Tiger Cao, Period 2
Due Jun. 18
The Worst Presidential Mistakes
1900–1999
#1 Woodrow Wilson
Wilson’s visit to Paris in 1919 was entirely a disaster. Initially fighting for peace and forgiving among the European countries with his Fourteen Points, Wilson eventually submitted to the vengeful demands of the French and failed to prevent the Treaty of Versailles into France’s revenge on Germany. His actions in Paris and elsewhere saw France collapsing the economy of Germany, which eventually spawned Adolf Hitler and the Second World War; the failure of the United States to enter the League of Nations, which discredited the League and made it unable to have any international influence; and almost as a “bonus”, inspired Ho Chi Minh to turn to the communists for the independence of Vietnam, which created the leader of North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
#2 Lyndon B. Johnson
Johnson wanted to become a legacy. He also feared that if he lost the war in Vietnam, he would be blamed—as Truman was for “losing China”. Determined to win the war, Johnson sent the first—as well as the five–hundred thousandth—ground troop into Vietnam. Johnson managed to create one of the deadliest and longest wars in American history—killing 1.5 million Vietnamese and nearly 60 thousand US
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Nixon. Nixon, too worried that he might not be re–elected (although he would surely have been re–elected regardless), allowed, and later spent two tiring years trying to illegally conceal the wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee. This scandal, in combination with the time it occurred, devastated the Americans, who were already in unease from the assassination of Kennedy and the Vietnam War. The Watergate Scandal concluded the decade of suspicion and unease of the 1960s and the early 1970s, after which Americans simply could not trust the government like they did before Watergate ever