Top 5 WORST Leaders ever

[carmen510]

You've seen the best, now see the rest!

Note: Try to think really hard of the people who completely screwed up their nations.

United States

1. George Dubya Bush. This will be a president whose influence will be felt for years to come.
2. FDR. He made the Great Depression worse, and actually encouraged attacks so he would have an excuse to join the war with Britain.
3. Woodrow Wilson. Encouraged attacks as well to join war with Britain.
4. Buchanan. Wasn't able to prevent the secession of Southern States.
5. William Henry Harrison. Didn't do anything during his term in office.


World (Don't really know)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

 

[Traitorfish]

1. George Dubya Bush. This will be a president whose influence will be felt for years to come.

Much as I loathe the Arch-Chimp, I think calling him the "worst President ever" is probably exaggerating. Whoever's in power now always seems worse than they are because they're in power now, if you know what I mean...

 

[Irish Caesar]

5. William Henry Harrison. Didn't do anything during his term in office.

Which makes him one of the better ones, really.

 

[LightSpectra]

1. George Dubya Bush. This will be a president whose influence will be felt for years to come.

He's not good by any means, though calling him the worst ever is laughable. You need to check out the Harding or Hoover administrations and attempt to repeat that nonsense.

2. FDR. He made the Great Depression worse,

And here, we apparently have far-right propaganda, strangely. Check this graph and then this one and finally this one, notice that the New Deal began in '33.

 

[LightSpectra]

Now, assuming that we're not counting the "evilness" of the leader, where otherwise Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Leopold II, Ismail Enver, Kim Il Sung, Hideki Tojo, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, etc. would all take the front spots.

In terms of just overall prosperity of the nation, I would argue that leaders who allowed their nation to fall into civil war or deep depression because of their hedonism, greed or general incompetence are the worst leaders in history. Charles I, Louis XVI, Nicholas II, Nero Caesar, whichever Chinese emperor/empress who refused to modernize and thereby allowed China to be conquered several times in a row, and so on.

 

[Godwynn]

Which makes him one of the better ones, really.

I agree with the above statement.

 

[Dachs]

2. FDR [...] actually encouraged attacks so he would have an excuse to join the war with Britain.

Mmmm...what's so bad about America saving the free world and smacking down an uppity Asian Great Power? We GA'ed off of that Marine victory at Guadalcanal, after all.

3. Woodrow Wilson. Encouraged attacks as well to join war with Britain.

Again with the conspiracy theories and the automatic assumption that war is bad. Wilson ain't so great, but at least slam him for the resurrected Alien and Sedition Act (not sure of actual name; believe it was 1917 Espionage Act), the complete destruction of any semblance of order in Europe, and the Palmer raids, not some tripe like joining a war that we were going to get into sooner or later.

Which makes him one of the better ones, really.

Stimmt - although he could have picked a better VP. I mean, come on, Tyler?

He's not good by any means, though calling him the worst ever is laughable. You need to check out the Harding or Hoover administrations and attempt to repeat that nonsense.

Hoover wasn't nearly so bad as Harding. Arthur would be up there too if not for the Pendleton Civil Service Act.

And here, we apparently have far-right propaganda, strangely. Check this graph and then this one and finally this one, notice that the New Deal began in '33.

FDR was no economic genius (and a miniature Stalin to boot, though I'm not really complaining), but he didn't make things worse. They just didn't get better really really fast, which is apparently enough to indict a President on charges of crimes against the economy. "You didn't provide me with instant relief! Curse you!"

Now, assuming that we're not counting the "evilness" of the leader, where otherwise Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Leopold II, Ismail Enver, Kim Il Sung, Hideki Tojo, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, etc. would all take the front spots.

Counting evilness would be sort of silly, I agree.

In terms of just overall prosperity of the nation, I would argue that leaders who allowed their nation to fall into civil war or deep depression because of their hedonism, greed or general incompetence are the worst leaders in history. Charles I, Louis XVI, Nicholas II, Nero Caesar, whichever Chinese emperor/empress who refused to modernize and thereby allowed China to be conquered several times in a row, and so on.

If you mean Charles I of France, you can blame the succession system of Francia in general, not just him - he fixed everything but that, after all. If it's Carlos I of Spain (aka Karl V, Heiliger römischer Kaiser), then I fail to see how abandoning a monolithically poorly run Empire for two Empires, both of which were somewhat less poorly run and able to concentrate on their respective spheres of activity, makes him a bad ruler. I suppose he could be indicted for failing to eliminate Lutheranism and the rest of the Protestant groups as viable political and social influences within the Empire, but that was never going to work anyway, what with the problems of martyrdom and the strangely energetic Valois French under Francois I. And Louis wasn't really bad, IMHO, but he was unfortunately indecisive, and probably many better rulers than he would have been toppled by the confusing insurrections of 1789-1815. (He even had a relatively ingenious plan for eliminating the problematic nobility, but failed to summon the nerve to carry it out; that's the whole reason he was in that mess, after all.) Personally, I can come up with several extremely poor Roman Emperors (Diocletian, to name someone with a massively overinflated reputation, as well as Augustus; some of the later, Eastern, Emperors were also pretty bad, like basically all of the Angelid dynasty as well as every Doukid except Ioann III, Doukas Vatatzes), and Matthias Corvinus basically guaranteed the disintegration of Hungary after his death by antagonizing all of his neighbors and overstretching himself.

