Which President Was Worse -- Lincoln or Obama?

When comparing Presidential policies that proved disasterous for the country, let's see who comes out worse -- Abraham Lincoln or Barack Obama?

Lincoln
- Started a war of Northern aggression against southern states that legally left a union that no longer represented their best interests.
- Instated the first national draft.
- Suspended the writ of habeus corpus and illegally tossed people in prison on his whim.
- Actively advocated shipping off all the blacks in the U.S. back to Africa or to some foreign island.
- Stopped the prisoner exchange program and allowed thousands of troops to die of starvation in the prison camps.
- Advocated a scorched-earth campaign against non-combatant civilians.
- Responsible for the deaths of over 650,000 US citizens

Obama
- Has effectively crippled the US economy to suit his political whims
- Has taken more vacation days than any prior US president
- Advocates forcing US citizens to purchase health insurance they can not afford
- Continues to involve the US in ineffective foreign wars for political gain.
-Advocates new tax programs that will cripple the already over-taxed upper and middle class and destroy new job creation.


Wow....when you look at it this way, Lincoln was obviously worse than Obama!

I voted equally bad, but you have a point that the Lincoln provoked the war. I voted equally bad because Obama's not done yet. At the rate he's going, with the help of Maxine "No Justice, No Peace - The TEA Party Can Go To Hell" Waters and "Hanging" Andre Carson, Obama may well do the same.

Notwithstanding his drawbacks, Lincoln was still instrumental in the emancipation of the blacks an end to slavery.

Obama, on the other hand, has thus far been instrumental in absolutely fucking nothing.

Show us on the doll where the ghost of Lincoln touched you, BD.

Don't be fooled. Lincoln was no abolitionist. He wanted to free the blacks to get rid of them.

He touched us all. Even you. The rampant centralized government that we have today is a direct result of the Lincoln.

American Colonization Society

Lincoln was the greatest. Obama is probably in the bottom half.

Probably???

Yeah, have to make room for people like George Bush and Ronald Reagan too, remember?

I was. And he's still in the bottom 5 or so.

According to the book "The Leaders We Deserved: And A Few We Didn't", Lincolns economic policies did a good job of financing the war and laying the groundwork for the economic growth the U.S. enjoyed the in the latter half of the 19th century.

That said, I don't know why people blame Lincoln for starting the Civil War. The south fired the first shots.

As for provoking it, Lincoln was publicly on record as being as being unwilling to force an end to slavery.

The Democrats were still the largest party in Congress so southerners had no reasons to believe that Lincoln would be able to end slavery.

Arguably the greates presidents were those involved in independance, especially John Adams.

Sticking to one thing at a time, you can't blame the South for starting the war just because it fired the first shots. Technically, it's true that the shots were the start of open hostilities but at that point they were more of a formality than anything else. The hostility and division were already so profound that Lincoln would've had to commit hari-kari on the front steps of the White House to stop the actual fighting AND his successor would've had to have been an avowed Southern sympathizer.

indirect, non?
I mean, TR was the one that put an end to unregulated trusts.
Wilson pushed for the league of nations which evolved to the UN.
FDR... well, let's not go there... he was both extremes-hero and villain.
Truman/Ike got you into this world police BS, whether the world wanted it or not.
Nixon showed how the empire had no clothes...
Yeah, I don't think America has done very well with leaders this second half of it's existing.

Dayton3 agrees: partial agreement.

When I said "I was", I should've elaborated that I put GWB somewhere just above the middle and Reagan well into the upper half." Counting them still leaves plenty of room for Obama in the bottom 5 or so.

There's no teh baba option. This poll is invalid.

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In my opinion with a short synopsis for each.

Worst presidents-no order

1) Franklin Pierce-last president with a reasonable chance of preventing or at least limiting the scope of the U.S. Civil War.

2) James Buchanan-poured gas on the fire that became the Civil War. Did the almost impossible and made things worse. Also considered one of the most corrupt admin. in U.S. History.

3) Andrew Johnson-pissed away any hope of immediate reconcilliation in the aftermath of the Civil War. Encouraged the idea of the south being "white mans land".

