Who are the worst national politicians?

[bballrox4717]

Eh, some Republican governors are better than others. But yeah, all Republicans in Congress are basically equally awful.

Governors actually have jobs to do while our gridlocked Congressmen are just FOX News pundits with fancy offices.

As for Cory Booker, he's a cool guy, if a bit overrated.  Gavin Newsom is the better example of a phony "man of the people."

I don't see a reason for Booker hate either. Connections to Wall Street is more criticism of the political system than individual politicians.  I'm totally with you on Newsom though. He's an example of a guy that seems to have the right positions but he's just....slimy. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up like Weiner.

I can't really comment on a lot of the religious Congressional Republicans being bad, as they are basically extensions of their constituencies. If you're looking for bad, I'd say Paul Lepage, Rick Scott, Rick Perry, Mark Sanford, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Ron Johnson. Mitch McConnell probably beats them all though. The Senate was already polarized before Democrats came to power but McConnell's made the working environment toxic, and he gains my biggest ire when it comes to campaign finance. Ugh.

I'll also note Harry Reid is on the list of worst Democrats. If he runs again in 2016 and the opponent is Brian Sandoval or not crazy, I'd support the Republican just to get him out of Majority Leader. The fact that Biden had to step in for him in negotiations is appalling. Ehmanuel, Rangel, Quinn, Weiner and Cooper are pretty bad as well. This is more towards independents, but Bloomberg is horrible.

[bballrox4717]

It seems this little grading process is mostly ideologically driven. That kind of makes it an arid exercise doesn't it?  

I tried to make mine more based off personality, corruption and actual job performance than to go on a tirade on how I don't like Republican politics. Any politician that is making the dysfunction in Washington worse attributed to the list as well, though I can't really criticize Tea Party type Republicans for doing exactly what their constituencies want. I'm harsh on the Senate leadership because they do a piss poor job of setting the example for actual work to be done. The roots of the Senate hyperpartisanship started with Reid during the Bush administration and were fleshed out with McConnell's one term comments. I'm not much of a fan of Cantor or Boehner, but they generally aren't responsible for what happened in the House as Reid and McConnell are for the Senate. Boehner and Cantor also have a much larger, hostile faction in the House, and I'm not in envy of their jobs to keep things working. I can't imagine who would actually do better than them right now. The Senate would work better if Schumer and Thune were Majority and Minority Leader tomorrow.