You know, when they ask these academics to rank the presidents it seems like things don’t change a whole lot over time. For example, in the five Siena Polls since 1982, Franklin Roosevelt has been ranked our best president every single time. George Washington has been ranked fourth every single time. I think what’s really remarkable about our history is how few presidents have been worth a damn.
I mean, when Woodrow Wilson is listed sixth-best in four of the five polls, you’re obviously digging at the bottom of the barrel almost from the outset. I’m not in favor of judging our presidents with anachronistic standards, but Woodrow Wilson stood out as a doughface racist even in his own day. Wilson stands out as one of our finer presidents only because so many of them have been dreadful.
Nixon was the president when I was born. He wasn’t actually that bad of a president except for the impeachable offenses. He was certainly a more competent president than anyone that succeeded him until Poppy Bush took over. Ford was a placeholder. Carter was an epic failure on almost every level (remember that the progressives revolted over his centrism and incompetence and ran with Kennedy). Reagan couldn’t even remember his lines. Clinton was impeached (unjustly) and treated everyone shabbily. And then we had the Chimp.
I mean, the record is so bad that if I had to make a list of just the best presidents since 1900, I couldn’t fill out a top five without gagging. I mean obviously FDR was the best president since 1900. And I can overlook many things to make Teddy Roosevelt number two. But I’m not enthusiastic about naming anyone to that number three spot. I think JFK is incredibly overrated and his record is (through no fault of his own) quite incomplete. LBJ gave us the Vietnam War. Clinton thought it was a good idea to fool around with interns and deregulate the financial sector. Truman created the CIA, was the first and only person to drop nuclear weapons on civilians, and involved us in a war in Korea that is still going on. Who am I going to choose? In reality, I am going to choose Obama. His record is still incomplete, but so far it is better than any of the other candidates.
To round out my top five I am going to pick LBJ for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the War on Poverty. And I’ll go with Clinton in fifth place because he ran a very competent administration, kept the economy humming, and didn’t get us bogged down in any land wars in Asia.
But, Jesus, this is some slim pickings. I’m actually tempted to put Eisenhower ahead of Clinton. In any case, here are my five worst presidents since 1900.
1. George W. Bush
2. Herbert Hoover
3. Warren Harding
4. Richard Nixon
5. William McKinley
Isn’t it saying something that there were indisputably three (Republican) presidents in the last 110 years actually worse than Richard Nixon? How has this country fucking survived?
