NationStates Jolt Archive

Well?

Charles Manson.

Neville Chamberlain hands down the WORST...The man who allowed Hitler to start WWII


Well?

I nominate Nero. With bush as an incredibly close second.

Charles Manson.
Never herd of him.

I nominate Nero. With bush as an incredibly close second.

Nero has been excessively villified through history.

My personal vote goes to Chamberlain.

Nero has been excessively villified through history.

My personal vote goes to Chamberlain.
Nero allowed the Rome to burn down. and bush allowed the New Orleans getr hit by hurricane. and then they both di nothing to help the people who fell victim to this. That is why they are the worst leaders. now u understands me?

Nero allowed the Rome to burn down. and bush allowed the New Orleans getr hit by hurricane. and then they both di nothing to help the people who fell victim to this. That is why they are the worst leaders. now u understands me?

Given the standard of your grammar, I doubt it. Nero did not allow Rome to burn down, nor did he instigate the fire. Recent academic studies suggest that, whilst the Christian pogroms may well have been a propaganda move, it is equally likely that the fire was begun by Christian dissidents.

Moreover, despite Octavian's establishing a fire service in 19BC (I believe the date is correct), such a fire service was intended to combat minor fires, and was thus rendered futile by the scale of the fire. Thus, in light of the above, how was Nero the worst leader ever?

Incidentally, Akhnaten recieves an honourable mention herein.

Lady Jane Gray. Nine days, I mean come on she wasn't even trying.

I'd the worst leader.

My only action would be to abolish all authority.

Well, do you mean worst leader ever, or just most evil leader ever?
Most Evil Leader ever: By far, Stalin
Worst Leader: Chamberlain and Carter.

Never herd of him.

He's a charismatic psychopath who convinced some weak-willed people to kill for him.

He's pleasantly nutty. :)

Caligula.

Russia: Brezhnev
UK: Chamberlain
USA: Calvin Coolidge

worst ever leader : tony blair, nevil chamberlin (signed away my beloved empire the evil ****:upyours: )
, george bush , nixon , sadam and the guy who used to run africa

best ever leaders : fidel castro , king richardIII , king edwardIII and his son the black prince , winston churchill , stalin , queen victoria , king james ,henry VIII and of course jesus

funny leaders: hitler , jack straw , blunket , blair and bush:rolleyes:

Hitler.

Caligula.

seconded...

Nero allowed the Rome to burn down. and bush allowed the New Orleans getr hit by hurricane. and then they both di nothing to help the people who fell victim to this. That is why they are the worst leaders. now u understands me?

I actually like slamming Bush more than most, but the suggestion that he "allowed" a hurricane to hit New Orleans is too far even for me.

I actually like slamming Bush more than most, but the suggestion that he "allowed" a hurricane to hit New Orleans is too far even for me.

That's true. What was he gonna do, build a big wall?

Stalin. A royal idiot.

God? An awful lot of bad stuff has happened on his watch...

Hitler.

This is going to sound horribly racist, but Hitler was actually a great leader. He turned Germany from a decrepit nation, full of poverty and social strife, and turned it into the most powerful nation on Earth. He was, however, a horrible tactician, so he lost everything he gained, so I suppose you could say he was a bad leader in that respect.

As for me, for worst leader ever I nominate Robert Mugabe. He took a country that had one of the highest life-expectancies in Africa, a country that had economic prosperity, a country with what seemed to be a bright future, and flushed it down the drain.

I would have said that Nero wasn't an especially bad leader. He did a few worthwhile things.. Caligula was worse, in so much as he didn't do any worthwhile things and liked to wander aroung Rome executing any men with more hair than him. I don't think you can really say which was the worse leader of all time.. so many to choose from.

Who ever says Bush and takes that decision seriously is retarded, he may be a bad president, but at least he doesn't commit mass genocide.

This is going to sound horribly racist, but Hitler was actually a great leader. He turned Germany from a decrepit nation, full of poverty and social strife, and turned it into the most powerful nation on Earth. He was, however, a horrible tactician, so he lost everything he gained, so I suppose you could say he was a bad leader in that respect.

As for me, for worst leader ever I nominate Robert Mugabe. He took a country that had one of the highest life-expectancies in Africa, a country that had economic prosperity, a country with what seemed to be a bright future, and flushed it down the drain.
Nah, I know what you mean re. Hitler. I actually realized only after I posted that there are different ways to understand the question, and the OP didn't qualify it.


And I agree that Mugabe is certainly up there with the "best" of them.

This is going to sound horribly racist, but Hitler was actually a great leader. He turned Germany from a decrepit nation, full of poverty and social strife, and turned it into the most powerful nation on Earth. He was, however, a horrible tactician, so he lost everything he gained, so I suppose you could say he was a bad leader in that respect.

As for me, for worst leader ever I nominate Robert Mugabe. He took a country that had one of the highest life-expectancies in Africa, a country that had economic prosperity, a country with what seemed to be a bright future, and flushed it down the drain.
Agreeing. Wth Aristion getting an honourary mention.

worst ever leader : tony blair, nevil chamberlin (signed away my beloved empire the evil ****:upyours: )
, george bush , nixon , sadam and the guy who used to run africa




uh...the guy "who used to run Africa" ?

I actually like slamming Bush more than most, but the suggestion that he "allowed" a hurricane to hit New Orleans is too far even for me.

Yes. Actually,its insanely retarded.

uh...the guy "who used to run Africa" ?

Jesus.







Duh.

Charles Manson.
Never herd of him.

:eek: (And :eek: :D for your vocabulary mistake. Yes, fortunately, there never was a herd of Charels Mansons.)

Who ever says Bush and takes that decision seriously is retarded, he may be a bad president, but at least he doesn't commit mass genocide.

You haven't been reading NSG enough in the last 8 months. I fully expect someone will accuse GWB of exactly this....

and the guy who used to run africa

http://www.world-of-smilies.com/html/images/smilies/gewalt/a078.gif

Even for the after-summer school crowd, that's just a sad comment on yourself....

And as far as the OP, people are listing lots of evil people who were not nearly the worst leaders. In fact I doubt the worst leaders could ever be named - you have to lead people pretty well to get into the history books or public knowledge, even as a pure evil hearted person. The worst leaders will never be known because of this...

