Worst President Ever

It's Been Apparent to Most of Us that Trump is in Fact, the Worst President Ever, But Historians Have Been Slow to Agree

Trump is the Worst President Ever.

There, I said it. It’s obvious. He’s certainly the worst President of my lifetime, something I thought the first month in office when he screamed “American Carnage” and started his insane border policy. Everything he did since then with pulling out of the Iran deal, negotiating with the Taliban to pull out of Afghanistan, tear gassing protesters, etc. has only underscored the fact that every other President was way ahead of him. I actually thought I’d never see another President in my life who was worse than George W. Bush, who got us into two wars, was inept in a major national emergency and single handedly managed to collapse the entire housing and banking industries, but boy was I wrong. There is a level of bottom beneath all that.

And America has had it’s share of shitty Presidents, don’t get me wrong. You can subjectively point to many you disagree with politically and call them the worst. In many instances, they are just reflecting the issues and complexity of the times. To find Presidents who are objectively horrible is another feat entirely. Not only do they have to have no moral scruples whatsoever, they have to have been completely incompetent in getting anything they want accomplished. In that sense, Trump is in a league all of his own.

But PurpleAmerica being what we are, we want to make sure he gets a fair hearing on this matter.¹ So below we make the case for several other possible contenders for the title “Worst President Ever” and see how it stacks up against the King.

The Contenders

William Henry Harrison

Well, Bill wasn’t so much an awful President so much as he was a short lived one. You see he had his inauguration on a particularly cold day in Washington, and to show his strength gave it (which was actually the longest Inauguration Address ever, even to this day) without a coat on. He died of pneumonia 30 days later, making his the shortest Presidency.

Now, when we look at how Presidents rank, one of the things that need to be considered is “What did they get done?” In that sense, William Henry Harrison is completely unique in the pantheon of American Presidents. Nothing. In the amount of time he was in office his administration did not accomplish a thing. In his defense, 30 days is not enough time to get much of anything done in D.C.; the standard today is the first 100 days, and back then “Executive Orders” were not as prevalent in moving the bureaucracy as they are today. It’s for that reason, many rankings by historians routinely omit him as an option, thinking it unfair to rank him as an absent President.

Which serves as a proper dividing line between the good and the bad. Harrison didn’t do anything good, but didn’t do anything harmful to the Republic either.² So in order to be one of the worst Presidents ever, you have to have been worse than a guy who literally did nothing but die in the White House.

Score Card:

The Good: Did No Harm

The Bad: Did No Good Either

The Ugly: President for only a month.

Warren G. Harding

Warren Harding presided over the period immediately after World War I and his economic policies (free market, deregulation, tax cuts) helped kick off the era known as the “Roaring ‘20s”. Like Harrison, he died in office, but if the standard is “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” as James Carville said, why is he on this list?

Because he and his administration were notoriously corrupt. His cabinet was full of cronies and shady figures who weren’t opposed to anything if it inflated their pocketbooks and interests. Many were already extremely wealthy, but looked to use the levers of government to expand that wealth and control.

The worst scandal involving Harding didn’t even become known until after he died; the infamous “Teapot Dome” scandal. This was related to the giving of leases to drill near the U.S. oil reserve of Teapot Dome, WY. There were no competitive bids, they were given to friends of Harding, and Harding approved of the leases before his death.

On top of that, it became known after he died that he carried on several extramarrital affairs when letters to his paramours were found by historians. All in all, Harding seemed to be a figure of deep political and personal flaws.

Score Card:

The Good: “Ain’t we got fun?” and “All that Jazz!”

The Bad: Kickbacks, corruption and speculation schemes

The Ugly: Everything in his admin looks like a forerunner to every scandal by every President that comes afterward.

Andrew Johnson

For his 1864 campaign, Abraham Lincoln had to replace Hannibal Hamlin, who wanted nothing more to do with the Vice Presidency. Instead of turning to existing Lincoln Secretary of War and confidante Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s choice was to pick a Democrat for a unity ticket; Johnson was the only Democrat not to be in favor of secession, from Tennesseee (a border state), as Lincoln looked to turn toward reunifying the country after the Civil War. It became a lesson for America why you don’t ever do this.³

Though he was also a target of the Assassination Conspiracy, as luck would have it the person assigned to shoot Johnson stayed in a tavern all night and got drunk. As a result, Johnson ascended upon Lincoln’s death and we are still all living with the consequences.

