Worst President Ever?

Michael Froomkin asks:

Worst President Ever? :

Nice sticker. But is it true?

Nominations for Presidents even worse than GWB -- if any -- are now open.

I have come around to the view that GWB is substantially worse than Nixon. And also Jefferson. But is he worse than Andrew Johnson? Than US Grant? Andrew Johnson had some principles, but they were pretty bad ones on the whole. Grant was a great general but an unabashedly awful President. And there are surely some obscurely bad Presidents that I've neglected?

Or, I suppose, this could perhaps be no more than another example of the middle-aged propensity for the jeremiad...

I believe that U.S. Grant was clearly a better president than George W. Bush. With Andrew Johnson it's a toss-up. And I think it's clear that James Buchanan was worse than George W. Bush.

Third-worst president ever.

Comments

[Barry]

Brad:

Your list of Presidents is faulty. Jefferson a bad President? Sure, the Embargo Act was terrible policy. Yes, he was a hypocrite in his personal life who pursued political enemies with a vengeance. But .... the Louisiana Purchase, ending the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lewis and Clark, the Tripoli War - all of these were hallmarks of a competent, if not excellent Presidency. Don't take my word for it; historians generally agree that Jefferson was a "top ten" President.

As for Presidents more incompetent than Bush - Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and (maybe) Grant were worse. And look at Woodrow Wilson, a bigot who allowed A. Mitchell Palmer to arrest immigrants on flimsy grounds.

However, it does mean that Bush is the worst President, in my view, in the last 80 years. Quite an accomplishment.

[Karlsfini]

Grant by all accounts was honest. Certainly plenty of scandal rocked his admin -- including the only Whitehouse staffer indicted until Libby -- but were there any long-term injuries to the country? Grant was a poor president, but a great man. Bush is a worse president and no excuse for a man at all.

What was the fall-out of Buchanan's incompetence?

The country may never fully recover from Bush's bungling. Let's wait until the bills start coming due. Hands-down Bush is the worst ever.

[Barkley Rosser]

Pierc was mediocre. Johnson was pretty bad, but was made to look worse by being impeached. Grant tried to reform the South, and his enemies later went after him. He was too incompetent to control the corruption in his administration, but he really comes across as mediocre. Did start the National Park system with Yellowstone.

My only serious candidates for worse than Bush are Harding and Buchanan. The civil war was probably inevitable, especially with the election of Lincoln. But Buchanan's bungling certainly moved it along, a total incompetent. Harding was so bad his own wife probably poisoned him.

[gandhi]

Worst.

Ever.

Full stop!

If you don't think so, you don't know enough about what is really going on. Read Maureen Farrel's latest backgrounder to get an idea (click my link for the URL).

The only way you could argue that Bush is not the worst Prez ever is to say that:

(a) He is not really President, since both the last elections were fraudulent, or

(b) For all intents and purposes, Cheney is really the President.

[Karlsfini]

Barry, I think there is some evidence that by 1812, when Madison pushed through the declaration of war, the embargo was starting to work and the war might not have been necessary.

Jefferson believed that if the country could just be patient until the war in Europe ended the violations of neutrality would stop. His fear (I think) was that if we declared war on Britain, once the war in Europe ended, Britain could turn the full force of its army and navy on the U.S. and destroy it.

I don't have time to Google it now, but I believe in 1812 the U.S. had about 2,000 soldiers to Britain's 100,000 and 40 ships to Britain's 1,000.

We were lucky that once Napoleon was defeated Britain didn't choose to continue the war with the U.S. In any event, it's probably fair to say Jefferson showed good sense and Madison was reckless. Madison's gamble paid off, of course, but being lucky doesn't make a great leader. (Any more than one case of lucky market timing makes a great investor.)

I don't know enough to judge Jefferson's greatness, but I can't imagine how Kermit the Frog could do worse than Bush.

[Richard Green]

How about Franklin Pierce? New Englander who supported slavery--only sitting president not to be renominated by his own party. I could see putting him at GWB's level.

I am not crazy about James Polk either, but that is not a consensus view.

[Charles Kinbote]

James Buchanan worst President ?!

Homophobe!

[Knut Wicksell]

GWB is hands down the worst, by a statistically significant margin. He's at least two standard deviations below the mean and one standard deviation below the next worst President.

Grant was set among vipers intent on ransacking the public domain. We haven't seen anything like it until the present administration. Pierce has some of GWB's genes. 'nuff said. Buchanan was an old incompetent man, who wanted to avoid war at all cost when it was too late. He was the Neville Chamberlain of his time, but you have to remember that a very large part of the northern Democratic Party -- exemplified by Cyrus McCormick of reaper fame -- were against the war, as were large parts of the manufacturing elite for much the same reasons. It would destroy a market. Harding at least had been a politician in a previous life. His big problem was that he came in on the first wave of reaction to liberal politics -- his administration is the great grandfather of our present one.

