Top 10 Worst American Presidents

       

Top Worst US Presidents

      

    Benjamin Harrison,         -      
      
The grandson of the ill-fated ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison, the cold and humorless Benjamin Harrison rode into office largely upon his pledge to keep the government’s promise to compensate his fellow Civil War veterans which his opponent, the incumbent President Grover Cleveland, had obstinately refused to do.

Once in office, Ben was good for his word and coughed up the promised funds, which turned out to be the high-point of his tenure. After that, things went downhill fast — especially economically. By the next election cycle, the country was in a full-blown depression and Cleveland won his old job back, defeating the very man who had defeated him just four years earlier.
      
    William Howard Taft,         -      
      
It would be hard for any man to follow in the footsteps of the larger-than-life Teddy Roosevelt, but the corpulent Taft definitely failed to live up to even lowered expectations, which was curious considering that Taft had been Teddy’s hand-picked successor. The problem was that TR was what one would call a progressive and he thought Taft would continue in that tradition, but it quickly turned out that he was an old school Republican after all, much to Teddy’s chagrin.
      
So disappointed was he in Taft that Teddy challenged him in the primary in and, though he won more states and delegates than the incumbent president, still lost the nomination to Taft at the convention. Never the pragmatist, Teddy then went on to run a third party campaign, splitting the Republican vote and handing the White House to the Democrats for the first time in years.
      
  . Jimmy Carter,         -      

Though he still has his proponents today, the case could be made that Jimmy Carter was the quintessential man in over his head if there ever was one. While a generally genial and compassionate man (later evidenced by his          Nobel Peace Prize), what the country needed was a strong leader willing to face up to the Ayatollahs and tackle the double digit inflation that dogged his administration.
      
To be fair, Carter did have a couple of successes. For example, he did get Israel and Egypt to sign the Camp David Peace Accord, which brought peace to the two antagonists after nearly years of intermittent warfare. Overall, though, if one were to sum up the Carter administration it would probably be “best of intentions but a job too big for the man to handle.” We’ll give him an A for effort, though.
      
  . Millard Fillmore,         -        
      
The period immediately preceding the Civil War produced an unusually large number of weak presidents, one of whom was Millard Fillmore (no, that’s not an immortal Alec Baldwin pictured above). Only the second man to assume the presidency upon the death of his predecessor (in this case, Zachary Taylor, who died just over a year into his administration) Fillmore seemed overwhelmed with the job right from the start.
      
It’s not that he made lots of mistakes, it’s just that he didn’t do much — other than perhaps encourage secessionists by deciding it was be a good idea to make the newest western states slave states in an effort to appease the south. In his own words   “God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil … and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution.” How’s that for a man of conviction?
      
  . John Tyler,         -      
      
The first sitting vice-president to ascend to the presidency (upon the death of William Henry Harrison, who died just a month after being inaugurated) things did not go well for Mr. Tyler from the beginning. First, it wasn’t entirely clear that the vice-president could simply assume the presidency upon the president’s death, creating a political crisis. Tyler won that debate, but that was the extent of his success.
      
After that, he turned on his former supporters, vetoing their entire agenda, and got himself expelled from the Whig party (which is not surprising considering he was a former states rights Democrat before joining the Whigs). By the time he left office, not even his wife was willing to give him a second term. He eventually won a congressional seat in the Confederate government but died before he could take office, ending a long but decidedly mediocre public service career.
      
  . Herbert Hoover,         -      
      
Hoover, perhaps in the best example of worst timing ever, managed to ride a groundswell of support into office in         , only to see it all come crashing down — both literally and figuratively — just a few months after being sworn in. Of course, he got all the blame for it, even though the dynamics that made the crash inevitable had been enshrined in American financial institutions long before he put his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office.
      
What he was responsible for, however, was helping the country work its way out of the Great Depression, which he proved to be wholly incapable of doing. Hoover tried, to be sure, but by the time the next election cycle came up, unemployment stood at a staggering % and Hoover was toast.
      
