Worst Post-WWII President?


http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,106715,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

No Sard, the worst president since WWII (and certainly in the top 10 all time) is the present inhabitant. We will pay dearly for his errors.

Jimmy Carter: The Worst Ex-President in History
By Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
During his four years in the White House, he presided over the worst economic downturn since World War II, allowed a bunch of thugs to seize our embassy and our citizens, and supported Philippine dictator Fernando Marcos, Pakistani General Zia al Huq, Saudi King Faud and many other dictators. But Jimmy Carter was a much better president than he is an ex-president.

In fact, Jimmy Carter holds the hands-down record for being the worst ex-president the United States has ever known. His post-presidential meddling in foreign affairs has cost America dearly, both in terms of international credibility and international prestige.

He defied US law by visiting Cuba, even addressing the Cuban public and handing Castro a huge propaganda victory. He oversaw the elections in Haiti, against the expressed wishes of the Clinton administration. A coup followed.

Carter once described Yugoslav strongman Marshal Josef Tito as "a man who believes in human rights." Regarding North Korea's dearly departed Kim Il-Sung, Carter found him "vigorous, intelligent, surprisingly well-informed about the technical issues, and in charge of the decisions about this country," adding "I don't see that [North Koreans] are an outlaw nation."

He was similarly generous regarding Manuel Noriega, Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaucescu and, of course, Yasser Arafat. He said of Ceausescu and himself, "Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights."

Virtually all of the humanitarian activities of the Carter Foundation abroad have been in direct opposition to US foreign policy. Carter called Bush’s description of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil" was "overly simplistic and counterproductive.”

Added the man who was once attacked by a rabbit, "I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement."

His most recent adventure may be partly behind the predicted $3.00 per gallon analysts say we'll be paying for gas by year's end. Jimmy Carter went to Venezuela to 'monitor' that country's effort to recall President Hugo Chavez.

In 1992, a band of army officers led by Lt. Col. Hugo Chávez Frías attempted to overthrow President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Although court-martialed and jailed, Chávez emerged a hero.

In 1998, he was elected president on promises to clean out corruption and reduce poverty. Once in office, Chávez promoted a new consitution to consolidate his powers and began to constrain the business community, civil society, and rival politicians.

As a presidential candidate, Hugo Chávez campaigned against the "savage capitalism" of the United States. On August 10, 2000, he became the first foreign leader to visit Saddam Hussein since the Gulf War, and he allegedly aided Afghanistan's Taliban government following the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States.

At the same time, Chávez said that Cuba and Venezuela were "called upon to be a spearhead and summon other nations and governments" to fight free market capitalism.

Venezuela is also one of the countries upon which the United States is dependent for oil, and has been since the US first began relying on imported oil supplies back in 1948.

Besides supplying the United States with 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, Venezuela provides most of the petroleum consumed by U.S. allies in the Caribbean and Central America.

Regional leaders know that opposing Chávez in any significant fashion could result in less favorable sales terms or cuts in deliveries.

In September 2003, President Chávez accused the Dominican Republic of harboring Venezuelans--like former President Carlos Andrés Pérez--who allegedly might conspire against his government. Chavez then stopped oil deliveries, prompting a temporary energy crisis while Dominican officials scrambled for new suppliers.

From the perspective of American economic interests, not to mention homeland security issues, Hugo Chavez is a very bad man to have in the neighborhood. And, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Chavez isn't going away anytime soon.

Venezuela's opposition party finally forced a recall election, with opinion polls showing that voters favored his recall by a margin of more than 2 to 1.

When there were questions about possible vote tampering by the Chavez side, the opposition called for election monitors. Chavez agreed to let Jimmy Carter oversee the election, and the Carter Center headed for Caracas.

Under Jimmy Carter's watchful eye, Hugo Chavez defeated the recall attempt by a wide margin -- reflecting almost a mirror-image of the opinion polls.

While two out of three Venzuelans polled before the election wanted Chavez out, when the ballots were counted, Chavez was declared the winner by an almost exact opposite margin. "About 58 percent said 'no' to a recall, while 42 percent said 'yes,'" wrote the Washington Post.