That leaves the shrub. No previous involvement in public life (other than ceremonial positions); no interest in public affairs. Limited capacity to take in nformation and process it, bone lazy, impressionable, carrying a well-earned inferiority complex. He is the perfect storm of a sure-to-fail president. His great goal here was to 'be' president, not 'do' the presidency.\

We could have done worse. Imagine what it would have been like to have someone like Cheney (but with enough charm to sell the public) as our chief magistrate. What is truly scary isn't how bad Bush is -- that was predictable. What's scary is that the American people were ready to elect someone like him. That's why the rest of the world is scared.

[JR]

The question is a mistake. GWB is not just a president who can be ranked as better or worse than other presidents. He is the figurehead for a subversive political movement whose goal is to end two-party democracy and to usher in an era of corrupt one-party rule along the lines of Mexico under the PRI or Japan under the LDP. This quasi-fascistic movement appears to be on the run right now, hence the gleeful tenor the question "is Bush the worst ever?", but don't count them out. They haven't lost an election yet and they don't intend to.

[cassiusmclay18101903]

Warren Harding has been signficantly underrated by historians:

The Washington Conference, the Bureau of the Budget, freeing Eugene Debs and the other political prisoners from WWI (over _howls_, particularly from Florence Harding). Opposing the Klan, criticizing Big Business, appointing Hoover and Hughes, etcs.

Harding had bad taste in friends, but, you know, at least his administration's corrupt oil deals didn't kill anyone.

[RETARDO]

Jefferson was a terrible President. No one ever attacked the judiciary with such alacrity. Also, if Jefferson had had his way, constructive treason would be law. Read Leonard Levy's "Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side". What Jefferson tried to do to Burr (all the while knowlingly keeping a traitor -- James Wilkinson -- as Commander of the US Army) was unconscionable.

Professor DeLong is way too kind to Grant, under whom the campaign against the Indians became consciously and officially genocidal. Grant was stinkingly corrupt; his proximity to Gould and Fisk making Bush's to Delay pale in comparison.

I think Harding gets a bad rap generally: the man was forgiving, unjailing the likes of Debs when you know good and well Wilson would never have done such a thing. Also, Harding's corruption was chickenfeed compared to Grant's and Bush's; he also gets points for being a legitimate Good Old Boy where Grant was very intelligent and knew exactly what was going on, and Bush is a fake GOB who is actually a deviously alert person.

Also, Harding disarmed, something Bush would never have done, 9-11 or not.

I think Andrew Johnson gets a bad rap too: in fighting the Radical Republicans of the time, he was just doing what Lincoln would have done: "with malice toward none, with charity toward all". Johnson was determined *not* to be vindictive.

['As You Know' Bob]

I dunno - the very first crime listed in the indictments at the Nuremburg war crimes trials (which began 60 years ago yesterday, btw) was for committing "crimes against peace".

The United States has hanged people for their roles in launching wars of aggression.

And there were no WMDs.

Worst. President. Ever.

[Walt]

I think "Common Sense" is actually Stephen Colbert in disguise. Very funny, Stephen, but your schtick is too well-known to fool anyone.

[Andrew]

I've been debating for a while with a friend whether GWB is the worst president ever, or only one of the worst. He says one of the worst, ranking Harding, Buchanan, and Nixon below him. I saw worst ever, right now. But whatever your position today, I think that by the time the next three years have unraveled and a fuller record of the administration's lies, corruption, and malfeasance has been revealed it will be hard for anyone to avoid the conclusion that George W. Bush was the worst president ever.

[bakho]

Buchannon is the worst for failures that led to Civil War. Bush is somewhere near the bottom.

[dearieme]

"The United States has hanged people for their roles in launching wars of aggression": but surely all the US's wars have been wars of aggression except for WWII?

[dearieme]

Apologies: WWII and the first Gulf War.

[sm]

Bush has the "advantage" of having plenty of time left to add to the wreckage.

All of the people hammering Jefferson should have another look at James Madison, his secretary of state and successor as president. It was Madison who bears a great deal of the responsibility for getting the US into a war that might have had catastrophic consequences.

I read a bio of Madison a few years back -- a sympathetic one -- and was struck by his incompetence in exective positions.

[gandhi]

As a non-American, I have to ask what to me seems to be the real question here (and please excuse me if I am venting here, it's been a long time coming):

WHY THE #%&* DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP ELECTING (OR EVEN NEARLY ELECTING) SUCH ABYSSMALLY CRAP PRESIDENTS?

I mean seriously... Blind Freddy could see Bush Jnr was an idiot from day one.

And given that you have such an abyssmal history of electing crap Presidents, and that your elections usually involve a bland two-party choice between one totally crap candidate and another not-quite-so-crap candidate, how can you even think about "exporting democracy" to the rest of the world? I mean, it's ridiculous that even anti-war types still think like this!

