perfidy

Easy to explain: It's the season for cheap political point scoring.

Everyone knows there's no way in hell it's going to make it out of Congress, any more than fiscal prudence will. My only complaint is that he didn't ask for both, because at least one of them would have made sense. Plus why not go for the fantasy trifecta, and suggest peace on Earth, goodwill toward all men, while he was at it?

But it's just posturing, I'll duly ignore it as such, and I'd suggest you do so as well. But keep up the "worst president in history" meme - I can't get me enough of that.

Millions of people no longer living under vicious tyrants might count as a minor policy accomplishment.

And I got a tax break!!!

Libya giving up nukes? Or was that Cindy Sheehan's doing?

I hate it when people with no knowledge of history throw around a label like "Worst President in history." I have problems with Bush despite having voted for him twice - the alternatives were far worse in my opinion.

Paul Martin - WORST PRIME MINISTER EVER!!! Ah, that felt good, anyhow -

Lefties like you probably would have put the same label on Reagan 20 years ago. Only with a couple of decades of prospective can a Presidency be accessed.

James Buchanan is generally considered the worst President in history for his refusal to deal with the secession crisis that led to the Civil War. Sorry but Bush hasn't destroyed the Union yet - he still has a couple years so there is hope. In the 20th Century, Jimmy Carter is considered the worst with Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Warren Harding getting dishonorable mentions.

You could make a strong argument for Wilson being the worst president ever. By bungling America's entry into the first world war, and then totally screwing the pooch on the peace settlement, he set the stage for German aggression and the second world war, and the expansion of world communism and the cold war. Hundreds of millions dead for his rigid idealism.

I still say it's Carter, but you make out a pretty good case for Wilson.

Carter was weak and indecisive, but simply didn't have the opportunity to become truly awful.

I also have a strong dislike for Wilson for several reasons. He helped ram through the 16th Amendment (income tax) - based on blatant class envy - under questionable circumstances. The promises that it would only affect the super-rich were a lies and enabled later Liberals to explode the size of government. 1916 campaign promises to stay out of WWI were complete lies. And, after his stroke left him disabled, he allowed his wife and staff administer in his stead rather than honestly resigning and letting the VP take over. The kind of arrogant behavior we have come to expect from effete, academic, liberals.

I'm not a big fan of FDR either. Great wartime leader - sellouts to Stalin not withstanding - horrid domestic policy. He his economic policies did nothing to stop the Depression (WWII took car of that), trampled the Constitution, and left us with a bloated mess of a government we are stuck with to this day.

If you're trying to weigh the relative greatness of presidents, you have to look at upsides and downsides, and the sizes of each.

FDR has downsides, sure. But his wartime leadership is a net plus for him, I think.

Wilson is pretty much all downside. So is Carter and LBJ, but the magnitude of Wilson's downside eclipses by far the others. As LBJ's does Carter. Carter was an ineffectual president - bad but not damaging. LBJ had extensive ill effects in both the foriegn and domestic spheres. But LBJ's bad policies only resulted in millions of death and trillions of dollars wasted. Wilson is in the hundreds of millions and probably quadrillions of dollars range.

I think Carter did plenty of damage via his "handling" of Iran. I'll spot you Wilson for now, but we haven't seen the full butcher's bill for failing to deal in a sovereign manner with Islamofascism when we first had the opportunity.