10 Worst U.S. Presidents

What do you think? We want your votes on the worst presidents in American history. You may select up to three.
• George W. Bush
68% of voters

haha and Nixon in second. I had a hard time choosing between Nixon and Reagan.

• Abraham Lincoln
11% of voters

ok, is this referral traffic from tcsdaily or st-rmfr-nt

ha ditto this:

• Franklin D. Roosevelt
4% of voters

uh, you can't have a tie at 9 and put someone at 10!

truth bomb^^^^

GWB, Nixon and Reagan, the three fucking stooges and all in my lifetime to boot. absolutely no surprise lots of of people would vote for Carter but I think George HW was worse than Jimmy.

I was gonna go with that trifecta as well but went with Hoover instead of Reagan.

william harrison at #8 is a bit of a cheap shot.

gotta find a place for Clinton, GWB's enabler and Destroyer of (what was left of) the Dems' New Deal Legacy

clinton's making such a dick of himself on the campaign trial it won't be long til he's seen as the new hoover

^^^

Very boring choices on that list. Why not Woodrow Wilson, that snivelling prig responsible for the worst aspects of liberalism and neoconservatism?

well, Americans have short memories/are not students of history

And the careers of Andrew Johnson and U.S. Grant are more complicated than the schoolbook history suggests.

wilson saved us from the kaiser!

we'd all be pledging allegiance to Hohenzollern if it wasn't for woody <3

I ::heart:: Wilson.

I like what J.D. wrote on the thread:

the worst president in history, worse than even W on every score, for all the reasons alfred mentions.

the federal reserve act, as robert la follette said, "legitimized the money trust it was supposed to destroy."

by far the worst blot on his record is the astonishingly extreme suppression of civil liberties during WWI. no president in history weakened the first amendment so much. karp makes the very good point that the main reason for them was that there simply was no good reason for the war; had people been able to criticize it publically, no one would have supported it. wilson's destruction of the progressive movement essentially ended (small-r) republican politics in america, paving the way for the national security state, mccarthyism, and the permanent institutionalizing of corrupt two-party rule. and his stupid blunders at versailles (clemenceau cracked that wilson seemed to believe he was jesus christ) paved the way for WW2.

he was sort of the "W" of his time

Not really -- Wilson was powerfully, even supremely, eloquent.

and W isn't?

W can't even put a sentence together

The WW of his times

okay i'll bite: what's so bad about the federal reserve act?

"w" is eloquent in the sense that his delivery appeals to many people for whatever reason. i read a nypress column calling him the greatest orator the writer had seen in his lifetime (which was either trollbait or a genuine appreciation of his plain speakin manner, hell if i know which is was)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n04/mish01_.html

^^ incredible stuff. wilson: patron saint of lecturing the world about liberty while being clueless, careless and racist. the real tragedy is that so many of "the browner peoples of the earth" (qtd the onion) took him seriously

nypress column calling him the greatest orator the writer had seen in his lifetime

dude must've been watching TV with the sound off

Also, whether one buys Wilson's foreign policy vision or not, he certainly was ineffective in having that vision realized vis-a-vis domestic politics and congress. Not exactly a brilliant moment of leadership.

What's scariest about Wilson is that his first term was one of the most impressive thanks to Congress' near-total acquiescence to him, kinda like Reagan's first year.

i think i may have posted this before here but what the fuck:

Warren G. Harding (November 2, 1865 - August 2, 1923) was a worthless piece of shit. Fuck him. His presidency was a taint, not just in the sense of a "stain on the office," but literally a taint - the anatomical area between the anus and the testicles. I hate Warren G. Harding.

you may have posted that before, on the rip warren g. harding thread

That's weird since he wouldn't have won without the Teddy Roos throwing a shitfit during the election of 1912. He didn't have a "mandate" like Reagan did he?

Gore Vidal's Hollywood has a nice sketch of Wilson. One of the fictional senators (an enemy, and Wilson, like He Who Must Not Be Named, had no allies only enemies to be identified and destroyed) remarks that he's the best politician since Lincoln.