Carter ignored a press release from the polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Assoc. that reported, "Exit Poll Results Show Major Defeat for Chavez." The release, dated 7:30 p.m. on election day, said, "With Venezuela's voting set to end at 8 p.m. EST according to election officials, final exit poll results from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, an independent New York-based polling firm, show a major victory for the 'Yes' movement, defeating Chavez in the Venezuela presidential recall referendum."

One of the most effective ways to monitor the fairness of an election is to employ the use of exit polls. In a nutshell, here's how exit polls work. After somebody has finished voting, a pollster will ask them how they voted. In emerging democracies, about 90% of voters participate.

By contrast, in America, where exit polls are widely used to call elections before the votes are all counted, less than 40% of voters participate.

Statistically, exit polls should mirror the actual vote, within a relatively thin margin of error.

The margin of error between Carter's certified fair-and-square ballots and the independent exit poll results constituted a swing of almost forty points -- a statistical impossibility. Chavez counted on Carter leaning his way -- Carter's history of promoting anti-American dictators is no secret.

As Stephen Hayward noted in a column at Front Page, "among his complex motivations is his determination to override American foreign policy when it suits him."

Indeed, Carter's penchant for interfering in US foreign policy is so well known it won him a Nobel Prize. Jimmy Carter will go down in history as the first US ex-president ever to be awarded a Nobel Prize for the sole purpose of conveying an insult to his country from the Nobel committee.

Gunnar Berge, chairman of the five-member committee, told reporters that giving the Peace Prize to Carter "must also be seen as criticism of the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq ... It's a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States."

("How can we REALLY show how much we hate the Americans? I know! Let's give a Nobel Prize to Jimmy Carter!")

Once Chavez had stolen the election and Jimmy Carter certified the results, certain American critics (pretty much anybody with a brain) started questioning whether or not Jimmy Carter had just sold American interests down the river -- again.

Carter hit back in a Wall Street Journal Opinion piece, writing;

"We are familiar with potential fraudulent techniques and how to obtain a close approximation to the actual results to assure accuracy."

Having established that Jimmy Carter is far too savvy to be conned by a mere thug like Chavez, Carter then dismissed the results of the exit polls, writing;

"During the voting day, opposition leaders claimed to have exit-poll data showing the government losing by 20 percentage points, and this erroneous information was distributed widely."

Well, that's that! The New York pollsters 'widely distributed erroneous information' -- Hugo Chavez won fair and square. Jimmy Carter says so.

Penn Schoen evidently must have cheated, although it is a reputable New York polling firm with a 20 year track record, including working for Bill Clinton in 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2001, Michael Bloomberg in 2001 and many other national political campaigns.

Why would it risk its hard-won professional reputation over an election in Venezuela? Carter doesn't explain.

Hugo Chavez is bad news from the perspective of US national security. He is bad news from the perspective of homeland security. He is bad news from the perspective of US dependence of foreign oil. And he is bad news for America's economic security.

Which makes Hugo Chavez good news from the perspective of the worst ex-president in US history

I didn't know Puget Sound Anglers was a conservative political group.

I thought they were all about Puget Sound, not Republican political doctrine.

I guess my checkbook & I know better now.

I had the privilege of fishing with President Jimmy Carter on Berry and Owl Creeks in Grand Teton Nat'l Park back in...1978, 79 (?). I found him to be an extraordinary man, perhaps the most intelligent I've ever met. So I am completely biased in my defense of the gentleman.
His honesty cannot be questioned and it would be re-assuring if the same could be said of our current President.

"it would be re-assuring if the same could be said of our current President."


ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

And if only monkeys could fly...

With no fewer than eight top oil execs in the Administration, don't count on it salmosalar...it's not a coincidence that they are there and that we are fighting all over the middle East.

Fish on...