You guys need need big, big changes. Why don't all you anti-war types get behind the US Green Party, for example? Ooooh, nooooo, we can't do that...! They are (a) crazies or (b) never going to be popularly elected anyway or (c) a threat to the all-important US economy or (d) incapable of governing. Hmm, doesn't that sound like an administration we all know ???

Dare to dream, that's my advice. If you don't follow your dreams, they will follow you.

Now get off your asses and do something before you kill us all!

gandhi

P.S. Don't get me wrong - I am an Australian, we have similar problems and we have re-elected our own crap pro-war PM over and over and over. But (a) he wouldn't be so crap if he couldn't follow the US lead and (b) we are not in the business of building empires and (c) who cares about Australia anyway?

[fergy]

Worst president ever? sure.

My criteria:

- He breaks hard won accomplishment. (eg. torture)

- He start a war that causes Louisiana/New Orleans unable to react properly, on top of his FEMA.

- The guy even try to destroy habeas corpus, set up his own court.

- and of course the BRazen LYING. The simply LIE like they don't care.

What makes Bush worst president: He does things that everybody else already done and know it's bad. At least disasterous president before him commit blunder in novel situation. But Bush? wow...

[hubcap]

I believe that a drunken Franklin Pierce once ran down a woman with his carriage. So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.

It takes a long time to judge how good a president was. You need a few decades of distance. But with W, the really special thing is that we have one of the worst presidents is our history AND WE KNOW IT AS IT'S HAPPENING. O the thrills...

[andres]

Gandhi: Time to start reading some Barbara Tuchman, not to mention studying books on the rise of fascism. The US electorate is not yet at the fascist stage, and God willing will never get there, but there are some alarming resemblances of the US political situation today to Wilhelmine Germany (not least in comparisons of Kaiser Willie with GWB, and the replacement of German anti-Semitism with Anglo anti-Arabism). Once you start making such comparisons, the election of GWB twice over, even with the help of fraud tactics and the Supremes, becomes all too easy to explain.

Guys, most of you seem to be way wrong on the issue of worst president. If unnecessary body count is the sole determinant for worst president, then Nixon wins hands down thanks to Hanoi, Cambodia, Chile, Greece, etc. All of the others, even GWB, pale by comparison. From that stand I will not budge.

[John Biles]

No one beats Buchanan for badness. For all his flaws, even Bush hasn't helped to push the country into civil war. For me, that pretty much tops everything.

Grant was hideously naive when it comes to money. He and Harding had the same basic problem--putting too much trust into people who didn't deserve that trust. Grant compounded that by remaining loyal to those in disgrace for too long, Bush-style. On the other hand, Grant and Harding both had some accomplishments as well.

Jefferson...as a foreign policy president, he was a miserable stinking failure. In terms of domestic policy, he was pretty successful and gets huge points for getting rid of the Alien and Sedition acts and being one of very few presidents to actually substantially reduce the national debt. Unfortunately, he did that in a way that further weakened America's effectiveness in foreign affairs.

My list of worst:

1. Buchanan, the great and powerful diety of bad presidency. Let us pray he will never be passed.
2. Richard Nixon. The criminal president. Increasingly descended into utter dementia. Lost the Vietnam War, while pretending he was all about winning it. SCUM.
3. Bush, Jr. The king of protection of incompetents, bungled everything he touches, threw away one of the best moments for reconcilliation in American history, has driven US reputation into the toilet. But still hasn't reached Nixon levels unless the rumors are true.
4. Franklin Pierce--accomplished nothing in the White House, failed to resolve the Kansas situation, which became a bleeding wound, began the process of collapse of the national unity of the Democrats.
5. Harding--in way over his head; he had some accomplishments, but presided over a hugely corrupt administration.
6. Grant--Also presided over a corrupt administration, but Grant made strong efforts at national reconcilliation in the wake of the civil war, coming to be regarded well even by many of the Southerners he had just fought. Grant's errors tended to come from misplaced good qualities.

[AP]

Andres-- I think you're leaving out the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths Bush is responsible for.

[andres]

AP--Most ballpark estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths are at around 30-40 thousand. Nixon, with the carpet-bombing of Hanoi and Cambodia and the continuing Vietnam effort, killed far more. But who knows, GWB might yet decide to unleash the B-2's in the Sunni triangle.

[ogmb]

Did any of the other contenders have the House, the Senate, the Press and the Supreme Court as their handmaidens?

[Abu]

I am a leftist socialist. I hate Bush more than I hate anyone in the world. However, even if we were so lucky that Bush vanishes tomorrow, I still hate America.

I hate American pop culture, American capitalism, American military action, and American corporations.

