10 Most destructive Americans the last 80 years

[healey36]

Yes, Clinton was quite a disaster (IMHO), it just didn't quite blow up 'til he was out of the White House. His was a trifecta, in that (1) he missed the boat on Bin Laden, who reared his ugly head first during the Clinton years, (2) Clinton/Gore ignored the vagaries of the dot-com era with the mantra "It's different this time" (uh, no, it isn't), and (3) Clinton championed/doubled down on the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) which was passed during the Carter years and had a major hand in the financial meltdown of 2007-2009. That, together with Hillary's shenanigans in the White House with the travel office and the Whitewater affair, one of which led to Vince Foster blowing his brains out; yeah, I never thought much of that bunch. The only good things to come out of it was Gore inventing the internet and Jim Carville, one of the greatest political operators of all time.

[Neil]

At least Clinton didn't invade Iraq for no good reason. Not to mention Afghanistan. How much money and how many civilian and military lives (mostly Iraqi) did that particular adventure (Iraq) and its followup cost? A lot more dead bodies and money than 9/11. And who found Bin Laden finally and on whose watch as President? Not Bush Jr. A lot of selective political reasoning going on here.

The president has little control over the economy in most instances. But there's no debating that the economy under Clinton and Obama was much better for more people than under Bush Jr. And whatever good that has happened over the last three years has more to do with what happened under Obama during the previous eight years than anything the world's greatest business loser and anti-vaccine nitwit (Trump) did. The guy's business record is appalling. More lawsuits and bankruptcies than anything of substance in his personal life. Maximal incompetence and corruption.

[HONDO74]

James Carville & Mary Matalin. Talk about an odd couple. Love across the isle. It can be done,,,,

James Carville, a political strategist for candidates of the Democratic Party. The lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton

Mary Joe Matalin is an American political consultant well known for her work with the Republican Party. She has served under President Ronald Reagan, was campaign director for George H. W. Bush, was an assistant to President George W. Bush, and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney until 2003.

Back years ago when I watched TV and CNN. Carville co-hosted CNN's Crossfire along with associate Paul Begala from 2002 until the show’s cancellation in 2005. Carville was a CNN contributor until parting ways with the network in 2013. The following year, Carville joined Fox News Channel as a contributor.

I actually like James Carville, He is very good at what he does.

[HONDO74]

At least Clinton didn't invade Iraq for no good reason.

But he didn't learn anything from Bush's mistakes. He took out Gaddafi in Libya and tried to take out Assad in Syria. Both of those countries are now a total mess also just like Iraq. What was his excuse for doing it.

[Neil]

"He took out Gaddafi in Libya and tried to take out Assad in Syria. Both of those countries are now a total mess also just like Iraq. What was his excuse for doing it."

No idea, but the comparison with Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of money and lives (American money and lives) is several orders of magnitude different. The difference between invading Grenada and Vietnam in impact.

[healey36]

At least Clinton didn't invade Iraq for no good reason.

But he didn't learn anything from Bush's mistakes. He took out Gaddafi in Libya and tried to take out Assad in Syria. Both of those countries are now a total mess also just like Iraq. What was his excuse for doing it.

I presume you are talking about Obama, not Clinton (Gaddafi was killed in 2011). Obama was picking up the pieces after the neo-cons (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearl, and others) launched the whole Middle Eastern nation-building scheme on the trumped up (no offense to the current goof in the White House) WMD premise (which one might argue was just an outgrowth of America's support of the Mujahideen fighters aligned against the Soviets). We can argue whether Saddam had WMDs or not (he certainly did at one time, just ask the Kurds), but the neo-cons had a hard-on for him after Bush One failed to pursue the Iraqi army back to Baghdad in the first Gulf War go-round. Bush Two got steamrolled by Cheney into continuing the whole mess IMHO.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

He took out Gaddafi in Libya and tried to take out Assad in Syria. Both of those countries are now a total mess also just like Iraq. What was his excuse for doing it.

Gaddafi action was linked to the plane bombings and other sponsored terrorism acts. Libya for a while was actually doing ok until it got pushed under due to a lack of support. We like to go into places, fix things 85%, and then walk away as if nothing ever happened and that we have no responsibility for any of our actions and commitments. A lot of the birth of the mess called Afghanistan falls under that heading back into the 80's.

Assad.....who knows; maybe the failure to remove him was the cause of now. The near complete chaos approach tht has been ongoing for 3 years has not helped at all, and if anything encouraged the mess to escalate.

[healey36]

The president has little control over the economy in most instances. But there's no debating that the economy under Clinton and Obama was much better for more people than under Bush Jr. And whatever good that has happened over the last three years has more to do with what happened under Obama during the previous eight years than anything the world's greatest business loser and anti-vaccine nitwit (Trump) did. The guy's business record is appalling. More lawsuits and bankruptcies than anything of substance in his personal life. Maximal incompetence and corruption.

I would agree with much of that, although when you say "there's no debating that the economy under Clinton and Obama was much better for more people than under Bush Jr.", then you also have to admit that was by circumstance, not by anything they did.

I actually believe that while "the president has little control over the economy in most instances", the office does have influence. Tonal and regulatory direction counts for a lot. Just like the stock market, the economy runs to great extent on emotion. If people believe and have confidence that things are or will be running in a good direction, often times the economy will, to great extent, run in a good direction. That's the president's job...set the tone, point the country in the right direction (something which the clod currently in the White House has no inkling).

I want to retract something I said earlier, the cavalier "the vagaries of the dot-com era with the mantra 'It's different this time' (uh, no, it isn't)". After watching the Federal Reserve/Dept. of the Treasury print and dump trillions into the money supply for twenty years without any inflationary effect, leads me to believe that something is in fact quite different. That, I believe, is the effect brought by the Walmarts and the Amazons whose tech, distribution, and marketing skills has wrought such staggering downward pressure on prices that they effectively mitigated (for now) the inflationary pressure of so much cash washing around in the economy. Where did all the money go, you might ask, as does most Americans who feel scarcely better off than they were twenty or thirty years ago. If I told you thirty years ago that some day you'd be walking around with an $800 phone/computer/camera in your pocket, and you'd be paying somewhere around $45-$75/month for the privilege of using it, you'd have told me I was effing crazy. Nobody would pay that.

Putting aside all of the dot-com money squandered in the 1990s as we tried to find our feet in the birth of the Information Age and the death of the Machine Age, and the money that went to China to "globalize" our manufacturing base, that (the gizmo in your pocket), together with all of the cell-grid infrastructure to support it and the tech to exploit it, is precisely where much of the money went. The rest went to the 1% (the investors, to great extent).

All just my opinion, of course.