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We're had worse Presidents than Jackson in my lifetime.
Fair enough, worst I'm finding is #3 or #4 on some top 5 lists, but yeah nothing to write home about. Also I've noticed myself to confuse him with Johnson.
Admiral X wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:41 am
I guess I consider Jackson to be one of the worst Presidents, but maybe I'm a bit biased with that whole Trail of Tears thing.
I am guessing Jackson is very much like what we have here with Churchill in that people like to ignore ''the nastiness'' and focus on the good bits. It greatly helps when ''the nastiness'' is against people who are not you.
My money is on James Buchanan for the worst. Setting the foundation for civil war is probably the worst sin a president can commit.
One can perhaps blame Buchanan a little too much for that, since he did try to restrain the crazier Southern things, including trying to ram through statehood for the fraudulent Missouri slaveowner-imposed Kansan government in Compton. Even most of his Southern-majority Cabinet had provisionally Unionist Southerners like Toombs.
The issue is that nothing Buchanan does is going to defuse the issues around the South's latest greatest idea, a federal slave code for the territories, and how it's a no-sell among Northern Democrats. Thus giving Yancey the wedge issue to tear the party apart at Charleston and Baltimore.
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
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Admiral X wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:41 am
I guess I consider Jackson to be one of the worst Presidents, but maybe I'm a bit biased with that whole Trail of Tears thing.
Most people who place Jackson near the bottom are. And yes, Jackson killed a LOT of people....but then, most American Presidents do. Lincoln killed lots and LOTS of people, and he's generally considered to be the best President ever, so the exact magnitude of that sin varies a lot.
But in the final analysis, Jackson left the country stronger than he found it. Considerably stronger, actually. That puts him well ahead of men like Johnson or Pierce, and of course Buchanan, who failed to stop it's fracturing.
Admiral X wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:41 am
I guess I consider Jackson to be one of the worst Presidents, but maybe I'm a bit biased with that whole Trail of Tears thing.
Most people who place Jackson near the bottom are. And yes, Jackson killed a LOT of people....but then, most American Presidents do. Lincoln killed lots and LOTS of people, and he's generally considered to be the best President ever, so the exact magnitude of that sin varies a lot.
There's a lot of political implications of the trail of tears beyond aggregate fatalities though.
Last edited by BridgeConsoleMasher on Sun Dec 15, 2019 11:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I guess Lincoln could be seen in the same light that way given the whole states' rights issues and some of the violations of civil rights that came about in the lead up to the war as well as during it. While I'm sympathetic to the idea of states' rights, given that the "right" being fought over was the "right" to keep slaves, I can't really fault Lincoln for that. So that pretty much just leaves the civil rights issues.
With Jackson, he literally just ignored a ruling by the Supreme Court and did what he wanted anyway, which in my opinion shows his real quality. This is why I've always brought up Jackson whenever someone whines about the current sitting President supposedly being the worst President ever.
"Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough."
-TR