 

[Tecibbar]

Now, assuming that we're not counting the "evilness" of the leader, where otherwise Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Leopold II, Ismail Enver, Kim Il Sung, Hideki Tojo, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, etc. would all take the front spots.

They may be "evilness" in our time, but they would be worship as heroes in ancient times. Just compare them to Alexander, Ghenis Khan.

 

[puglover]

He's not good by any means, though calling him the worst ever is laughable. You need to check out the Harding or Hoover administrations and attempt to repeat that nonsense.

While I agree that Bush is not the worst president, Harding and Hoover weren't either.

Hoover was a victim of the circumstances of his election, and doesn't deserve the reputation people of the time gave him.

Harding, also, was hated in his day. While there were scandalous activities in the government, most of the information we had about him was supplied by his enemies, exaggerated to the worst interpretation possible. Now that historians have found his actual records, they're beginning to look at him in a bit more favorable light.

 

[bombshoo]

Everything I've read still shows Harding as a taint on the American Presidency. I'd like to read some other arguments if you could find and post them.

Buchannan and Pierce and those others who let the nation slip into the civil war are the worst in my opinion however.

As for not the United States, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Robert Mugabe, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto in Congo, "Emperor" Bokassa I, Idi Amin, Leopold I of Belgium, Santa Anna, Truijillo, Poppa and Baby doc...

The French ones from after Napoleon I to WWI all seem pretty pathetic...Napoleon III seems awful in particular though I don't know much about him...Also the Paraguayan President from the War of the Triple Alliance.

 

[LightSpectra]

Napoleon III seems awful in particular though I don't know much about him

He became emperor after France had been defeated and Prussia finally began to recover from the divisiveness of the Protestant reformation. He was a victim of circumstance, but even then he did a moderate job; he modernized France's economy and can loosely be considered an Enlightened despot because he freely liberalized his dominion.

If you mean Charles I of France, you can blame the succession system of Francia in general, not just him - he fixed everything but that, after all.

Charles I of England, actually. My mistake for not being clearer. His thirst for being a dictator caused a civil war. He tried to enforce the authority of the Church of England which caused more animosity from Ireland and Scotland. He knew nothing of the economy and initiated a short-lasting depression with his horrible taxes, and then he lost the civil war. All-in-all, he's probably done more damage to the isles than any other monarch

 

[philippe]

He became emperor after France had been defeated and Prussia finally began to recover from the divisiveness of the Protestant reformation. He was a victim of circumstance, but even then he did a moderate job; he modernized France's economy and can loosely be considered an Enlightened despot because he freely liberalized his dominion.

Napoleon III was an backstabber (see Italy), a meddler (Italy again), an incompetent warchief (see the wars vs Austria, and wonder where the name of the colour magenta is from), an authoritian figure (censorship, manipulation,...) and a adventurer doomed to fail (mexican empire anyone?) and he supported the American confederacy.
Too bad he didn't died at Sedan as he has wished, cause he deserves that for the modernisation of France and some other exploits.

 

[TheLastOne36]

i wouldn't call Mao the worst because he did revalutionized and industralized china.

Nero Ceaser is #1...
after that i'm not to sure.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

i wouldn't call Mao the worst because he did revalutionized and industralized china.

Nero Ceaser is #1...
after that i'm not to sure.

At the expense of destroying the land and starving the people by eliminating agriculture. He may have started it but he definitely didn't finish and on the wrong foot.

Most of the successors of Cyrus were pretty sucky. Mugabe sucks. IMO the mongol khans sucked. Timur sucked. I could think of plenty more unfortunately...

 

[sydhe]

Here are a few candidates
(1) Francisco Solano López of Paraguay, who managed to lead his country into a war with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay at the same time. That was the war in which most of the Paraguayan men were killed.
(2) Phocas, the Eastern Roman Emperor who overthrew and murdered the Emperor Maurice, then let the country's defenses collapse while he fell into paranoia, violence and general incompetence. Heraclius had to rescue the empire, which probably would otherwise have fallen in the Arab invasion if not to the Persians first.
(3) Idi Amin of Uganda, who was not only a murderous thug who let his country collapse, but led them into a needless war with Tanzania which his country promptly lost.
(4) Ethelred the Unready of , who was not only, well, unready (and uncounseled, which is what the nickname meant originally), but also ordered a massacre of Danish residents which led to him losing his country to the Danes.
(5) Kim Jong Il of North Korea.

 

[TheLastOne36]

(1) Francisco Solano López of Paraguay, who managed to lead his country into a war with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay at the same time. That was the war in which most of the Paraguayan men were killed.

Oh yes, and at that time there were far more men in Paraguay then women. i think i read that 2/3's of the population was killed?

 

[sydhe]

Oh yes, and at that time there were far more men in Paraguay then women. i think i read that 2/3's of the population was killed?

I've seen estimates of up to 80% of the entire population, which seems a bit high, and over 90% of the male population. After the war there were many times as many women as men.

Since I mentioned López and Kim, I should complete the trifecta with Baby Doc Duvalier, another incompetent and deadly son of a dictator.

 

[LightSpectra]

Timur was a conqueror. He had a moderately sized empire. By those standards, he was an amazing leader. The title "the Lame" refers to an injury he had during a particular battle, not that he was a horrible leader.

 

[bob bobato]

When you say 'worst', do you mean 'evil', or 'incompitent'? And dont say that its the same thing (thats the answer I got last time I asked that at this sort of thread...).

 

[LightSpectra]

Incompetent, apparently.