I nominate George Donner, leader of the Donner party back in the 1840's. His brilliant leadership led a wagon train on a "shortcut" to California for Illinois that took up three weeks more than the normal route. Due to this and other setbacks, the Donner Party was trapped in a pass by snowfall that they would have otherwise avoided, and more than half of the group starved to death.

Every last single Mayor of my town. Jesus, i mean how hard is it to run a city? We have all the resources in the world, good location, but somehow they seem to allow my city to fall deeper into the shit hole

I nominate George Donner, leader of the Donner party back in the 1840's. His brilliant leadership led a wagon train on a "shortcut" to California for Illinois that took up three weeks more than the normal route. Due to his leadership and other setbacks, the Donner Party was trapped in a pass by snowfall that they would have otherwise avoided, and more than half of the group starved to death.


*seconds the motion*

(Boldened slightly changed by me, without changing intent of author)

*seconds the motion*

(Boldened slightly changed by me, without changing intent of author)


Well at least he didn't turn down a hooters, red lobster, an amusement park, a heavy industrial sector,etc... -grumbles-

Well at least he didn't turn down a hooters, red lobster, an amusement park, a heavy industrial sector,etc... -grumbles-


*pokes Zilam with an amusing heavily-boobed-lobster-tail*

*pokes Zilam with an amusing heavily-boobed-lobster-tail*


oh you would do that :p

Nero allowed the Rome to burn down. and bush allowed the New Orleans getr hit by hurricane.

LMAO

did i read this right? Bush allowed new orleans to get hit by a natural storm? you mean he didnt get out his storm stopping machine and redirect the storm back into the ocean? what a bastard

Bush thinks God has spoken to him, that doesnt mean he IS God

LMAO

did i read this right? Bush allowed new orleans to get hit by a natural storm? you mean he didnt get out his storm stopping machine and redirect the storm back into the ocean? what a bastard

Bush thinks God has spoken to him, that doesnt mean he IS God


He failed to utilisize his assets in order to minimise the damage.
Incompetence that ought to be rewarded by being shot at dawn.

He failed to utilisize his assets in order to minimise the damage.
Incompetence that ought to be rewarded by being shot at dawn.

yep sure did, thats why there is a governor of states. they are resposible for their state and it is up to them to declare an emergency. or the mayor respsonsible for the city, who also had resources never used and very poor planning on his part. but hey why blame the black man or the white woman. lets just blame the man on the top without looking at the hierarchy of things

yep sure did, thats why there is a governor of states. they are resposible for their state and it is up to them to declare an emergency. or the mayor respsonsible for the city, who also had resources never used and very poor planning on his part. but hey why blame the black man or the white woman. lets just blame the man on the top without looking at the hierarchy of things


The man in the top-spot is ultimately responsible.
Chaps like Grant and Lee understood that.
Ditto for Prince Rupert and Nelson.


Meanwhile, keelhaul the Shrub.
PS: If you defend Shrub, I nominate you for keelhauling with the same rope.

Is no one going to mention Pol Pot or Slobodan Milosevic?

oh you would do that :p

Oh yes, I would! :p

Neville Chamberlain hands down the WORST...The man who allowed Hitler to start WWII
Then wouldn't the worst be Hitler? Chamberlain was a great man and the world would be better if we had more leaders as dedicated to peace as he was.
This is going to sound horribly racist, but Hitler was actually a great leader. He turned Germany from a decrepit nation, full of poverty and social strife, and turned it into the most powerful nation on Earth.
No matter how good life got for Germany, he still initiated the holocaust, effectively rendering every acomplishment and good dead in his life null and void.

Most Evil Leader ever: By far, Stalin


No way, Mao killed more... and he was chubby!

By my reckoning, Margaret Thatcher. Chamberlain was unwise to simply give away Czechoslovakia to Hitler, but that wouldn't make him the worst leader.

The man in the top-spot is ultimately responsible.
Chaps like Grant and Lee understood that.
Ditto for Prince Rupert and Nelson.


Meanwhile, keelhaul the Shrub.
PS: If you defend Shrub, I nominate you for keelhauling with the same rope.

I find it funny that none of the gentlemen you listed were in the top-spot.

I find it funny that none of the gentlemen you listed were in the top-spot.

President... Grant... never... was.. in.. the ... topspot.

Of course, Dubya has never really exercised command at all.

*poke*

President... Grant... never... was.. in.. the ... topspot.

Of course, Dubya has never really exercised command at all.

*poke*

Um... "Grant & Lee" - It is pretty obvious to me you were speaking of Grant's role as General of the Union Armies, not his later Presidency. :rolleyes:
The other 3 certainly weren't Presidents!

Wow, this is a tough one....so many incompetents, how do you compare them....I'm going to admit, there are many many truly stupid leaders throughout much of history, but I have not studied the rulership succession of but a handful of countries.


My choice off the top of my head has to be Phillip II of Spain who ran Spain into the ground so badly that it never really recovered until the end of Franco's regime in the 20th century....

His accomplishments (remember, he was handed control of Spain at what would later by recognized as the height of its power)

---> tried to invade England with the Spanish Armada, pouring out HUGE amounts of blood and treasure on the effort (to be fair, it had a better than even chance of success, but he put all his eggs in one basket....) and he did micromanage the affair to a significant degree which had some bearing on its failure...

---> He cost Spain control over the extremely prosperous Low Counties....because he promised the rebels persecution on religious grounds unless they all became good catholics again

--->he pursued diastrous policies of ethnic and religious purity that cost him dearly. He encouraged the Spanish Inquisition to gather steam as he turned it's unanswerable and draconian powers on Protestants and the descendents of Moors and Jews who had converted to Catholicism.

Unfortunately, these were some of the most important demographics for creating wealth through trade and artisanship. Ultimately, as the result of what he started these groups were mostly extinguished from Spain, pushing their already lackluster economy (which never had coped with the inflationary pressure of gold and silver from the New World) further downwards.

