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Franklin Pierce didn’t even know how to ride a horse
“lilmod, though I wasn’t yet an adult during his term to be able to claim I recall events in detail, Hoover was a fairly good president despite his tenure being marred by the Great Depression – which was no fault of his.”
Uh,Joseph, do you mean that you weren’t an adult or you weren’t in this world yet?
The first election I remember was the one between Ford and Carter. All I knew about them was that Carter had a daughter, whereas Ford had a dog.Obviously, I liked Carter much better.
(I know this is not what the OP wanted, but it’s good for you Americans to know that there is a world beyond the Brooklyn Bridge). Living in England we of course don’t have a president. But from my SA days, we had a president called FW de Klerk, who negotiated to give up white minority rule and of course the great Nelson Mandela. However the worst president is current incumbent, the corrupt, uneducated and power thirsty Jacob Zuma.
Jimmy “beepbbeepbeep” Carter as bob grant used to say
Daas Yochid,
That Christie line made me smile. Thanks.
Did others notice how the media and liberal self-declared historians fawn over Democrat presidents and give many of them a loving nickname/acronym such as FDR, JFK and LBJ? (It isn’t anything recent.)
Or perhaps the initials were used to avoid confusion with Teddy Roosevelt, Robert Kennedy, Andrew Johnson (ok, not exactly a contemporary, but they were trying to be consistent). when it came to the Bushes, W sufficed.
According to your theory we would have had BHO and WJC, which we do not.
WinnieThePooh, you’re both mistaken
It was an journalistic & campaign style during the middle of last century,to show they’re “men of the people” to give Democrats initials
The best the GOP could do was “Ike”
Geordie613,
The best President of the Union of SA was probably
Marshal Smuts
Agree?
Re: “the great” Mandela
Writing in the Times, Mr de Klerk argues that the handing over of power to the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1980s would have resulted in fighting and “the imposition of a communist regime” by the party’s left wing..
In all likelihood an ANC victory before the mid-1980s could have been achieved only after a devastating racial war and would not have resulted in a genuine constitutional democracy but in the imposition of a communist regime.”
We ignore that Apartheid South Africans were the bulwark against communism for virtually the whole southern half of the African Continent
Truth- so how come we didn’t have a HST?
Pardon,
Marshal Smuts
was Prime Minister. That was before South Africa became a Republic
WinnieThePooh, fair enough
Hit ’em Hard Harry
With a name like Harry probably it would have unnecessary
Unlike Franklin Delano
John Fitzgerald
Geordie613,
South African yidden constantly reminisce with nostalgia for the “good old, peaceful” days prior to the breakup of Apartheid
Back then,however, they were the biggest fighters and activists against Apartheid!?
It is Time for Truth,
You make good points.
However, Jan Smuts was Prime Minister. SA’s first Executive State President was PW Botha. Smuts did support Zionism, was a friend of Chaim Weizmann, and recognised the creation of the State of Israel, just a few days before losing an election to the NP and the start of the Apartheid years.
(strange that this is on a thread called “Who was the worst president”)
South African yidden constantly reminisce with nostalgia for the “good old, peaceful” days prior to the breakup of Apartheid
Back then,however, they were the biggest fighters and activists against Apartheid!?
I think The yidden who say that, are not the same as those who fought Apartheid.
Benignuman, I’m glad someone got it.
Best president of my lifetime: Lyndon Johnson, notwithstanding his atrocious blunders in Vietnam. He pushed through the Congress the most important civil rights legislation since the end of the Civil War. I am not sure whether he or his predecessor, Kennedy, was responsible for Medicare and/or Medicaid.
Worst: Easily, Tricky Dick, notwithstanding his opening to China. If any other person had done with China what Tricky Dick did, Tricky Dick would have been his leading critic. But his Watergate crimes wipe out any credit he gets for doing anything right (which was not that much, anyway).
Special note to Joseph: I can’t tell you why anybody else used initials like FDR, HST, DDE, JFK, LBJ, RMN, GRF, GWB, GHWB, RWR or JEC, but with me it would be because I am lazy. Use of initials does not constitute an honor or expression of admiration, whether the writer is liberal, conservative, smart or stupid. And while you are at it, study the difference between initials and acronyms. Here’s some help: When GRF passed out WIN buttons, he was using an acronym for Whip Inflation Now. But the ACA (Affordable Care Act) is just a bunch of initials, not a bunch of initials that make a word that people can use.
CT Law, I was born during FDR’s Presidency but the first President I actually remember was Truman who turned out to be a pretty good President. thought Eisenhower was a good President as well. He was active and decisive when he needed to be and he followed Lord Northcote’s dictum,” When it is not necessary to do something, it is necessary NOT to do something”. I recall, at the time, the Democrats made light of Ike’s supposed intellectual limitations. They must have missed the part where he led the larges army of western allies ever assembled, to victory over Nazi Germany while holding that alliance of rivals together long enough to do it. F rom 1952 to 1960, Eisenhower presided over eight years of peace and prosperity (of course the fact that the U.S. had the only industrial plant that hadn’t been bombed to rubble may have had something to do wit that). We may recall it as folly now but the threat of attack by the Soviet Union, particularly while Stalin was alive, was quite real and terrifying. Ike’s actions at the time have to be viewed with his very real concern in avoiding nuclear holocaust.
