On Friday morning, our friend Rob Bluey at the Daily Signal caught this monstrosity from The Atlantic, which published reader responses to who they consider to be the “worst leader of all time” and, not surprisingly, the responders named former Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan -- alongside murderous dictators Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot -- as well as the incompetent British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Set to appear in the January/February 2017 print issue, the posted responses ranged from liberal authors and TV hosts to average readers of the monthly magazine. The people cited spanned nearly the duration of human history.
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Author Laurence Leamer was the one who cowardly thought Bush was worthy of the title (so, above a communist dictator) because he was going to say Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder “when the goofy, smiling face of President George W. Bush appeared out of nowhere.”
“Bush’s invasion of Iraq was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions, was a major factor in the dismemberment of nation-states, and the tally goes on,” Leamer complained.
TV Land’s Throwing Shade co-host Bryan Safi provided the Reagan answer that skirted the cutting room floor as he falsely and childishly accused Reagan of having helped wipe “thousands of gay men” “off the map” during the AIDS crisis:
Ronald Reagan. Tens of thousands of gay men were wiped off the map simply because he refused to speak, much less act. What’s worse than ignoring a national health crisis while you stuff your face full of jelly beans and your wife reads her horoscope in the next room?
The MRC’s Brent Bozell and Tim Graham blasted this lie about Reagan and his federal government idly standing by in the 1980s in their May 30, 2014 column (as well as here in a 2004 column excerpt):
The real Reagan record on AIDS is diffe rent than the seemingly never-ending mud-slinging. His Department of Health and Human Services secretary called it a "top priority" in 1983, when the disease was so new that few people even understood what was happening. AIDS funding skyrocketed in the 1980s, almost doubling each year beginning in 1983 — when the media started blaring headlines — from $44 million to $103 million, $205 million, $508 million, $922 million and then $1.6 billion in 1988.
Now, try finding Walter Mondale "mentioning AIDS publicly" when he ran against Reagan in 1984. It didn't come up in the presidential debates. It's nowhere to be found in his 1984 convention speech. A Nexis search of the Washington Post and The New York Times in 1984 doesn't locate a Mondale quote on AIDS.
The remainder of the responses were far more becoming of a serious list for the worst leaders of all time.
However, the inclusion of Bush and Reagan illustrated the left’s cartoonish obsession with trashing Republicans as evil. Eventually, this petty behavior ran dry as American public’s trust in the media plummeted and drove voters to Donald Trump on November 8 (despite his many flaws).
It’s rather pitiful that the best answer had to come from CNN’s New Day co-host Chris Cuomo of all people as he provided a short list led by the devil [emphasis theirs]:
The devil, for appealing to the weakness in human nature, disconnecting people from the basic love of one another in order to secure a leader’s power over them. Look at Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler—different times and places, but they all share that diabolical influence.
For the record, other responses given were Romulus Augustus, Napoleon Bonaparte, Neville Chamberlain, Jefferson Davis, Nicholas II of Russia, and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II from World War I.
