To Bachmann, five horrible mistakes made by Presidents other than Obama

People these days have horribly short memories, it seems. But nobody has a shorter memory than politicians. Now, while I may not be able to find my netbook occasionally, I pride myself on being able to see farther into the past than Michelle Bachmann and her sympathizers can. The Huffington Post highlights a BigGovernment.com interview of Michelle Bachmann, which includes the following little tidbit:

SHAPIRO: Is President Obama better or worse than Jimmy Carter?
BACHMANN: Worse. Easily worse.
SHAPIRO: I agree. So far, you’d have to say he’s the worst president in United States history …
BACHMANN: No question. No question.
SHAPIRO: … with the possible exception of James Buchanan.

Well, as a loving liberal, I think that Michelle Bachmann is being more than a little harsh on the President. Sure, there are plenty of things not to like about Barack Obama, such as the way he handles press leaks, but it is definitely a horrible exaggeration to say that other Presidents haven't screwed up worse than he has.

To prove my point, here are five Presidents, including some very good Presidents, that have done at least one thing that was worse than anything Obama has committed so far in his term.

After all, Obama can only become the worst President ever if he tops every action on the below list, plus many more.

1) Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Court packing

He is recognized by many to be one of the greatest Presidents of all time. He valiantly guided the United States of America though the greatest armed conflict in the history of mankind; what wrong could he have possibly committed?

Well, Roosevelt's sin was one born out out of the frustration of the party politics of the time. The conflict was worst between Roosevelt and the Supreme Court, where conservative judges fought many New Deal policies.

Roosevelt's solution to this was the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, which, among other things, expanded the number of justices on the Supreme Court. If the bill had managed to pass, then Roosevelt would be able to add more liberal justices to the court and then be assured that the court would vote the way Roosevelt wanted.

While Obama may have had his faults, and definitely has not yet demonstrated leadership on the level that FDR did, Obama has not attempted to drastically change the American government in the way that Roosevelt's court packing plan would have.

2) Herbert Hoover: Horrible economic policy

Tea partiers love to complain that Obama is incompetent in his dealings with the economy and that his tax policies will empty the wallets of the nation.

But Herbert Hoover, the predecessor to Franklin Roosevelt, bungled the Depression in a way that Obama has not even come close to. The Hoover Administration saw unemployment reach the point where nearly one out of four people were out of a job.

Hoover was also notorious in his use of increasing taxes to respond to the disaster, taxing in a manner faintly reminiscent of whoever these guys were protesting:

So, when somebody says that the late 2000's recession could have been worse, they might have a small idea as to how it would be worse.

3) Richard Nixon: For obvious reasons

Yup, Watergate.

Choosing Richard Nixon was the obvious choice for this blog post, perhaps too obvious.

But I chose to put Richard Nixon in this list so I could discuss him in contrast to Barack Obama.

Obama loves bipartisanship. He very badly wanted the health care bill to be a bipartisan thing. But instead, Barack Obama received nothing but vitriol from the Republican party, but managed to fix the health care system anyway. Whereas Nixon and his pals were obviously not being kind to the other party.

4) Harry Truman: ka-BOOM!

Like Roosevelt, Roosevelt's successor was a pretty cool guy in many respects. He helped found the United Nations and rebuilt Europe.

But Harry Truman also did something that I REALLY disapprove of. I consider this to be the worst mistake mentioned in this blog post, and perhaps one of the worst mistakes ever to be made.

Yes, it would have to be the bombing of Japan. Though a full analysis of the bombing and the time period that it occurred in would require an entirely new blog post, I will speak of it shortly. The main excuses were that a direct land assault on Japan would have resulted in too many American deaths, because Japan would not have surrendered easily, and that America could not have let the Soviet Union handle it because then Japan would have ended up as another satellite state.

While there is truth to both excuses, Japan would have surrendered under the condition that their emperor's status was kept as a puppet ruler, but only an unconditional surrender would have appeased the Allies.

(And of course, I approve of the Manhattan Project itself, building the bomb was necessary, but using it on the Japanese was not).

5) Barack Obama: Stuff that might happen in the future

(Yeah, I was too lazy to write about another President. There are plenty of bad Presidents to choose from anyway).

Barack Obama is not the worst President ever.

Not yet, anyway.

Even though I am a liberal that fully supports Obama, I recognize the possibility that something could happen before the end of his first, or possibly even second term.

Nobody predicted the oil spill, and that is already becoming a horrible environmental disaster. Chances are that something else may happen in the future, tainting Obama's legacy, whether or not Obama could have influenced the situation for the better.

The point that I'm trying to make, though, is that as of the publishing date of this blog post, Barack Obama is definitely far from being the worst President. Once he tries to appoint a lot more Supreme Court justices, runs the economy into the ground, gets his cronies to break into something, or detonates a nuclear weapon, then he will be on the level of the Presidents I mentioned above. And some of those Presidents, such as FDR, still enjoy a lot of respect today.