Worst presidential legacy

[Bossy Monkey]

Poll question: Worst presidential legacy

The suspense isn't noticeably killing me...

[ogneopasno]

1. Reagan made all the rest of it possible, so I chose him.

Edited because I had originally put "voted for," and I threw up a little.

[onehandle]

2. With that logic, you should have voted for Nixon.

He is the true father of the modern GOP.

But I think the poll was about the individual President.

Bush, hands down.

[Warpy]

12. Same here. Stupid wouldn't be nearly as bad

had not Reagan, his father, and to a lesser extent Clinton all laid the groundwork for him.

He's the culmination of 40 years of conservative rule by GOPs and southern Democrats, capped off by 28 years of fiscal insanity from the far right.

You can't declare economic war on your own citizens for long before you destroy the economy completely, something every king with a thirst for empire and peasants to starve for the funding has found out to his horror.

[tosh]

3. No contest.

[baldguy]

4. Bush is the culmination of Reagan's legacy.

Do you condemn the one who set us on the path to destruction? Or the one in charge when the crash occurred?

[stillcool]

6. but Bush is the culmination..

of all that went before. He had all the support he needed for doing any damn thing he wanted, and those ties have roots that go way, way back. But he is the face of the last 8 years, regardless of the well-connected families and friends that propped him up.

[stillcool]

5. without a doubt ..George W. Bush

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. None of those other guys screwed multiple pooches. n/t

[NoPasaran]

8. I've gotta go with Buchanan

After all, his term saw ongoing guerrilla warfare in Kansas, the ruling (in Dred Scott) that only whites were US citizens and a full scale economic collapse, the Panic of 1857. And as he left office, seven states has seceded from the Union, formed their own confederacy, seized federal properties and were raising an army. The stage was set for civil war, which would be this nation's bloodiest conflict.

Yes, Bush has fucked things up royally, but I think the state of affairs that Obama inherits is a bit better than that of 1861.

[PFunk]

9. I agree for many of the same reasons

Though Bush is now a close second who like Buchanan has left the US a now much divided country

[ShadowLiberal]

13. I agree, and you forgot to list some of Buchanan's other failures

Among the things you didn't mention he failed miserably with.

-Insisted that succeeding from the union was unconstitutional, but that the federal government couldn't do anything about the southern states succeeding from the union because that's unconstitutional to.

-Sat back and did nothing while southern states raided Union armories where they stored a bunch of weapons, an action many consider treasonous.

-Tried, and failed, to offer more compromises to the south to get them to stay into the union, failing to realize that once the south had succeeded they couldn't just willingly rejoin the union again just like that, as no one would take them seriously anymore when they threatened succession.

-The south was talking about succeeding from the union if Lincoln was elected, Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot on a lot of southern states. With all of that talk of succession even before the election don't you think that a competent president would have prepared for what to do when the election results were in, possibly showing a Lincoln victory that the south dreaded, or even taken some preemptive actions against the confederacy by transferring weapons in union armories located in the south up north, where the south couldn't reach them?

[dysfunctional press]

10. reagan, of course- with bill clinton a VERY close second.

dumbya doesn't even have a legacy yet.

[Jack Rabbit]

11. I guess a good argument could be made for Buchanan

But let's see -- the 9/11 attacks after clear warnings were ignored; invading Iraq without cause or justification (just a pack of lies); gross violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Bill of Rights; the slow and inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina; the politicization of the Justice Department, to include the bogus prosecution of Don Siegelman and others; and the financial meltdown including the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

And all Buchanan left us was an embryonic civil war. Fortunately, he was followed by a great president who succeeded in holding the nation together.

True, Buchanan's legacy tore the country apart. However, even the freepers should wish Obama success, because if he fails in cleaning up the mess Bush has left us, the United States could be going the way of the Soviet Union. That is not an exaggeration.

[Jakes Progress]

14. Some were venal or stupid

and some, like Reagan, may have tried to ruin the country. But no one has ever presided over the harm and deterioration of our nation more than the moron, bush, the willing puppet for the neocon coup.