The fact that the Inquistion also persecuted political enemies of the Crown using religion as a pretext essential stalled any development of responsibility in central government such as happened in England and even eventually in France and Germany)

---> He flung his weight around Europe with such vigor that he aroused such fear in Europe that the shift in international diplomacy resulted in Spain being at a severe disadvantage in power politics (because while at the time they were stronger than _anyone_ they weren't stronger than _everyone_.)

This culminated about a century later in the Hapsburgs of Spain being replaced by the French Bourbons (though this did not lead to the union of France and Spain, about the only good thing for Spain in this resolution) after an international coalition intervened to settle the Spanish succession when the main branch of the Hapsburgs finally inbred itself into oblivion. (the final Spanish Hapsburg king only had 9 different people in the tree of parents, grandparents and great grandparents instead of the normal 14!)

---> Whereas other nation-states were becoming independent of the Church, from wrong headed piety he reinforced the Church thus allowing the dilution of sovereignity of the late middle ages to continue, arguably in some degree up to the Spanish Civil War!

The point is that unlike merely "bad" Kings and Queens of the Europe (the only place I'm really familiar with), in the pursuit of doing good for his country, he had a genius for picking the _exactly_ wrong threads of political reponse to the pressing issues of his reign.

However poorly Bush or Chiraq or whoever does, it's hard to match this standard of sounding the retreat when you thought you were signalling the charge in the metaphorical battle against the adversities of your regime.

Honorable mention goes to the collective leadership of the Poles of the late Dark Ages though. They didn't even _have_ a real leader. The magnate families of Poland hit upon the brilliant idea of _hiring_ their king, often from out of country. This was smart because this ensured the King has narrow and limited powers of his own within Poland. Moreover, they could fire him at any time.

Also, to get anything done that affected the whole state, the gathering of the magnate families' heads had to all agree _unanimously_ to something. This (almost?) never happened.

Essentially, in the fight between central authority and the periphery, Poland proved that you can have too much of a good thing and destroyed their ability to innovate and progress by passing all power to the nobles. The _only_ achievement of this arrangement was a more efficient provision for the common defense of the land. and even that wasn't so great since Poland slid steadily downwards once gunpowder spread. (well, and it guarnteed the influence of the Catholic Church so at least they had no civil wars of religion because with no middle class, the nobles HAD to back it to the hilt just to have any clerks!)(though they did make the mistake of sheltering the losing side of a Swedish civil war and getting seriously clubbed down for it.)

Given the standard of your grammar, I doubt it. Nero did not allow Rome to burn down, nor did he instigate the fire. Recent academic studies suggest that, whilst the Christian pogroms may well have been a propaganda move, it is equally likely that the fire was begun by Christian dissidents.

Moreover, despite Octavian's establishing a fire service in 19BC (I believe the date is correct), such a fire service was intended to combat minor fires, and was thus rendered futile by the scale of the fire. Thus, in light of the above, how was Nero the worst leader ever?

Incidentally, Akhnaten recieves an honourable mention herein.

Hmm... so we should believe all recent academic studies ? Recent academic studies also suggested that the real death toll of the holocaust was under a million and it's jewish propoganda that made it 6 million. But people who came up with that study and that's more than one were labeled anti-semities and were prosecuted. "recent" studies aren't always as factual as they seem, since they themselves are based on historical records of whose biasness can never be known.

Is no one going to mention Pol Pot or Slobodan Milosevic?

Milosevic? You have to be kidding. He was a petty dictator who killed, at most, a few thousand people. An absolute bastard by any standard, but far from the worst.

uh...the guy "who used to run Africa" ?

Yes, that... just left me speechless for a while. I mean, I've seen insane amounts of ignorance in these fora, but this...

As for me, for worst leader ever I nominate Robert Mugabe. He took a country that had one of the highest life-expectancies in Africa, a country that had economic prosperity, a country with what seemed to be a bright future, and flushed it down the drain.

Yes. That country being Rhodesia. :(

USA: Calvin Coolidge

Markreich: Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

I add Hugo Chávez, not objetively, but out of spite.

Markreich: Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Screw that, they'll just export the jobs to Mexico & China while the party/union bosses get rich. :(

I am very tempted to place Bush in large, capital letters.

King John, Richard the Lionheart's little brother. He was such a bad leader, even for impoverished Middle Age standards that they forced him to sign the Magna Carta. What a douche.

I'd say, as PM of Britian Thatcher. Of America, probably Hoover.

Meanwhile, keelhaul the Shrub.
PS: If you defend Shrub, I nominate you for keelhauling with the same rope.

So anyone who doesn't agree with you is wrong because you say so?:rolleyes:
How dare people think for themselves when they can just puppet you.

Any of the Popes named Innocent or Clement, there are like 4 of them, or Henry VIII or, for American Presidents, Andrew Johnson, or William H. Harrison, or Warren G. Harding.

I'd say, as PM of Britian Thatcher. Of America, probably Hoover.

Thatcher wasn't THAT bad. She effed up a lot, yes (the economy didn't do so swell), but she certainly wasn't the worst.

I would have to say one of the worst PMs of Britain was Asquith (probably not THE worst, since the UK has had a lot of them and I haven't studied them all). He pretty much dragged Britain into WWI (he also played a small role in actually starting the war, with his weird diplomacy with Germany and the other European powers), he messed with the economy by starting a HUGELY expensive naval arms race with Deustchland, and he generally did nothing but drag Britain into WWI. His one redeeming feature was his increase in social spending (although, it was a further strain on the economy, due to the fact of the Naval Arms race on it)

seconded...
Thirded

Jim Jones, since 100% of his followers died, and what's more, as a direct result of his actions.

Possibler nominees: George Bush
Adolf Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Kenneth Lay
The guy who runs Wal-Mart
The guy who runs Coca-Cola
Chris Simcox

I'm gonna have to go with Dick Chenney on this one, he just loves to talk shit about people and divide everyone up and piss everyone off. he just a Dick.

That's true. What was he gonna do, build a big wall?
Haha, you mean like the levees?

But I agree, how was Bush supposed to stop Katrina? As for the aftermath, so FEMA could have done a little better at handling it, it's still not the national government's responsibility to take care of these people like children.

I'd actually kind of like to hear from someone from Mississpi, or Alabama to hear how they're doing this long after Katrina.

