Worst leaders of your country

[Flamezdudes]

Hitler.

I win.

Actually Hitler was a brilliant leader and an awesome politician. A genocidl despot, sure. But a bad leader? Hell no. He united a nation and brought all of Europe too its knee's.

Are you kidding? In 12 years he took a country that was while undergoing a huge depression was still one of the countries on earth and in just 12 years reduced it's population by 10% and left it in the power of hortile governments where the Eastern half was being systematically destroyed, raped and murdered and with the Western half being used as a proxy in the cold war.

Seriously I couldn't fuck up a country that much if I tried.

He was still a great leader. His goals were retarded wich made him fail. But as a leader he was solid. Otherwise the nazi parti would never have gotten of the ground at all.

The only reason he got into power was because of luck and thuggery, not good policies.

The luck factor was the fact that Germany was in a MASSIVE economic problem and it's citizens wanted something different from the shit the Weimar Republic was giving them. I'l admit, he was a charismatic speaker, but apart from that he was terrible.

The rest was just mindless propaganda and fear used by the SA to stop people from voting. Hell, it's very likely the Nazis are the ones who caused the Reichstag fire and just blamed it on the communists (which they did), which allowed them to just put them down and gain their votes.

And like another poster said, recent accounts show that he was a lazy shit and hardly did anything.

 

[Scarecrow1001]

Australian politics don't matter in the long run, but still. Julia Gillard. She is just awful. The Carbon tax? It will do nothing good, same with the mining tax.

 

[Busard]

For Switzerland, hmm....

I'm really tempted to say Blocher, who was one of the 7 leaders we had here, because he really only he a loud mouthed troll who spent more time short circuiting the democratic process than doing anyhing helpful.

But I'd put Ueli Maurer, responsible mostly for the army department, in first place for just being a delusional incompetent fart who still thinks we live in the 1970 and has a total disregard for the outrageous spendings and allocations he does for a defunct branch of our society

 

[Robert Ewing]

Tony Blair.

Joined EU, the most undemocratic democracy of all time. Sold ALL of our countries gold reserves for a fucking pittance, which doesn't help ANYTHING because Britain isn't on the dollar, it's on the gold standard, so we would have nothing to fall back on if things went tits up, which it did... Allowed mass immigration to the country, causing movements such as the EDL, the BNP, the IRA to go fucking berserk, massive cultural upheavals have severely damaged the spirit of this country because of the European obsession with multiculturalism. Started a useless war in the middle east (I happen to think the second gulf war was at least partly necessary.) He's fucked the country over with the welfare state. He implemented CCTV on every British street to create a nanny state. URGHHH.

Kay, Tony Blair did some good things, what kind of an idiot would get voted in and just do horrible things? Nobody... But Stalin did some good things... It counts for nothing against the sheer peril he's put us through.

And the worst part is? He did all with a straight face. He's now on a multimillion dollar packet being a peace envoy for the middle east. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, BLAIR!? WHAT!?

 

[Airsoftslayer93]

Thatcher... Blair... Major was weak, Brown foolishly thought he had stopped boom and bust, Cameron is a twat
Basically every PM recently has been terrible.

which doesn't help ANYTHING because Britain isn't on the dollar, it's on the gold standard,

No we aren't. We haven't been on the gold standard for a very long time. Plus that was Brown when he was chancellor.

 

[MetalDooley]

Tony Blair.

Joined EU, the most undemocratic democracy of all time.

You know Britain joined the EU(or the EEC as it was called at the time)in 1973,a full 24 years before Blair came to power,right?

causing movements such as the EDL, the BNP, the IRA to go fucking berserk,

Blair was one of the people behind the Good Friday Agreement which led to the IRA ceasefire.If you want to blame anyone for the shit the IRA carried out then blame previous UK governments who sucked up to the Unionists in Northern Ireland in order to gain their support in parliament.

 

[themyrmidon]

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

LBJ was awesome. If he didn't go to Vietnam, he would have been considered one of the greatest presidents of all time.

He fought for Civil Rights, made education cheaper with financial aid, reduced poverty dramatically, established Medicaid, made immigration easier, consumer protection, gun control, space race..... the list goes on man.

1: I agree he did well on civil rights.
2: If by made cheaper you mean granted colleges the right to start jacking up tuition because the government will pay for it then you are completely correct.
3: The president can rarely take credit or blame for the personal economic well being for the demographics of the nation. Poverty was already starting to dip when he entered office anyway.
4: Medicaid and Medicare should both fully belong the states so they can fit them to their size, needs, and capabilities. Medicaid is in a better position because the states have much more input, but both programs are terribly flawed.
5: I don't have a problem with easier immigration.
6: I'll give you consumer protection, with the exception of the NHTSA. Despite what people think, safety has always been a selling point for cars and creating a government program, while beneficial in the short term, has long lived its expiration date.
7:The problem with gun control is that the US has always had guns (that and human nature). Because of that if we implement gun control in the US crime will increase. Obviously automatic weapons are overkill and I don't have any problem with registration, but the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
8: He did well in the space race too.