  . Ulysses S. Grant,         -      
      
Any man that could command a million-man army and defeat Robert E. Lee should make an ideal president, or so one would think, but Grant proved that assumption to be erroneous. The problem was that the genial and well-meaning Grant, while a man of personal integrity, had absolutely no capacity to discern the same in others.
      
As a result, he surrounded himself with some of the most corrupt men ever to sit on a cabinet. Worse, he was fiercely loyal and so was reluctant to sack anyone once their indiscretions became not only public, but self-evident. Had it not been for his personal popularity (Grant is the most popular president to make the bottom ten) it’s unlikely he would’ve seen more than the one term.
        
  . Warren G. Harding         -      
      
If any man had less capacity to be president of the United States than Warren G. Harding, it’s hard to know who it might be. Harding basically became president because he was considered handsome (by the standards of the time — and remember, this was the first election in which women could vote) and because people were tired of Woodrow Wilson’s shenanigans. Unfortunately, he was somewhat ethically challenged and seemed far more interested in playing poker, drinking, and pursuing women than leading the country. Fortunately, the economy was booming in the twenties or he could well have gone down as the worst president. He also died just three years into his term, supposedly of heart disease, which further insulated him from deserved criticism.
      
  . Andrew Johnson,         -      
      
Old Honest Abe Lincoln was not known for his ability to pick competent generals until he happened upon Grant. The same might be said for his choice of running mate in, when he chose Andrew Johnson — an anti-secessionist Democrat from Tennessee — to be the man entrusted with being a heartbeat away from the presidency. The problem was that once Johnson was handed the keys to the White House upon Lincoln’s death, he and the Republican controlled congress couldn’t seem to agree on much of anything
      
(Johnson holds the record for most presidential vetoes and for having the most presidential vetoes overridden by congress). As a result, he ended up in a four-year-long spat that turned the post-war reconstruction efforts into a nightmare and nearly prematurely cost him his job when he avoided being impeached by a single vote. What was Abe thinking?
      
  . James Buchanan,         -      
      
Okay, so he wasn’t quite as bad as his predecessor in that he didn’t openly support succession and slavery. It’s just that “ol’ Buck”, as he was known, did absolutely nothing to stop or even slow the secessionist train down as it headed towards the country at full speed.

What is sad is that Buchanan had the résumé to be a good president   a popular and experienced politician, Buchanan ably represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives and later the Senate, and served as Secretary of State under President James K. Polk.
      
What he lacked was awareness of the dangers the country faced or the courage to do anything about them, which is even more unforgivable than simply making mistakes. Buchanan might have made a passable president at another time, but in          he proved disastrous.
      
  . Franklin Pierce,         -      
      
Ol’ Frank Pierce usually makes it to the bottom of most of these lists, probably because he did more to set the stage for the Civil War than any other president. What did he do? Well, for one thing, he repealed the Missouri Compromise act of         , thereby reopening the question of whether slavery should be permitted in new western states, further fueling the fires of succession — which he also supported, by the way (even becoming the only ex-president to openly support the south during the Civil War). It’s not that Franklin was evil.

In fact, by most accounts he was a fairly genial guy. It’s just that he was badly on the wrong side of history who probably did more than any other president to make the Civil War inevitable. Sadly, he was also the only president to die of alcoholism, succumbing to sclerosis of the liver in, making him about as tragic a figure as one could imagine.

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Top 10 Presidents of the USA

These are the best presidents in American history, ranked by their lasting contributions
 to the country. The tenth best President was John F. Kennedy, an inspiring leader whose key foreign policy accomplishment was confronting the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, Europe and most notably, Latin America, by forcing the Soviet Union to remove their nuclear weapons from Cuba during the tense  -day missile crisis in At home, he promoted the ambitious "New Frontier" domestic program, promising federal funding for education and aid programs for rural America. This also included pushing for medicare, which today is one of the most popular government programs providing healthcare for America’s seniors.

It was passed by congress and signed into law three years after JFK was assassinated in Dallas, ending his presidency after just three years in office.
 
