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 This is James Buchanan. He was President from March 1857- March 1861. I am going to explain to you why he is, without debate, the worst president of the United States to have ever existed. Let's start with his cabinet. The lovely, lovely Cabinet of James Buchanan  This guy was his Vice-President. His name is John C. Breckinridge. He is of course, most famous for being the god damned Secretary of War for the South. Yikes. Not a good start. Who else ya got?  This is Howell Cobb. He was Buchanan's Secretary of the Treasury. Of course he was more famously the President of the loving CSA before Jefferson Davis. Jesus Christ Buchanan. Maybe your Secretary of War was better?  Nope. John B. Floyd was a Confederate General. How about the Secretary of the Interior? Surely that guy has to be-   No. Jacob Thompson was Inspector General of the Confederacy States Army. Met with John Wilkes Booth prior to his assassination of Lincoln and instigated a number of anti-Union riots.Okay. Secretary of State has to be good right? I mean, he wasn't even concerned with domestic issues?  Secretary of State Lewis Cass invented the idea of popular sovereignty which was the direct cause of Bleeding Kansas (although to his credit he resigned after it was clear Buchanan had no idea what he was doing) On a Cabinet of 8 people half of them would go on to fight for the Confederacy, 1 would die in office (Postmaster General), 1 argued that secession was legal (Attorney General), 1 invented popular sovereignty and 1 was the Secretary of the Navy. Not the best start. Dred Scott  2 days after Buchanan was inaugurated, the Dred Scott decision came out. You know, the famous one that said black people aren't actually people therefore you can't do anything to restrict slavery. Taney's decision is bar none, the worst SCOTUS decision in history. While the Court had already decided to rule against Dred Scott, the court's majority was only planning on writing a very narrow opinion. Until Buchanan got involved. Buchanan wrote Pennsylvanian Robert Cooper Grier and arm-twisted him into supporting a broad decision that would render the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, declare black human beings as non-citizens and prevent Congress from making any more policies about slavery in the US Territories other than "anything goes". Buchanan was delighted by the decision and hoped that now with the slavery question decided and the Republicans' platform of restricting slavery in the territories destroyed the country could move on to other more important things  The Panic of 1857  So, what is a President to do after forcing the Supreme Court to make a decision declaring that black people weren't citizens? Why cause an economic recession of course! 1,400 state banks and 5,000 businesses were shuttered in the summer of 1857. Buchanan's decisive fix for this was...do nothing and restrict the money supply (aka the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do in this situation). Utah and the Mormons   The Mormons had settled Utah a few decades earlier and were a constant annoyance in the pre-Civil War era. Brigham Young and federal officials had quarreled mightily and a Utah militia massacred a group of Arkansas settlers headed for California. Clearly a crisis was brewing. So what did Buchanan do? Well, Buchanan listened to rumor-mongers in DC that the Mormons were already in revolt against the US Government. He decided to replace Brigham Young as Utah governor with the non-Mormon Alfred Cumming. Unfortunately he forgot to, ya know, tell anyone else about this which resulted in Brigham Young and Alfred Cumming both asserting they were the Governor of Utah. He then called in the Army, Brigham Young started a guerilla operation and thus, that's how Utah went to war with the United States. Buchanan started a domestic insurrection because he forgot to send a letter. Bleeding Kansas  Another domestic crisis where Buchanan got to put his master-level intelligence and political skills to the test. Earlier I talked about popular sovereignty. The idea was, rather than have Congress decide whether a state was admitted slave or free, the citizens of that state would decide. Sounds like an okay idea right? Well, except when you don't have very good record keeping and thus don't actually know who live in the state. And making matters worse, if the pro-slavery side just happens to murder all the anti-slavery supporters, well, I guess that's the popular will right?  At the end of the Pierce Administration two dueling Kansas administrations had been set up. A free one in Topeka and a slave one in Lecompton. The Topkea one had far more people following its rule-of-law by all accounts was the more legitimate government. But James Buchanan, master politician decided to ignore all that and accept the Lecompton government as legitimate. He appointed Robert J. Walker, a staunch pro-slavery advocate from Mississippi, to be territorial governor. However, soon after Walker arrives even he agrees that slavery doesn't make sense in Kansas and started advocating Kansas be admitted as a free state. Again, Buchanan tried to railroad Kansas into becoming a slave state and even the guy he appointed to the railroading said it was bullshit. Well, the pro-slave faction in Lecompton wasn't very pleased by all this, and so held an election in 1857 that was so fraught with fraud that Governor Walker threw out the results. All the admitted states had previously sent their