Talk Elections

http://listverse.com/2007/11/06/top-10-worst-us-presidents/

Interesting article.

Some may disagree as to the order, and some may disagree as to who is on the list and think some others should make this list instead.

It is interesting to note that 7 Presidents on this list are shortly before the Civil War or shortly following.

Awful list. Way too much hatin'. Calvin Coolidge, Zachary Taylor, etc. And how do you put Harding as the worst? Buchanan EARNED that spot.

That's just compiled from Wikipedia rankings.

Real list (http://www.xaviercromartie.com/2009/12/libertarian-ranking-of-united-states.html) is:

10. Clinton
9. Eisenhower
8. Nixon
7. LBJ
6. Wilson
5. Truman
4. Reagan
3. FDR
2. Lincoln
1. Dubya

So, apart from honest Abe, you prefer the 19th century presidents.
Just because there wasnt any big government in the 19th century?
Many of them were pretty incompetent and several responsible for genocide.

This list (in its entirety) is why I could never be a full on Libertarian. Foreign policy is ridiculous and for the most part their social policy is as well.

My List

10. Bush Jr
9. Kennedy
8. Nixon
7. Harding
6. Cleveland
5. Grant
4. A. Johnson
3. L.B.J
2. Carter
1. Buchanan

Are you implying that I support "Manifest Destiny"?

So your issue is with the peace and liberty part, not the complex economic theory part?

Stop trying to make Dubya look good by putting the worst President together with the two best Presidents.

As always, it's not as simple as nice little buzzwords like "peace" and "liberty". Take the Civil War for one. The list puts Lincoln in the top ten worst for obvious reasons, one of the largest being that he started a war against the right to seceded, etc. While the "right to secede" might sound well and good, practical reality says otherwise. Fact is, a nation can not survive when a large chunk of it can just decide to leave simply because it doesn't like the result of an election. If that happens, that sets a horrible precedent that can not be tolerated. As President, one's duty is to ensure the survival of a nation, and if a man (or woman) with such a duty allows something on that scale to happen, they're not doing their job and have betrayed their duty. As well, it leaves America a much weaker nation, open to complete dissolution. Of course, Libertarians would just love that. As well, a Libertarian foreign policy doesn't cope with the reality of something like the Cold War. It would be disastrous for a country merely to ignore a conflict and allow a nation like the Soviet Union to gain the upper hand on the world stage while America gets to talk about how "Libertarian" it is, without its nuclear weapons and whatnot. Continuing, the arms race was a necessary deterrent from a large war that would've resulted in millions dead and many countries wastelands.

It's really basiclly  a "libertarian to authoritarian" president rankings. I think Obama might be #2 or #1 if the list were made today.

There's a lot of problems with that list.  All those arithmetic values are arbitrary.  Is the gold standard really more important than whether someone supported Dred Scott?  Lincoln loses points for being a supposed "white supremacist" in spite of all his policies to the contrary, meanwhile Jackson and Van Buren don't lose any for supporting the gag rule against anti-slavery speech in Congress. And Reagan doesn't get any credit for lowering taxes?

Reagan doubled payroll taxes.

Buchanan was by far the worst - Harding was more inept than anything.

Lincoln wanted to deport all black people to Liberia, and attempted to have them colonize Île à Vache, British Honduras, Chiriquí Province, and various other places to get them out of the US. Seems pretty racist to me. (http://www.theroot.com/views/was-lincoln-racist?page=0,0)

You need to keep a historical perspective here.  If you are doing a historical ranking, you need to consider where Lincoln stood compared to others of his day, and whether he was an improvement on what came before.  On matters of the rights of blacks he was better by far than any President before him besides the Adamses, and better than some who came after him. 
Lincoln didn't want to deport all black people - he wanted to establish a voluntary program. Colonization was a very common position of those who opposed slavery. A misguided attempt to deal with fears about post-slavery racial conflict, yes, but there's no need to consider it racist in the context of the times, and he abandoned that position halfway through his term anyway.

Dear God that's a disgusting list. 6 of those presidents should be in the top 10 (Ike, LBJ, Wilson, Truman, Roosevelt, Lincoln), with only Bush near the bottom (specifically, above a few antebellum presidents). Even the terribly overrated Reagan and Clinton should be in the top 25.

Also, was Lincoln a racist? Probably. But how is he worse in that regard than...pretty much everyone else in the first half of the 19th century? I compiled my own list.

