No sooner had I finished my ranking of the UK Prime Ministers (which was only in 2022, but three Prime Ministers ago) than people were suggesting I do the same for the US Presidents. Had they no idea of the research time, or the worry over who should rank higher of Millard Fillmore and John Tyler, or the hours spent looking for a positive of the Buchanan administration. In vain, I might add. List making is a very serious agenda in my book, and after two years, here is a ranking that will probably change tomorrow. I was taken aback by how many US Presidents I thought were a bit awful. As with the Prime Ministers, I have made a list of the achievements under their administration (the buck does stop here after all), and added and deducted points for my opinion on those policies. So, the Civil Rights Act would gain a lot of positive points (+150) whereas attempting genocide would score a vast number of penalty points. All of these points were added together to produce a rough list, before personal bias came in. Obviously, there’s a lot of personal bias. However, I was taken aback by the points differentials. In the UK version, there was 700 points separating top from bottom. Here? Over 2000. It may have been even more if not for the racism penalty clause, which kicks in with every different policy, and badly hurt a few Presidents, but to be fair, that’s their own damn fault.
For those who know me, or don’t, I tend to think highly on democracy, progressive social change, peace between neighbours and judge folk on how they treat those less well off than themselves, the vulnerable and minorities and so on. I have low opinion on authoritarian policies, economic decisions which hurt your own people, and opening concentration camps in the Philippines. I’m about personal liberty but feel the government exists to support that liberty in whichever way it is necessary. For some that’s freedom of speech (which doesn’t not protect from freedom of reply, a commonly held error online), for others it’s the right to health care or the right to existence of LGBT or non-white minorities and yes, for many, it’s the presence of a safety net so they don’t die of starvation or freeze to death or so on. I see all leaders through these prisms, these are my personal humanist biases, like listening to Jesus on the Mount and nodding sagely (says the atheist).
I’ll mention two fun facts before we kick off. Firstly, over in the UK list, Margaret Thatcher (you may have heard of her) had the dubious distinction of gaining one of the largest positive votes for a single policy (harassing world leaders into signing the Montreal Protocol) and also one of the largest penalty points (for Section 28). One of the US Presidents has seen this and said “hold my coffee”. You will have heard of him. More on that later.
Secondly, it was amusing to note that my top 4 UK Prime Ministers contained a progressive, a philanderer, a right winger shockingly popular with the left, and a chap the internet wanted to cancel, whose greatness I stand by. My top four US Presidents? A progressive, a philanderer, a right winger shockingly popular with the left, and a chap the internet (briefly) wanted to cancel. Ah, consistency.
Now, onwards, before this dreaded election happens and the whole Presidency thing gets cancelled along with LGBT rights, NATO and the existence of Ukraine.
43. James Buchanan (1857-1861)
PROS – It was only four years
CONS – Declaring support for the Dred Scott decision, trying to gain federal protection for slave owners, standing back as the country fell apart, accepting the very racist Lecompton Commission etc etc.
“In his betrayal of the national trust, