(H/T – Ramjac7)
Alexandra von Maltzan of All Things Beautiful has issued a challenge to the blogosphere to come up with the 10 worst Americans of all time. Hmmm, so many choices, so little time. So, here’s my Bottom 10:
10. Bill Clinton – If he were dead, he would be far, far closer to the bottom (he just might redeem himself – yeah, right). Multiple chances to get Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, the Black Hawk Down fiasco, scandal after scandal after scandal, sending missile-launching and -targeting technology to the Red Chinese; in sum, a failed Presidency.
9. John Wilkes Booth – Thanks to him, we’ll never know if the Lincoln Plan for reconstituting the South into the Union would have worked. Instead, we were left with Andrew Johnson’s jack-booted methods, which we’re still suffering from.
8. Aaron Burr – Easily the worst Vice President in the history of the US. Killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel while VP, resigned in disgrace, and tried to set up a competing empire.
7. Joe Kennedy – Staunch isolationist, Hitler sympathizer, and he gave us John, Robert and Ted Kennedy.
6. Andrew Johnson – Instituted said jack-booted Reconstruction, and so corrupt he became the first President impeached (he survived by a single vote in the Senate).
5. John Walker Jr. – He gets the nod over Aldrich Ames because had the Cold War gone hot, his handover of our communications codes would have cost FAR more lives than Aldrich’s sale of operatives to the Soviets.
4. Jeffrey Dahmer – No “Worst” list is complete without at least one mass-murderer, and perhaps because Dahmer did his work in Milwaukee, he’s the NRE’s representative.
3. Nathan Bedford Forrest – Founded the Ku Klux Klan after being a Confederate general. Robert “Sheets” Byrd (D-West Virginia) thanks you.
2. Earl Warren – Before the infamous Warren Court, he was the driving force behind the Japanese internment camps.
1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt – Father of the welfare state, enough of an egomaniac to serve more than 3 terms and force a term limit on the Presidency (when no other office of federal government, even the Vice Presidency, is term-limited), enabled J. Edgar Hoover, extended the Great Depression into WWII, good friend of Iosef Stalin (in fact, his shadow involvement in WWII only was apparent after the Soviet Union got invaded), approving said Japanese internment camps. Not even the successful conclusion to WWII can save him from the bottom of the list.
