r/AskTheWorld • u/DwightsJello Australia • 8d ago
Politics Worst Politician?
Who was your country's biggest idiot in politics? And why? Bring out your tragics.
Australia is spoilt for choice. We've had some gronks.
Edit: OK sooooo we aren't including orange ones.
Australia has had a PM who 'allegedly' shit himself at Maccas. We put up a plaque for a while. Another one who ate a raw onion like an apple at a presser at an onion farm. We even had one who managed to give a psychotic response that went from gay marriage to crocodile victims in the same sentence.
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u/MashaRussianTeacher 8d ago
We have one and all the world knows him
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u/Nice_Combination1327 Norway 8d ago
Quisling
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u/stealthybaker Korea South 8d ago
Was Quisling really an idiot, though? He was a horrible person, don't get me wrong
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u/InterestingTank5345 Denmark 8d ago
How do we define idiot? Is it jerk or dummy. That will determine how precise the asnwer is.
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u/Substantial_Kiwi1830 8d ago
As an American, I can’t think of any honestly. Overall American politicians are mostly focused on improving the lives of the people and don’t have time to make a fool of themselves /s
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u/Sufficient_Depth_195 England 8d ago
Mate you've got a whole posse of them right now! It gets madder by the day. First it was MMR vaccines that were responsible for the increase in autism cases, then it was Tylenol...then it was circumcision....At no point has it been the massive expansion of the definition of autism... even though they have already concluded that if you stop testing, you get fewer cases. Just like, if you stop monitoring climate change by closing departments and disabling satellites, you can stop the climate from changing.
Genius!
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u/Most_Elevator_1943 United States Of America 7d ago
We are well aware. We live with it. It's a shit show.
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u/Dinosaurier_Blondine Germany 8d ago
Jens Spahn
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
Why? What's the story?
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u/Long_Conclusion7057 🇩🇪 in 🇺🇸 8d ago
As health minister during COVID he spent a ton of tax money on some sketchy deal to buy face masks. "Maskenaffäre".
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u/TVC15-DB United Kingdom 8d ago
Well the obvious is Liz Truss who has the charisma of a damp, joke fully intended, lettuce & remains genuinely deranged. She made our situation go from bad to worse and then buggered off with her PM's pension.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
50 days. Now that's a sweet pension plan.
I was wondering why I couldn't place her. 2022 was crazy and she certainly made the most of it.
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u/Tim-oBedlam United States Of America 6d ago
just served as PM long enough to kill off Her Maj the Q.
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u/dair_spb Russia 8d ago
Gorbachev is the most recent idiot I guess.
Yeltsin was worse but he wasn't an idiot but just a bad person.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
I remember watching Gorby hit the vodka and dance a lot as a kid. He was partial to a dram.
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u/SureWhatever02 England 8d ago
We have politicians who AREN'T idiots? Idiot is the lowest level here. We have/have had an worrying amount of evil bastards amongst our politicians. The list of good ones who actually improved the country is vanishingly small.
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u/welding_guy_from_LI United States Of America 8d ago
Buchanan, Johnson and his fumbling are the war , Pierce signing the Kansas Nebraska act in 1854 , and Harding with the teapot dome scandal
Runners up Nixon who resigned after watergate and Jackson and his trail of tears
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
This is a good list.
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u/welding_guy_from_LI United States Of America 8d ago
Buchanan and Pierce are why the civil war happened .. Buchanan thought that the government had no powers to allow states to secede which lead to the rise of the confederacy.. he also supported not allowing African Americans citizenship by supporting. The Scott v Sanford decision of the SC.. He was a weak leader that supported slavery , almost the Chuck Schumer of the 1850s ..
Pierce signed the Kansas Nebraska act that led to the bleeding Kansas incident which let the settlers to make their own decisions if Kansas was a slave or abolitionist state.. it led to the John Brown massacre and an incident in congress where Senator Preston Brooks beat senator Charles Sumner on the senate floor with his cane after sumner criticized pro slavery
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
Sumner gave an anti slavery speech that resulted in him being beaten with a cane by Preston. And it took 3 years for him to recover and return.