constitutions out to voters to be approved. But given what just happened with the election, the Lecompton government was worried about the constitution being rejected. So they just sent it into Buchanan without actually asking its citizens if they agreed with it (spoiler: they did not). Even this was too much for Buchanan so he told Kansas they have to vote on something. And vote they did. But not on the Constitution, but rather on whether Kansas would allow slavery. However, the Topeka government, not viewing the Lecompton government as legitimate, instructed everyone to instead vote a month later on the same question. Both elections, of course, gave different results. Hopefully by now it's becoming clear why popular sovereignty didn't work. Walker writes to Buchanan telling him how hosed this whole situation is and begs him not to adopt the Lecompton Constitution. But Buchanan gives no fucks and approves it and call the Topeka government "revolutionary" and insinuates they're in cahoots with the Mormons. Buchanan then literally bribes Congressmen to approve the pro-slavery constitution but the House can see what a sham the whole thing is and doesn't approve it. The main person who helped defeat the sham Constitution? Stephen Douglas Buchanan, Stephen Douglas and the 1858 Midterm  Stephen Douglas is most famous for the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which happened during Buchanan's mid-term. Douglas was a moderate Democrat, but a northern Democrat and was sick of Buchanan's Southern appeasement. Buchanan hated Stephen Douglas so much that he attempted to rig the Illinois state elections to deny Douglas the Illinois Senatorship. The only reason there was a close race between Lincoln and Douglas was because Buchanan was running a bunch of spoiler candidates and buying votes just to spite his rival. Northern and Southern Democrats were beginning to split as a party, so as a result of shenanigans like what Buchanan pulled in Illinois, the Republicans got a plurality in the House and they subsequently were able to block most of Douglas's agenda. Buchanan was a whiny baby and thus started spite vetoing bills including a bill that would have established land-grant colleges and a bill that would've given public lands to settlers who stayed on the land and farmed it. The Covode Committee  Remember how I said that Buchanan had a penchant for trying to bribe people? Yeah, eventually other people figured that out too and the House started investigating him in 1860. The committee's setup was beset by scandal from the start as pro-Buchanan Democrats accused the chairman (John Covode) of acting on a personal grudge (which was true!), but the findings of the commission were so overwhelming they soon drowned out the critics. While the committee failed to find grounds for impeachment, they did issue a report showing corruption, abuse of power and surfaced the allegations about bribery around the Lecompton Constitution (but were unable to prove it). Even the pro-Buchanan minority report agreed with the facts but argued that evidence was insufficient for any charges. Secession  At this point, I think you could very easily argue Buchanan as a really bad President. But it is his actions after Lincoln's victory that move Buchanan into the worst of all time. In October of 1860, the Commanding General of the United States Army, Winfield Scott warned Buchanan that the election of Lincoln would likely result in the secession of no less than 7 states. He recommended the Union take immediate action and station large amounts of federal troops in the South to head off any attempt at insurrection and protect federal property. Buchanan did nothing. After Lincoln's victory, and consulting with his Attorney General, Buchanan stated that states did not have the legal right to secede but that the federal government could also do nothing to stop them...in effect giving the green light to the South to start breaking away from the Union. His proposed solution to the crisis was a Constitutional amendment that would affirm slavery in slave states, the Fugitive Slave Act and popular sovereignty forever. Real brave of him. In typical Buchanan fashion, this just pissed off the North and South and the response was so limp dicked that Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb resigned. Yeah, it wasn't even pro-slavery enough for the guy who would become President of the CSA. Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson (remember him) starts openly planning Mississippi's secession while still serving in Buchanan's cabinet and Secretary of War John B. Floyd gets caught sending guns to the South. Buchanan did nothing. Actually he did less than nothing, because he started having regular meetings with Jefferson Davis and telling him all his plans, who then went and leaked to all the Confederates what exactly the Federal Government was up to. Buchanan's last real act as President was attempting to surrender Fort Sumter to South Carolina in January 1861. This act of appeasement was such a betrayal that Buchanan's entire cabinet threatened to resign so he instead decided to send a re-supply mission. But he strictly forbade the Union relief force from firing on the Confederates, which force the relief ship to abort its resupply mission. Conclusion Buchanan was a corrupt, pro-slavery, petty, coward whose actions turned the Civil War from a solvable insurrection issue into the deadliest war in US history. He's a piece of poo poo and I hate him and I hope you hate him now too.