34. Martin van Buren
35. John Tyler
36. Andrew Jackson
37. George W. Bush
38. Warren Harding
39. William Harrison
40. Zachary Taylor
41. Franklin Pierce
42. James Buchanan
43. Andrew Johnson

I think that even if Lincoln was a racist, he still recognized blacks as people.  His actions suggested exactly the opposite, and actions speak louder than words.  Looking at it objectively, I believe the real list of the worst Presdents thus far (in descending order) is more like this:

10. Harding
9. Grant
8. Nixon
7. Garfield
6. Fillmore
5. Carter
4. William Harrison
3. Andrew Johnson
2. Buchanan
1. Pierce

The only reason Harrison and Garfield are on this list is because they really didn't do much.  Not that it was their fault; both men died so soon into their terms that they didn't have a chance to get a whole lot done.  As for Grant, Harding, and Nixon, they are on my list simply because of their scandals.  In my opining, all three of them were pretty good Presidents once you put aside those scandals.

10. Grant
9. Clinton
8. Truman
7. Wilson
6. Polk
5. Theodore Roosevelt
4. LBJ
3. Obama
2. FDR
1. Lincoln

My rankings are based on what role they had in expanding federal government power.  The more federal power the worse they are.

There is a book that came out recently that shows (using quotes) that Lincoln was not at all a big government advocate.  I can't remember the title, but it's probably worth reading.  I don't think that a good or bad president is defined by how much they expand the federal government.  I would say that Lincoln was our best president, and FDR, TR, Polk, and Truman would all be in my top ten or twenty best as well.

You two. Name one thing, one simple thing WHH failed at during his term in office. Name one terrible thing he did (this excluding things he did not do) that makes him deserve that ranking (asides from long-windedness).

Being an utter failure at staying alive. In all seriousness, him and Garfield should probably be left off the list.

It makes more sense than having Roosevelt and Lincoln as the 3rd and 2nd worst.

I tend not to define "worst" & "best" along ideological lines, but more in terms of success, priniple, & significance. Also, hating on guys who died is just uncalled for.

Not sure who I'd pick.

Also, Oldiesfreak1854, I'd love to see that book.

I said in my previous post that I only put them on the list because they didn't get much done during their terms.  Of course, that's not their fault, because they both died before they could really accomplish anything.  I would agree that is isn't entirely fair to put them on this list, but I was trying to come up with ten.

I forget the title, but I read about it in a review in one of my issues of National Review or The Weekly Standard.

Ranking presidents is such a strange and ridiculous thing to do that I can only imagine Americans doing it, anyway the answer really depends on whether you define "badness" by malevolence or just plain incompetence. I would pick Richard Nixon for the former and probably Franklin Pierce for the latter. It is a bit Zhou Enlai still with Dubya.

1. James Buchanan
2. Andrew Johnson
3. Richard Nixon
4. James Madison
5. George W. Bush
6. Franklin Pierce
7. Millard Fillmore
8. Warren Harding
9. Grover Cleveland
10. Calvin Coolidge

Lincoln
F.D. Roosevelt
Wilson
L.B. Johnson
Truman
G.W. Bush
T. Roosevelt
Nixon
Obama
Clinton

Anything after the first five are subject to change if you ask on a different day.

Instead of a numerical order, a grouping:

Buchanan

Worst of the worst by far.

Andrew Johnson
Bush II  
Pierce

All actively harmful in a variety of ways.

Harding
Van Buren
Carter
Hoover
Cleveland

All failures to one degree or another, though all had good points.

Nixon

Would have gone in to the "actively harmful" group, but had more genuine achievements than the rest of them out together.

There's no way Harding was the worst President, he was actually successful in some points. Buchanan was a total failure, he got nothing done or accomplished.

Lol.

10 Worst Presidents:

1) James Buchanan
2) Andrew Johnson
3) Franklin Pierce
4) Warren G. Harding
5) George W. Bush
6) Richard Nixon
7) Herbert Hoover
8) John Tyler
9) Calvin Coolidge
10) Andrew Jackson

Really, Buchanan is quite objectively the worst. Or one of them at the very least.

Or just pragmatic. Lincoln knew his countrymen's racial attitudes well enough to realise that even freed blacks wouldn't be more than second class citizens in the forseeable future. so the idea that it might be better for them to be first class ones in a state of their own was not absurd, though the numbers involved merant that it could only work for  aminority of the freedmen.

He also suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned his political opponents, shut down newspapers, started a draft, murdered draft protestors, and tried to assassinate his counterpart.

10 Worst Presidents:

1) James Buchanan
2) Andrew Johnson
3) Franklin Pierce
4) Warren G. Harding
5) George W. Bush
6) Jimmy Carter
7) Herbert Hoover
8) John Tyler
9) Calvin Coolidge
10) Andrew Jackson