Who were the five worst presidents in American history? Should they, collectively, have a holiday of their own?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
71 Comments
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
Harding, Johnson (Andrew), GW Bush, Buchanan, and my own personal animus towards Reagan.
Can’t quibble with that set, except I’d have W one and Reagan two.
Great list – but where’s Nixon?
No way he’s in worst 5.
Bad guy, but signed environmental laws and went to China. He still gets a “bad” badge, but those factors should keep him out of the top five.
Also proposed negative income tax, created the EPA and OSHA and proposed the heath insurance mandate and proposed federalization of Medicaid (would be really helpful in the South right now).
For a self-described conservative he was more liberal than many in today’s Democratic Party.
He was also a very unlovable even disgraceful human being, but his politics were not so bad considering what came after him. I really believe that he did his best for the country’s interests as he saw them.
mostly agree, except Nixon instead of Reagan. Reagan was definitely bad, but not top 5 bad. Definitely top 10 though.
As for the day? April 1st.
Because you can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time…
Yeah if I was being a neutral observer I wouldn’t put Reagan in top 5 either. As Brendan said, Pierce was a piece of shit in many ways. However, despite his call for anti-lynching laws and opposed the Klan, Coolidge also sat on his hands and allowed the laissez-faire to take over setting the stage for the Depression; Coolidge was also looked at for inspiration during Reagan.
Reagan began the dismantling of the New Deal, amped up the drug war, and empowered the religious crazies. That’s enough for me.
Carter actually started that. The New Deal busting and new style religion in politics things I mean.
Yes, and he was singularly ineffective. His inactions fed the meme that government can’t do anything right.
Clinton put the destruction of New Deal regulations on steroids, further amped up the drug wars, and give the religious fundies a target for their wrath. He deserves to be scraping down at the bottom of bad presidents along with Reagan and the Bushes.
From Thomas Frank: The matter with Kansas now: The Tea Party, the 1 percent and delusional Democrats. published yesterday at Salon.
George W. Bush has to be somewhere near the top. Pierce was a piece of shit. Nixon. Reagan.
Too lazy to think of others, but maybe they SHOULD have their own day, so we as a nation can better remember the misdeeds of our worst leaders.
their own day emphasizing the fact that they got voted out of office. have a ritual of throwing shoes
“Bad Presidents Day” is a great idea – you don’t even have to have an official list. Just let everyone fill in their own blanks.
Pierce, Buchanan, Grant, Harding, Dubya.
If you gave me a sixth, I’d give you Andy Johnson. But I have a harder time slamming a guy who never would have or should have been President if not for the Union Party electoral strategy of 1864.
Pierce made things worse during his Presidency and by the time he slunk back to New Hampshire, the Civil War was inevitable. Buchanan was manifestly terrible, the American Nero.
Grant ushered in an era of corruption and poor governance that overshadows his accomplishments outside the White House.
Same with Harding, although he accomplished nothing outside the White House.
I wouldn’t put Reagan in the top seven or eight, because of Social Security reform and immigration reform. I don’t like much of what he stands for or advocated, but he has some concrete accomplishments, and I’d even given him credit for what he advanced at Reykjavik.
As did Reagan. Without Reagan, the SCOTUS’s holier-than-thou crusade against liberal democracy, the middle class, and personal liberty would not have been possible. The Shrub’s election – and the massive corruption and war crimes that followed – flow directly from Reagan and the zealots he put in his Cabinet, in the military leadership, and on the courts.
In addition to those grave offenses (and Iran-Contra), Reagan laughingly refused to do even the minimum then possible to address the AIDS epidemic. Finally, as we continue to try to get our political institutions to act against Climate Change, the ignorant jocular anti-intellectualism behind Reagan’s removal of the WH solar panels gums up the works. Reagan shut the door on America’s commitment to science and progress and evidence in favor of anecdotal, ‘feel good’ sloganeering. Reagan was IMO much worse than Grant and has to be in the top 5 most destructive presidents ever.
Reagan’s “corruption” in your telling is mostly bad governance.
Grant and his cronies literally opened up the government for sale. While Grant himself was probably honest, while he could’t tell a lie, he also couldn’t tell a liar.
His Treasury Department colluded with Fisk and Gould to help them corner the gold market.
His Revenue Department little stole money from the Whiskey Excise tax.