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Feb 19, 2018 20:59
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The Compromise of 1877 or Why Rutherford B. Hayes Is a Motherfucker Meet Rutherford B. Hayes.  No, no when he was older  There we go. Rutherford B. Hayes was the 19th President of the United States from 1887-1881. Prior to that he was a Cincinnati lawyer, Civil War hero, Congressman, and Governor of Ohio. And he was a motherfucker. The Election of 1876 - The "Primaries" Following 16 years of Republican rule (Lincoln, Johnson, Grant) and 11 years of Reconstruction America had yet another general election. Grant, beloved as he was, declined to seek a third term throwing open the gates to the Presidency. The Democrats, after not fielding a candidate against Grant's easy re-election race in 1872 nominate this nice fellow:  Samuel Tilden, the Governor of New York. Tilden was a typical loyalist Democrat in that he didn't outright call for secession, but he didn't much like Lincoln and he definitely didn't like Lincoln's strong executive branch nor did he like Reconstruction. To his credit, he did go against the New York Tammany Hall political machine and try to clean things up a bit. Tilden used his reputation as a reformer to nab himself the 1876 Democratic Nomination and considering the corruption of Grant's Administration his platform of stamping out corruption seemed a good one. Now he needed only to wait for his opponent, who would of course be James G. Blaine, the former Speaker of the House and now Senator from Maine.  Blaine was the overwhelming favorite to be nominated at the party convention and won a commanding 285 votes on the first ballot...but that was only about 37% of the vote. The other voters were split between: -Benjamin H. Bristow, Treasury Secretary -Oliver P. Morton, Senator from Indiana -Roscoe Conkling, Senator from New York -John F. Hartranft, Governor of Pennsylvania and -Rutherford B. Hayes, Governor of Ohio With no clear majority the voting continued with no real change in position until the 5th ballot, where Morton and Bristow voters began defecting to Hayes who was now in 3rd after Bristow. The 6th round saw further defections with Hayes now at 113 votes to Blaine's 308 and Bristow's 111. The final ballot saw Morton, Conkling and Hartranft's voters all jump ship after a private discussion among the reform-minded candidates decided that Hayes would be their man. While Blaine did manage to gain 43 votes, it was not enough to overcome but Hayes who was able to just barely secure a win 384 votes to 351 votes.  The nation was stunned. Rumors abounded of smoky backroom deals and compromises on the party platform. The Election of 1876 - The General The campaign was, to be blunt, a complete poo poo-show filled with mud-slinging and insults. Republicans changed "Not every Democrat was a rebel, but every rebel was a Democrat" while the Democrats alleged the Republicans were stealing everything not nailed down in the White House and selling it to the highest bidder. Hayes was described as "a third-rate nonentity whose only recommendations are that he is obnoxious to no one." Jeez. Colorado was also a complicated issue as it had just been admitted to the Union on the 1st of August. Given the closeness of the election and without time to organize a new election in the state the state's legislature (which was Republican-controlled) would select the state's electors. So 3 free electors for Hayes. Democrats' strategy was to pick up all the former CSA/slave states while also taking New York and hope for the best. This would give him 173 electoral votes out of the 369 total. Close, but not enough to win.  Meanwhile the gameplan for the Republicans was simple: win the loyal Union states. Even writing off New York as a loss this would still give Hayes 196 electoral votes and a win, albeit closer than anyone would've liked.  Of course, history is never so simple. In reality this: is what happened:  An undecided contest with 3 states outstanding. A Contested Election  Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina had what you can charitably call as electoral "issues". Less charitably it was outright voter suppression and arguably rigging. Early returns indicated that Tilden would win all three but the fraud and voter suppression was so audacious as to call the results into question. Additionally, to allow illiterate voters to vote, the states at the time would print symbols for each political party on the ballot. But in these 3 states the state printed Abraham Lincoln's picture for the Democratic ticket. In the case of Florida and Louisiana the governor (or attorney general in Florida's case) decided to appoint Republican electors with South Carolina still outstanding. Meanwhile, Oregon decides to get in on the fun. The statewide vote had Hayes win in a landslide, but the Democratic governor of the state claimed that one of Hayes' electors was ineligible as a former postmaster and thus Tilden should get the vote (and the Presidency). The two Republican electors dismissed this and reported 3 votes while the appointed Democratic elector reported 2 votes for Hayes and 1 for Tilden. This dispute raged for a while but ultimately all 3 electors were given to Hayes. Thus, the election now hung on the outcome in South Carolina. Oh boy. South Carolina. Where to start. First off, South Carolina had 101% of registered voters vote. Yes, more people voted than were registered. Very, definitely not something funny going on here. As a result, the state's appointed electors were Hayes electors as the state election board declared obvious fraud. However, the Tilden electors claimed that by vote they should be counted. Others argued they shouldn't vote for anyone, but considering that Hayes was currently president-elect by a single electoral vote, nullifying South Carolina's vote would change the election. Tensions ran hot and there were legitimate fears of a Second Civil War breaking out. Congress acted fast and passed a new law stating that the election would be decided by a 15-member commission. The Electoral Commission  The Commission was to be made up of 5 members from each house of Congress and 5 members of the Supreme Court. The House (held by the Democrats) selected 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans. The Senate, held by the GOP, did the reverse (3 Republicans and 2 Democrats). For the Supreme Court's representation 2 members were chosen from each party with those 4 to select the final member. The Justices ended up picking David Davis who was famously described as being such a complete political mystery that "no one, perhaps not even Davis himself knew which presidential candidate he preferred." The Commission's decision would ultimately end up being Davis's as the only non-aligned member. But then, just as the Commission was to begin its work, the Democratic-controlled legislature of Illinois named him Senator, thinking this would buy his support. It did not. Davis, instead of remaining on the Court, resigned immediately to take his seat, leaving only Republican justices on the bench and thus, ensuring a GOP-favorable outcome. Every single vote on the committee was 8-7 and resulted in all 20 electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon given to Hayes. Democrats were furious and unable to alter the proceedings attempted to disrupt them as much as possible. The Commissions results were final, but only if both Houses of Congress consented. With their chance for electoral victory slipping away, the Democrats sought to act. Quickly the House of Representatives objected to results that were previously not in question from Vermont, forcing the Senate to overrule. 12 hours of debate followed and once the debate was done, the House then objected to results from Wisconsin. At the time the filibuster still existed in the House and without the House's consent the election would still be in question. This continued until 4 am on March 2nd when the House finally threw in the towel and the election was certified with Hayes the winner 185-184 despite losing the popular vote 51%-48%. The Compromise of 1877  But why did the House Democrats stop their objections? Well. Remember how there was a bunch of backroom wheeling and dealing when Hayes got the nomination? Hayes employed the same tactic here. In exchange for dropping their objection to the results the Republicans would: 1) Remove all US military forces from former CSA states 2) Appoint at least one Democrat to the cabinet (David M. Key of Tennessee was appointed as Postmaster General) 3) Construct a second Trans-Pacific Railroad through Texas and the South 4) Sign and pass legislation that would help industrialize the South 5) Give the South the right to deal with black citizens without northern interference (aka allow Jim Crow) Points 3 and 4 were never enacted, but Hayes did agree to points 1, 2, and 5, forever tainting his Presidency. Given the controversial way in which he was elected and his abandonment of Reconstruction his term was a rocky and short one. He never ran for re-election. And that's why Rutherford B. Hayes is a motherfucker. axeil fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Feb 19, 2018 |
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Feb 19, 2018 22:15
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farraday posted:Monroe, so bad axeil doesn't even rate him.  Sorry Monroe. Clearly he belongs in the Hall of  Munkeymon posted:
And that's why I missed Monroe! I also agree that citing alcoholism as a flaw for Grant is too harsh. His main problem really was being too trusting and that in combination with his substance problems caused all the corruption issues. QuoProQuid posted:this was me and i got to 1892 before the strain of the project completely overwhelmed me. That thread was great and you got to pretty much the end of the pre-modern presidents. Once you hit Teddy Roosevelt we'd all start voting for maximum Eugene V. Debs so I think it ran its course very well. axeil fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Feb 19, 2018 |
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Feb 19, 2018 22:23
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Lord Hydronium posted:Someone mentioned Harding in the Trump thread, so why does he fall last on many lists that I've seen? Like, I know his administration was corrupt as hell, but worse than James "literally let the Union fall apart" Buchanan? Harding was a corruption elemental. He's pretty much as bad as you can get before you get into the "actively making things worse" territory of GWB, Buchanan, Trump, etc.
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Feb 19, 2018 23:04
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Lord Hydronium posted:The Wikipedia article on Presidential rankings has him last in the first eight surveys on their list, for example. And I feel like I've seen a lot of articles on Harding throw in some mention of him being the worst, though I know that's not particularly helpful. The argument for someone other than Buchanan being the worst is that the Civil War was inevitable after 1856 and thus the actions of Buchanan didn't really matter and he was never found guilty of any of the corruption allegations swirling around him. I mean, I think that's an insane argument but it's the one you'd have to make.
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Feb 19, 2018 23:12
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Alter Ego posted:He also died a couple years in, so we have no idea just how awful he'd have been. Oh that's interesting. Tell us more about Coolidge and why he sucked! I don't know very much about him.
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Feb 19, 2018 23:21
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Alter Ego posted:Oof, I don't know if I can make an effortpost about Coolidge like you did with Buchanan. Jesus christ what a monster. Effort post added to the OP
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Feb 20, 2018 00:04
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Spangly A posted:Lenin wasn't in the trenches and he wasn't "sent" to Russia, he was running around Finland and A-H trying to start a revolution because german socialist support for the war went entirely against the second international. He's already back speaking to crowds in Petersburg by the time America votes to go to war and he's leader of the October revolution 3 months before the US arrives on the continent. Germany failed to break the blockade before the US even arrived, the spring offensive was never going to be sustainable and was just throwing the kitchen sink at France without any real hope of holding on. Was it a given that the Spring Offensive wouldn't have worked? Had their breakthrough gotten them to Paris they probably would've been able to get something approaching a good peace deal, although I guess that would've required them to have far more in the way of supplies and soldiers at that point. I'm not an expert on the end of WW1 though.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:35
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Alter Ego posted:Howsabout everyone's favorite white supremacist President? These were fantastic and I added links to them to the OP. Spangly A posted:
Wasn't a large issue that Wilson had a stroke by the time the Treaty of Versailles negotiation began in earnest and thus was unable to adequately advocate for his "peace with honor" belief? I know a lot of the German anger afterwords was because they surrendered believing they would be getting peace with honor and instead got reparations and a giant bag of poo poo. I'm enough of an idealist to think if that had been the real peace deal things might have turned out okay. It's interesting that you mention how the UK teaches US intervention in WW1. My recollection from my AP US History course was that the Americans came in and broke the lines and won the war for the Entente...when in reality we mostly did dumb poo poo like attack the Ardennes despite the British and French telling us it was stupid and getting a few tens of thousands green soldiers killed for no reason. The US history books don't focus much on the whole "US forces were arrogant and thought they knew everything and as a result incurred way more casualties than they should've" aspect. Instant Sunrise posted:Any chance for a writeup on why Millard Filmore is a motherfucker? farraday posted:Compromise of 1850, namely the Fugitive Slave act. Yeah, I don't have time unfortunately or I'd try and do it justice but the Fugitive Slave Act is one of the most immoral and lovely laws the US has ever passed. It took abolitionism from that thing the weird Christian idealists talked about to something the average day Northerner wanted. axeil fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 03:58
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Alter Ego posted:I had a surprising amount of fun writing that and I'm willing to take requests since I can't decide which one I wanna do next. People seem to want Millard Filmore 
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Feb 20, 2018 04:13
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BlueBlazer posted:He's a motherfucker but goddamn I read that and go, he did the best with what he had to work with it. He's a motherfucker...but I'm not sure what else he could've done in that situation. The options presented to him were: 1) Concede the election 2) Have Grant do something (martial law, etc.) that would give him the result 3) Allow the House to continually object to the Commission results, deadlocking things in perpetuity 4) A compromise A 21st century cynic would probably go with option 3 and rely on public opinion eventually forcing the House's hand, but this was the 1870s and people weren't as jaded then. Alternatively, it could've effectively abolished the Presidency for the next 4 years and given the immense power the Executive had just gotten via Lincoln would've been an amusing way to transition to a parliamentary system. The real galaxy brain option would've been to agree to the compromise...and then refuse to end reconstruction and let the South get away with Jim Crow but I doubt Hayes was interested in destroying the GOP's legitimacy and power over a bunch of ex-slaves in the South  American history could've been a lot different if the Republicans had just nominated Blaine like they were planning to.