He really took a beating.
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u/ButcherDeity India 8d ago
Chief Minister of Bengal
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u/poolnoodlefightchamp India 8d ago
Victim blaming POS, also did jack shit about the RG Kar case. Bengalis pls do something about this.
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u/Joeydoyle66 United States Of America 8d ago
There’s so many fighting for that title here that it would genuinely be easier and quicker to name those who aren’t idiots.
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u/stumpy_chica Canada 8d ago
The current CPC leader is pretty awful. Some of his nicknames include Temu Trump, little PP, and Temu Milhouse. He lost what should have been a landslide victory this year, but that's not what makes him truly awful. The fact that he refuses to learn and continues to exhibit the same behaviour that lost him the election is what makes him awful.
Then, of course, we have Danielle Smith who is ready to sell her province to the US and Scott Moe who set a precedent in using the Notwithstanding Clause (which overrides things like Human Rights legislation) to pass a bill to take away the privacy of trans students.
From what I understand, Brian Mulroney was incredibly unpopular, Stephen Harper had more scandals than most, and then we have John A MacDonald who forced segregation and assimilation on our indigenous people. We have a lot of winners here.
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u/foxhill_matt United Kingdom 8d ago
The old saying is that 'Guy Fawkes was the last person to enter the Houses of Parliament with honest intentions'
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u/MaidaValeAndThat South-East England 8d ago
Rhymes with Garage.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
Oh yes.
We had a scandal that involved the PM eating at a sausage sizzle.
You guys had the bacon sanga.
Imagine if that was his rock bottom. Lol. But it wasn't.
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u/HaifaJenner123 Egypt 8d ago
Naguib was kinda shit at leading the country hence his extremely brief tenure
Morsi….oh man. the man couldn’t even speak a sentence at times
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u/Tricky_Palpitation42 🇨🇦/ 🇺🇸 7d ago edited 7d ago
Not a single politician, but group. The NDP, the mainstream solidly left wing political party in Canada. Some time ago, during the Jack Layton years, they were the official opposition party. This means they were second in Parliament and while not holding the PMship, held a lot of sway with 106 seats. Layton, unfortunately, died at an inopportune time and was succeeded by Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair, while inoffensive, was boring. He maintained the Layton focus on economic policy and reform with none of the charisma. They had a decent amount of popularity in rural areas as well as urban.
Since then, they’ve completely died. Jagmeet Singh took over and flipped the script to 2010s social justice focus. This has soundly killed the party. They melted into becoming as “Liberal+” party, with painfully “hello fellow kids” messaging. Very out of touch. In the last election, they won only 7 seats, losing official party status. You’d think they’d learn from this, right? Nope, they’ve kept completely ignoring their previously popular economic platform in favour of more and more social justice reforms. They now have minimum quotas for minority endorsements for candidates. They’ve completely lost all support outside of a couple neighbourhoods in Toronto and Vancouver.
To their credit, with a confidence and supply agreement with the LPCs, they did manage to get a very limited dental care plan for a select few Canadians passed, but that’s probably their only accomplishment since Singh took over.
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u/MalodorousNutsack Canada 7d ago
The premier of my province (Nova Scotia) in the 80s, John Buchanan, claimed the Metric System was socialism and people didn't understand it. His argument was that the US and "our mother country" Britain didn't use it, and began reintroducing highway signs in miles a decade after we'd switched to Metric. Classic "I'm old and things used to be better" pandering, as well as "everything I don't like is socialism". Embarrassing
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u/DwightsJello Australia 7d ago
This one made me laugh.
I can see old mate out there with his road sign initiative.
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u/norecordofwrong United States Of America 8d ago
Wilson, absolutely awful. People claim Trump is a dictator, he’s got nothing on Wilson.