Todd

Naw, our method of bailing out of Viet Nam was one of our really magnificient blunders. Our exit from Somalia was another.The technique gauranteed and gave credence to the term 'paper tiger.' We are still paying for that faux paux. Why do you think the criminals in Iraq hold on even tho badly battered. They know, based on past performances, Viet Nam and Somalia, for instance, that the American public can be counted on to go tits up if enough of our blood is shed. The lefties will see to it. "hey man! we stopped a war"
The mistakes we have made in Iraq are legion, however, they are fixable it we can get the Iraqi military and civil police to have enough self-respect to kick butt. Show them how and get out of the way.

"Show them how and get out of the way."

Amen, brother...but it would have been a lot easier to do so had we got it done about two years ago...unlike our leadership, the folks in Iraq know the difference between the warring factions, and may have been able to deal with it effectively before it got so FUBAR'd.

Fish on...

Todd

It wasn't bailing out of Vietnam that was a blunder. The blunder was in getting into Vietnam as a police action, not a war, with no clear objective (how do you know when you've succeeded?), and no clear exit strategy. A lot like W's war in Iraq.

Getting the Iraqi military and civil police to do the job ought to be recognized as maybe being on the list of things not necessarily possible for the US to do. It simply ain't possible to get someone else to do what you think they ought to do for their own good. The cultural anomoly of using our yardstick of success to measure what another culture ought to do is as stupid as it gets.

W is stupid, but Cheney isn't. There is no clear exit strategy because there is no intent to exit. Cheney doesn't leave oil.

Yeah and Korea was a "police action" too, and it's still unresolved for the most part. There's a pattern here. Legitimate wars, we kick butt. Other actions? Questionable results.

And I agree. From DAY ONE there has been no intent to exit Iraq. It's one of the things that's torqued me the most about this administration....they want me to believe that someday they'll leave. Ha! My BS indicator pegged out on that one.

Right on.

We won't lose a legitimate war. Ever. There won't even be a question. Thst's because when America as a whole rallies, we won't be stopped. But you can only rally America as a whole if the cause is just.

Carter the worst President? Maybe, but that's only because a good man doesn't necessarily make a good President.

Here' Another Opinion

The Worst President in History?
One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush
SEAN WILENTZ
Page 1 2 3 4

Flashback: Bush in '99 -- We Warned You!
George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.

Historians do tend, as a group, to be far more liberal than the citizenry as a whole -- a fact the president's admirers have seized on to dismiss the poll results as transparently biased. One pro-Bush historian said the survey revealed more about "the current crop of history professors" than about Bush or about Bush's eventual standing. But if historians were simply motivated by a strong collective liberal bias, they might be expected to call Bush the worst president since his father, or Ronald Reagan, or Nixon. Instead, more than half of those polled -- and nearly three-fourths of those who gave Bush a negative rating -- reached back before Nixon to find a president they considered as miserable as Bush. The presidents most commonly linked with Bush included Hoover, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan. Twelve percent of the historians polled -- nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success -- flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.

Even worse for the president, the general public, having once given Bush the highest approval ratings ever recorded, now appears to be coming around to the dismal view held by most historians. To be sure, the president retains a considerable base of supporters who believe in and adore him, and who reject all criticism with a mixture of disbelief and fierce contempt -- about one-third of the electorate. (When the columnist Richard Reeves publicized the historians' poll last year and suggested it might have merit, he drew thousands of abusive replies that called him an idiot and that praised Bush as, in one writer's words, "a Christian who actually acts on his deeply held beliefs.") Yet the ranks of the true believers have thinned dramatically. A majority of voters in forty-three states now disapprove of Bush's handling of his job. Since the commencement of reliable polling in the 1940s, only one twice-elected president has seen his ratings fall as low as Bush's in his second term: Richard Nixon, during the months preceding his resignation in 1974. No two-term president since polling began has fallen from such a height of popularity as Bush's (in the neighborhood of ninety percent, during the patriotic upswell following the 2001 attacks) to such a low (now in the midthirties). No president, including Harry Truman (whose ratings sometimes dipped below Nixonian levels), has experienced such a virtually unrelieved decline as Bush has since his high point. Apart from sharp but temporary upticks that followed the commencement of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and a recovery during the weeks just before and after his re-election, the Bush trend has been a profile in fairly steady disillusionment.

* * * *

How does any president's reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures --