Worst Americans Options

[*kryogenix*]

Who do you believe are the worst Americans of all time?

Be prepared to defend your choices! I'm expecting a lot of "George W. Bush for being a stupid dum dum head," so make sure you can stay and defend your choices.

This is not a concrete list (actually, I'm going to pick some controversial figures for the sake of debate) but here, in no particular order:

FDR- For pretty much becoming a dictator during WWII, not to mention mishandling it.
Nathan Bedford Forrest- For starting the KKK.
Joe McCarthy- For his overzealous crusade against Communism.
U.S. Grant- For being a terribly ineffective president, especially after the Civil War.
Robert McNamara- For mishandling the Vietnam War.
Malcolm X- For undoing what MLK JR III did by supporting violent miltantism.

I can't think of any more bad Americans at the moment, but I'll let you guys have a go.

[ComradeRed]

Franklin Pierce gets too much crap too; by the 1850s, inaction was probably the best that anyone could have done. It's like the Cold War--you want a leader who will try to preserve the Status Quo, not someone who will take an aggressive, activist stance and lead to nuclear war (the election of 1964). Lincoln ran an activist campaign and guess what? Civil War broke out.

[Mulder]

Franklin Pierce gets too much crap too; by the 1850s, inaction was probably the best that anyone could have done. It's like the Cold War--you want a leader who will try to preserve the Status Quo, not someone who will take an aggressive, activist stance and lead to nuclear war (the election of 1964). Lincoln ran an activist campaign and guess what? Civil War broke out.

the civil war was inevitable. if there had been no civil war than the country would have divided into 2 separate nations. the south was being too demanding. someone had to take an agressive stance on the matter.

[ComradeRed]

the civil war was inevitable. if there had been no civil war than the country would have divided into 2 separate nations. the south was being too demanding. someone had to take an agressive stance on the matter.

Hardly. The South was demanding that states in the West vote on whether they wanted slavery--was that being "too demanding" (furthermore, the South's OWN Constitution prohibited the importation of slaves so the South was not bent on expanding slavery to any considerable extent outside of New Mexico and Arizona)? An aggressive stance led to the bloodiest war in US History--whereas almost every other nation in the Americas saw slavery come to a natural end by the late 1880s (Brazil being the last nation) without fighting a bloody war (Haiti is the only one I can think of where slavery was ended by war). Clearly, the Civil War was not needed and only resulted from the South's perception that Lincoln would be overly aggressive and disrupt the status quo. Under Pierce, there were four years of relative calm and peace which is more than I can say for most presidents, so while he wasn't one of the greatest presidents ever, he nonetheless does get too much crap. Even if the country divided into 2 separate nations, historically speaking, it would not have mattered at all. The South was economically unimportant to the North until the 1980s and 90s with the booms in NC, GA, TX, and FL, and would not have seriously hampered our ability to defeat either the Nazis or the Soviets.

Besides, Pierce had the brilliant idea of buying Cuba--that would have appeased the South since it would have restored the Senate balance, and moreover it would have saved us so much trouble later on (no Castro, no missile crisis, etc.)