Learning From the Worst Presidents

[Geee]

American Thinker:

An increasing number of Americans -- and not just conservatives -- are expressing the opinion that Barack Obama's presidency is as calamitous for the United States as was that of Jimmy Carter. If so, then in the relatively short span of three decades, America has experienced two spectacularly flawed presidencies, each comparable to only a handful that have occurred over the life of the Republic. Could these two recent tragedies have been predicted? Are there any identifiable personality traits, past experiences, or political trajectories that might enable voters to foresee impending abject failure in a presidential candidate?

In order to respond to that query, we must ask: who were our worst presidents? An immediate problem in addressing the question is that in most of the well-known surveys that rank our presidents, the overwhelming majority of the opinions were solicited from leftist historians and political science professors. Thus, biased thinking skews the results. For example, Calvin Coolidge is typically cast as a horrible president, while Woodrow Wilson is extolled as a great one. It is said that Coolidge was absent while business ran roughshod over the working man, complicit in the rich virtually escaping federal taxation, and indifferent to the plight of American minorities. Wilson was heralded for expanding the rights of women, modernizing America's antiquated constitutional structure, and improving the condition of the poor.

These assessments are colored by the political tendencies of those providing the judgments. In fact, Coolidge presided over one of the greatest periods of prosperity in the history of our nation, and almost all of his actions -- and in many instances, wise inactions -- helped to steer the economy and social fabric of the country in a favorable direction. Wilson, on the other hand, led us into a gruesome world war that served only as an appetizer for a more horrific reprise, shepherded in the 16th and 17th constitutional amendments that haunt us to this day, incarcerated innocent Americans for disloyalty, and bequeathed to us the Federal Reserve.

Surely, surveys that rank Wilson high and Coolidge low are biased to the left. Examples of such tainted surveys include the Schlesinger polls (both père [1948, 1962] and fils [1996]) and the five Sienna College polls (between 1982 and 2010 -- the last of which absurdly ranked Obama the 15th-best president). Somewhat less biased are two polls done by the Wall Street Journal in collaboration with the Federalist Society (2000, 2005).

Of course, any definitive ranking will be subjective, but for my money, our least distinguished presidents prior to 1900 were Tyler, Fillmore, Buchanan, Johnson, and Arthur.

[nickydog]

Interesting article and interesting comments.