His officials (and Congress) benefited from the graft of the Credit Mobilier scandal.
Grant is very similar to Harding, but Harding had the good sense to die in his first term.
And you can add under poor governance the lackluster performance of Reconstruction under Grant, too.
As Henry Adams said, “Grant should have lived in a cave and worn skins.”
Buchanan the American Nero? Buchanan who continually sought compromise and the middle way, in both domestic and foreign policy? Buchanan who followed bi-partisanship to a fault? Doesn’t he remind you of someone? A 21’st century President? And the Supreme Court destroyed the compromises of both, by Dred Scott and Citizens United.
I find this interesting because I’m finally reading up on the antebellum period. It’s something my so called education never touched upon:
What do you think Pierce and Buchanon should have been doing to prevent Civil War? (Or know any good sources that discuss that?) The way I see it, there were many events occurring that they could not do much about. Even by 1952, the tension over slavery was intense. (I’m going by impressions from my single best source at this point: McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom”.)
“What do you think Pierce and Buchanan should have been doing to prevent Civil War?”
Ramp up arms production in advance of the outbreak of hostilities.
Including the development of nuclear weapons. Why, if they’d done THAT, that would have put an end to lots and lots of problems later on.
And by now, most of the radioactivity would have decayed away.
Pierce’s Administration was behind the Ostend Manifesto, which – as Lincoln put it – would have guaranteed perpetual war from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego.
Buchanan was a notoriously duplicitous, untrustworthy man, though by the time he was sworn in, few men could have righted the ship. But he – like Pierce – were northern Democrats in the pockets of the slave power and they alternately made bad decisions or no decisions.
That’s consistent with what I’m reading now. But as you say, “few men could have righted the ship”. And that is what I am asking. If someone could have done better to make some progress in prolonging a tenuous peace, what would those actions have been?
Personally, my impression is that by Buchanon’s term, there was nothing he could really do. By then everything was so polarized and the press of both sections keep fanning the flames. To me it seems it was well outside his hands. And I wonder if this isn’t also about how we Americans tend to view the politics of any time through the president of that time and not the many other actors and institutions involved.
Buchanan is probably hurt most because he has no one arguing his side.
I think his failures in Kansas are his. But you can’t blame him for Dred Scott or the Caning of Sumner. Pierce I think actively made things worse, but Buchanan was simply ineffectual.
The thing is, he has no partisans to speak up for him. Southerners don’t like him because Pennsylvania. Northerners don’t like him because secession. He was not a personally likable guy. His behavior as Secretary of State under Polk was atrocious.
If he had been elected after 1868, he could have been another Anonymous Bearded Ohioan (except for the being from Ohio).
Thanks again for your thoughts.
More on Pierce would be his support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and then his (and Buchanan’s) completely ineffectual dealing with the mini-Civil War in Kansas from 1856-1865.
The Civil War began well before Ft. Sumter and those two idiots did nothing about it.
Could Pierce or Buchanon have sent enough federal troops into Kansas to keep peace and prevent ballot stuffing? Would that have made pro-slavery interests content with him? He had unanimous support from slave states in his election. Was there any way to placate them or would “stronger action” have been a betrayal that would have pushed them into secession earlier?
He could have. The partisans on either side numbered in the hundreds, not thousands. A show of force would have dissuaded many of them.
Plus, he blew it on the whole Lecompton Constitution issue.
But, yeah, he was in the pocket of the Southerners. That isn’t an excuse.
No historian, me, but basically anyone who enabled or sided with the confederacy makes my top five
John Tyler (was actually a Confederate in the war)
Franklin Pierce (Doughface)
James Buchanan (“”)
Millard Filmore
I’ll go with Warren G. Harding, whose administration was simply laughably corrupt, as my last pick.
GWB the lesser, could garner the top two slots alone…I could almost say “Dick Cheney” but he doesn’t qualify technically…so that leaves us with Reagan, Nixon, and Putin as…oh the gop hasn’t nominated Putin yet?…
Who were the five worst presidents in American history?.
I dunno.
The jury’s still out.
If this country sooner or later collapses into a choice between martial law or open insurrection; if the security state becomes a permanent and dominant institution; if the massive anti-American sentiment throughout Asia, the Middle East and South America finally ruin this country in one way or another and/or if the economy tanks to the point of real, runaway inflation, then for future generations Barack Obama will be right up there with George W. Bush for the lead place in this hall of shame.
Bet on it.
You don’t have to be stupid to be one of the five worst presidents.
Just catastrophically unsuccessful.
AG
History of our presidents in Tweets, by Eric Loomis.
The last one there brings a related question to my mind. Of all our Presidents, which top 5 were given the worst situations to deal with on entering the office and which were given the best situations?
Worst situations:
Lincoln – for obvious reasons
FDR – same
Washington – No government, no credit, no precedent
Madison – Jefferson left him with no good options, no army, no navy and an eminent war with either Britain or France.
Andrew Johnson – Reconstruction was never going to be easy, and likely never would have worked to anyone’s satisfaction.
Bonus:
Harry Truman – The A bomb decision, how to deal with the Soviets in Eastern Europe and how to demobilize an economy that everyone feared might slip back into the Great Depression.
Best situations:
Bush 43 – Declining deficits, relative global peace and prosperity
Monroe – Despite a financial panic in 1819, the US enjoyed mostly peace and newfound harmony from not losing to Britain
McKinley – The country was leaving the worst depression of the 19th century and gold strikes in Alaska, the Yukon and South Africa allowed the global currency to inflate, allowing him to sidestep the silver coinage issue
Wilson – He came in at the zenith of the Progressive Era with a majority coalition of loyal Democrats and Progressive Republicans to pass an impressive host of reforms
LBJ – He had massive majorities and the shroud of a martyred president to force reforms through the Congress
good lists. thanks for that. very interesting.
Worst in what way? Worst policy? Worst personality/personal behavior? Most ineffective? That would give three different lists.
Bush Jr. was so bad he’s in a class by himself.
You know, around 1952 Harry Truman would have headed the list. A huge percentage of the electorate hated him for integrating the Armed Services. Today, that is reckoned one his greatest accomplishments. In 1952, almost all agreed with his decision to nuke Japan. That number is considerably lower now.
You have to step back and give history time to make a verdict, although I’m sure it will not be kind to W.
I’ve noticed that many lists ranking the “worst” presidents put emphasis on the incompetence of the administrations, but — with the notable exception of Richard Nixon — gloss over the moral and/or ethical dimensions of the presidency.
How one can, for example, impugn the murky intrigues of Watergate but give Andrew Jackson — as racist and genocidal as any of the supervillains of the 20th Century — a free pass escapes me. And yet Jackson is routinely assigned to the top tier of presidents.
There also seems to be little consideration, in many rankings, for the scope of the damage that a bad president does. William Henry Harrison is often rated near the bottom, but how much evil can any president do with only 32 days in office? And Warren Harding, while he was no doubt both thoroughly corrupt and incompetent, only served half of a single term. He’s often described as the worst president ever, but I don’t think that description does justice to exactly how bad a president can be. It takes more time to be as bad as all that.
There are, to be sure, presidents that rank prominently in each of these dimensions. I think Ulysses S. Grant and George W. Bush are fair examples. Both had deep personal limitations, crooked associates and two terms to mishandle a national disaster, with vast and long term consequences.
I couldn’t even tell you why Jackson is remembered as a “good” president by historians. His ethnic cleansing, Spoils System, opposition to the bank…what did he do that was “good”?
I get the impression that it boils down to the unfortunate but confirmed tendency of historians to celebrate the aggregation and exercise of power as an end unto itself. Jackson was effective in imposing his will.
His face on the twenty also makes zero sense, even if we assume he was a good president. He hated central banking with a passion. Why put his face on a federal reserve note? Maybe it’s spite: “Take that, Jackson!” Or remembrance of why we need a central bank? Who knows…
Usually historians’ “worst” lists rank people like Harrison high because their evluation of presidents outside living memory is premised on a paucity of positive accomplishments. They’re not even thinking in terms of damage inflicted, because by definition America always moves forward and every president is great, it’s juts a question of how great, amirite? This sort of rose-colored nationalist fell out of favor among serious historians decades ago, but it survives in the premise of things like these sorts of lists.
More recent presidents seem to be judged by a different standard – for example, Nixon had any number of positive accomplishments (China, EPA/environmental, etc) and his moral failings were matched by the corruption of at least a half-dozen 19th century presidents, not to mention the succession of mid-19th-century mediocrities who mishandled The Peculiar Institution.
