Who is the best leader your country never had?

[Barrister]

Somewhat inspired by Raz's thread (Your ideal politician), but more grounded in reality.

What's the one election you really think your country got wrong?  Who, with hindsight, would have been a far better national leader than the person who was elected?

Would America be a better place if President Dole had won in 1996?  Would the UK have been better off with Prime Minister Kinnock?


If I may, try and keep it to people who actually ran in the race - you may think, I dunno, Howard Dean should have won the Democratic race in 2004, but the choice America faced was between Bush and Kerrey.

[Martinus]

Not electing a Habsburg in one of these 16th century elections.

[Zanza]

Friedrich Wilhelm IV accepting the emperorship in 1848 from the Frankfurt parliament. That would have set Germany on course for a parliamentarian constitutional monarchy and not the authoritarian Prussian state we got two decades later.

[Valmy]

No idea. I mean sure there have been a couple elections where I felt the country got it wrong, 1992 and 2000 stick out, but I don't know if any of those really fill me with angst.

I mean Dewey and Stevenson were great in their other public contributions but I don't know if they really would have been great Presidents.

[Liep]

Mogens Lykketoft in 2001, instead we got Fogh. Perhaps not the beat leader we never had, but we would've not had one of the most destructive.

[Zanza]

Cthulhu or a giant meteor might have been better choices than Hitler in 1932 and 1933.

[Berkut]

McCain in 2000.

[mongers]

Gordon Brown in 2010, given the mess Cameron has left behind.

[Barrister]

Gordon Brown in 2010, given the mess Cameron has left behind.

But you already had a Gordon Brown as PM, so he's not really a leader you "never had".  You know what kind of leader he was.

[Barrister]

Cthulhu or a giant meteor might have been better choices than Hitler in 1932 and 1933.

Okay, you guys win for the worst election results ever...

[celedhring]

Not exactly "best leader we never had" - that would go to a talking parrot put in place of Fernando VII - but I always thought about the fun and giggles had we given the crown to Leopold Hohenzollern in 1868, and aligned Spain with Prussia.

[The Larch]

A wet rag would have been a better king for Spain instead of Ferdinand VII in the Bourbon restauration after the Napoleonic wars. It was not really an election but we could have done so much better...

[mongers]

Gordon Brown in 2010, given the mess Cameron has left behind.

But you already had a Gordon Brown as PM, so he's not really a leader you "never had".  You know what kind of leader he was.

Well we're in the beginning of a whole mess of stuff, so I'm willing to see just how bad he'd have to become to still be better than Cameron.


edit:

BB you're right, so instead I'll go for zombie Screaming Lord Sutch over Dave 'Nice But Dim' Cameron.

[Valmy]

Hey are you guys listening the Mike Duncan's Latin American Revolution series? I loved the line that Bolivar was the only one to not support Ferdinand in Venezuela during Ferdinand's captivity in the Napoleonic Wars because he was the only one who had actually met Ferdinand.

[Valmy]

McCain in 2000.

Good one. Talk about an election to disillusion one on the POTUS election process. I have had a very hard time emotionally tolerating these shitshows ever since that one.