The Worst Presidents of All Time

Last week I wrote about who I think the best Presidents were. Today we’ll discuss the worst.

The greatest fault you can find with any President is weakness. It’s a willingness to be led, by the past, by other people, or by ideology, and let losses pile up in their name, that can turn an elected leader into a disaster. And America has had its share.

As with last week’s piece on great Presidents, please feel free to disagree and state your reasons below:

1. George W. Bush – Iraq, Katrina, the Great Shitpile. He wasn’t evil, and he wasn’t stupid. What he was, in the end, was weak. He let others lead us, and they led us astray. Dick Cheney was, and is, a truly vile, very frightened little man, who represents the worst America can become. Iraq left us unable to save New Orleans. Bush’s ideology and passivity created the Great Recession, which nearly destroyed the world economy. From the method of his selection by an ideological court, to his end as an object of ridicule, he ruined what should have been the best years of my life. America will never forgive him.

Warren G. Harding – You had one job and you blew it. Again, the problem was weakness. He was a congenitally weak man, who let himself be led into scandal, for whom the office was always going to be too big. The best thing he did was die in office. The second best thing was to keep FDR out of office prematurely, and leave James Cox free to gain his fortune.

Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan – They were all of a piece, and deserve to be seen as an entry, like in the Kentucky Derby. Zachary Taylor, nominally a Whig but in fact a Louisiana slave owner. Millard Fillmore, better known later as leader of the Know Nothings, the Tea Party of its time. Franklin Pierce, nominally a northerner but in fact a southern sympathizer. Buchanan, who could do nothing with the hand dealt him but wring his hands. Between them, they created the terms, and conditions, for the Great Civil War that nearly destroyed America. And they knew what they were doing even as they did it.

Herbert Hoover – He could have been one of our great Presidents, but instead his ideology made him rigid, unable to deal with the economic crisis that overwhelmed him. As tied to the politics of Theodore Roosevelt as Buchanan was to Jackson, or as Bush was to Nixon. This was his weakness, an inability, even an unwillingness, to think differently in the face of circumstances.

Lyndon Johnson – Again, he could have been great, and he did some great things, passing the Kennedy domestic agenda. But he was as tied to Franklin Roosevelt as Hoover was to Theodore, or as George W. Bush was to Nixon. When circumstances changed, when the nation demanded he stop digging us further into the Vietnam quagmire, he kept digging. And so all his great work fell down around his, and our ears. What he left undone, most of it, is still undone, and it is this that dooms him before the bar of history

Benjamin Harrison – Forgotten, but should not be. He dithered on the way to the 1893 economic collapse, and won office while losing the popular vote. He deferred to Congress, which was good in the form of the Sherman Antitrust Act, but bad in gutting the regulation he’d been given to administer. He could have been a contender for high honors, but he floated along instead. Right to the edge of the cliff.

Andrew Jackson – The one great historical thesis in American history that was a mistake. Jackson was a horrible bigot, an imperialist who killed central banking, and he created the conditions for a crash so complete in 1837 it took us a decade to dig out of it. He defied the Supreme Court in order to commit genocide against Native Americans, and stood squarely for the slave-owner against the slave. Most analysts would put Martin Van Buren, who inherited the mess, in this place. But how about we give discredit where it’s due.

U.S. Grant – Another face from the currency who deserves to be replaced. Like most others on this list, a good man in over his head, whose ideology was not his own. The corruption of his years, the economic Panic of 1873 that set us behind a decade, led his followers to a deal that put civil rights back nearly a century. Again, a lot of people would put successor Rutherford B. Hayes here, but without Grant’s failures Hayes never would have had to do the deal.

Gerald Ford – The only President I ever met personally. He was a nice guy. But like the others on this list he was incredibly passive. Ford not only pardoned Nixon, but he launched the careers of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. He tried to fight inflation with a button. He was a placeholder, in an office where to be such is to be damned by history. But he was a very nice guy.

James Madison – The father of the Constitution nearly lost the whole country. His Washington wound up being burned by Canadians, in the only successful foreign invasion. Blundered his way into a war with England in support of Napoleon, and if not for Waterloo England may have pressed its advantage on us. His wife, Dolly, was our first great First Lady, however, and basically created the position, serving both her husband and Thomas Jefferson as the nation’s chief hostess.

Be back next week.