If a terrorist nuclear weapon wipes out an American city, that will be a day of great joy for me.

Bush may be the worst President ever, but if he ruins America, then he might just have achieved a good end result.

[Jonathan W. King]

Richard Green writes:
>
> How about Franklin Pierce? New Englander who
> supported slavery--only sitting president not to be
> renominated by his own party.

Uh...Chester Arthur wasn't renominated, either, if I recall (althought he only got to be president because Garfield was shot).

I think one problem here is that badness isn't a unidimensional concept. I think we can at least separate it into at least 3 dimensions, and I think the top 3 seem to be:

1) Incompetence
2) Corruptness
3) Recklessness

So Nixon was primarily corrupt, while Harding mixed incompetence and corruption. Buchanan was very incompetent, and Grant was especially unlucky in that he wasn't really made to be president and delegated work to corrupt people. G. W. Bush is notable for being a top (bottom?) ten president on all 3 dimensions. Many presidents who were not admired in their day often look better in retrospect, but it's hard to see history being very kind or forgiving to GW Bush (especially compared to people like his own dad, or Jimmy Carter, who chose a truly bad time to be president).

[bob mcmanus]

I don't understand what Buchanan did, or didn't do, that could have prevented the Civil War. Emancipate the slaves? Negotiate a new improved Missouri Compromise? I just don't get the hate. Buchanan did not cause the civil war.

Bush is astonishingly bad. Most of the catastrophe to soon follow is his direct responsibility. I could not have imagined a President with so little redeeming qualities that I would joyfully hand him over to the Hague as a war criminal.

[liberal]

He might not be the worst president ever, but Woodrow Wilson was a racist who introduced Jim Crow into the Federal workplace.

[Kimmitt]

"WHY THE #%&* DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP ELECTING (OR EVEN NEARLY ELECTING) SUCH ABYSSMALLY CRAP PRESIDENTS?"

You know, I'm really starting to wonder this myself.

[bad Jim]

One reason we elect such presidents is that we actually adore phonies. Why else would anyone consider John Wayne or Ronald Reagan to be genuine heroes?

[Firebug]

My personal vote for worst president ever goes to Woodrow Wilson. He was a virulent racist who drove blacks out of the Federal civil service. He was an intolerant suppressor of civil liberties who thought nothing of locking people up for opposing him. (Bush might like to do that, but he hasn't actually been able to do so yet.) And, worst of all, he was a naive, foolish fanatic who brought us into WWI - a European war that the US had no stake in - and in doing so laid the groundwork for Hitler's rise and WWII. (No Wilsonian intervention = No lopsided German defeat = No Versailles = No Hitler). Nor did the Entente even much appreciate his intervention; his insistence on dictating terms probably made things worse. (Commenting on the foolish Treaty of Versailles later on, David Lloyd-George said: "Well it was the best I could do, seated as I was between Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte". I doubt that was intended as a compliment.)

[Firebug]

I would rank the Shrub right below Wilson, as the second worst president in American history. IMO, none of the other candidates measure up in that dubious distinction.

Ulysses S. Grant's administration had corruption, to be sure, but Grant's own complicity in this is not clear. As a general, Grant valued loyalty, and was loyal to his friends long after he should have stopped. He certainly has better excuses for his administration's corruption than Shrub has for his. Furthermore, Grant does have positive accomplishments in his presidency. He worked diligently to suppress KKK terrorism in the South (until these attempts were shot down by the Supreme Court in _Cruikshank_) and spearheaded the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Warren G. Harding often gets a bad rap, and some of it is deserved. As with Grant, there isn't really any evidence Harding was personally corrupt; it was his appointees that did the looting. Of course, that still reflects on his stature as a president ("The buck stops here"), but it's not as bad as being personally corrupt, which it's pretty clear Shrub is. Harding also never lied the US into war, and he has a couple of positive accomplishments to his name. He supported anti-lynching legislation (which was filibustered in the Senate), and pardoned Eugene Debs from his unjust conviction for opposing WWI. Harding was essentially a placeholder president in a time of peace and prosperity.

Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were pretty bad, but the Civil War cannot really be blamed on them. Short of utter capitulation to slavery, the South simply was not willing to compromise. Furthermore, one has to look at whether a President actually made a change or not. Pierce and Buchanan both inherited an angry, divided country on the brink of civil war and left an angry, divided country on the brink of civil war. Shrub inherited a peaceful, prosperous, happy nation and left us a flaming wreck. And he's not even finished yet, God help us...

[Richard Green]

JOnathan King wrote:

"Uh...Chester Arthur wasn't renominated, either, if I recall (althought he only got to be president because Garfield was shot)."

You are right--I should have said only elected presidentnot to be renominated.

[Barkley Rosser]

Hmmm. People are making some serious arguments that Buchanan and Harding are not so bad, my candidates for ones worse than Bush.

