Question 7: Who were the five worst US presidents and why?

Any president who was in office for more than just a few months
amasses a substantial record, and not being a presidential historian,
I don't pretend to know the records of every president in enough
detail to give a meaningful answer to that question.

So, rather than pick five presidents as the worst, here are just two
relatively recent presidents whose legacies I believe had terrible
long-term impact on the country:

Franklin D. Roosevelt - While many credit him with pulling the U.S.
out of the Great Depression, there is an equally strong argument that
he may actually have prolonged it through some of his interventionist
policies. But what distresses me most about his policies is that it
set a precedent--still in effect today--that, by default, people
believe the government should interfere with the inner workings of
the economy. In my view and my reading of history, the government
more often than not just distorts the way the economy functions (or
malfunctions). Much of the government action intended to solve one
economic problem just changes the nature of the problem and transfers
the burden to a different constituency. Still, I have to give credit
to Roosevelt for being a dependable wartime leader. I wish today's
Democrats had his backbone in that department.

Lyndon Johnson - Medicare and Medicaid absolutely devastated the
health care industry. By effectively mandating that health care
providers sell their services for pennies on the dollar, Johnson
forced those providers to shift their costs to other paying
customers. That's why a hospital will charge you $8 for a single
tablet of Tylenol. That's also why you can't get a doctor to come to
your house, the way people did in the 1950s. Doctors have to make up
the lost money on mandated Medicare and Medicaid treatments by
jacking up the cost for everybody else and by increasing their
patient volume, which is why you're lucky if your doctor spends more
than 5 minutes with you whenever you visit. And if you hate HMOs,
blame Lyndon Johnson. They sprang up as a result of the market
disruption that his policies created. Many people complain about
today's healthcare system, and many of those complaints are rooted in
policies enacted by President Johnson.

__________________
Bart Hook
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