If you are a president, and especially the president of the United States of America, you cannot make any mistake, because not only the citizens of your country will be staring at you, but the entire world. During the history, the United States had many presidents, and as simple human beings, they made mistakes, smaller or bigger. From Kennedy to Obama, they all had their errors. Some of them could have been avoided, other not.
Let’s see now the top 10 of the mistakes made by the United States presidents.
1. James Buchanan – Voted out on eve of civil war
James Buchanan is often called “the worst US president”, being blamed for not averting the Civil War. However, people are curious how bad he really was? Well, after he ended his mandate, he was hoping for a peaceful retirement, but instead things got bad for him, and the entire conflict between him and the public took the name of “Buchanan’s War”. People consider that he failed as a president, because he didn’t manage to take powerful measures against the fire-eaters from the south.
2. Bill Clinton – The Lewinsky scandal
Bill Clinton was a good president, until he met Monica Lewinsky. As a charming and suave man, he got involved in one of the biggest sexual scandals in the history of the White House. The entire scandal gathered reactions from all over the world. Clinton tried to deny everything, but he just made the situation worse. In 1998, he was voted by the House of Representatives to impeach the White House. On the Senate didn’t vote for that, so he stayed president, but the huge scandal influenced his career.
3. Richard Nixon – Watergate
The Watergate scandal is one of the biggest presidents’ scandals in the world, and definitely the biggest scandal involving a US president. Five men were caught when they broke into the Democratic National Headquarters, in the business complex of Watergate. Everything happened in 1972, and a huge investigation was conducted. The secret Pentagon Papers revealed that Nixon and his team tried to attempt. Nixon resigned after this scandal, on 9th of August 1974, before he could have been impeached.
4. Ronald Reagan – Iran-Contra Scandal
Ronald Reagan broke all the international conventions, when he decided to give funds for a revolution. He gave weapons to Iran, and he broke an arms embargo. If that wasn’t enough, he used the gains to sponsor a revolution in Nicaragua, started by a group named Contras. He violated the Borland Agreement. Reagan was loved as a president of the US, but these mistakes had a major impact, and they cannot be forgotten. He was cited for his actions.
5. Jimmy Carter – The Iran hostage crisis
Everything happened between November 1979 and January 1981, when an angry Islamic group of revolutionaries took more than 60 Americans as hostages in Tehran, in front of the US Embassy. The crisis was the most promoted the event in the television and in the media since the World War II. Carter was blamed for everything that happened, especially since he didn’t allow the Shah of Iran to entry in the United States. The Shah was sick of cancer, so he finally allowed him to enter the States, but the negotiations continued to fail.
6. John F. Kennedy – Bay of pigs invasion
The bay of pigs invasion was a huge scandal in the United States, a futile exercise that overthrows the government of the Cuban president, the dictator Fidel Castro. The conflict between the US government and Cuba evolved every day, until the President Dwight D. Eisenhower cut all the relations between the two countries. In January 1961, Kennedy, the successor of Eisenhower, approved an invasion plan, and the US forces suffered a decisive defeat in Cuba. It was a very strong embarrassment of the entire Kennedy Administration.
7. George Washington – The whiskey rebellion
In 1794, a massive group of farmer from Pennsylvania started a revolt against the federal law that was taxing the distilled spirits. The scandal is known as the “Whiskey Rebellion”, and it was one of the largest events organized against the federal authorities. It happened between the American Revolution and the Civil Was, and many rebels were prosecuted for their actions. Washington was considered responsible for everything that happened.
8. Woodrow Wilson – The League of Nations
Back in the 1920s, the League of Nations was an international organization, with the office in Geneva, Switzerland. If was created after the World War I, as a forum to resolve international conflicts. It was proposed by Woodrow Wilson, the president of the United States, but the US was never a member. Wilson even called the organization “a general association of nations”. Unfortunately for him, the organization got really strong.
9. Barack Obama – Obamacare
Obama is the current president of the United States, and the first black one. Many people agree with his actions, but he made also some mistakes. For example, it is considered that the US is in a constitutional crisis, because Obama has no idea about the Constitution of his country. He is acting like an imperial president, making laws by executive decree. He changed Obamacare, just to make sure his party won’t support consequences in the next election. He is ignoring some of the laws, and often bypasses the Congress. He doesn’t get consents and approval from the Congress and the Senate for many of his actions.
10. John Adams – The XYZ affair
The mandate of John Adams was fully consumed by the problems of the French Revolution. He was very popular among the Americans at the beginning of his presidency, but he used the French Revolution as a source of terror and anarchy. He tried to be diplomatic at the beginning, but later he demanded a $250.000 bribe and $10 million loan before starting the peace negotiations. This incident is called as the XYZ affair, and marked his entire mandate. When Napoleon became the head of the French Government, they finally signed the Treaty of Mortefontaine, which allowed the United States to get out of the war alliance with France.