Who Do You Consider the Worst President Ever?
Wednesday July 2, 2008
So I've just written up the eight worst presidents in U.S. history on civil liberties issues, but I'm guessing some of you will disagree with my choices or their placement. Here are a few people who didn't make the list for very specific reasons:
- George Washington: He didn't always quash rebellions in the best possible manner, and the Crimes Act and original Fugitive Slave Act were both problematic, but he gets a free pass from me because the U.S. government was still in nascent form when he took office. Besides, he could easily have been so much worse, and would have been if he had followed the only examples available to him at the time.
- Abraham Lincoln: Because civil war always threatens the stability of a country's institutions, and because the Emancipation Proclamation makes up for a multitude of sins, I'm not ready to put Lincoln in the top 8 over habeas corpus violations.
- Franklin Roosevelt: This was a very, very tough call. I don't forgive the Japanese-American internment camps, his unwillingness to accept Jewish-German refugees during the early years of the Holocaust, or his brazen attempts to stack the Supreme Court. But the cumulative effects of the Great Depression and World War II, and the fact that he was by far the longest-serving president in U.S. history, make his real legacy on civil liberties issues very difficult to assess.
Comments
You wrote: “I don’t forgive the Japanese-American internment camps, his unwillingness to accept Jewish-German refugees…” Does this mean you forgive President Roosevelt for locking up some 15,000 European Americans (11,000 German Americans and 3,500 Italian Americans)? Does it also mean that you forgive this president for declaring some 600,000 Italian Americans and 300,000 German Americans as “Enemy Aliens;” which barred them from flying, from possessing cameras and firearms?
See more on this at http://www.foitimes.com
Roosevelt ranks number one for violations of civil liberties. In 1940 he required all legal resident aliens to register age 14 plus, male/female. He created the first peacetime draft. He incarcerated 120,000 Japanese, arrested 60,000 Germans per his Attorney General, did not permit lawyers into hearings,in which the courts agreed. The courts up to Appeals Court declared habeas corpus denial as proper, and that hearings already given were a courtesy and not a right.Roosevelt also imported for internment Germans, Japanese, their indigenous spouses and kids from Central and South America.He and Truman kept internees on Ellis Island until mid 1948.
How do I know this? I was interned, am now 83.
“Incarceration” is a myth. You weren’t “interned”, you were evacuated from the west coast combat zones.
From the outset the WRA’s principal objective was to resettle evacuees and get them out of the camps as soon as possible for locations anywhere in the U.S. but in the military zones from which they had been evacuated. Anyone (alien or citizen)could apply to leave the relocation centers and would be approved if he or she met the following criteria: (1) had a job offer or other means of support waiting on the outside, (2) agreed to keep the WRA informed of any changes of jobs or addresses, (3)had a clean record both at the center and with the FBI as well as no record of disloyalty to the U.S. with a military intelligence agency, and (4)there existed reasonable evidence that the person’s presence would be acceptable to the community in which he proposed to make his or her new home.
Ironically, the announcement of the resettlement program in September of 1942 brought howls of protest from the evacuees “who saw it as an attempt on the part of the government to evade responsibility of caring for them by turning them into a hostile Caucasian world.” [”Democracy on Trial,”-Page Smith, award-winning historian and professor at UC/Santa Cruz.
The WRA persisted in encouraging (practically begging) the evacuees to apply to leave the centers. Counselers were dispatched to assure them of good treatment on the outside, monetary incentives to leave were offered, WRA resettlement field offices were set up in Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Milwaukee, New York, and other cities to pave the way for employment of the evacuees. But still many evacuees, particularly the Issei, resisted leaving the camps.
In a letter dated February 10, 1981, former WRA head,Dillon Myer, responded to a researcher’s question in the following words: “The WRA did its very best to get people to leave the camps, and of course many thousands did leave…but many of the older aliens refused to leave… because they felt more secure in the camps.”
Even though your 83 you’re still capable of fudging on the truth…
Bob, it doesn’t look to me like Interned is fudging the truth at all. If you look at the WPA interviews from the Depression era, you’ll find that many former slaves missed slavery, too. But they were born into slavery, just as Japanese Americans were captured and interned. The fact that some were glad they were interned doesn’t change the fact that they weren’t allowed to leave, just as the fact that some former slaves missed the old institution doesn’t mean that they weren’t slaves. A thing is what it is.
That said, I didn’t include Roosevelt on the list–controversially, I realize–because of the reasons noted in the blog entry above. It was a very hard decision.
Tom, the evacuation had nothing to do with slavery. What’s your point in bringing up slavery accept to provide an emotional reaction?
Issei were not Americans, they were Japanese. Their kids were Americans by birthright and many of these also held dual citizship with Japan, many returning to Japan for a facist education then returning to the United States as reserve members of the Imperial Japanese military.
