Worst leaders of your country

[sb666]

Who do you think were the worst leaders of the country you are from or live in currently.
My list in no particular order is
Robert Menzies For spending his entire time as PM in England trying to be Churchills right hand man during World War 2 rather then protecting the country, introducing conscription.
Malcolm Fraser For his involvement in the Whitlam dismissal.
John Howard Workchoices, privatised Telstra and he introduced a GST
William McMahon support of conscription.
Tony Abott He is not PM yet but unfortunately he is very close to being there.

 

[mParadox]

Ladies and gents, I present to you, General Zia ul Haq.

Spoiler: GET HIM.

Why do I hate him? In fact, why does the entire nation hate him? Well, because he integrated religion with the workings of the state. Which as you know, is a very very horrible decision.

Because of him and his legacy, Pakistan became a breeding ground for the Taliban. And to a lesser extent, the al Qeada. Yes, he's the root of it all.

Now's a good time to mention that he died in a spectacular plane crash. Thankfully.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Hitler.

I win.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Here's my top three:

Absolute Worst: George W. Bush

*Gutted the Bill of Rights with the Patriot Act.
*Dragged the country into a completely unnecessary and costly war in Iraq,.
*Approved of gross human rights violations, including the indefinite detainment and torture of "enemy combatants."
*Guilty of treason by association with cabinet members that exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame.
*Furthered corporate interests at the expense of the working man/woman.

2nd Worst: Richard Nixon

*Watergate - need I say more?
*Altogether a thoroughly unlikable and slimy individual.

3rd Worst: Andrew Johnson

*Thoroughly bungled reconstruction efforts after the Civil War.
*Vetoed the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 ("This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.").
*Violated the Tenure of Office Act (for which he was later impeached).

 

[Dryk]

John Howard Workchoices and he privatised Telstra

He wasn't that bad for a Liberal, but handing over the national telecommunications infrastructure to a private company was such a dumb idea. We're still paying for it at my house, Telstra have a quasi-monopoly on internet on my block because you can only get ADSL or Cable because they haven't upgraded the copper in decades so everyone is on Bigpond Cable.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Buchanan, LBJ, and Andrew Johnson. All of them crazy, all of them morons, all of them terrible leaders.

 

[DJjaffacake]

Recent: James Callaghan, since he presided over the near collapse of our economy.
Historical: King John, because he lost the French territories, caused a civil war, and was just generally shit.
Legendary: Vortigern, for basically inviting the Saxons to come and stay (and take over).

 

[Sixcess]

This is a tricky one.

The first name that springs to mind is Margaret Thatcher. I know she's widely admired overseas so it's hard to convey just how justifiably hated she was by a lot of people in the UK. But, against that, she did do a lot of things right - ruthless, heartless things perhaps, but things that needed to be done. I can't say she was our worst.

So I'm going to have to go with Tony Blair. He did good as well, but Iraq overshadows all that - for the half truths and outright lies, and the eagerness with which he took us into a war that was ill concieved at best and flat out illegal at worst.

"What is important though is that at moments of crisis they (the USA) don't need to know simply that you are giving general expressions of support and sympathy. That is easy, frankly. They need to know, `Are you prepared to commit, are you prepared to be there when the shooting starts?"
- Tony Blair

There was no crisis in Iraq, a nation that, however unpleasant its leadership was, had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMDs. Blair threw away the lives of British soldiers for no better reason than to suck up to the US government of the day, the smarmy, sanctimonious little prick.

 

[J Tyran]

Margaret Thatcher, because of the poll tax, the mining strikes, disastrous experimental economic policies. She also privatised several public services that took decades to recover.

Oliver Cromwell, he was a puritanical Christian nutcase. His invasion of mainland Ireland bordered on ethnic cleansing and thousands where butchered during the campaign.

Edward Heath, the Prime minister that couldn't keep the lights on. He imprisoned trade unionists on flimsy grounds, then he tried to implement harsh and unfair laws to limit the power of the unions. Caused long term strikes that bit so hard power stations didn't have enough coal to meet electricity demands. Business where reduced to a 3 day working week during the strike. His government was directly responsible for the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. Maggie finished off his destruction of the trade unions.

 

[MammothBlade]

Tony Blair, for going to war with Iraq in a phony "war on terror", likely having Dr. David Kelly assassinated, surrendering further power to the European Union, general bad governance, and introducing a brand of crony capitalism like none other. He's a conman, a kleptocrat, and a mass murderer.

 

[Lord Garnaat]

I have a feeling that George W. Bush is going to go down in history as one of the country's worst Presidents. It seems like anything that could possibly go wrong with his presidency did, and in the most spectacular possible way.

In my opinion, however, James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding are still worse. Buchanan was a useless fool that let the Civil War break out, and Harding was an incredibly corrupt, adulterous slimeball.

 

[Vegosiux]

Hitler, I guess.

This is totally unfair. Everyone here has this massive history to back their country up but I dont. Germany's history is just WW2, WW1 and loads of small kingdoms before that.

Hey, I have some stuff in the 6th century, and then post-1991. Sure I could cheat a lil' and bring the post-WW2 Yugo into this, but that one mostly only had one leader (He was actually not as bad as people make him out to have been).

As for the worst? The current administration. Those guys are so far detached from reality it's baffling.

 

[MrPeanut]

Worst leaders of Hungary? all of them.

Funnily enough any competent leaders we ever had were foreigners.

Hitler, I guess.

This is totally unfair. Everyone here has this massive history to back their country up but I dont. Germany's history is just WW2, WW1 and loads of small kingdoms before that.

But what about Charlemagne, HRE, Prussia etc? Surely those things are part of German history? :S

 

[Total LOLige]

David 'silver spoon up his fucking arse' Cameron. There's probably worst but he's a fucking prick.

 

[jklinders]

Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. He was a horrible example of what happens when a man with no vision is elected to public office. Under him, the Avro Arrow program was cancelled. This put Canada into a position of being even further dependent on US military tech than we already were.

Brian Mulroney. The deficit tripled under the rule of this silver tongued cretin. He also signed the free trade agreement with the US which saw more money go south than before. Consumer goods got a bit cheaper but at the cost of losing domestically owned manufacturing and retail. Finally he left the party just in time to allow his successor to get slapped with the natural result of the scandals he had built up over 9 years.

Stephen Harper the man who took us from surplus budgets to deficits within a year, used massive government spending programs to directly promote his own party and is pushing harder than any previous leader to turn Canada into a war mongering state.

Honorable mention to Pierre Trudeau and Paul Martin for not understanding economics and ripping their own parties to tatters respectively.

 

[SextusMaximus]

Hitler, I guess.

This is totally unfair. Everyone here has this massive history to back their country up but I dont. Germany's history is just WW2, WW1 and loads of small kingdoms before that.

Uhhh, what about Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire? Pretty big parts of history.

 

[SciMal]

Andrew Johnson - Bungled Reconstruction.
Ulysses S. Grant - An infamously corrupt drunk.
Calvin Coolidge - Setup the Great Depression.
George W. Bush - Setup the Great Recession.

 

[Patrick Buck]

Probabaly Thatcher. For getting rid of british industry, and basically leaving us fucked if we were to, say, get into a recession.

 

[BlackStar42]

For England/Britain after 1707, we have:
George III. Utterly mad, incompetent and lost us the Thirteen Colonies.
John I. Utterly mad, drowned his own nephew, lost us most of our French territories and lost the crown jewels. He did (unintentionally) give us the Magna Carta though, so there's that.
Charles I. Started the English Civil War.
Anthony Eden. Responsible for the Suez Crisis, ending our status as a superpower almost overnight.