Thinking in terms of “active damage,” I’d go with Jackson, GW Bush, Buchanan, Coolidge, and Grant, in that order. Jackson at the top for several reasons, the most important of which being that his enthusiasm for Native American genocide was not only horrific in its own record, but set the template for the next 70 years of American expansion. Jacksonian slaughter really only stopped when there was no land left to steal. Launching a 70-year campaign of genocide is kind of hard for anyone, even Dubya, to top.
My first inclination was to put Buchanan (who gave us the Civil War) ahead of Bush. But if 9-11, two wars, a crashed global economy, drowning New Orleans, and ignoring climate change weren’t enough, it was also the Bush cabal’s discovery that you could lie incessantly and shamelessly without any political cost in our modern media system that enabled the entire Tea Party Krazee to get a foothold. Those last two are, by the end, each likely to lead to far more human casualties than the US Civil War did. As did Iraq. Which is saying something.
Good points and a good list. You’re right about the rose-colored aspect. I remember a list from long ago that detailed problems in every administration but gave Nixon top ranking because the moon landing happened in his term. LOL.
It seems to me though that most of these lists also fail nearly every time to take one thing into account and that is the context the president was handed when he took office and what happened during his administration that was largely outside his control. Buchanon may deserve to be on the list for corruption alone I suppose, but given the many events outside his control starting from the mid-1840s, and given the challenges of a country growing wildly in population and territory (tilting toward the free soil side), what COULD he have done to resolve the sectional conflict?
The tensions between pro and anti slave states built to a pitch that made the Civil War inevitable as soon as ANY Republican was elected Prez. The various events related to expansion from the Mexican War to Bleeding Kansas (and John Brown), Dred Scott, the many manipulations of Congress, etc. It got postponed to 1960 in large measure because many simply tried to ignore the crisis. Press from both sides were busy pouring oil on the fire as well.
Do you think about context much when you make the list? For me Dubya deserves to be on it especially because of what he was handed: prosperity, peace and urgent intel on al Qaeda and how badly he screwed up 99% of the time.
I don’t think it was so much that he failed to resolve the conflict so much as he was like a writer for South Park and Slate molded into one: slavery is bad but those abolitionists are only making the question harder to resolve because they keep agitating! Also, too, who am I to tell settlers going West that they can’t have slaves?
Secession is illegal, but so is going to war to stop it, apparently. So rather than “What could he have done?” is more like, “He actively came up with bullshit to not deal with it at all.”
That’s fair:
“He actively came up with bullshit to not deal with it at all.”
But even in those terms, what would “dealing with it” look like? Kicking the can down the road, weasel words and avoidance were standard strategies for the Dem party at the time from what I can tell. The Whigs and Republicans also had moments of evasiveness. Could Douglas have done better? I don’t think so. So I have a hard time pinning it all on Buchanon.
I think the country was on a collision course anyway and this had much to do with many other political, economic ans social forces beyond the control of one human, even the President.
“…But even in those terms, what would “dealing with it” look like?…”
Well, for starters, Buchanan might have tried to enforce the laws regarding the theft of Federal property. Starting in December 1860, Buchanan allowed several of the seceding states to take over Federal property and armories, therby essentially arming the rebels. He allowed his Secretary of the Navy to move warships into southern harbors so that they might be commendeered if the states decided to secede. Buchanan allowed the secessionists to get a three-month jump on Lincoln who was handed a true mess when he took the oath of office in early March 1861 because of Buchanan’s lack of real attention. Buchanan never understood that the fire-eaters were never going to allow the nation to remain united and condemned the nation to four years of civil war because of the lack of imagination. He belongs somewhere in the “Worst 5” for sure.
Those are all good examples of his incompetence. But the “it” we were talking about in “dealing with it” was the impending Civil War. By Dec. 1860 one state seceded and many followed just the following month. Would Buchanon’s enforcement of law about Fed property have prevented or postponed the conflict? I don’t see how at that late date. Geov refers to “Buchanan (who gave us the Civil War) ” at the top of this thread and I’m just asking for specifics on how Buchanon did that. And more so what was really doable during his term that could have prevented the eruption of war in 1961. I’m not expecting someone to write a history but if anyone has a good link – much appreciated.