As for my vote, I'd probably go with Stalin.

I'd say, as PM of Britian Thatcher. Of America, probably Hoover.

Screw you. She saved Britain from de facto union rule, and stabilised and augmented our economy. She also made the following statement : "There is no state". Genius.

Who is the worst leader ever?

Joseph Smith Jr.

Gorbachev. What a tool he was.

Mao Zedong of China

Joseph Smith Jr.
Anyone who says I can marry more than one chick at the same time is ok in my book :D

The worst leaders ever *takes breath*:
Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, Bush, Wilhelm II., Kohl, Mao, Franco, Mussolini, Kim Jong-il and Pol Pot... ehm... any more?

I wouldn't count Jim Jones (or Koresh, or the three leaders of Trier's Anabaptist revolt etc etc) because his "society" was so small that the checks and balances that a modern society has against such suicidal destructiveness do not function at this scale. Once you're to even the size of small nations like the new state of Montenegro (they only have 600,000 people) or Iceland(300K,000)...you're pretty much safe from this threat. The only case I have ever heard of a leader killing their citizens wholesale without fear of internal opposition was Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

And in that case, I would argue, that _overall_ while they are much poorer and internally divided than most of their neighbours, they are still in the same ballpark as several Asian nations...Bhutan, Nepal, Laos, Afghanistan...and that many of the same geographical and economic handicaps that hold those nations back would be holding Kampuchea down too. What he did was evil, but it didn't really devestate the _future_ of his nation (especially compared to the likely "best results") _relative to how things would have been without him_ as much as Phillip II.

(Though an argument can be made that given the low baseline of well being for Kampuchea, holding it back even somewhat overall should be weighted more heavily...Spain would be like watching a brilliant college graduate get a cocaine habit and join a cult and wreck his life; Kampuchea would be like watching a typical blue collar worker burn down his house and get a poorer one when the community chipped in to replace it and shelter his family....but I think in the long run Kampuchea will not be condemned to _centuries_ of internal conflict and marginalization as Spain was, is the thing.)

Spain should have gone on to lasting influence, security and power. Not a dominant power, but say, approximately as powerful as post Aldophus/Charles IX Sweden. But instead it became a _perennial_ backwater. (Though one could argue that the Catholic Church may be as much to blame than he was, but his father had stood up to the Church and had managed to work out compromises with it.) Kampuchea was going to be an impoverished backwater. In fact, arguably, they have received enough foreign aid to keep the GDP in the same ballpark as it would have been. (Though I am not arguing that this makes the holocaust there trivial or insignificant.)

I wouln't count Thatcher or Cheney because neither of them damaged the political institutions of their country irreparably. (Well, I suppose Cheney still has time, to be fair, but despite showing talent and motivation, he seems to be hitting the point of diminishing returns(wry look)...) Americans were already fairly divided into opinionated "right" , opinionated "left", unideological "middle" and moderate "middle". The lines are more vivid and the jostling at the boundaries is harsher but everyone is still mostly following the rules.)

Thatcher at worst damaged the standard of living of Britain (by compromising the provision of service and running down the infrastructure and increasing social inequality), and may have slowed down it's long term economic growth (by essentially donating huge storehouses of past tax expenditures by fire-selling the nationalized entities the government had set up) (though that last point is hotly debatable).

But Britain still is approximately as powerful, approximately as it was historically. The gap between rich and poor, while larger (perhaps) than it "has" to be is still smaller than in the 1920's.

Don't get me wrong; she was a hypocrite, she did overall make things worse, and Britain would have been better off without her. But her presence was not an unrecoverable disaster. It has not empowered long term trends that will exert the same gravity and Phillip II magnitude screwups would.

Btw, honorable mention should go Alexus Comenius of the Roman Empire of the East. Not for being a "bad leader" per se...but making one of the single worst cases of _bad luck_ ever. He wanted Pope Urban to encourage some Christian knights and mercenaries to come work for him on favorable terms. He didn't want a crusade. He just wanted help to resist the incessant pressures of the Selucijid turks who were making steady, unstoppable gains in Anatolia (what is mainland Turkey today). He had no reason to expect what followed....

But the fact that the crusades happened had a demonstrably _worse_ impact than if he had been forced to live with the status quo. Because of the Crusades, Constantinople was _sacked_ by the Christians within 200 years and the country carved up between the crusader nations. This external order didn't last, but the Byzantines never recovered their stability or prosperity after that monumental disaster. The Empire of the East (albeit more like "The Roman City State of the East") did survive the loss of Anatolia for about 100 years. If they had lost it more slowly and without being sacked, they might have made compensatory gains in the Balkans. They certainly would not have been worse off than they were.

The worst leaders ever *takes breath*:
Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, Bush, Wilhelm II., Kohl, Mao, Franco, Mussolini, Kim Jong-il and Pol Pot... ehm... any more?

Ooo! Can I play "which of these things is not like the others"?!?


Wow. I'm amazed that someone who's probably educated could put Bush, Franco, Wilhelm II & Kohl in the same company of Hitler, Stalin, Kim, Pol Pot, & Mussolini.

That's like comparing Mongolia to Germany as a football (soccer) power.
Like comparing McDonalds to real food.
Like comparing the musical qualities of Britney Spears to Mozart.
:headbang:

Possibler nominees: George Bush
Adolf Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Kenneth Lay
The guy who runs Wal-Mart
The guy who runs Coca-Cola
Chris Simcox

Um.. How are the guys that run Coke & Wal-Mart (though I dislike both firms) bad leaders?

As for Chris Simcox, he's not really a leader, he's just a shithead that is no better or worse than Cindy Sheehan. A self glorifed git.

Joseph Smith, Jr. [the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints, aka The Mormons]


I have to strenuously disagree.

I don't like them particularly much. They hold many social beliefs I find repugnant. But in terms of setting up a stable subsociety in Deseret (Utah), they have done tolerably well. For a theocratically leaning state, the rights of minorities do at least _exist_ if not to the degree they should; the economy is in decent shape; and his successors were able to secure the right of Deseret to exist _even though_ the rest of the USA clearly was hoping to end up invading them and putting down their "heresy" with fire and sword.