Eisenhower achieved an armistice if the Korean war. Your statement attributing the beginning of the Vietnam involvement to Ike is absurd. Under the terms of the negotiated peace treaty between France and the Viet Minh (yes it was abrogated by the US) Ike sent some 430 military advisors to South Vietnam. The same number of advisors were there when Kennedy became President in 1961.
Kennedy and his SECDEF, McNamara, are the true authors of the debacle in Vietnam (N.B. McNamara continued to serve in that capacity under Johnson). It took another Republican, Richard Nixon, to end that war. P.S. If Kennedy hadn’t stolen the election in 1960 we probably would never have gone to war Vietnam
The First President I voted for was LBJ who rewarded me by sending me to aforementioned South East Asia war games. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a dirtbag, Nixon was a pretty good (albeit liberal) President. Besides extracting the U.S. from the disaster in Vietnam, he also signed off on the major environmental laws in force to this day as well as, wait for it…Affirmative Action!
Which brings us to my candidate for Worst President in my Lifetime, I give you the man who cured me of voting Democratic, James Earl Carter. He helped create and presided over what was thought to be an economic impossibility, double digit inflation with double digit unemployment. 1n 1979, he single-handedly created a gasoline shortage where none actually existed. His foreign policy made America the laughingstock of the international community not to mention a punching bag for every two bit dictator and mullah who wanted to show off their toughness by beating up on the U.S. Add to that the fact that he was a not so closet antisemite and you have the absolute quinella of Presidential rottenness
Nice to hear from you!
Bush Jr. I know that may surprise people given who know how I lean. He destabilized the middle east and made the pro – “two state solution” the mainstream even in the Republican party.
Also, unless my memory fails me, he started the bailouts which were continued under Obama.
Also, bear in mind, “my lifetime” does not include as many presidents as most posters here.
Neville
GW Bush is NOT a Junior. The first President Bush is George Herbert Walker Bush. The Walker for his mother’s side of the family. GW is not named for the Walkers.
Winnie…the LBJ tag came from his campaign strategists. I still own political lapel buttons that read: “All the way with LBJ”
The W in Bush Jr isn’t for Walker? I’m pretty sure as long as you have the same first and last name as your father, you’re a Junior.
NCB – who is the first president whom you remember?
I remember my life when Clinton was President, but I was too little to be thinking about stuff; so, the answer is probably Bush. Yeah, it’s a pretty narrow competition for me. How about you?
You are obviously very young. The first president that I remember was Carter. I remember the Carter/Ford election campaign (I only knew about it because it was in the Weekly Reader), so I guess technically, I kind of knew that Ford was the President at the time.
Neville….
Unfortunately you are wrong in your assumptions.
I’m a family law attorney and dealing with non-Jews who have many juniors, IIs, IIIs, etc. I have to be up on this.
A junior is named for his father with exactly the same name. It is not enough that the first and family name be the same.
II and III are people named for the same person, not juniors.
So, if there is a John Doe and a grandchild is named for him, that grandchild is John Doe II. If II’s child is also named for original John Doe, the child is III, but instead if the child of II is named for II, the child will be a junior.
GW Bush does not carry his father’s second name…Herbert, thus he is not a junior.
Geordie……………….
I long for the days when I’d fly in and out of Jan Smuts Airport. O.R. Tambo has no appeal to me.
Hello CTL,
I’m with you on that one. Jan Smuts was SA’s war time leader and the man who, my grandfather told me, he was inspired by to go to war in North Africa. Oliver Tambo, when I was growing up, was a terrorist!
benignum and redleg, Nixon didn’t end the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese ended it when they won the war. It was Gerald Ford who announced the end of American involvement in Vietnam (and under whose watch Americans were evacuated from Saigon).
CTL, I worked with a guy who used both II and Jr. Maybe his great grandfather was Ploni Almoni and his father was named Ploni Almoni II, making my coworker Ploni Almoni II Jr.
“Winnie…the LBJ tag came from his campaign strategists. I still own political lapel buttons that read: “All the way with LBJ” “
Cool. Do you still wear them though?
My theory could still hold- his strategist may have felt it necessary to use LBJ to differentiate him from the previous Pres Johnson, and then they came up with the catchy line to rhyme with it.
There is something catchy and “large” about FDR, JFK, LBJ, but that may be just because I am so used them and their associations.
Winnie…….
The slogan was used in early Senate campaigns in Texas. No need to differentiate a living Senate candidate from a long dead VP/President of the 1800s from Tennessee.
No, I don’t wear them, they are part of a collection of 20th century US political items I put together for a political science class in college some 45 years ago or so.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson were all people who used their full names in everyday life (many Gentiles honor the mother’s family by including the name as a middle name). These names took too much space in newspapers, on letterheads, advertising, etc. Ink and paper cost money, so Initials were used. Dwight David Eisenhower’s initials DDE were too close to the now banned pesticide DDT, especially for an Army general, so he used his child nickname IKE in politics.
