Who is the worst U.S. President ever?

[SeattleUte]

I think Bush may be our worst president ever. By way of contrasting example, Nixon evinced his hatred for free government, overseeing an administration run amok in civil rights abuses and behaving like a thug himself, his henchmen even breaking and entering into a psychiatrist's office so they could smear a journalist who embarrassed the administration. He instituted wage and price controls ushering in the spiraling inflation of the 70's and '80's. He took seven years to extricate us from Vietnam after being elected on the promise to do so asap. The tapes reveal he was a racist and anti-semite and would have loved to shut down the news outlets. The Code of Federal Regulations tripled in size on his watch. His nuclear arms disarmament initiatives may have prolonged the cold war by ten years or so. He was a terrible president.

Yet Nixon's initiatives in China were truly groundbreaking, even subversive to conservative dogma at the time, and all for the greater good. His diplomacy for better or worse remains the stuff of high historical drama, even legend, and among many consreviatives he retains a mystique as a brilliant albeit damaged person and leader.

Bush has Nixon's dark side, and none of his complexity and positives. He'll go down in history as a shallow, mean, dogmatic little man in the thrall of his mendacious handlers who got us mired into a decade long and pointless war and disgraced us as torturers and civil righs abusers. It was always quite ambiguous who bore the fault for getting us into Vietnam between Johnson and Kennedy, and there was much sympathetic understanding that this was a sort road to hell is paved with good intentions enterprise that unfolded gradually. It's clear Bush got us into Iraq, and by invading a sovereign state on a false premise. He's certainly the least respected and worst president of my life.