While people are focusing on Wilson, who was a racist but with a strong record in many other areas, let us not forget Andrew Jackson, who is greatly admired (even has his face on the much-used $20 bill, despite having gotten rid of the National Bank). He engaged in the most systematic and "successful" slaughter and expulsion of the Native American Indians of any president, so much so that he was openly admired by Adolf Hitler as a paradigm of genocide. For sheer evil, he may be the top of the whole lot, despite a number of offsetting accomplishments, including arguably his opening the presidency to "regular people," not part of an eastern pseudo-aristocracy.

[theCoach]

Huge difference between now and, say, pre WWI. Lots of things that we take for granted now, were coalescing. Morality was different, e.g. if the majority of people at the time did not find the slaughter of Indians to be as abhorrent as it is, those facts need to be considered in evaluating a President.
It is also worth pointing out legitimate threats to the Republic, which the GWOT is certainly not, except inasmuch as GWB and his horrible (worst ever by an order of magnitude) rule have used it to corrupt and distort the government into a potential (always small and now shrinking) threat to the Republic.
Arguning for mercantilism today is different than it was back in Hamilton's day - and we need to realize that.

[Lis Riba]

Andrew "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" Jackson?

[Randy]

Topics likes this are why I simply don't find most of the statements of the anti-Bush crowd credible. Its a religious movement. A gathering of fanatics. You're yelling so loud that I can't hear you. The gleam in your eyes doesn't inspire trust - but rather, a feeling that I should be reaching for a weapon.

[Bruce Bartlett]

I think any list of the worst presidents has to be based on how many people that president killed with the least justification. On that basis, I nominate Woodrow Wilson as the worst. Simply being corrupt does not seem to me to be a particularly damning thing.

[JRoth]

Stirring defense of Bush, Randy. You've really shown the rest of us the err of our ways - why look at the list of Bush's positive accomplishments you've given us!

*********

While it may be true that there was little Buchanan could have done to save the Union, he could have *not* done things like order Northern armories emptied, their contents sent to the South, on the eve of the war. Bear in mind that the bastard was from Pennsylvania.

That said, I think it's valuable to judge a president by the delta between the trajectory a decent president (and/or the electoral opponent) would have led versus the one actually led. Thus, for all the corruption, it's not clear Harding did much lasting damage. Firebug makes a pretty damning argument against WW. Nixon, I think, is too complicated to be resolved this way, unless you want to say that everything decent he did (EPA, etc.) would have been done by another who wouldn't have bombed Cambodia, overthrown Allende, Strategized the South, and, oh yeah, bugged the DNC.

But my bottom line is that I think this judgment really condemns Bush. People don't like to dwell on it, but I think that it's not hard to imagine where a Gore administration would have us right now, and by Jeebus does it look better....

[CBBB]

"WHY THE #%&* DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP ELECTING (OR EVEN NEARLY ELECTING) SUCH ABYSSMALLY CRAP PRESIDENTS?"

Every nation has their share of bad leaders. The US has also had so great leaders who stand out, not just amongst the other US Presidents but amongst other world leaders; such as FDR.

Now I'm not am American but I'm surprised to see Jefferson getting a bad rap. I was always under the impression that he was considered to be one of the greatest Presidents.

[Jason]

Feel however you want. With the way things are going, having a weapons cache might be an excellent idea. Besides, mob violence is exactly the type of thing that the current political climate seems to need.

However, I think it is beyond dispute that GWB is a poor president. Even outside of the continuing debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sheer ineptitude of the response to Katrina, and the eroding perception of America worldwide, just looking at our national balance sheet should settle the question. Our total debt and carry trade imbalances are staggering, which bodes ill for the near term future...

Whether he is the poorest president is for history to decide, but he certainly has hubris and spite enough to make the top ten at least...

[Jason]

Jefferson was arguably a decent, if not good president. He really doesn't belong anywhere near the list of the "worst". I would also argue that US Grant was a terrible executive, but let's be honest, he was fighting against a very strong racist and anti-federalist tide, and was somewhat blinded by his loyalties. On balance, I can't condemn him too strongly.

[RT]

You've got to factor in "how much of a difference did their badness make?"

And there's where Bush clearly outclasses Nixon, and leaves in the dust all the mediocre 19th-century Presidents after Jackson and before Lincoln.

And the same goes for Jackson, Grant, and Harding, with less of a margin. But the principle still applies.

If you can decide whether Coolidge or Hoover was responsible for the Great Depression, THEN maybe you'd have a contender.

[CBBB]

I think history will prove that GWB is the worst President in terms of lasting damage to the US. With most of the other "bad" Presidents you can find something positive they did but Bush fails miserably on every level; economics, foreign policy, military, environment, and general moral character. He excells only at rhetoric and propaganda. People "believe" he is a good president because he talks tough.