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Feb 21, 2018 05:45
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Alter Ego posted:Bumping this because I really don't want it to go away. I love this subject, even if Presidents' Day was a month ago. I think LBJ is probably a good one since he signed the Civil Rights Act knowing it would permanently destroy the Democrat's strength in the South because it was the right thing to do. He'd be top 3 if it wasn't for Vietnam.
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Mar 21, 2018 16:35
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Blindeye posted:I probably should write up one on Taft, especially since he's perennially on my list of "least evil" US presidents. Who knew not wanting to be president at all might make you less prone to delusions of grandeur? I would also really like to read this as all I know about him was that he was real fat and he and Teddy Roosevelt played spoiler to each other and let Woodrow Wilson win in 1912.
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Mar 23, 2018 19:03
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Awesome! Adding to the OP.
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Mar 27, 2018 17:01
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More excellent content! Added to the OP.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:27
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Alter Ego posted:(I hope you guys are enjoying these. I'm having fun writing them.) Hell yeah I am! I've added links to all of them in the OP.
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Mar 29, 2018 16:37
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Alter Ego posted:I might do Boy George next. After reading Jean Edward Smith's biography of him, I'm convinced that we need a refresher course in why George W. Bush is an irredeemable rear end in a top hat and a war criminal. Agreed. Especially for younger folks around here. The first election I was really aware of was 2004 and I'm still seething mad about it. Only the GOP could manage to convince people that a draft dodger was more patriotic than a dude who got a friggin' Purple Heart. I'm so happy that lady with the purple heart bandaid is dead. gently caress CNN for loving over Dean with their improperly calibrated microphone levels.
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Mar 29, 2018 16:46
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Alter Ego posted:
Someone put up the Evilweasel signal, as he's the go-to person on any law-related stuff. I can post a whole bunch about TARP and bank bailouts and such though.
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Mar 29, 2018 18:27
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I did not know this.
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Echo Chamber posted:Source? I need to share with my friends. http://obits.dallasnews.com/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/obituary.aspx?n=patricia-crawford-peale&pid=186549283&fhid=17462 Alter Ego posted:No no, do one of these guys yourself! I don't know enough to do it justice Alter Ego posted:Gimme, I dunno...Carter. Tell us about why Jimmy Carter wasn't a shitlord. We've had too many shitlords, and I know very little about the man before he became President. Jimmy Carter is probably the only President who you can argue is a Good Person who never did anything really evil.
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Mar 29, 2018 20:45
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Excellent work, added both to the OP
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Apr 3, 2018 16:36
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Alter Ego posted:Don't forget Part 6 of my Johnson effortpost Thanks I missed it! Are you going to cover the 2000 Florida recount in your next post? Because that was an utter shitshow and if you don't cover it I might myself, except I'm super busy this week so I might not get around to posting about it until Sunday.
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Apr 3, 2018 16:47
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Alter Ego posted:I sure am! And after that, I'm going to go drink myself into a stupor for forcing myself to remember it! Bush v. Gore is one of the most amazingly nakedly partisan rulings I've ever seen and SCOTUS knew about it when they wrote it too which is why they stamped a big THIS IS NOT PRECEDENT on it.
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Apr 3, 2018 17:12
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Jimmy Carter 
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Apr 4, 2018 13:31
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Didn't Jimmy Carter agree to send arms to Afghanistan for basically the sole purpose of bleeding out the Soviets? HootTheOwl posted:I thought this was Reagan. It was both although Reagan was far more involved. Like JFK vs LBJ on Vietnam. But the Soviets were/are inhuman imperialist monsters so it's all good by me.
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Apr 4, 2018 18:55
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joepinetree posted:Carter also made human rights a much bigger part of American foreign policy, to the point where the thawing in the Brazilian dictatorship (which was put in place with the help of LBJ) can be directly traced to that. And this was well known at the time, to the point where Kissinger encouraged the Argentine dictatorship to speed up their brutal torture and assassination program so that the worst was already done by the time Carter took over. Carter wasn't great in terms of domestic policy, but in terms of foreign policy he was probably the best by a wide margin since FDR. Also probably the only President save maybe Taft who had a more important post-Presidency than Presidency.