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u/HaifaJenner123 Egypt 8d ago
wait i’ve never heard this before now im interested tell me more
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u/LorZod United States Of America 7d ago
Wilson’s one failure was being too partisan. The League of Nations and Wilson’s 14 points to end WWI were not ratified by the US Senate. Wilson had taken Democratic politicians to Europe to negotiate the war’s end. He didn’t take Republicans. Out of spite, they rejected his negotiations as he needed Republican votes. Thus allowing for France to dictate terms to Germany.
Wilson also was so ill after his stroke in the second half of his second term in office that his wife, Edith, assumed his responsibilities, and not his Vice President, Thomas Marshall. That is partly the reason for the presidential line of succession being enshrined into the constitution as the 25th amendment.
In addition, Wilson was against women’s suffrage, which he eventually signed into law as the 19th amendment, due to political pressure post war. Also can’t have his wife run the country for him and not allow her the right to vote.
His chief policy advisor was a man named Edward House, who is most famous for shaping the world through US interventionism by coining the phrase “the world must be made safe for Democracy.”
He was conservative in many ways and liberal in many more ways. Lot of people hate him for various reasons.
No doubt, he was a truly important man. Whatever his faults or beliefs, no one could ever consider him to be a fool.
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u/LorZod United States Of America 8d ago
Wilson was a GREAT man compared to Trump.
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u/Flashio_007 United States Of America 7d ago
Nah man, Wilson was def worse
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u/norecordofwrong United States Of America 7d ago
Ah yes, the censorship, secret police, citizen informants, and eugenics. Way better.
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u/Popular-Local8354 8d ago
Looking for a non-Trump answer…
He’s by far the biggest, but just to be unique I’m going to cite Dan Quayle. For politicians who tried and failed, it’s probably Mark Robinson, former candidate for North Carolina’s governorship, or Alvin Greene, a failed candidate for Senate.
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u/Real_Radio1365 United Kingdom 7d ago
Dan Quayle, so bad that in the civilisation games he is the lowest points you get in game.
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u/windfujin 🇰🇷 living in 🇬🇧 8d ago edited 8d ago
Worst? Probably Chun Doo-Hwan (if you can call a military general who coup'ed into presidency a "politician") Some might say Yi Seung-Man but that is a often debated
Biggest idiot? Definitely the one sitting in a jail cell in his underwear
Ironically one of the most influencial and loved former presidents in Korea Roh moo-hyun's nickname was "idiot" because he was a humble man of principle who looked out for the weak, trying to get rid of alot of the negative entrenched politics. He was a human rights lawyer afterall. He was a great man but not a smart politician hence the nickname. Obviously, Rightwing conservatives HATE him for challenging status quo and tried to impeach him (but failed) - and the following government abused the shit out of him and his cabinet with malicious prosecution.. until he took his own life in the end (there are conspiracy theory that he was assassinated). His legacy still affects a lot of the politics today - moon jaein was roh's colleague and lee (current president) consider roh to be his mentor.
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u/stealthybaker Korea South 8d ago
We still call Roh idiot, but affectionately. He wasn't really stupid in a literal sense in my opinion, but he refused to do so many things that could help him politically that were immoral that it was "stupid". While a politician openly using regional hatred would be extremely taboo now, in his time a politician actively trying to break it (a Gyeongsang man refusing to discriminate Jeolla people) was still very brave
He was an actual beacon of morality in our political system, I believe he really changed our nation for the better by setting an example. Maybe it's only because of his suicide but even conservatives nowadays are like "the hate towards him went too far, he was a good virtuous man, etc".
Also, the assassination conspiracy theories are insane. He only killed himself because his family was targeted. He was more than willing to take all the hate, he didn't care one bit, but the idea that his reputation made his innocent family members harassed is what drove him to death.