The war was pretty much a certainty by 1850, imo.
I think so too as near as I can tell. McPherson, in a way, mentions the Wilmot Proviso of 1846 as the start of the inevitable slide (that’s my interpretation).
So how is it that we put Buchanon on these lists every time and somehow “he got the nation into the Civil War?” It just strikes me that this may have been the conventional wisdom at some point but no one really remembers why. The many forces toward conflict were in motion for over a decade and many of those forces were outside his control IMO.
But I seriously don’t know and am asking for a free education. 😉
I don’t put him there for getting us into the war but for refusing to go to war to put down the secessionists. He thought secession was illegal, but so was war to stop it. So he basically did nothing about it. Had he did what needed doing and made absolutely certain that they were not allowed to secede and we would do whatever it took to make certain about it, including war, his presidency might not be looked at as the worst in history.
Thanks for the discussion.
Buchanan should have dealt with Kansas. You had armed insurrection in a US territory and he did nothing.
Hard to fault the Fire-eaters for thinking the North would let them secede peacefully.
I don’t know if any of them are worthy of a holiday. But if we are going to have a holiday, can we please move it to summer time? With thanksgiving, christmas, new years, and MLK day, we already have enough winter holidays.
Personally, I’ve always defined worst as most ineffective and/or indecisive
Carter
Pierce
Buchannon
Grant
Poppy Bush
Most Effective and/or Decisive
Johnson
Lincoln
FDR
Clinton
Teddy Roosevelt/Harry Truman
** JFK honorable mention for most charismatic
I think I’ll take Andrew Jackson, Polk, Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, G.W. Bush.
The worst thing a president can do is to start a war that doesn’t have to be fought, and especially if he has to lie to get us into it. That overrides any positive accomplishments of the president, in my book.
How did Wilson start a war? If he’s on the list than so should Madison, as Wilson had more casus belli than Madison did. Heck, you can throw Truman on that list, too, since we didn’t HAVE to fight in Korea.
Of course, Wilson didn’t cause the war, but he did campaign for reelection on the slogan “He kept us out of war” and then got us into the war right after his inauguration.
I despise Wilson, for any number of reasons, and I take the view that Wilson got us into the war only so that he would have a place at the table for redrawing the map after the Allies won. But his 14 points were incoherent, and he became a party to the disastrous Versailles treaty.
There are a lot of reasons to hate Wilson, and one is what the war did to democracy in America. I live in Wisconsin, and at least until recently, we idolized Bob LaFollette. LaFollette opposed WWI, and was almost censured and kicked out of the Senate, except for a sudden bizarre series of deaths which made him the deciding vote for control of that body. Not to mention that the greatest American of that era, Eugene V. Debs, was imprisoned by Wilson for his opposition to the war. When Debs fell ill in prison, and even Wilson’s notorious attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, recommended that Debs be pardoned so that he wouldn’t have to die in prison, it was Wilson who insisted that Debs not be released.
No question. Top 5 worst presidents. Maybe top 1.
Wow. I’d put Wilson top ten. First income tax, replacing the tariff with an income tax, worker’s compensation, the 8 hour day for railroad workers, the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Anti-Trust act, efforts to aid farmers with the Warehouse Act.
Wilson very much did NOT want a war. Germany had issued the Sussex pledge to respect merchant shipping, but then announced they would sink ALL shipping, including American merchant ships in the waters around Britain. They also conspired to try and get Mexico to attack the US as a diversion.
Wilson’s failures are manifest on issues of race, but there is not a single president who covered himself in glory on race between 1877 and Harry Truman. As far as his restrictions on civil liberties during war, that makes him exactly the same as every single war time president ever. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Bush, Obama… it doesn’t matter. Civil liberties suffer in war. Wilson even worried about this as a possible consequence of the war.
The stroke not only debilitated him, but it exacerbated his worst qualities. He become more stubborn, more moralistic when it came to the Lodge Reservations on the League Covenant. But the League was ultimately about preventing future wars. And since the UN was realized, wars between nations have declined to historic lows. That was his vision.
I see Wilson as a megalomaniac who wanted to redesign the world, and saw America’s entry into the war as his point of entry for doing that.