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Apr 4, 2018 20:11
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Ytlaya posted:Certainly not any more than America, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Russia delenda est is my foreign policy philosophy.
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Apr 5, 2018 02:54
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It really cannot be overstated how bad the butterfly ballot is. Imagine this is what you got when you walked into the voting booth: Despite being listed second on the ballot, you have to punch the third hole to vote for Gore.  People also are still trying to figure out who actually won in Florida. The answer is...it's complicated but we know for sure that more voters intended to vote for Gore on election day. This article does a good job of explaining the clusterfuck of trying to figure out years after the fact who won and gets into how the qualification for what counts as a "vote" really, really matters. https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-election-results-studies/index.html quote:After the grueling 36-day Florida recount battle, Al Gore finally conceded the presidency to George W. Bush on December 13, 2000. What a god damned disaster. The coda to all this nonsense was America generally freaking out about its election infrastructure and the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002. This called for the elimination of confusing or unwieldy voting systems like the Butterfly Ballot and instead should be replaced with "electronic administration". Which lead to this  Fully electronic voting machines with no paper trail whatsoever. As everything was electronic you could conceivably tick the box for FULL COMMUNISM NOW and instead the system could record it as a vote for Neo-Hitler 2000 while still displaying a vote for your intended candidate. This was a minor issue in 2004 where vote totals in Ohio using these machines seemed odd and lead to additional speculation that Bush stole a second election. Since then most states have completely ditched the machines and moved to a "Scantron" ballot where the voter manually bubbles in circles. Except that has problems too  This vote in the 2017 VA House of Delegates race was counted as a vote for the Republican, David Yancey despite being a clear overvote. This threw the election into a tie in which Yancey won the coin-flip. It sounds inconsequential, unfortunately this single vote decided the control of the VA House of Delegates. axeil fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 15:30
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Alter Ego posted:Thanks, axeil. Compared to this, 1824 and 1876 seem like East Hampton clambakes. Thanks to you as well! Your effort posts have been a real joy to read.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:46
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Alter Ego posted:For all you younger viewers, this is why some of us older folks want Florida to sink into the ocean. And also why everyone in their 30s and over were begging students/20somethings not to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. We had all seen this play out already in 2000 and once again, if you add the Dem+Green votes in PA, WI and MI the Dems would've won just like in 2000 in Florida. Don't vote 3rd party, it really is a vote for whoever you hate the most.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:51
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Alter Ego posted:I'm not sure Jill Stein held the same allure for the group of people that voted Nader in 2000, but she attracted a whole new coalition of self-righteous "leftists" and anti-vax nutbags. Your message remains sound, however. Very true. I would write up a post on alternate voting systems rather than first past the post and why they are potentially better ideas in terms of figuring out true voter preference but it's a bit out of scope for a thread about Presidents.
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Apr 5, 2018 15:59
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Ze Pollack posted:the number of votes gary johnson would have given to trump is, of course, politely ignored Republicans shouldn't vote for 3rd party candidates either but it helps keep their idiots from getting elected so I don't care if they make tactical mistakes.
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Apr 5, 2018 22:43
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Alter Ego posted:Part 3: The Post-Truth Society (Or: How Added to the OP! My main memory of the pre-9/11 time was the Spy Plane Incident in China and I put a sarcastic "warning" sign on my bedroom door about spy planes having a large blindspot like we have for tractor trailors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident R. Guyovich posted:this is usually the jumping-off point for alternate historians to posit a communist world since he advocated friendly relations with the soviet union. i'm skeptical this would have been allowed even at the time, but it is interesting to think about Henry Wallace as VP in 44 and Trotsky winning out over Stalin (either through Stalin dying early or Trotsky winning outright). I don't know enough about Trotskyism to really contribute much other than the idea though. axeil fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Apr 9, 2018 |
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Apr 9, 2018 16:46
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Who all remembers this from the debates? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6nW2Uow-zk Bush was such a goddamned liar.
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Apr 12, 2018 17:10
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Echo Chamber posted:I'm still more mad about the 2004 election than I am about 2016. Agreed. 2004 made me deeply angry as well. Especially about what happened to Howard Dean. I think if the 2004 election had happened where we have Twitter and social media Dean would've won the primary and probably the general.