[CBBB]

I saw a list a while back, and I'm trying to look for it now, that listed the results of an opinion poll on who was the greatest president. I think GWB came in third. I believe it went Reagan, Lincoln, GWB, and I can't remember the rest.
This is pretty sad. In my opinion Reagan was mostly "built-up" through mythology (Reaganomics) and rhetroic - same thing with Bush - the great "War Leader" was just a construct of the media stichted together with a few sound bites and video clips.

[Gideon S]

According to a study done by Johns Hopkins (actual peer reviewed study, not just the Pentagon or whoever else making shit up) the number of Iraqi civilians killed is in the 100k range. See http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf which is a repro of the article from Lancet. Or if you object to the link off of zmag go to http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673604174412 but you'll have to cough up some cash I believe.

[Barkley Rosser]

Well, if we are going to get into this list of killing unnecessarily, we need to deal with FDR and Truman. Yes, Japan attacked us, and then Germany declared war against us (and was engaged in horrific genocide). Also, one can point to much domestically they did that was worthwhile, and I don't know how one wants to count the Korean War.

But, Truman nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki unnecessarily. As was noted at the time, he could have set off one of those babies over open water where the Japanese (and the Soviets, long rumored to be the real students) could see what we had. Bring about the end of WW II without around 300,000 actually dead or the possible huge numbers with an invasion of Japan itself.

Then we have for FDR the firebombing of Dresden, completely unnecessary, which becomes even more obscene when we remember that he did not bomb the concentration camps or the train tracks going to them. We could have potentially saved millions by doing that, but heck, needed those bombs to kill thousands of civilians in Dresden.

So, there are a lot of messy things going on here, but I would certainly agree that WW II was not avoidable, and obviously it was a very nasty and ugly business. Bush's was in Iraq was both avoidable and unnecessary, a big mistake as most now know.

[save_the_rustbelt]

No votes for LBJ?

I can think of about 58,000 reasons.

[Anonymous]

Bush is almost as bad as FDR, and that's pretty bad! Another warmongering Big Government President.

[Basharov]

Until Dim Son came along, it was Woodrow Wilson, hands down.

116,000 dead American troops in a war that the U.S. joined for no discernible reason other than Wilson's determination to be able to enforce Wilsonian Idealism at a "peace" conference -- Dim Son has a ways to go before he beats Wilson's record. Wilson was also quite similar to Dubya in another way: They both took the U.S. to war based on lies and misinformation and the crushing of dissent. Once he got his war on, Wilson instituted a police state in which people could be sentenced to life in prison for throwing a few anti-draft brochures into the street. He got himself elected in 1916 with the slogan "He kept us out of war," while the entire time he was scheming to get us into war. The fact that he was a virulent racist and used the war to destroy the Progressive Era is just icing on the cake.

I think, though, that Dim Son will go down in history as the worst, but only because he has nuclear weapons and the power to use them, and Wilson didn't.

[dearieme]

More apologies: I was wrong to suggest that the First Gulf War was not a US war of aggression; Saddam had not attacked or declared war on the USA. So back we go: all the USA's wars have been wars of aggression except WWII.

[michael]

If you use the standard of how many people died (US and Iraqi) for his mistakes and how much money was wasted on unneeded expenses and how much goodwill was pissed away, and how little willingness he had to take responsibility for any of it, I think W has surpassed all of his competitors for the Worst President of all time.

[nmg]

Is "Abu" for real or just a sad little troll? That post is so over the top I have a hard time believing he's not a Freeper congratulating himself for his "brilliant" caricature of "them wacko american-hating leftists" or "islamofascists".

On the other hand, if he's not a troll, I'm a little disturbed.

nmg

[gandhi]

WHAT DOES IT MATTER???

What does it matter if Bush is the worst, third worst, ninth worst, whatever?!? He is the worst right now and it's time citizens of Bush's USA stopped talking about it in abstract terms like this and started DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Bush has now placed one neo-con crazy in charge of the World Bank and another neo-con crazy is trying to blackmail the UN into BushWorld reforms. The Bush disease has killed 100,00 Iraqis and is still spreading beyond US borders because it has not been isolated and destroyed at home.

It's time to stop talking and DO SOMETHING!

If nothing else, join the Crawford Peace House and get your butt down to Crawford, Texas this Thanksgiving.

[CBBB]

Bush is almost as bad as FDR, and that's pretty bad! Another warmongering Big Government President.

Hey! FDR was a great man, I don't understand you so-called "libertarians" I have little respect for a belief system based on such naive assumptions.

[CBBB]

More apologies: I was wrong to suggest that the First Gulf War was not a US war of aggression; Saddam had not attacked or declared war on the USA. So back we go: all the USA's wars have been wars of aggression except WWII.

