Depending on how the next four years go I’m on the fence between Bush Jr. and Trump but I’d like to hear from you
Edit:
Top 10 suggestions so far (unordered):
- Andrew Jackson
- Andrew Johnson
- George W. Bush Jr
- Ronald Reagan
- Richard Nixon
- James K. Polk
- Woodrow Wilson
- James Buchanan
- Franklin Pierce
- Donald J. Trump
Does worst mean:
- least able to achieve their stated agenda, ie worst at their job. (Trump)
- worst vision for America, ie most evil (Reagan)
- worst overall impact to America, ie one you’d kill with a time machine (Bush Jr, but Trump might catch up in term 2)
- Worst for the word, ie the one I’d kill with a time machine (Washington)
Although I’m not American and don’t know your history that well.
Agree with most of the comments about jackson being the worst, but I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Eisenhower and Hoover, who would easily go in the top ten.
No one said Buchanan.
Reagan
George W Bush Jr.
Yes I am handing him the worst president title, even over Trump.
Because, it was his mishandled War on Terror, that plunged the country into massive national debt. He crashed the housing market. He literally had waged a war on obese people, minorities and other things as distractions from his failure to capture Osama. He allowed American Surveillance with Patriot Act I and II. His cabinet were all crooks and he was just a dumb puppet.
He is essentially the ripple effect of everything we’re dealing with today and Trump is merely the symptom of that.
I agree. Bush Jr. was the one who broke the window, Trump is just the inevitable crackhead who climbed in and started living on the couch.
He allowed American Surveillance with Patriot Act I and II.
People at the time were begging for that. There were a very, very few civil libertarians that realized just how dangerous those acts would be, but the people, as a whole, were really behind them. Just like the people went in gung-ho for the start of GWoT.
He is essentially the ripple effect of everything we’re dealing with today and Trump is merely the symptom of that.
I’d put that at the feet of Reagan first. Reagan was the one that cozied up to the ‘moral majority’, which was based in racism and misogyny, what with Bob Jones University being forced to desegregate. That’s where the birth of the alt-right (which I guess is now just mainstream Republicans) happened.
People at the time were begging for that. There were a very, very few civil libertarians that realized just how dangerous those acts would be, but the people, as a whole, were really behind them. Just like the people went in gung-ho for the start of GWoT.
“Do you want the terrorists to win?!?” was hurled at me a bunch back then.
Trump is definitely in the quintile, but also anyone putting him in the bottom 5 is just recency bias.
Most people who argued for Trump said it’s because of Jan 6th and his other felonies and that he was allowed to run again and became reelected (even tho a partition of the us citizens are to blame for the latter). I also think people already value him lower because of Project 2025 and out of fear what will happen during his 2nd term.
Wasn’t it Nixon who sold the americans out? Or Truman?
Plenty of choice. In my view, most presidents were rambling reeking right wingers in some way or other, save for FDR and Teddy Roosevelt, who were the two presidents I’d actually call capable and outspoken on civil rights (rather than just pragmatical like Lincoln). They did have their blemishes, but less than e.g. Andrew Jackson.
So many presidents were terrible for one people or another.
Andrew Jackson? Held hundreds of slaves and quite literally led an ethnic expulsion against Native Americans (the Trail of Tears).
Lincoln? Mostly good, but did not forbid slavery in the form of penal labour. If one were to abolish slavery, why not go the full mile?
Wilson? Rabid antisemite, pretty much.
Hoover? Might’ve tried to tackle the Great Depression – but did so by allying with large coorporations, effectively being corrupt and choosing bribery.
Truman? Dropped nukes and set the stage for “we support any government that hates people being remotely leftist”.
Nixon - corrupt and wanted to sidestep the rule of law, all for his own profit: to stay in power. Other than thaf, decent, but that’s a big “other than that”.
Reagan - enough said. Ultracapitalist, misleading, made the US economy far worse by accruing debt like there’s no tomorrow, and shoving it onto the poor – typical oligarch behaviour! Militaristic, power-hungry. And no, he did not end the Cold War: Gorbachov did.
JFK: socially pretty good, actually. But economically, the cutting of the top rates made the richest keep more money. At least it wasn’t down below 50%, but still. Had that happened, I think the tax rates would’ve allowed wealth accumulation.
And so on.
So, in my view, it’s hard to focus on who is the worse, and better to rather focus on what is the best. Ted would be my candidate. Not only social progress, but also economical, and in a way that favour the worker – and he also was environmentally aware. That is a good president.
FDR and Teddy Roosevelt, who were the two presidents I’d actually call capable and outspoken on civil rights (rather than just pragmatical like Lincoln). They did have their blemishes
Blemishes? FDR seized the property of 200,000 Americans and threw them into concentration camps because of their race. The guy’s bottom 10 if not bottom 5. He’s easily the worst Democrat of the last 100 years.
George Washington. This thing should have been nipped in the bud.
Would that have changed much (Except for his name & face being literally everywhere in the US) or would they just have taken another founding father as their idol?
I would hire nucular George every day for the next 4 years to get rid of the orange dipshit.
It is absolutely fuckin bonkers that Trump is so bad that a person can say they yearn for the good old days with Dubya without a hint of sarcasm
Dubya at least had a face of ‘compassionate’ conservatism, and believed in the rule of law. Yeah, he bent the law a lot, but he never outright broke it. He was incompetent–or, he was at least not up to the task of being a president–but not apparently malicious.