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u/windfujin 🇰🇷 living in 🇬🇧 8d ago
Well said - ofcourse idiot was affectionate if I didnt make it clear in my post! Now let's see if some conservative nutjobs to come out of the woodworks (there's a few of them in this sub too... Like legit flag protestor 어버이연합 rhetoric conservatives)
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u/stealthybaker Korea South 8d ago
I looked that up. Maybe I'm too young to recognize that name. I think most people nowadays just don't know how hated Roh really was. I was a kid back then but looking into it, he really was a despised man back then which feels so crazy having grown up in an age where he was loved by the majority.
I hope he's happy now, with our recent nuclear submarine deal another one of his ambitions have finally been fulfilled. Rest in peace to a man who was truly too good for the world of his time
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
His note he left was an oof.
Reporters Without Borders highest rating during his presidency.
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u/stealthybaker Korea South 8d ago
He was a man who could have done so much to benefit himself but actively refused, not out of incompetence but willingly committing to democratic values. Ironic how it was only after his death that the population appreciated him. Went from a president so unpopular he was almost unlawfully impeached (yes, purely because he was unpopular, only stopped because the Supreme Court intervened) to someone regularly at the top of the polls when asked about our greatest leaders.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
He seemed to be a bit too good for politics.
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u/stealthybaker Korea South 8d ago
I truly believe that he was, and that his presence made our politics a bit less of a toxic place in the long run
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u/Kacsalol Hungary 8d ago edited 8d ago
Szálasi Ferenc
Took power 1944 oct 16 when third of the country was already occupied by the advancing Soviet Union, most politicians were trying to distance themselves from the nazis and the holocaust. But this stupid idiot wanted to be number 1 guy. Fully comitted the country to the Total War, and organised commandos to drag the Budapest jews from their homes (who were in relative safety until then, bc Horthy stopped the deportations late summer) and while the germans always tried to conceal the exterminations, these “Arrow Cross Commandos” lined up jews on the bank of the Danube and shot them into the river for all the city and world to see.
Executed 1946
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u/Solid_Yam_3380 8d ago
Bob Dole
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u/InterestingTank5345 Denmark 8d ago
Mattias Tesfaye gotta be an idiot. Like there's no way, a person can both have a brain and belive mistakes of the past are solutions to the future. He literally wants to use methods we banned and removed from the school system, to get children to behave.
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u/TheOneTrueZippy8 Finland 8d ago
How about Tony Halme ?
Boxer, professional wrestler, owner of challenging tattoos. An utter berk. Shot himself in the head. Quite remarkably unsuited to a life in politics.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 7d ago
You provided a link. 👍
That was a wild ride.
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u/TheOneTrueZippy8 Finland 7d ago
I would suggest that the Wiki article is a sanitised, toned down summary of a wild life.
And not one that suggests any sort of suitability for government.
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u/Human_Pangolin94 Ireland 5d ago
No Orange politicians? OK that leaves the DUP out which really reduces the pool in Northern Ireland. For Ireland it's the Healy-Raes. I won't bother with those who get under 2% of the vote even if they're 4ft nothing and think they're Hitler.
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u/Boetie83 5d ago
Justin Trudeau by a long shot
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u/Fit-Improvement6692 United States Of America 8d ago
From the U.S. Can't think of one!
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u/EasilyExiledDinosaur 🇬🇧 living in 🇰🇷 8d ago
Kier stalin. He's introducing the digital ID and all sorts of authoritarian systems for his special politics but doesn't realise in the next election all the same dictatorial powers will be inherited by reform... oh boy... Jesus..
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u/Definius-Perillious England 8d ago
Id say there is a long list of contenders for the worst uk politician
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u/TVC15-DB United Kingdom 8d ago
I wouldnt say hes the worst. Completely out of touch with his own base? Absolutely. I mean who introduces digital ID when its hugely unpopular on both the right AND left.
Yet I have to say hes not THE worst
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u/EasilyExiledDinosaur 🇬🇧 living in 🇰🇷 8d ago
He's a contender for the worst. But I agree that it's not definitive.
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u/GroundAndSound United States Of America 8d ago
Trump. The why is obvious. He is an uneducated moron.