All reasonably good accomplishments. Scientology or the "Moonies" (the nearest approximately comparable attempt) has not had _nearly_ as much success. Yes they have accumulated a great deal of wealth and influence, but they have not organized coherent societies with large, contigious boundaries. (Though I admit, I am waiting to hear Moon exercise "the option to buy" some of the smaller Microneasian states that are going to be above the new likely "new high water mark" of global warming....(wry look))

And as I discussed their theology with an ex member, their underlying principles, while arguably more subject to abuse, are really no worse than Christianity overall, and in a few respects, much better. (For example, Jesus' death was only to offset "the fall"; each person must earn the salvation for their _own_ sins...this isn't a great attitude in all respects, but it is more cosmologically equitable and reasonable. Say what you will but at least they're not telling their people that they have to feel ashamed for being human. Gravely worried about their ability to sin, but at least not ashamed.)

Yes, they're sanctimonious, uptight, and hold some icky racist and homophobic and sexist beliefs. But they have mellowed with time (the blacks were finally declared people back in the 70's or 80's....) and probably will not be getting worse in the long run.

Gorbachev. What a tool he was.

He presided over the disintegration of a powerful nation-state and it's replacement by a fractious set of somewhate cooperative oglarchicial "domains". It reminds me of Italy of the 15 century, except poorer and larger....

However...these trends were pretty much irreversible. As A Whitney Brown pithily observed "It's ironic that Communism ended because it turned out there was no money in it". The nomenklatura and the magnates of the Party were disillusioned with the lack of reward the status quo gave them. And hey, their choice to carve up the nation _did_ personally enrich many of them.

It was dry rot. He was the one who smashed the supports, but they were slowly crumbling and judging by the post-breakup leadership, no one had the vision to do more than stall for time. Maybe things would have gone better in such a case, but I am skeptical. It is definitely a tragedy, but castigating him is like shooting the executor of a will which you are disputing. He has some responsibility, but mostly it's not his fault.

Hmm... so we should believe all recent academic studies ? [snip: regarding: Nero didn't start the great fire in Rome]

Maybe he did after all, but the Roman state recovered quite nicely from that mishap. The great fire was _far_ less a disaster than the sack of rome in AD410. Rome went on to have the Pax Romania and had a decent chance to try and deal with it's political and economic weaknesses. They failed, but they did have a chance at least.

Do explain how the great fire (or anything about Nero's rule) created a long term destructive influence upon Imperial Rome ?

Robert Mugage is definitely one of the outstandingly bad (possibly even the worst) kleptocratic rulers of a developing world state.

No question, he has destroyed the vitality of his country and sown long term divisions.

However, I think Zimbabwe's case is roughly analogous to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Things are going to be bad after he dies. However, Zimbabwe has a few things on its side that will mitigate this.

---> A large expatriate community who contribute a lot of money to the economy and who will might return if the successor regime is as successful as say, the government of Mozambique, which has recovered from some _grievous_ wounds in the last 10 or 15 years....
---> Smaller and with fewer internal geographic barriers, making the re-establishment of civil order less of a pipe dream
---> less ethnically fractious and has had the experience of full rule of the periphery by the center within living memory (which was NEVER the case in the Congo)
---> has a history of relative prosperity to use as a model to refer back to (hopefully with more equity than the white minority administered things).
---> affiliation with the Commonwealth, which cares a great deal more for the country philanthropically than say, Belguim has for the Congo. (and Britain has played a role in what short lived stability and prosperity they had after Smith's government had to reconcile with the guerillas. The process was flawed, but it was less bloody than a protraction of the civil war would have been.)

So I'm not sure if it's correct to say that intractable long term damage is being done (beyond falling behind on the development curve)....

The point is that _all_ the kleptocracies in the developing world are just stuttering along. They make little if any long term progress and the material circumstances of overpopulation, ethnic polarization, and covert foreign intervention in domestic politics leaves few with anything resembling a good future.

Things are awful there now, but in a generation or two they will probalby be no worse off than their neighbours and possibly a sight better.

I submit for a leader to be _truly_ bad, they have to leave a legacy of lasting damage that cannot reasonably be fixed by human agency.

I fail to understand people putting Chamberlain down as "worst leader". At best he could be said to have been misguided, but certainly not worst. Remember he gave Britain time to re-arm, something we desperately needed and we still weren't fully prepared by the time Germany invaded Poland.

Worst leader is almost impossible to answer, there are so many of them, but honourary mention should be given to King Charles I whose poor leadership and inability to work with either Parliament or the Scots led to the English (nee British) Civil War.

King John, Richard the Lionheart's little brother. He was such a bad leader, even for impoverished Middle Age standards that they forced him to sign the Magna Carta. What a douche.

King John did a damned sight better job of running England than his more famous brother. Richard beggared his country between the foreign adventures and the ransom they had to pay to get him back ,and he didn't even leave a stable succession because he was too same-sex attracted to breed.

Charismatic and popular, he was a lousy administrator. Not an abysmal one. But not worthy of his long lasting fame save perhaps as a warrior (and I'm not familiar enough with the facts to judge that).

John's rule in fact was quite serendipitous. By provoking a reaction by squeezing the country so hard to try and balance the books and get things in order....he helped set England on the road to a healthy balance between the powers of the center vs. the periphery. This healthy balance was critical to the moderate and productive outcome to things like the War of the Roses, the English Civil War, the Reformation, the Gloriana....

The Crown was a prize, but not such a glittering one that everyone fought to the knife to get it when it was apparently up for grabs. The losers did not have to be terrified of losing. A few of them were broken, but you could play the big game in England and not die if you lost. Nor did England have to resort to the heavy handed supression of the nobles that stifled the relative productivity of France and Russia.

Do explain how John's legacy held England down ?

This is going to sound horribly racist, but Hitler was actually a great leader. He turned Germany from a decrepit nation, full of poverty and social strife, and turned it into the most powerful nation on Earth. He was, however, a horrible tactician, so he lost everything he gained, so I suppose you could say he was a bad leader in that respect.

You're buying his myth, hon.