Pity that SCOTUS stepped in with the Florida recount, since it was eventually found that Gore should have won. I wonder where we’d be on climate change now if Gore had won? Oh well Florida, enjoy your flooding and hurricanes.
James K. Polk. He went into a bloody war for conquest with Mexico to conclude Manifest Destiny.
If we’re talking strictly the neoliberal era would it be too out there to say 1. Bush Jr 2. Reagan 3. Biden? All time though probably Andrew Jackson
While i abhor Bush Jr, I would put Reagan as #1. He paved the way for Bush Jr. And Biden. IMO Bush Sr is tied for the #3 spot simply for pardoning members of the Iran-Contra affair.
Nixon is one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had though, and I would put him higher than any of the others. The “war on drugs” caused so many rippling horrors domestically. And those horrors don’t compare to what he did abroad.
Wilson and Nixon are definitely up there with Jackson too
andrew jackson (or johnson can never remember which) for the trail of tears. absolutely awful
Jackson was trail of tears, Johnson was the one who killed reconstruction. Both very bad.
Andrew Jackson was Trail of Tears, but I actually think Andrew Johnson was arguably worse. He was Lincoln’s Democrat vice president (he was brought on to help “balance the ticket” instead of sticking with his strongly abolitionist first term VP Hannibal Hamlin), who started dismantling reconstruction and giving the power back to the former slaveowners.
You can pretty much lay Jim Crow at his feet.
kinda hard to argue apartheid is worse than genocide imo
I’m not really trying to weigh and decide if 6000+ deaths and forcible removal of 100k+ people from their homes is better or worse than 100 or so years of systemic oppression followed by more, quieter oppression. Instead, I’m looking at this from the perspective of alternatives.
After the Civil War we very nearly had a moment when we could have maybe did something real for racial equality beyond anything we’ve seen even up to the present day. The Freeman’s Bureau was fighting for wages for former slaves, and was generally a force for working class empowerment. Black congressmen were already being voted into office rapidly. If it were left to do its work, it might even have helped to innoculate the Irish- and Italian-Americans against future union busting on Black/White racial lines a few decades down the line.
Instead, after only about a year, Andrew Johnson started fighting and dismantling the Bureau, placing the former slaveowners back into a de facto master/slave relationship with their former slaves, giving the old Southern Democrats back their political power, and generally restoring the status quo as much as possible. The Bureau itself lasted only 5 or 6 years, don’t remember. The KKK rose up because reconstruction wasn’t there anymore to prevent it, because the Democrats wanted so bad to just put all of the states back in the union and go back to bad old days, and so on.
That was never a realistic moment that I know of in American history where people against war with the native tribes of this land had outsized power and influence. Jackson completely ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling was awful, but while the ruling was grounded in good moral and legal principles, it was, like it or not, extremely unpopular. There wasn’t an entire party with a supermajority in Congress that could have kept up the pressure on this issue.
To only count the direct deaths of the forced march and not the deaths resulting in having your land stolen and along with it your ability to reproduce your society is straight up genocide denial.
After the Civil War we very nearly had a moment when we could have maybe did something real for racial equality beyond anything we’ve seen even up to the present day.
And this is absolving responsibility of all the people who maintained slavery, which one could argue is even worse than jim crow.
I think you’re reading more intent in my post than was actually present. I’m not denying we did genocide to 100 million natives. All I’m denying is that Jackson specifically is significantly worse than the historically reasonable alternatives to the position. Had (for instance) John Quincy Adams, one of the authors of the Monroe doctrine and a big proponent of western expansion, won the presidency, I do not doubt that a similar overall trajectory would have taken place. Maybe we wouldn’t have specifically had a trail of tears moment, but there’s more to the genocide of native americans than just the trail of tears.
And this is absolving responsibility of all the people who maintained slavery, which one could argue is even worse than jim crow.
How so? I believe you’re arguing in good faith, but I honestly don’t see how you come to this conclusion from what I wrote?
It’s Reagan or Nixon, no contest. Bush pales in comparison
Woodrow Wilson was so racist that he was quoted in an epigraph for “The Birth of a Nation.” You know, the 1915 movie about how awesome the KKK was, which became the first true “blockbuster” film and which led to a huge resurgence in KKK activity. Not only that, but Woodrow Wilson also personally invited the filmmakers to screen the movie in the White House - the first movie ever screened in the White House, by the way. Honorable mention!
As well as hating black people he also hated Slavs too and laid the foundations for anti-soviet US foreign policy
what? He gave the Slavic nations self-determination, there are roads named after him in e.g. Czechia, Slovakia; and wtf is bad about anti-Soviet foreign policy?
lol
and wtf is bad about anti-Soviet foreign policy?
-adolf hitler
wtf is bad about anti-Soviet foreign policy
The Soviets wanted deescalation after WW2, and supported self determination for liberated countries including Korea, Vietnam, Greece and Italy. Whatever you think of communism, the American policy of “containment” is directly and indisputably responsible for the suppression of democracy in dozens of countries and wars which killed tens of millions of people all because some of those people would have elected communist and socialist leaders we didn’t like.
He gave the Slavic nations self-determination
Absurd claim. Slavic nations risen due to collapse of the three european empires in WWI.