Almost every president of the last 50 years would warrant a mention. Eisenhower may be the only Cold War president to emerge with dignity intact, and even he was (for a time) besotted with international adventures, like in Guatemala.

besotted is such a great word

international adventures = Teddy to thread

Carmen San Diego to thread

The idea that TR was a warmonger is the kind of beautiful fiction which keeps John McCain up nights. TR is much more belligerent as a president-in-training and former president than in office.

also: TR, our best-read president after Jefferson.

Columbia and the Phillipines would probably disagree.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/19991016/bush_reading.jpg

Teddy was a complex dude, no doubt.

When ranking presidents, is it fair to judge them harshly on imperial adventures? I mean, the US was basically founded as an imperialist adventure and you have to expect that most of its most powerful leaders will pursue that agenda.

I agree. Let's locate some indigenous people and slaughter them.

posts very much in character

why shakes why

i mean for your own sake

are your sarcasm detectors broken or what

Did W really have hair like that once?

That should be his wax museum statue.

This thing is scary:

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3221/georgewbushpa7.jpg

none of them rank as great in my book except:

lincoln: not only the very best (and an amazing writer), but one of history's truly noble figures.
washington: all the usual reasons. washington's example is probably the main reason the presidency didn't become what it is today until the twentieth century - that's a good thing.
jefferson: flawed, but ultimately a noble man whose achievements (i'm not one to complain about the louisiana purchase) outweighed his blunders. strong on civil liberties, modest foreign policy and personal image - if it hadn't been for slavery, jefferson would be my model of what a president should be. (carter walked to the white house during his inauguration, the first pres to do that since jefferson - unfortunately, it turned out to be the high point of his administration.)
FDR: way more flawed than we like to believe - besides the obvious internment of Japanese-Americans, much of the first new deal (especially the appalling National Recovery Administration) is rightly forgotten today. also threw away the biggest mandate for reform in american history by wasting a year trying to pack the supreme court. but he did enough great things that it's impossible to leave him off.

worst: wilson, reagan, GWB, hoover, coolidge (easy to overlook, but certainly as responsible for the depression as anyone), buchanan, polk, nixon. most everyone from the last 50 years - eisenhower's probably the last competent one.

overrated: i'm a bit skeptical of the LBJ revival. after reading the robert caro books, it's hard to believe that idealism played much of a role in anything he ever did - the man stole his high school election, for god's sake.

I'd never call Jefferson "noble" in the same way that Lincoln or Washington were. That Henry Adams history more people should at least sample, along with Vidal's Burr and Joseph Ellis' American Sphinx, should forever put to rest any notion that for Jefferson the notion of a Republic was inseperable from self-interest, which makes him of course the first "modern" politician of the era.

You're OTM re FDR too. I mean, after 1936 with that kind of congressional mandate he could have asked to invade Canada and they would have approved; instead he misreads tea leaves, for the only time in his political life, and wastes energy...packing the court. He could have (stress "could") broken the Southern Democrats' filibuster on civil rights if he so chose.

Underrated: Washington (for obvious reasons; but people forget how easily he could have turned megalomaniacal, and how well he understood the role required of him), Madison.

Overlooked worst president: McKinley.

overrated: i'm a bit skeptical of the LBJ revival. after reading the robert caro books, it's hard to believe that idealism played much of a role in anything he ever did - the man stole his high school election, for god's sake.

idealism is a requirement for greatness?

i confess i find gore vidal a bit...glib, sometimes. his constant lamenting for "the republic" seems at odds with the fact that he doesn't seem to like people that much.

idealism isn't a requirement for greatness but after reading hundreds of pages about how johnson went out of his way to lie to and/or screw over everyone he ever met it's hard not to have mixed feelings, at least.

If only LBJ hadn't fallen into the Nam/dominoes thing, I would've excused his dubious motives for doing so many good things.