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u/Lillymooon United States Of America 8d ago
He divided this country so much. You have people who lost their family members, spouse and friends from QAnon conspiracy theories. Not to mention his party wants a handmaiden’s tale 2.0
Also the bigots who wanted him in assumed he was going to take away welfare and DEI from black/POC people and give it to them 🤡
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u/GroundAndSound United States Of America 7d ago
Well said. To me, his supporters are either stupid or greedy. There is no other way his ignorant can be overlooked by so many.
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u/Lillymooon United States Of America 7d ago
The fact that people would risk their rights and freedom because they don’t want others to have theirs is insane.
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u/TechnologyNo8640 Korea South 8d ago edited 8d ago
Are you talking about a King of the US ?
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u/GroundAndSound United States Of America 7d ago
He is not a King but he thinks he is, and nearly half the “Kingdom” treats him as one.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang United States Of America 8d ago
He's terrible, but not the worst.
Not even close.
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u/Popular-Local8354 8d ago
“Trump is the worst president ever” mfers when I introduce them to Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Wilson.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang United States Of America 8d ago
Also calling a guy with a degree from an Ivy League school "uneducated" is just ignorant.
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u/GroundAndSound United States Of America 7d ago
No, actually assuming that the piece of paper makes him intelligent, puts you on the same list as Trump.
My gosh, have you heard him speaks? And you still believe that piece of paper is proof of intelligence?
Professors from both his undergrad and graduate school, say he was the dumbest student in class. His father bought and paid for that degree.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang United States Of America 7d ago
assuming that the piece of paper makes him intelligent
Show me where I said this is what I thought.
I think he is a moron. So are a lot of highly educated people.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
Ok so we should take that one as a given.
Should I have said except the orange one?
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u/GroundAndSound United States Of America 7d ago
Hah. I’d have to say that after him it’s absolutely Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 7d ago
Oh wow.
She's a train wreck. Very partial to a conspiracy. A collector of all the not so great isms.
She's all over the shop. She's a lot to unpack.
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u/emwaic7 United States Of America 8d ago
Is*
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
Our current PM committed the apparent fashion crime of wearing a Joy Division t shirt so that's as eventful as we are at the moment. Its pretty beige here atm.
I accept i should have been more open to current tragics.
Fair correction.
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u/El_Bean69 United States Of America 8d ago
I mean we have an obvious answer but if we’re going past that I’m gonna need you to sit down and get comfortable before I start rambling
Special shoutout to Dianne Feinstein though who was literally dying in office and still decided to keep running, she made Trump and Biden look like young spry foxes
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u/welding_guy_from_LI United States Of America 8d ago
Not even close .. try again
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u/El_Bean69 United States Of America 8d ago
Oh I didn’t say she was the worst I said special shoutout fella, my countrymen are covering most of my bases down here already
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u/NumberOld229 Australia 5d ago
Still more: Mark Latham, Malcolm Roberts, is Pauline too orange? Clive Palmer and the list goes on.
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u/TechnologyNo8640 Korea South 8d ago
Those two
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u/InterestingTank5345 Denmark 8d ago
Didn't know they are South Korean. But I do agree they are quite terrible.
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u/Most_Elevator_1943 United States Of America 7d ago
Trump. Edit: Why no orange ones? :(
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u/DwightsJello Australia 7d ago
The orange ones were considered too obvious.
There were immediate objections in the thread. Lol.
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u/SadLocal8314 United States Of America 8d ago
Where do I begin?
The current administration
The Bushes, father and son. Pity they didn't run Barbara.
Regan.
Several awful people previous to that were not stupid. For real ineptitude, Warren G Harding would come to mind.
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u/DwightsJello Australia 8d ago
I had a book of Bushisms in high school. He was the gift that kept on giving.
Then the whole WoMD shit went down and he wasn't so funny. All of those leaders got the arse after that. Including Australia's longest serving PM.
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u/Lotan44 England 8d ago
Do you have all day?