Why do I say that? Because Johnson’s Presidency was primarily one about Reconstruction of the South following the war. While Republicans in the administration wanted the South to pay, wanted federal troops occupying major southern cities and wanted more liberal laws in favor of freed slaves, Johnson slow-rolled and outright opposed much of it. Johnson’s policies allowed for Jim Crow to gain a foothold and Northern control to be stymied.

In addition, with a Democrat now in control of the White House, Lincoln’s Republican cabinet and Republicans in Congress were worried Johnson would fire them in favor of pro-south sympathizers now that they were coming back into the fold. Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over Johnson’s veto that prevented Johnson from firing any administration official already confirmed. So what happened? Johnson fired Edwin Stanton. The result was that Johnson was impeached and eventually acquitted in the Senate by a single vote. Until Bill Clinton was subsequently impeached in 1998, he was the only President to face an impeachment vote.

Once out of office, President Grant looked to try and right the ship, but the damage was done. Grant’s hands were limited in what he could do and nobody wanted another Civil War. Johnson’s administration led to another 100 years of civil rights violations and crimes against blacks that would ravage the South to this day.

Score Card:

The Good: Er…umm…OK Edwin Stanton was a prick but he would have been better at President than Johnson. And I suppose I’m glad Johnson survived the assassination attempt.

The Bad: When Impeachment isn’t the worst thing, you know you were a bad President.

The Ugly: Jim Crow, lynching, massacres and terror. He didn’t do any of it, but he didn’t prevent the weeds from taking over the garden, which resulted in all of the above.

Franklin Pierce/James Buchanan

Pierce and Buchanan were both horrible Presidents but the reasons largely overlap. In a nutshell, a pair of Northern Democrats went along with party supporters (which at the time were Southern states) and not only did nothing to prevent the Civil War, actually took actions that would eventually create the conditions for the War to start. With no good opposition party, after the Whig Party’s collapse, nothing stopped them.

Pierce was barely nominated as the Democratic candidate in 1852. Though he never expected to win the nomination, he was a compromise candidate who won with little bedrock support on the 49th ballot.

Of course, the big issue of the time was slavery. Both supported the Compromise of 1850 (which impacted the creation of states west of the Mississippi as “slave” or “free”) and the fugitive slave act (which allowed southerners to track down and take back runaway slaves in the North). Under Pierce’s Presidency, western expansion of slavery came to the forefront. Torn between Nothern Democrats wanting clearer control of the slavery issue and Southern Democrats who wanted to expand slavery west, Pierce was unable to placate either side and his Presidency was a disaster. In 1856, Democrats didn’t even nominate him, choosing instead James Buchanan.

If Pierce’s presidency was a thunderstorm, Buchanan’s was a maelstrom. Soon after Buchanan was inaugurated, the Supreme Court decided the infamous Dred Scott decision.⁴ Largely reviled to this day as one of the worst decisions ever handed down by the Court, the decision only fueled tensions between pro-slave and abolitionist factions. Not only did the decision basically strip rights from any African American, it undercut any federal control over slavery’s expansion, allowing states westward to choose and upending any political balance on the issue. The issue that was flaming up was now a full on five alarm blaze.

State borders between slave and free states began to erupt into skirmishes, none worse than between Missouri and “bleeding Kansas” which had been admitted as a free state. The Federal Government was effectively powerless to stop much of it. As states began to assert further control over a weakened government in D.C., you begin to see the start of the secession movements take place. Buchanan stopped none of it.

Once Buchanan left office and anti-slavery abolitionist Abraham Lincoln won the White House, the table was already set for secession and four years of Civil War over slavery.

Score Card

The Good: I got nothing.

The Bad: While both were utterly inept, incompetent to stop what was happening, I suppose it could be considered that much of it was entirely outside of their control and I’m not sure anyone in that position would have succeeded given the passions and divisiveness of the day. One person shouting stop does not stop the tide from coming in.