8. William Harrison (1841)
He was president for all of 30 days after contracting pneumonia during his interminable inaugural.

lol, I love that they go all "what a dick" on him for this

he wasn't exactly a brain surgeon before taking office either, iirc.

wot about Andrew Jackson, if you want to talk slaughter of indigenous people?

along with Vidal's Burr

^^^this is a great and very funny book

Same with Polk

xpost

People should study G. Washington's final presidential speech. What he said about the country and what it's leaders should be is the polar opposite of what the current landscape is. If he could see what's going on, he'd be wondering if the smallpox and winter encampments in hell were really worth it.

we have pretty good dental care tho

Jackson also opposed a national bank when it was fairly obvious that the time for Jeffersonian agrarianism was long past. He's another top tenner whose acclaim mystifies me. Maybe it's the hair!

a national bank seems like a bad idea to me, tho i admit i never quite understood the intensity of the 18cen debate over it.

grover cleveland was by all accounts a very honest, forthright guy, and probably the last president who actually took "laissez-faire" seriously (as opposed to coolidge and reagan's corporate subsidizing and tax breaks).

he was also deep in the pockets of the railroads – every one of his Supreme Court appointees was a laissez-faire douche. Don't forget the Pullman riots.

Also, as Walter Karp made clear, he made loud noises over Venezuela.

Cockburn:

Line up Obama with his fellow assassins, from Eisenhower through Bush, and I believe he’s the most repellent of the bunch, down there with Woodrow Wilson. None of his rivals quite match the instinctive egotism that allows Obama effortlessly to affect the earnestness of a man taking the moral high road while executing a cynical program of electioneering-by-assassination.

Cynical but effective. The Republicans are in a state of total confusion and have no plausible candidate to run against Obama. The progressives are solidly behind their man.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05132011.html

More C-SPAN twaddle about "effectiveness." My own worst-of.

https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

no GWB in the worst 10? what fucking bullshit is this, CSpan?

HISTORIANS SURVEY RESULTS CATEGORY
MORAL AUTHORITY
President	2021 Final Score	Category Rankings	2021 Overall Rankings
2021	2017	2009	2000
Abraham Lincoln	95.2	1	2	1	2	1
George Washington	92.7	2	1	2	1	2
Franklin D. Roosevelt	81.8	3	3	3	4	3
Dwight D. Eisenhower	81.4	4	4	5	5	5
Theodore Roosevelt	79.3	5	5	4	3	4
Barack Obama	75.5	6	7	NA	NA	10
Jimmy Carter	71.7	7	14	14	10	26
John Adams	71.6	8	11	12	9	15
Harry S. Truman	71.3	9	10	9	7	6
John Quincy Adams	69.9	10	12	16	12	17
Thomas Jefferson	69.1	11	6	7	8	7
James Madison	68.5	12	9	10	13	16
Ronald Reagan	65.4	13	13	8	11	9
James Monroe	63.2	14	16	15	17	12
George H. W. Bush	63.1	15	17	19	19	21
John F. Kennedy	61.8	16	15	11	15	8
Ulysses S. Grant	60.8	17	19	23	31	20
Calvin Coolidge	60.4	18	21	20	23	24
Woodrow Wilson	59.6	19	8	6	6	13
Gerald R. Ford	59.5	20	23	13	21	28
William McKinley	59.4	21	18	17	16	14
William Howard Taft	59.3	22	25	22	22	23
James A. Garfield	58.6	23	22	25	25	27
Lyndon B. Johnson	54.8	24	24	26	28	11
Grover Cleveland	53.5	25	26	21	18	25
George W. Bush	51.4	26	34	35	NA	29
Benjamin Harrison	48.6	27	30	29	30	32
James K. Polk	48.6	28	27	24	20	18
Zachary Taylor	48.0	29	28	27	27	35
Herbert Hoover	47.1	30	29	28	24	36
Chester A. Arthur	47.0	31	35	33	32	30
Andrew Jackson	46.3	32	20	18	14	22
Rutherford B. Hayes	45.5	33	32	30	26	33
Martin Van Buren	45.4	34	33	32	29	34
William Henry Harrison	43.8	35	31	31	34	40
Millard Fillmore	34.5	36	36	36	33	38
John Tyler	33.8	37	37	34	35	39
William J. Clinton	30.0	38	38	37	41	19
Franklin Pierce	29.2	39	39	38	36	42
Warren G. Harding	26.9	40	40	39	39	37
Richard M. Nixon	21.7	41	42	41	40	31
Andrew Johnson	20.3	42	41	40	37	43
James Buchanan	19.1	43	43	42	38	44
Donald J. Trump	18.7	44	NA	NA	NA	41

18.7 is surprisingly high for "moral authority" tbh.