I disagree with this black-and-white view that war is only justifiable if you have been directly attacked. I don't subscribe to the neo-con view that we should try to install friendly regimes in other nations either but I think whether going to war is justifiable or not has to do with the context. In the Gulf War I would say that this was an acceptable time to use force; you had a dictator invading a smaller nation and a large international alliance willing to step in.

[dearieme]

CBBB, "I disagree with this black-and-white view that war is only justifiable if you have been directly attacked. " That's not my view; I was categorising wars by whether the USA attacked the other side or was attacked by it (or had war declared on it). Going to war on behalf of Kuwait was entirely justifiable in my view, but by my criterion was still a war of aggression: it was your (if you are an American) choice (unless you had a treaty of alliance with Kuwait which said that an attack on Kuwait must be treated as equivalent to an attack on the USA). Ditto the war on Afghanistan: your choice and you chose wisely. Not the present Gulf War, though, where it was your choice and, in my view, your choice was a terrible blunder. My point is small, but I think accurate; WWII is the only war in your history over which you had no choice. I don't count FDR's provoking of Japan as equivalent to war - provocation and war are clear different things.

[Derelict]

Bush MIGHT have been a hair behind Buchanon. However, as I learned just minutes ago from tonight's Frontline broadcast, Bush has stripped more money and personnel from FEMA--and removed the agency's preparedness function. He did so by executive order.

This tells me that he is far, far too stupid and arrogant to accept that anything at all went wrong during Katrina. This is an active refusal to learn--in effect, Bush is saying "You can't MAKE me learn anything I don't want to, so there!"

And that makes him, hands down, the WORST PRESIDENT EVER.

[pantom]

I'm with the Wilson folks.
Wilson's arrogance in getting us into WWI was, IMO, directly responsible for the sequence of unjust peace causing hyperinflation in Germany and other places, fascism in Italy, hyperspeculation in the US shortly thereafter, depression, the rise of Nazism in Germany as a reaction to this depression, and then the worst war in human history ever. (Which was followed by a revolution in China that caused a massive famine, just as one of many many awful tertiary consequences. The list goes on and on.)
Compare the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars: the revolutions of 1848 were the last reaction to the upheaval caused by that, and the reason for the far lesser consequences was that the rest of Europe recognized that their own self-interest lay in a just peace with France. No such consideration of self-interest was necessary after WWI, because the triumphant powers knew they could call on the US again if they were pushed to the wall again. As history shows, they were right.
In domestic US terms, this intervention was also directly responsible for the death of the ethic laid out in GW's Farewell Address, of maintaining strict neutrality in the byzantine intrigues and wars of Europe. The line from that to the imperial and militaristic Presidency of today, where a President feels perfectly justified in taking us to war without consulting Congress, is direct.
Bush is strictly bush-league in comparison. For Wilson, being punished to burn in Hell forever would be far too kind.

[vsa]

"Abu" is a troll.

The people who talk about destroying american cities are radicals on the far right of the political spectrum.

It is radicial right-wing political commentators who call for the destruction of american cities by terrorists, such as recently about San Fransico.

It is radical right-wing religious extremists who call for the assasination of democratically elected foreign leaders, who say towns lose god's protection for voting against creatonism, who say Katrina's impact on New Orleans was a punishment from god, and who said the 9-11 terrorist attack was god 's punishment on this county.

Try harder with your trolls next time, "Abu".

[liberal]

save_the_rustbelt wrote, "No votes for LBJ?

"I can think of about 58,000 reasons."

But many of those deaths occurred under Nixon's watch.

Furthermore, Eisenhower and Kennedy got us into Indochina. Not to downplay LBJ's role, but let's not exaggerate it either.

[CBBB]

You could look at any President and find something to dislike about them.

[rvman]

Including only deaths in battle, 1,864 died in '61-65 (the years best attributable to Kennedy/Eisenhower), 28,978 died in 66-68 (unambiguously LBJ's), 9,414 in '69 (mostly LBJ - Nixon became president that year, but it is doubtful he could have ended the war that year in any reasonable manner), and 5,901 in 1970 through withdrawal. (The balance of "58,000" includes MIA and non-hostile deaths - accidents and the like. They are proportional) LBJ is by far the most 'at fault' for the 58,000 dead. At most 1/3 of the dead in the Vietnam war - and probably far fewer - belong to Nixon.

If Eisenhower and Kennedy got us into Indochina, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton 'got us into' Iraq. Remember the debacle in Iran in '79? The Marine barracks in Beiruit? The USS Stark, Arms-for-hostages, Blackhawk Down, GWI...? We've been leading to this war for a long time. Bush just happened to be on watch when it tipped over the edge.

Bad Presidents: Wilson is number 1 and most 'evil' - domestically with the Klan, civil liberties and all that, and internationally with entering a war we had no business being in, setting up the scenario Firebug describes. He had been maneuvering to get us into WWI from almost the beginning of the war. (So had FDR, for that matter, in WWII.) Buchanan was the most incompetent, Harding most corrupt. Madison was most reckless.