Weimar Germany did a remarkably good job. It was reasonably comparable to post WW II Japan. Not a perfect system, because it was imposed from outside, rather than naturally evolved. But well enough that if the Great Depression hadn't mugged them and they hadn't been dealing with the lingering simmering resentments of the settlement of WW I, they could have handled it.

Germany suffered economically greatly during the opening of the Depression...but so did all the other industrial nations. I see nothing here to say that Germany needed "saving" any more than France or Britain or America.

As to divided....Hitler's rule did not result in real unity. He was terrified of revolt. At least 1/4 of Germans _even at the Zenith of the Reich_ did not want him in charge. A substantial minority of them risked their lives to oppose him. If you have people regularly committing _treason_ to protest your regime, I suggest you have not achieved political unity. Esepcially when you have a secret policy making dissent worth your propery or life!

Look at how he had to play two sides against each other all the time. For every major state function, he made at least two agencies. Then he nudged them to be at each other's throats so that he could have the power as dispenser of favors and final arbitrator. However, this was not efficient. It resulted in duplication of effort and endless petty infighting.

Towards the end of the war, he even let it be thought he was dead for a while, to see what would happen. Goering declared himself Fuehrer. Hitler then had him locked up, and only the end of the war saved him from execution. (so that he could kill himself rather than let the alllies kill him at Nuremburg (wry look))

If you are governing by division how can you be unified ?. How can you expect not to pay for lack of internal harmony at key intervals ? The attempt to kill him in July 1944 seriously impeded their conduct of the war while Hitler had the purge in response to this, for example.

Another obscure metric of his lack of control is that he didn't dare impose "full wartime production" until 1943. Anyone with a brain who decides to take on Britain and Russia should have declared full production from the start. Germany would have had a far better chance if they had.

(and don't get started that Hitler "just about conquered Russia". New archive releases following the collapse of communism showed that the Russian order of battle demonstrated a clear superiority in men and arms that was pretty much overwhelming. This was _after_ factoring in the tremendous German advantages in leadership and strategy and tactics!

John Astell and Frank Chadwick spent over 20 years modelling and refining a wargame model of WW II in the East. ("Fire in the East" and "Scorched Earth") (The quality of their judgement is vindicated by the fact that the model they made of modern warfare (the "World War III series") was the only one that predicted the US victory (and its rough extent) in the Gulf War. Chadwick also wrote the popular "Desert Shield/Desert Storm Fact Book")

Their conclusion after 15 years of work was that the Germans had a hopeless task. The job was simply too big for them, given the logistical limits they faced and the ungodly flow of men and materiel the Russians could throw at them. They were going to get beaten given the historical circumstances, it was just a question of how badly.

Only by changing "big variables" would things have had a chance to turn out differently. Changes like
-->imposing full war production in 1939
-->bribing Japan to beseige Vladivostok
-->arming the Russian subjects in a nationalist crusade against communism. One that the German government was fully behind, unlike in reality. (The Germans did make some efforts here...but they were piddling compared to what they could have done. Ironically most of this armament and organization was under the organization of the Waffen-SS!) Never let it be said Himmler was such an ideologue as to not use any tool for power that suited him...)
--> Finishing Britain or negotiating a settlement with them in 1940

Why didn't he gear up production ? Because it would have required sacrifices of the domestic population. He had no confidence they would stay behind him if he demanded these. Not even after his government was at the zenith of it's conquests. Because at that point, he felt it would show that he wasn't confident of success.

To be that concerned with optics is not the mark of someone seated securely in a position of dominance and control.

And the economic "successes" of Nazi-but-prewar-Germany were mostly attributable to one man: Hitler's finance minister, Hjalmar Schacht. He was one of Hitler's lesser known but more important followers. Schacht worked wonders. He was instrumental in providing the financing for the election of Hitler to the Chancellorship. He was also instrumental (as a major figure in German banking and finance) in swaying the leading industrialists into signing on with the Nazi's wholeheartedly.

He was the wizard of rearmament and is attributed as the key figure in the extent and secrecy of it. Centralized "command economy" structures tend to not work. But Schacht went with a brilliant hybrid that made rearmament "job #1" but didn't totally gut the regularly economic system as did Stalin in the USSR.

For example, he managed to use _barter_ (!) _effectively_ as a cornerstone of the process. You could sell anything you wanted to Germany. But the central gov't controlled what you could buy with it. This allowed Germany to funnel resources and development to war industries without ending the purely domestic market economy.

The key point is that Schacht _volunteered_ to join the Nazis. Hitler didn't objectively canvas important business figures and lobby him. Schacht _found them_. The Nuremburg trials concluded he was indispensible to the degree of Germany's successes in the 30's.

You might say "well, that shows what an inspiring leader that Hitler was, that he could get Schacht to help him.

But Hitler failed to stop Goering from sidelining Schacht beginning in 1937. Goering was put in charge of the Four Year Plans, and Schacht was supposed to help him. But Goering got into jurisdictional fights with Schacht and refused to cooperate with him. Schacht quit _within three months_...and Hitler didn't force Goering to do things differently and apologize to Schacht. This was _against_ the advice of the army, whose generals had profound respect for Schacht's accomplishments and were deeply skeptical of Goering's administrative abilities.

They told Hitler to impose order, and Hitler imposed political expedience instead by backing Goering. Subordinating economics to politics is not the mark of a brilliant leader.

Hitler was a brilliant politican (in gaining and holding power) but the high price this process extracted on the German economy and management of government was a critical weakness that doomed the war on Russia and thus the Reich. He was NOT a good manager. He was an erratically talented strategist. The country could have gotten along _just fine_ without him.

This is all _totally divorced_ of the absolute amorality of the man and his willingness to kill anyone who was between him and his goals, too! (I say amoral and not immoral because he did have a personal code, it was just a very warped one. His adherence to it establishes that he did have self control.)

Just sadly for that self control was bent on purposes that did the Germanic peoples no good save by serendipity. (for example, by leading to severe loss of population in Europe and Russia...but because all of Europe expelled their Germans, Germany wasn't "down" any population on the net balancce.

Because their industrial structure was razed, they could rebuild with the most modern methods and structures. The US wisely then give them money to rebuild by the Marshall plan. (An act of unprecedented and unparalleled stratetic foresight.) (Of which the Germans received more money than anyone but Britain, who needed it badly. The British were on _RATIONS_ until the mid 1950's. This being _after_ they "won"!)