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Apr 12, 2018 17:45
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Ze Pollack posted:back when the Liberal Orthodoxy demanded they be treated as disgusting, freakish punchlines [citation needed]
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Apr 12, 2018 20:21
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Nocturtle posted:At the end of Bush II's presidency I thought Reagan/Thatcher-style conservatism had finally been publicly discredited as a serious governing ideology. The unnecessary wars, the abortive attempts to gut the social systems on which society at large relied and above all the deregulation-enabled financial crisis were all undeniable evidence of a failed approach to governance. Whatever followed, I believed Bush II had proved that the Republicans would need to radically reform following the very public failure of their principles in action. This obviously didn't happen, and instead the recent shift of the Republican party to all but explicitly endorse authoritarian and white supremacist principles directly follows from Bush II's failures. There was nowhere else for the party to go in 2008. Probably a lack of people to replace them/bigger fish to fry. If the 08 financial crisis hadn't happened then maybe the party spends it's time purging the Iraq War supporters. As it is almost all of them are gone from Congress and Hillary's been completely ruined as a politician thanks to her losing to Trump plus she lost the 08 primary because of her vote to approve it. Here's the list of everyone who voted for it, those still in the Senate in bold. quote:The full roll call on H.J.Res. 114, 107th Congress, A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq, is here. The vote count was YEAs 77, NAYs 23. The only notable name on the list still in the Senate is Schumer. So long as they are willing to repent for their mistake and vote in a way that shows they have learned their lesson I'm willing to forgive the Dems who voted for the Iraq War, but Schumer having voted for it and being Minority Leader is a real slap in the face. edit: Kerry's name is really the most surprising on that list and it breaks my heart. He's the only liberal (other than Clinton) to vote yes and you can chalk Clinton's Yea up to her being from NY and pretty hawkish. Kerry had no goddamned reason to vote Yea and it ended up really, really harming his campaign in 04. axeil fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Apr 13, 2018 |
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Apr 13, 2018 17:27
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Trump just pardoned Scooter Libby. Alter Ego, hopefully you've got the whole Plame Affair in your write-up as it's about to suddenly be relevant again.
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Apr 13, 2018 18:32
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Alter Ego posted:gently caress. Sure! My knowledge of the whole thing is fuzzy so if you/anyone else want to chime in, feel free!
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Apr 13, 2018 21:32
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I'd rather have Jimmy Carter for a palate cleanse. I hope there are some younger readers here who now understand just how deeply Bush hosed everything up and why older folks, especially older millennials despise him. My main Iraq War memory was when I was 14 and driving around town with my Presbryterian Church confirmation sponsor, a friend of my mom's. She's a pretty leftist lady and we got on the topic of Iraq and I was arguing "well, if they have WMDs, then shouldn't we take them out" and she very calmly and clearly explained how all that was bullshit and turned me against the war before it happened. She talked about the Kosovo war refugees she and her family took in during the 90s and how war should really only be the last resort and only when something truly horrible/ethnic cleansings were going on like in WW2 or in former Yugoslavia where only violence can stop the people trying to harm the innocent. Really gave me perspective on things and was probably my first non-Hollywood look into what war is really like. So thanks Mrs. [REDACTED} for saving me from a potential lifetime of being a giant idiot about that. The Plame Affair shocked me deeply as a kid who did Model UN and was interested in diplomacy and intelligence. Even though I was only about 14 or 15 I knew the one thing you didn't do was name undercover agents unless you would like to get them killed. I am almost certain there were orders from either Rumsfeld, Cheney or Bush to out her as a warning not to oppose the Iraq War and leak anything about how the "evidence" was made up but we couldn't prove it and all we had to show for it was Scooter Libby...who's now been pardoned. I swear to god if Trump gets impeached and whoever succeeds him tries to go the Gerald Ford route they need to be immediately ejected into the sun. That there was no follow-up and prosecution of anything Bush did by Obama is another huge gently caress up that pissed me off to no end. GreyjoyBastard posted:edit and this is basically the spiritual successor thread to the QuoProQuid "goons declare John Adams permanent and hereditary king, then elect the Anti-Masonic Party" thread That thread was an utter joy and I'm sad we never finished it...although I think it got dropped right after November 2016 so I get why we all may not have wanted to do fantasy elections any more. axeil fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Apr 14, 2018 |
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Apr 14, 2018 06:19
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