They were allowed to leave under the conditions I described above.
In fact, at no point was the government interested in “locking up” the evacuated Japanese. From the beginning if the evacuation should occur the plan was to relocate them to areas in the interior with suitable farmland where the majority being in agriculture could continue producing for the war effort. From the begining religious, social service and even the JACL demanded that if the evacuation should occur the Japanese shouldn’t just be “kicked out” of the combat zones.
The government should be responsible for feeding, housing, providing employment and medical care for the evacuated people – and assiting them in re-establishing themselves in the interior – in as humane an environment as could be provided. That is just what the government did with the Relocation Centers.
Internment camps were run by the Department of Justice and held only enemy aliens who had been deemed security risks and their U.S. citizen family members who were allowed at their choice to stay with them. Internees included 10,995 Germans, 16, 849 Japanese (5,589 who voluntarily renounced U.S. citizenship and became enemy aliens), 3,278 Italians, 52 Hungarians, 25 Romanians, 5 Bulgarians, and 161 classified as 登ther・ Only a small fraction of enemy aliens were interned. Japanese citizens with families were sent to Crystal City, Texas and lived side-by-side with German and Italian families. Single men were sent to internment camps in other states. Not all enemy aliens were placed in internment camps, and no American citizen was forcefully placed in an internment camp. If you were interned it was determined that you, a spouse or parent was an enemy alien and a security risk.
This history has been so entirely manipulated by special interest groups it’s no wonder the passive reader with little knowledge of the history would come to conclusions that just aren’t true.
Here is an interesting quote from the Tolan Commission on National Defense Migration made by Representative Carl Curtis of Nebraska March 7, 1942.
Mr. Curtis: May I say something right here. I don’t believe anything will be gained by assuming that everyone who has to be evacuated is disloyal. These military decisions must be made upon the basis of the best judgement of those military authorities who are in charge. The rest of us will have to comply. It will be tuff, it will be cruel and there will be hardships.
Sherman had an old idea of what was war, but that was a long time ago and it is old-fashioned. But that is going to fall upon every American.
I live in a little town of 1,700 people. One of the car dealers there sells automobiles. He did sell automobiles, radios, washing machines and tires. His Government at Washington says, “You can’t sell any of those things. You can’t even buy them.”
It so happens that that family has two sons in the armed forces and a third one about to go. Well, now, they are not sitting down at their supper table and talking about their liberties and their precious rights to do business and their precious things being taken away. It is one of those things that all of us are just going to have to take on the chin and like it.
(Rep. Curtis made this comment to Japanese American members of the United Citizens Federation. It is amazing from reading the National Defense Migration testimony that the arguments made by the Japanese American Reperations Movement today is nothing more than the same old positions used by similar groups in 1942.)
The 8 worse Presidents list I find one sided,opinionated and some downright nitpickery.But we all have a right to our personal opinion.I’ll not get further into it except to opine my choice : Best Prez ever: FDR, dispite his misgivens, Worse Prez ever, Carter, because of his. note :Must confess I voted FOR Carter because I thought no one can be as bad a Prez as Ford. I was sure mistaken then and can be now.
By far, one of the worse presidents was Jimmy Carter, and a close tie or next Bill Clinton.
As for the WW2 and history re President Roosevelt, declassified documents, and numerous publications give facts. A min of 6,000 Japanese on west coast, declared allegiance to Japan. Those relocated had a choice to leave the west coast or be protected in various camps. See any/all of Lillian Baker’s Nobel prize nominated publication, and David Loaman, “Magic”…
published by Athena Press, http://www.athenapressinc.com, and http:www.internmentarchives.com, to learn the truth and facts.of this military war time urgency. Contact American’s For Historical Accuracy, frankdodgee@aol.com. Or check out: http://www.hemet411.com/AFHA/
Jimmy Carter was the worst, then Bill Clinton
for many reasons. The People do not have a choice (so far) in November, i.e. “None of the above”. Hopefully the delegates will draft another candidate at convention.
George W. Bush as the worst president ever in a landslide. (Maybe Johnson is a close second).
My comment is That in recent times ther was terrible Presidents, lack of moral stature, and outright actions that are not was America is about.I’m not voting on recent (today) or your picks that you showed. Moral decay in America is unacceptable-from Presidents that do what two i know of, and not particularily the first choice on your list.It is said you cannot satisfy everyone, but i know of better times, trials-and we had problems then also, but not what we are experience is nowadays. Irregardless of who leads, what changes without Human kindness, and the basics of life- this World will not succeed when it is exploited by a few- who not only are out of touch, but i wager learn at a pace i can accept.
This thread must be a joke? There is no intelligence displayed here. Just chatter.