The Ugly: The eight year downward spiral that eventually came to the bloodiest war in American history, dividing a nation, and providing a deep scar that remains to this day.

Donald J. Trump

So why is it so easy for me to label Trump as the worst President ever? Because his presidency contains elements of ALL of the other worst presidencies.

• Corruption? Check. His administration officials took money from the Russians and the Saudis. When Jared Kushner was denied a security clearance because of red flags, Trump just overruled them. Trump sided with Putin over the U.S. Surveillance Community on whether Russia tried to get Trump elected. After he was elected, the rates at Mar-a-lago skyrocketed and became a haven for foreign nationals. Corruption, yeah 10 out of 10 there.

• Impeached? Huh, he’s been impeached TWICE! But I’ll repeat what I said about Johnson— “When Impeachment isn’t the worst thing, you know you were a bad President.”

• Incompetence? He couldnt even get a tax cut through a Republican Congress for his entire first year in office. COVID; incompetent in attempts to manage and control spread resulting in over a million U.S. deaths.

• Failures? There is an ongoing list of failures. Every day was a long slog downward spiral of one bad thing after another. But whereas, the other Presidencies actually attempted to stop the bottom from falling out, Trump just kind of passively continued to let them happen.

• Civil strife after George Floyd and BLM/MeToo Protests; he actually had protesters tear gassed and removed for the singular purpose of a photo op.

• Russia in Ukraine; tried to blackmail the Ukranian President with money already allocated to Ukraine. Basically gave a green light for Putin to invade.

• Pardons? He pardoned people from his campaign and who did things in furtherance of his own Presidency.

• Cabinet? Most people who were confirmed for cabinet positions and positions of interest under his Presidency all think he’s a moron and dangerous.

• He incited an insurrection on Congress fulfilling an actual Constitutional duty. It’s as close to a coup d’etat as America has ever experienced.

• Indictments. Well, up until this point no other President had been indicted. To date, he faces 91 indictments and counting.

Not only is he the worst President ever, it’s hard to believe any peacetime President could be any worse. That all of this occured while America was experiencing a calming of the ship under President Obama, who cleaned up the big steaming pile of s**t that was left on the doorstep of his Presidency, is quite frankly a miracle. Had this happened in more controversial times, in a more divisive era, I can’t help but believe the United States would have been irreparably damaged by it.

God save us if he wins again.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

Historians vary in their assessments and for the most part have not really graded Trump yet, on account they prefer to wait for the passage of time in order to more objectively assess and compare. Those that have rated him have placed him near the bottom, but not the worst, with Buchanan usually the bottom.

As for the best, there tends to be general agreement on who the top three are with variations on the order.

George Washington

Abraham Lincoln

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

After that, it gets more subjective with a similar mix of the next 5 or so, but the orders all over the place:

Theodore Roosevelt

Harry S. Truman

Thomas Jefferson

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Woodrow Wilson

What do all of the above Presidents have in common? They are all associated with successful management of wars.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

It’s a frightening thought that the Worst President of American history is currently the GOP frontrunner for President. I can’t tell if it speaks to the lack of quality currently within the GOP, or the utter insanity/incompetence of GOP voters.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. Much like the many fair hearings he is going to have in multiple jurisdictions on a multitude of crimes.

2. In fact, his dying in office actually led to the first Vice President assuming the White House. Prior to that, there was no clear indication what the capacity was, whether as “President” or as “acting President.” John Tyler who assumed the role was routinely dismissed as “His Accidency” upon his ascendence. Afterwards, it was regarded that the Vice President assumes all powers inherent in the Presidency in such instances, something make definitive (finally) in the 25th Amendment. This is Harrison’s only legacy.

3. Every election when it comes time to pick a V.P. there is always some nonsense rhetoric about picking a moderate from the other side of the aisle as part of a unity measure. It never comes to pass. These people know better than to choose someone from the other side as a running mate. Its mostly done to make it appear that they are welcome to the idea of purple-ish people from the other party coming over to join their side.

4. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)