4) Lyndon Johnson- Civil and Voting Rights Bills is great plus.

But, LBJ sent more than 500,000 soldiers (losing nearly 40,000 on his watch) to fight a war he DID NOT EVEN WANT. U.S. cities burned during his administration.

5) Richard Nixon- lost 25,000 soldiers just in the process of pulling out of Vietnam and making a desperatation agreement that led the U.S. to abandoning South Vietnam.

The Watergate Scandal has hurt the American presidency and the faith of the American people in our civil govt. to this day.


6) Jimmy Carter- arguably, the American president who appeared the weakest in modern history on the international stage.

And can anyone name a single major domestic policy of Carters that benefited the American people in the long run.

Looking at this list it is little wonder that Ronald Reagan looks so good

Three of the four previous presidents were simply awful

My, my. Is Dayton professing a secret admiration for JFK?

Oh, no. Of course not. He prefers unelected chiefs. :wink:

No.

JFK was below average.

But I was only going on about the worst.

The four prior to Reagan.

Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter.

Ford was the one who was simply below average and not flat out awful.

Carter
Ford
Nixon
Johnson

It does not appear he is!

Lincoln was the greatest mass murderer of American citizens. Over 650,000 people died in Butcher Abe's unnecessary war.

What is the count under Obama? 1,500?

There is no comparison.

You couldn't have had Wilson or the Roosevelts without first having the Lincoln.

Granting that Carter was weak sauce, it should be pointed out that his international legacy salvages a lot of America's rep in the rest of the world. When I hear his name I think of Camp David Accords and his poster boying it for Habitat.
As the Chief exec, he may have been lame, but his was the last presidency that the other 5.7 billion of us could look upon as dignified.
Despite the Reagan love here on WF, the man built your reputation as a bully amongst other first world nations and he was hard to perceive as more than a talking head. His war on drugs demolished the rights against search and seizure while setting a precedent for privacy violation not seen since Lincoln.

I forget, I know Black Dove was always one of Muad's henchmen, but when did he go into full-on Koo Koo Konfederacy mode?

The reason the prisoner exchanges were halted is because the Confederates had a nasty tendency to shoot black soldiers that surrendered. Lincoln said they needed to be treated equally to white soldiers and Jefferson Davis said he could go fuck himself.

Shit, you might as well blame Lincoln for getting blood stains all over the Presidential box at Fords Theater.

Yeah, you lost me right here..

No Woodrow Wilson?
You're slipping.

In truth, it was Lincoln's economic policies that did a good job of causing secession. Lincoln was the Obama of his day.

Everybody decries Obama for being a tax and spend Liberal/Progressive. That describes Lincoln as well. Lincoln was very pro government subsidies and very pro tariff (read tax), and it was the South that was bearing that tax burden. THAT is why the South didn't like him, THAT is why he was not on the ballots in the Southern states, and THAT is why the deep South states started seceding when he got elected anyway. The border states didn't secede until Lincoln put out the call for 75,000 volunteers to raise an army and put down the secession.

You got one thing right: Lincoln was not very much of an abolitionist. He was a colonizationist.

That's why when you look at the whole picture of what was going on at that time, slavery doesn't make any sense as the cause of the war. It wasn't the cause. The taxes and spending were, and the South was going to bear the brunt of it.

Yes, slavery was in the articles of secession of the Southern states. The reason for that was that it was a constitutional issue. There had never been a constitutional provision or amendment that had ever opened the door to government seizure of private property until the 13th Amendment.

And don't start trying to argue with me that the slaves were people and not property because you'll hear no argument from me on that. They were people. Period. But the concern over the 13th Amendment was this: once you open that door, where does it go from here? We live under a governmental and legal system that is based on precedent. Once given that power, what else would the government start seizing? THAT's what they were afraid of.

Well it's hard to gauge Obama since his term isn't up yet. While he hasn't split the country apart physically, he has split it apart ideologically.

Which President Was Worse -- Lincoln or Obama?


Lincoln is long gone. Obama the SCOAMF is still in office stuttering and clusterfucking.