Talk Elections

The worst.

1 star. An utter disgrace to the office.

Expanding Medicare, and no child left behind should both be praised as legitimate progressive actions. Along with the fact it's a hard hard job to be commander in chief after 9/11-I can appreciate that it was not at all easy.

However post 9/11 GWB seemed to be overwhelmed. The initial stages of Afghanistan were badly thought out-the failure to get Bin Laden, putting Karzhai in charge and then forgetting about it until '06 was a bad decision. The Afghanistan strategy was one that could have worked at first-it was just poorly managed.

However the entire war on terror was awful, Ironic I know coming from a guy call Blair. Stripping soldiers of their human rights under the Geneva convention is awful, no matter how you look at it. Then torturing them, and keeping them without trial is even worse. I'm sure someone will claim 'oh yeah we got information'  There's shaky evidence of that  (http://www.livescience.com/4651-torture-long-history-working.html) I also don't think that it can be defended morally at all, when the US prides itself on being opposed to that.

His reaction to Katrina as well makes him one of the worst post war presidents-appointing your friends to key positions often happens in politics, but appointing stupid friends with no experience, and pulling money of the FEMA is not good

If this was an attempt at humor, it failed quite miserably.

You sure?  It's pretty hard to disgrace the office of President of the United States of America.

I know, which makes his feat even more impressive.

1 star for that horrid decision to invade iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMD, then disbands the entire army which later turns into the insurgency we fought the whole time we were there then turns into ISIS. Also he turned a 200 billion dollar surplus into a trillion dollar deficts. Also he greatly expanded excutive power and acted like a unitary excutive with all those signing statements.Signed the Patriot act,. Also the economy sucked when he left. tied for the worst with carter for post hoover presidents

Probably the worst president in nearly a century and a half. Led us into two failed, costly and pointless wars that disgraced America's global reputation, grossly violated the Geneva Conventions through torture, set up a massive Orwellian surveillance apparatus, was totally incompetent and lost control of his administration to the empire-building neocon lunatics be surrounded himself with, pandered to the Religious Right like no other president, implemented voodoo economics and presided over the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Easy 1 star.

Easily 5 stars.

We should abolish term limits and have him return in 2016.

Lol

You think Clinton was worse then bush

You think he was worse then Hoover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0

Horrid, 1*

One of the most inept, idiotic and out of place presidents ever to grace the office. In every conceivable measure the man was a failure. Debts and deficits blew out with unsustainable tax cuts and cooperate handouts. The few domestic "sweeping legislation" passed, like Medicare Part D and NCLB, were monsterous boondoggles. Mediocre and sometimes despicable people were promoted far beyond their ability, leading to various departments and agencies (the EPA, interior, FEMA, the justice department, much of the pentagon etc) becoming essentially moribund and dysfunctional. Remember "Brownie"? Remember the succession of non-entity AG's rubberstamping indefensible practices? Even the very last period of office was one of failure, with Paulsen and his team mistepping all over the place throughout the economic crisis.

Perhaps worst of all (and most indicative of the chaos in general) was the hideous botching and mismanagement of the dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if you think these were worthwhile wars, the manner in which they were conducted created enormous debt, two sprawling quagmires that now border on human catastrophes and undermined any general goodwill the world had towards the U.S. for generations. The fact is Bush and team should have recognised that people like Tommy Franks were failing, and instead chose to sweep the issue under the carpet for years - even as the Taliban and rebels rang rings round the scandal-plagued invasion forces in both theatres; even as Rumsfeld sent out soldiers to die in hick armour; even as Bremer threw the baby out with the Ba'ath water, and condemned Iraq to be a a failed, ungovernable state for decades to come etc.

Aside from AIDS in Africa, I can't think of a single issue that the Bush admin will be remembered even remotely positive for. His failures continue to shame the U.S. Really I haven't even scratched the scandal, idiocy and incompetence that will define bush Jr and his team to future historians. It just needs to be said that, even with the benefit of very little time to mull over the precise implications of his misrule; it is abundantly clear that Dubya is among the worst leaders in American history and a textbook example of a man fundamentally incapable of holding executive power.