Carter and Clinton used diminutives of their first names: Jimmy and Bill. Reagan couldn’t use initials, because RR is the abbreviation for RailRoad,
Special note to Huju: The poster who thought use of initials was a liberal trick to confer honor was WinnieThePooh, not Joseph. Maybe your head has taken too many knocks, too.
yehudayona,
The Vietnam War ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January of 1973. The US then pulled out their entire fighting force and the vast bulk of their people. When it became clear that Nixon was going down due to Watergate, Congress passed legislation forbidding the President from intervening in Vietnam without Congress’ advance approval. Seeing this, and after having time to recover from military losses, North Vietnam broke the Peace Accords over two years after signing them and re-invaded South Vietnam in 1975 (the Viet Cong started fighting again 1974).
Without Nixon and US military help South Vietnam fell relatively quickly to the North and Ford ordered the evacuation of US personnel in South Vietnam.
If not for Watergate, history would remember the Vietnam War as a US victory, albeit at great cost, ending in 1973.
benignuman,
Well said
Watergate and Congress
Special note re huju’s special note: You got it right the first time. WTP was repeating Joseph’s quote but forgot the quotation marks. Hence, your confusion, not the bumps on the head.
CTL, so what you are saying is that initials were used for practical reasons, not for propoganda purposes. Sort of like the CR (CTL, NCB, YY…)
Your info about LBJ’s senate campaign pokes a big hole in my theory, it helps to have inside knowledge having been around then!
Wasn’t JFK known as Jack in every day life?
By the way, huju, why are you sending notes to yourself? and sorry that the missing “” led to confusion.
Maybe huju has been reading Caesar’s Gallic Wars. Caesar wrote about himself in the third person. While he was undoubtedly a leader, it remains to be seen whether Trump will be.
Winnie……….
The initials were used for practical reasons, as well as in campaigns.
In my generation and those before me it was not unusual to have many monogrammed items…with your 3 initials.
In fact, my shirts are embroidered with my 3 initial monogram, on the right hand cuffs.
Yes, JFK was known as Jack. This is similar to boys named Yaakov being called Yankel. Since his maternal grandfather Fitzgerald was once mayor of Boston, the Fitzgerald middle name had great political value to JFK and RFK.
I often mentor foreign students in their legal writing and reading. I always explain to them that authors/editors choose their words carefully. Ink and paper cost money and extra words are not included. If the word is not necessary for clarity, it should be omitted.
My use of CTLawyer is to identify myself as an attorney in/from Connecticut. As laws vary greatly by jurisdiction it is important to identify where I practice and that the laws/customs/decisions I quote may apply here but not in other places.
Yehudayona,
You bring back memories of 8th grade and my LatinII class.
‘OMNIA Gallia in tres partes divisa est’ the opening lines of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.
All of Gaul is divided into three parts. I fear that Trump will cause real divisions in the USA.
Do people put II or Jr. on their driver’s licenses?
Along similar lines and in light of the bitterness surrounding the recent elections, who in the list of wanna-bes throughout US history *could* have become the worst president?
Of course, it’s all highly speculative and subjective, but, hey, this is the coffee room! 🙂
My vote, so to speak, goes to Spiro Agnew, who might have become president following Richard Nixon’s resignation had he not resigned months earlier due to his own legal problems.
CTL, talking about middle names… I always believed President Truman’s middle name was just the letter S. I once wrote to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. The correspondence, which you will find fascinating, follows:
Dear Sirs,
I have just visited your website for the 1st time and I noticed you have the name of President Truman as Harry S. Truman. Surely it is more correctly spelled Harry S Truman without the period, because S is a name and not an abbreviation.
Kind regards,
…
Their reply:
Dear (my name…),
Thank you for your e-mail message of November 4th.
Harry S. Truman’s middle initial did not stand for any specific name, but was a compromise between the names of his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young. It was Mr. Truman’s practice to include the period after the “S” in his correspondence. It may interest you to know that Mr. Truman’s memoirs include the period after the “S”; Margaret Truman Daniel’s biography of her father is entitled “Harry S. Truman”; and in “Mr. Citizen,” Mr. Truman, the author of the book, uses the period after the “S”.
I am not aware of any public statement that Mr. Truman ever made on the subject of his middle initial. Nor am I aware of him having mentioned the subject in his diary or in private correspondence.
Thank you for your interest in the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.
Sharie
Re CTLawyer’s 8th grade memories: My memory has it as “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quorum unum in colunt Belgae ….” Was your yeshiva Sephardic or Ashkenazic?
Re yehudayona’s comment: I heard Bo Jackson, the Heisman winner, football player and baseball player, more recently than I read Caesar’s Gallic Wars, so chalk up my third-person comments to Bo, who knows.
I don’t remember how Caesar began (that was way back in 9th grade), but I do remember the beginning of the Aeneid (more recent, in 12th grade): Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris.
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