The men who maneuvered/blundered Europe into war in 1914 at least had the excuse that they could not foresee what sort of war they had in store for them. By 1917, it was clear that soldiers were essentially being sent to the slaughterhouse, for no good reason. Yet that is exactly the sort of war that Wilson got us into.
And once he got his coveted spot at peace table, he blew it, and was party to a disastrous treaty that made another European war inevitable.
Sure, other presidents got poor grades on civil rights and civil liberties, but Wilson’s faults there are extraordinary.
As for finding a president with a strong civil rights record between 1877 and Truman, I would suggest Benjamin Harrison. He fought (unsuccessfully of course) for a voting rights act. I believe Frederick Douglass said that he was the greatest of all US presidents.
Here’s a surprising list of Presidential failures.
George Washington – succeeded in creating factions in government just by the way he treated his very ambitious staff.
John Adams – Alien and Sedition Act
Thomas Jefferson – In two terms he did everything by the end that he said at the beginning that he was going to reverse. And set the frame that resulted in the War of 1812. (Outside the White House, he set up a series of winning candidates — himself, Madison, Monroe — who destroyed the Federalist Party.)
James Madison – Started and then lost the War of 1812 had it not been for the miracle at Baltimore. And events in Europe more important to Great Britain.
William Henry Harrison – Spoke too long on a cold day. Allowed Tyler to become President.
Rutherford B. Hayes – The Great Compromise in the House that let the Confederates go free after a campaign of political terror.
Woodrow Wilson – He could have saved us a whole lot of trouble if he hadn’t appointed the Dulles brothers’ uncle as Secretary of State and looked the other way when the nephews were sent on secret missions for Wall Street. Also, giving Ho Chi Minh the brushoff was not terribly smart; self-determination only applied to European nations and not their colonies was not a great position as it turns out. And then there’s the promotion of Birth of a Nation. Sanctimonious Southern Princeton President — likely did more damage than Clark Kerr.
Harry S. Truman – He created the world that we still suffer under. A-bomb. Cold war. Military-industrial complex. Classification and state secrets. Loyalty oaths. Green-light for Israel as last European colonization. Taft-Hartley.
Dwight D. Eisenhower – Most everything but his farewell address, which is a “well why didn’t you do something about it when you were President?” sort of speech.
Richard M. Nixon – Provided space for George H. W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney to get their start. Another case in which we are still suffering from the consequences.
Ronald Reagan – turn to neoliberalism, budget-busting, let loose the religious right; conducted a foreign special operation against his own President in order to get elected.
George H. W. Bush – failed to establish basis for peaceful world with collapse of Soviet Union. Continued hollowing out of US economy.
William J. Clinton – architect of the legislation that is currently creating so much economic pain. Welfare reform that was welfare repeal, allowing repeal of Glass-Steagall, passage of NAFTA. And then there was that zipper problem.
Albert Gore – failing to hire a competent campaign manager who could respond to the GOP capture of the media.
George W. Bush – Name one thing that he actually did right. Just one. Of his own initiative. It took him six years to stop listening to Cheney according to a recent rehabilitative article and he refused to invade Syria with troops already in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Barack H. Obama – Has two years to make up for some serious bloopers. Has not made the list yet. Might if he keeps listening to Wall Street and Bob Menendez.
I’d add Andrew Jackson’s killing the Second Bank of the US and ushering in a century of bank failures and financial crises, that was only stopped by Glass-Steagall…. for a few decades at any rate.
That’s a hell of a list and hard to argue with.
What frustrates me is
I’m pretty sure I know the worst eleven:
Madison
Jackson
Pierce
Buchanan
Grant
McKinley
Harding
Coolidge
Nixon
Reagan
GW Bush
Culling the worst five out of that list isn’t easy for me.
At first, I took issue with Madison on this list, but holy incompetence did he wage a poorly fought war. He was undermined by his possibly senile Secretary of War (Armstrong).
I place most of the blame for the War of 1812 on Jefferson, who painted Madison into a corner that there was no way out of.
But the waging of the war falls on Jemmy Madison, and that was one massive cluserfuck.
Some days when I am particularly pessimistic about our country I imagine a Presidential heaven where the man who popularized the notion that “Government is the problem” gets his ass kicked by George Washington every day.
Or a presidential hell where the gipper is sodomized daily by James Buchanan…