Lincoln made the single worst decision. His decision to fight rather than letting the south go killed over a million Americans. His statement on the relative importance of Union vs. slavery was repugnant.

Carter was worst on international affairs - every step he took was wrong. Embargo, the Olympics, disarmament, Iran - everything he touched turned to dust.

Bush II 'wins' for fiscal irresponsibility. Cutting taxes is one thing, cutting taxes, increasing spending on domestic programs, then not belt-tightening when going to war - that is a whole 'nother level of irresponsibility. New Orleans, though, isn't his fault - Louisiana couldn't have handled Katrina under the best of circumstances. The worst Federal administration ever is more competent and honest than any Louisiana government yet formed. He handled the hurricanes last year, well. His handling of the Tsunami was brilliant. So was Afghanistan.

Iraq has been a FUBAR, but the idea (form a democracy as an example for the Middle East) had merit. Had it been done by his father, instead of backing down at the end of Gulf War I, it might even have worked. Twin Towers belongs not only to him, but to both Bushes, Clinton, Carter, Reagan, and onward. (Really, given that Al Qaida is an offshoot of one of the few good thing we've done in the Middle East - rescuing Kuwait - it is hard to know where to put blame. I blame failure by his father and Clinton to finish the job. Opinions can vary on this point.)

[Matt]

JR is exactly right -- the aim was(and is) to establish corrupt and perpetual one party rule, along the lines of the PRI or LDP. And tellingly, neither of these parties had a discerable "philosophy."

[Nan]

Bush beats both Warren Harding and Richard Nixon in corruption scale.

[John]

Although neither Buchanan nor Pierce caused the Civil War, it might not have happened without their combined efforts, so I believe their position as our two worst presidents is secure.

In response to rvman: Jimmy Carter was far more effective on foreign affairs than you suggest. In addition to the Camp David accord (still the greatest step forward for peace between Israel and its neighbors), the Helsinki agreement, much criticized at the time, gave America enormous world credibility and undercut the Soviet Union to an unexpected degree. Helsinki, and the arms buildup Carter began, were key factors in the fall of the Soviet Union.

For most evil president, I would go with Jackson, though he was quite competent and effective and therefore cannot be ranked among the worst presidents. I concede that a good case has been made for Wilson.

[Barkley Rosser]

Guess I am going to defend Woodrow Wilson. Maybe we could have stayed out of WW I, but we did not get in until it was nearly over. Furthermore, I do not think one can blame German hyperinflation and other problems on Wilson. He was the one at Versailles (along with Keynes) who tried to block the awful reparations payments. Also, he supported the liberation movements of many nations that first (or again) became independent at that time. He apparently supported the Kurds as well, but was blocked on that one as well. That we did not join the League of Nations was not his fault. And the number of Americans dead in WW I was less than in either the Civil War or WW II.

Domestically he was a racist, but he was hardly the only one, and Jackson easily beat him on that score, including supporting mass, genocidal murder. Wilson did establish the Fed, the fed income tax, the Clayton Act, and some other not so bad domestic initiatives. He is far from the worst in my book, despite some clear faults.

[John]

With regard to the suggestion that American wars (other than WW2) have been wars of aggression, I think it's an overstatement. My standard is that if you have a legitimate casus belli, it is not a war of aggression, even if the wisdom of the war is doubtful or the war was oversold at home. By that standard, I consider only the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and the current Iraq War to be wars of aggression (at least, of the major wars - there may be smaller conflicts I have overlooked). Specifically with regard to WW1, Germany was attacking U.S. shipping and had offered a military alliance against the U.S. to Mexico. The U.S. legitimately (and, in my view, rightly) went to the aid of its ally, Kuwait, in the Gulf War, even though it was not under a treaty obligation to do so.

[RKKA]

""Bush is almost as bad as FDR, and that's pretty bad! Another warmongering Big Government President.""

"Hey! FDR was a great man, I don't understand you so-called "libertarians" I have little respect for a belief system based on such naive assumptions."

What you have here is a revival of "The New Deal failed to end the Depression." and "we should have stayed out of WWII and let Hitler defeat the USSR"

Just read Charles Callan Tansill's "Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941" Regnery, 1952 for a taste of how this line of thinking goes.

[Bill Davis]

Bush is definately the worst President in my lifetime. I believe Andrew Johnson was the worst because the consequences of his mishandling the reconstruction are still evident in today's world. James Buchanan could be considered the worst due to his ineptness which may have caused or at least allowed the Civil War to take place. however, we probably needed a civil war to resolve our issues of the day.

But Bush is a lousy leader who has failed at most things in life. If it were not for his family name and money he would never be considered for president.