But these were not events that Hitler set out to create :) So I'm _NOT_ giving him credit for them, sorry :)

I fail to understand people putting Chamberlain down as "worst leader". At best he could be said to have been misguided, but certainly not worst. Remember he gave Britain time to re-arm, something we desperately needed and we still weren't fully prepared by the time Germany invaded Poland.


Moreover, he was trying to be very ethical. He believed that the Germans had been treated badly in Versailles (the consesnsus of the educated classes in Europe in this generation) and felt justice demanded some redress. If maybe Czechoslovakia didn't deserve to be a nation anymore, well, it had historically been part of the holy roman empire, unlike Hungary and the Balkans or Poland.....to him, it may well have seemed like if Britain had lost and someone had made Scotland independent.....then maybe in the German's shoes he'd be making the same demands.

One point that is totally omitted in the schoolbook histories is that when Hitler made the demand for the Polish Corridor ("West Prussia"), Chamberlain was LIVID with anger. He thought he had a deal with Hitler. The Czech issue was supposed to be "closure" for the excesses of Versailles. In retaliation, he ordered Asquith at the Foreign Office to do _everything humanly possible_ to back _anyone_ who was opposed to Hitler, anywhere.

The commitments thus made were (because of the rush) a bit foolish in some places (for example, no actual military aid got to Poland before the Germans invaded, and the entanglement in Greece bought the Greeks maybe a couple weeks of freedom and nearly cost the British Egypt.)...but they demonstrated that he wanted the entire power of Empire now absolutely committed to putting down Hitler for saying he was going to make peace and lying about it.

You have to remember, there was a huge pacifist movement in Britain, and few who had been too old to fight escaped without a sense of shame at the sacrifices of their younger cohorts. There was a conviction that somehow, at all costs, there could not be another experience like this.

This was a man whose political career showed great concern for the welfare of the whole nation. He was involved throughout his career in acts regarding taxation, public works, welfare, and nationalization of industry, in the quest for the greatest wealth for the nation. Yes, he was a patrician, but he did not believe in "benevolent patternalism" and instead demanded that government PROVE rather than simply _say_ that it was looking out for everyone's best interests.

He may have sold the Czechs down the river, but he expected that he was heading off a war by doing this. He was not happy with having to help re arm the country because he could clearly see how badly the country needed the money for the welfare of the people. But he could equally see the clouds of war on the horizon. So he tried to be moderate by pushing for medium paced rearmament, and energetic exploration of ANY means of resolving "the German Issues" short of war.

He misjudged Hitler, but so did nearly everyone else. Looking at the facts, he was not a coward or a pacifist, he just vividly recalled the waste of the Great War and wanted to do _anything_ he could to stop it. But he refused to sit by quietly once it was obivious that the Germans were going to piecemeal aggrandize themselves without any respect for the aspirations of the League of Nations towards international peace and rule of law.

A truly cynical man or one without principle would have waited until the Germans threatened something indispensible to British interests and then intervened, all the while building up the armed forces quietly. Chamberlain charged in, perhaps foolishly, but with the best intentions.

And he was an able administrator in general. No one could have dissuaded Hitler, and domestically his policies had done as well as could be expected for the times for Britain. Certainly the lower classes would have been less willing to fight another war if the govenrment had taken the approach that Hoover did in the USA....

So he does NOT deserve the title "worst leader in history" by _any_ stretch of the imagination.


Worst leader is almost impossible to answer, there are so many of them, but honourary mention should be given to King Charles I whose poor leadership and inability to work with either Parliament or the Scots led to the English (nee British) Civil War.

He wasn't a great administrator, no. He did end up getting killed for it after all. However, he also gets serendipity points for the good things that did come out of the English Civil War. It helped keep Britain on the path of moderation (in general) in its governance. And the period under Cromwell did more to discredit the puritans than ANY amount of purges and persecutions could have :)

Certainly, he was a monumentally bad judge of his environment....the war was after all entirely avoidable....

Yasser Arafat was without a doubt one of the worst leaders, in that he denied his people the right to self-determination and a real state. His rejection of the deal of statehood in 2000-2001 was called a 'crime against the Palestinian people' by Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia and endorsed as such by virtually the entire Arab and Western world. The reason a Palestinian state doesn't exist today is because he wanted to continue his position as a lucrative terror leader, amassing his fortune in his Swiss bank account, rather than truly caring about the Palestinian people and their needs.

While there are many leaders who were bad for their nations, and many who were far more evil than Arafat, in most situations they did not result in their own people lacking a state. For example, Mugabe is a bastard, but Zimbabwe is still a state. Arafat was a bastard, and because of him, the Palestinian people have no state.

Yasser Arafat was without a doubt one of the worst leaders, in that he denied his people the right to self-determination and a real state. His rejection of the deal of statehood in 2000-2001 was called a 'crime against the Palestinian people' by Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia and endorsed as such by virtually the entire Arab and Western world. The reason a Palestinian state doesn't exist today is because he wanted to continue his position as a lucrative terror leader, amassing his fortune in his Swiss bank account, rather than truly caring about the Palestinian people and their needs.

While there are many leaders who were bad for their nations, and many who were far more evil than Arafat, in most situations they did not result in their own people lacking a state. For example, Mugabe is a bastard, but Zimbabwe is still a state. Arafat was a bastard, and because of him, the Palestinian people have no state.

Ah, 'Bandar Bush'. A nice fellow.

Worst leader? I dunno, Custer?

Maybe, Montehzuma?

Leonid Brezhnev. His mismanagement turned the Soviets from a potent world power in to a stagnant and corrupt mess that was ultimately unable to be revived by those that followed him. Even worse, he was able to hold on to power for 18 years despite his gross incompetence and infirmity.

David Koresh didnt do a very good job with the Branch Davidians

It depends on the qualifications of being "The Worst Leader Ever." Do you mean the Most Incompetent, Most Repressive, Most What?

General Custer.

George Bush is with out a doubt the worst leader ever to become a person in a position of power anywhere. He is stupid, ignorant, and down right unintellegent. If he had any sence he would resign from office right now and let someone that had an IQ higher than a rock's run the country.