I don't think LBJ was a really bad president, even if I disagree with many of his policies, but he wasn't great either.

 

[Psychedelic Spartan]

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.").
Are you a ninja? I was going to say the exact same thing. I literally thought the same things.
*Violated the Tenure of Office Act (for which he was later impeached).

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

It absolutely was, Britain was not willing to give up its rule over the United States and the United States desired sovereignty. Any nation or people group that desires sovereignty has some degree of entitlement to it and if they can make adequate arguments for why they deserve it, which the founding fathers did, then their going to war to gain said sovereignty is necessary and they are fully entitled to it.

I think we are disagreeing on the use of the word "necessary" here, and "absolutely" come to think of it.

Also, the US did not exist. There were colonies under the rule of the UK. Some of those colonists wanted to leave British rule and start up for themselves, some did not. Hence why it was originally seen as a civil disorder matter in the UK. Should they have been given the option to vote on secession, yes sure, by today's standards I'd go for that.

Needed to be done.

 

[ThatGuy]

Uh, if you're in China, how can you say that without uh... Er... Gaining some "Attention" from the government? No offense to you, I'm not trying to sound like I'm joking, but isn't this the sort of thing that causes people to... "Disappear"?

I live in Hong Kong. It's technically part of China but with it's own system; a little corner of freedom in a giant country of authoritarian suck, at least until 2047 when China's allowed to change Hong Kong's system per an agreement with the British.
Over here, we've got mass candle-lighting memorials for the Tiananmen incident every June 4th.

right on; i'm living in beijing right now, considering moving to hong kong. i lived there for 1 year in the past, but i can't speak cantonese so that makes things a bit difficult.

 

[Reiper]

My vote goes to Pierre Trudeau

-mishandled the constitution
-national energy program
-massively expanded the government bureaucracy
-massively increased expenditures

I guess he put the FLQ in their place, but his other failures do not make up for that

 

[DirtyJunkieScum]

Needed to be done.

Add "in order for the founding fathers vision of an independent country to come to fruition" and I'd agree with you. "Needed to be done" full stop, no.

 

[Sutter Cane]

Note that I never said that you weren't justified for disliking the bush administration, but simply that

1. There have been presidents that have caused more damage than bush (Cooledge, Johnson, Buchanan)
2. There've been presidents that intentionally committed atrocities (Jackson and perhaps the expansionist presidents as well)
3. There have been presidents more incompetent than Bush(Harding, Grant)

and that your justification for calling bush worse than all of these leaders was not that his actions were more severe, or more damaging to the country as a whole, but simply that they affected you and those close to you. That is not sufficient for making a case that he is the worst leader in US history. That's like saying "Transformers 2 is the greatest film ever made," and when asked why you reply "because I had I great time when I went to see it with my friends." It fails to establish what about the film merits it being viewed by everyone as the best film of all time, just as your explanation for why bush is the worst president has failed to establish how he is worse than those above, and if you honestly believe that Bush should be recognized by us as the worst president of all time simply because he affected you personally, that that would indeed be egocentric, as it would imply that the suffering caused by all those others does not measure up to the hardship that you personally have been through.

If I call you a dick, does that mean your literally a dick? No.

If I call Bush the worst US president does that factually make him the worst US president? No.

Can you factually prove who the worst US president is? No, you can't, because depending on who you are PERSONALLY and what you have EXPERIENCED in your lifetime manipulates your view on what is and isn't morally right or wrong and in turn manipulates your view on the severity of what is wrong and what is right.

I don't understand how you can remember the names of presidents and what they have done, but fail to grasp what an opinion is.

I'm sorry for assuming that when you post about how bad bush was in a thread dedicated for talking about the worst leaders in your country's history, that you actually think that he's possibly the worst leader in your country's history.

You know what, I can't definitively prove who the worst president is, but I can attempt to make a strong inductive argument to back up my opinion. Your post here still doesn't make your initial argument any more justifiable, as although what you value has been shaped by your experiences, it still doesn't change the fact that if you say leader X is the worst because of actions y and z, and i point out others who have committed actions similar to y and z but to a greater extent, you no longer have a strong argument for leader x being the worst, unless your criterion for a leader being good or bad is just how they've affected your life personally, in which case we're right back around to an egocentric view of the world again.