I almost want to give him two stars because he was so utterly incompetent that I think he truly did not understand the implications of the decisions he made and many were the result of his cabinet rather than Bush himself. Furthermore, there were some good policies implemented while he was in office (his AIDS program, for example).

But no. One star.

I hate to link to Keith Olbermann, since I think he's basically liberal O'Reilly, but I think he nailed this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-j1Q0zeHo0

1 star for all the reasons people have mentioned.

Why was I forced to give this garbage a star?

Ah yes, but politics has a way of making the impossibly negative possible, does it not?

Anyway, obvious 1 star is obvious 1 star.

Hoover caused no geopolitical crises.

Anyway, I vote one star, though this better explains my view:

His response to 9/11 was respectable but that's about it. It's hard not to put him in the bottom 5.

4 stars, great man and leader.

One star. Worst President of my (short) lifetime.

Wasn't his response to read a children's book, dither and make some speeches namrchecking FREEDOM a lo while dragging out the commission so the dumkopf spooks who allowed terrorists to slip through the cracks all could hurriedly shred their files?

An incompetent who failed at almost every aspect of the presidency, and was controlled in some measure by his bloodthirsty advisers.

My Pet Goat is an exciting story. Bush listened to it being read for 10 minutes after learning about the 2nd plane hitting the WTC. But then he realized he had to flee the time zone.

He was at a school doing a PR stunt. Yes, he could of excused himself quietly when he was alerted that the US was under attack but I'm not going to take marks off for not rushing off in a panic. He publically addressed a grieving nation afterwards (including his support to Muslim-Americans despite convert FBI actions) and didn't go in guns-blazing-no-questions-asked Iraq/Viet Nam-style.

I'm not going to defend any of his other actions like the Patriot Act or Iraq but he handled 9/11 fairly competently.

Is this even a question?

He addressed the grieving nation from the nuke proof bunker in Nebraska the coward fled to after he was done reading my pet goat.

Complete unmitigated disaster, certainly one of the worst.

A good person, but president during a very bad time. Also trusted the people around him way more than he should have. He's a lot like U.S. Grant, Warren Harding, or Jimmy Carter. Two stars.

I mean, I hate Dubya as next as the next guy, but where the hell was he supposed to give the address? The top floor of the South Tower?

1 star.  One of the worst.

Any POTUS would have "fled" somewhere amidst a terrorist attack on our soil.  As usual, your hatred and hackishness blinds you.

The man was a coward who ran in the opposite direction plain and simple.

So despicable even John Ashcroft put his foot down and said enough's enough. Among the worst Presidents in history. Medicare Part D was a clever maneuver to win Florida, his hard rightward shift to sh*t on gay people was utterly despicable, his cabinet appointees were constantly and consistently inept and problematic, and that doesn't even tackle the utter boondoggle that is Iraq, which we are still paying for.

1 Star, certainly bottom five.

I hope no one is holding up Medicare Part D as a good think. Unlike ObamaCare, it massively hurt the deficit. It had all sorts of of issues, but there Democrats were more interested in fixing those than making political hay. And after it looked like the vote was going to fail, they held the voting open for hours in the middle of the night until they bribed and threatened enough Congressmen for it to pass.

Certainly.

At least Hoover worked his way up to become President.

What does that have to do with being president . Hoover created the worst economic crises in the nation history and did nothing about it, which could have knocked the country out and let to a Communist or Fascist Revolution .

Not to defend Hoover or anything, but he didn't create the Great Depression. Harding and Coolidge deserve more credit for that, at least as far as which presidents ought to foot the blame. Additionally many of the actions he took helped inspire the New Deal, so he at least gets a few points there. He certainly is not responsible for anything resembling the kind of destruction - both domestic and internationally - wrought by Dubya's presidency.

Computer09, just a reminder that the one sentence summaries of the presidents in your textbook aren't the only opinions you're allowed to have.

Would give him 0 stars if I could. One of the most incompetent, moronic, dishonest presidents of all time. Started a war which had nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with a personal vendetta and making profit, caused the worst economic crisis since the great depression, responded slowly and ineffectively to Hurricane Katrina, signed an incredibly destructive educational act (NCLB), ran two intentionally deceptive campaigns... I could go on, but you get the idea. In short, an embarrassment to Americans.