Leonid Brezhnev. His mismanagement turned the Soviets from a potent world power in to a stagnant and corrupt mess that was ultimately unable to be revived by those that followed him. Even worse, he was able to hold on to power for 18 years despite his gross incompetence and infirmity.

I think it is really arguable that his stewardship was the determinant cause though. The largest part of the reason for the tremendous gains the Soviet economy made under Stalin were (a) starting from a hideous baseline and(b) achieving the "easiest" parts of the reward-to-effort curve.

The problem is that in economic management, getting to the higher levels of the curve requires investing in and valuing administrative labor. But communism by its philosophy states that administration is routine and "scientific" and that anyone can do it, just give them the authority.

Like so much of communist theory, this flies badly in the face of reality. Yes, elementry supervision is not difficult. But detailed abstract decision making and the environmental literacy that allows -real- anticipation of and responses to difficulties....that is a rare talent.

I wouldn't go so far as the Randists in saying that all higher level managers should have their asses cleaned by the tongues of a worshipful public in gratitude for this service.

But I would say that Communism had fundamental problems economically that no leadership within that paradigm of governance could correct.

It depends on the qualifications of being "The Worst Leader Ever." Do you mean the Most Incompetent, Most Repressive, Most What?


I would say "did the longest lasting damage to their society's long term sociopolitical and economic health" (I count military affairs under "sociopolitical" war is politics by other means....

But you're right, there was no definition of this earlier in the thread :)

George Bush is with out a doubt the worst leader ever to become a person in a position of power anywhere. He is stupid, ignorant, and down right unintellegent. If he had any sence he would resign from office right now and let someone that had an IQ higher than a rock's run the country.

Here are _contemporary_ leaders who have done worse things to their society than Bush:

In terms of dramatic abuses of human rights for no real gain: (just to emphasize the point, not to say the ends justify the means)
Kim Il Jong the Elder
Pol Pot
Envier Hoaxa (Communist founder of modern Albania)(probalby mispelled)

In terms of severely holding back the economic development of their society:
Suaharto (sp?) of Indonesia
the whole National Congress Party in India up until the mid 90's.
the whole PRI party up till the late 90's in Mexico

I hate Bush. He's a lousy leader. But he is still adhering to the basic rules an industrial society leader in our age has to follow. No arbitrary execution or imprisonment of domestic political opponents; respect for the rule of law; respect for private property; has not made a state religion; has not attempted to install uniformity of sociopolitical opinion by the force of the arms of the state; nor has he elevated a clique of "insiders" to state sponsored dominance over public sector spending.

(Though yes, Haliburton has done quite well....but this is mostly done on the sly, as it has been throughout American history. The winning party hands out pork. But the majority of public sector spending has to at least go through the motions of fair competition. And there is strong inferential evidence this goal is achieved. Such as the fact that the estimates of straight out bribery are extremely low given the rewards such bribery could secure. It must be too much risk and too much trouble or it would happen all the time.)

These rules were broken and trampled on by the all the leaders in the first category and the leaders in the second set were breaking the last one and very weak or violating the second to last one.

Maybe he'd like those basic rules to change. He's certainly pressing at the boundaries all over the place. He's definitely mostly making bad policy. But he has yet to do anything that a succeeding government could not undo regarding domestical issues...nor has he attempted to legislate a permanent change in those "rules" I mentioned above.

Foreign policy wise....well, historically bad policy has been the rule for America, not the exception. He's just the lowest part of the contemporary bell curve.

He simply does not deserve the label "the very worst leader in any society at any point in history" By definition, very few deserve that :)

I NOMINATE HITLER......
then stalin
then clinton

Kim Jong Il

Thatcher wasn't THAT bad. She effed up a lot, yes (the economy didn't do so swell), but she certainly wasn't the worst.

I would have to say one of the worst PMs of Britain was Asquith (probably not THE worst, since the UK has had a lot of them and I haven't studied them all). He pretty much dragged Britain into WWI (he also played a small role in actually starting the war, with his weird diplomacy with Germany and the other European powers), he messed with the economy by starting a HUGELY expensive naval arms race with Deustchland, and he generally did nothing but drag Britain into WWI. His one redeeming feature was his increase in social spending (although, it was a further strain on the economy, due to the fact of the Naval Arms race on it)
Fair enough, the arms race was started by the |Torys before the Liberals came in power. and Asquith did apporve the peoples buget of 1909 and with it feforms like old age pensions, sick pay, national insurence, job centers, free school meals and hudnreds of other revoloutionary mesures.


Screw you. She saved Britain from de facto union rule, and stabilised and augmented our economy. She also made the following statement : "There is no state". Genius.

If there is no state what the hell was she ruling then? Thatchers only redeeming feature was she curbed the unions. But she messed that up as well-she didn't just curb there power by inflicting new laws, she tried to crush them.

Every Thacher policys fell into one of three pitfalls
a) She took it too far (Roads to prosperity)
b) She fucked up big time (NHS reform, privatisation)
c) it just didn't work (selling of british Rail)

The consequunices of a post-thatcher britian was a ruined econermy, failing services after they had been privatised, huge debt, rise in socal problems, failing NHS and many of these problems still exist today. Even the conservatives now admit that she was a mistake, other than Daily Mail and Express readers EVERYONE thinks that she was a mistake.

Nelson Mandela & Thabo Mbeki, they took a country that was the jewel of Africa and transformed it into the country with the highest crime rate in the whole world. South Africa is rated first in the number of rapes, murders with firearms and assaults per capita. They have also encouraged a continuing effort to kill all the remaining Boer's in the nation, a situation that amounts to genocide.

worst ever leader : tony blair, nevil chamberlin (signed away my beloved empire the evil ****:upyours: )
, george bush , nixon , sadam and the guy who used to run africa

best ever leaders : fidel castro , king richardIII , king edwardIII and his son the black prince , winston churchill , stalin , queen victoria , king james ,henry VIII and of course jesus

funny leaders: hitler , jack straw , blunket , blair and bush:rolleyes:

Yep, sounds about right...

Sven Goran Erriksson