Although James Polk died from cholera  months after he left office after serving only one term, he got a lot done. He believed in Manifest Destiny, that American settlers were destined to move westward, and negotiated possession of the Oregon Territory from the British and purchased New Mexico and California from Mexico after defeating them in the Mexican-American-War. He restored an independent treasury and was able to enact much of the democratic policy agenda.
 
Lyndon Johnson grabs the eighth spot on this list for being the last president to pass a massive domestic policy agenda that favored the people. Many of these achievements were part of his “great society” and are still cornerstones of modern America. As president, LBJ was responsible for signing the Civil and Voting rights acts; declaring a war on poverty; implementing gun control; setting up public broadcasting; enacting medicare and medicaid; appointing Thurgood Marshall as the first African American justice on the Supreme Court; signing an education bill that significantly improved funding to schools;establishing the National Endowments for the Humanities and Arts; protecting  .

Million acres of federal land; signing, developing and enforcing the clean air act; and passing comprehensive immigration reform for non-europeans. Unfortunately, Johnson’s standing takes a hit over the Vietnam war, in which he dramatically escalated American involvement from  ,  to   ,   combat troops. He did not seek a second term.
 
Under President Dwight Eisenhower the United States became the world’s richest country and our final two states, Alaska and Hawaii, were admitted to the union.
 
At home, Eisenhower launched the Interstate Highway System, created NASA along with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has developed a slew of important technologies, and established strong science education. He was a solid supporter of civil rights and signed the first major civil rights legislation in over   years, since Abroad, Eisenhower used nuclear threats to conclude the Korean War with China and prioritized inexpensive nuclear weapons and a reduction of conventional military forces as a strategy for keeping pressure on the Soviet Union and reducing the federal deficit.
 
Number six is Woodrow Wilson, who led America into WWI, the decisive moment that turned the conflict in the allies’ favor. After commanding the allied victory, he sponsored the league of nations - an early UN. Unfortunately, despite Wilson’s strong support, the US Senate voted not to join the league, a consequential moment that definitely made the body weaker than it should have been and was partially the reason why the Nazi party was able to rise to power in Germany.
 
Thomas Jefferson - the founding father who wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence - became America’s third President in    after serving as Adams’ Vice President and the first US Secretary of State under George Washington. He brilliantly doubled the size of the United States by reaching a deal with Napoleon Bonaparte to purchase the Louisiana territory from France for just $  million dollars. This area encompassed what eventually became all or part of   different states. Though he signed a bill in banning slave importation into the country, his legacy has been tainted by the fact that he owned slaves.
 
Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, taking over after William McKinley was assassinated, was the youngest man to become president. A true progressive, he was the first president to call for environmental conservation and greatly expanded the national parks system.
 
His square deal also focused on an expansion of consumer protection laws and greater control of corporations. A man of his word, he dissolved   monopolistic businesses during his presidency. Teddy’s “speak softly and carry a big stick” policy built up America’s navy, keeping the country militarily strong, but out of wars. After helping Panama win independence, he negotiated US control of the construction of the Panama Canal there. Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace prize for ending the first great war of the  th century between the empires of Russia and Japan.
 
George Washington, the first President of the United States, comes in third. His strength as the executive after leading the country to victory in the revolutionary war cemented his status as the “father of the country.” He kept America out of wars between European powers so that America could mature from its infancy, and his leadership style established many customs that are still in place today, like using a cabinet system to delegate responsibilities and delivering an inaugural address.
 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, is the second-greatest President of all-time. FDR was elected president an unprecedented four times and served for years until his death. He took office at the depths of the Great Depression and in his first    days in office, aggressively implemented the New Deal programs, and the economy improved rapidly. He successfully led the United States and the allies - along with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin - defeating Hitler and the axis powers in World War II.
 
The greatest president of all-time is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was the glue that held the country together as it unshackled itself from what was always going to be the biggest threat to the continuity of the nation  ending the practice of slavery--a challenge so daunting the founding fathers had to leave it for later generations to solve. Assassinated five days after General Lee’s surrender, Lincoln paid the ultimate price for leading the victorious Union through America’s bloodiest conflict. His victory in the Civil War strengthened the federal government, modernized the economy and set the nation on the prosperous path we are still walking today, nearly    years later.
 
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