exception to the rule and not the rule, military claims you have to have boots on the ground. I still don't like smart weapons, mistake, allows the enemy to live and eat normally thus doesn't hurt their morale. You can't win the war on terror by legal action nor can you win it by hitting a few buildings here and there. In my view 9/11 could've been avoided if Clinton would've gotten OBL when he had at least 2 chances, this is my opinion and I understand the WTC could've been attacked regardless but I bet it wouldn't have happened. OBL was wanted in this country because of the 1993 WTC attacks and Clinton chose to ignore several occasions to get him. In my view Clinton didn't do enough and neither has Bush. Should've cleaned up Pakistan although I believe Al Quada would've then crossed into Iran if they aren't there already. Bush, you can't have a war on terror without going after Iran, Syria and at least policing the borders of the USA. I realize we can't do this all at once but there is no way we should've let insurgents fight us in Iraq coming from Syria and Iran, that isn't fair to us or the Iraqi people, should've policed the borders of Iraq. BTW Clinton did expose our military weakness in Somalia, that is part of OBL reason for attacking us. Because he believed we were a paper tiger.
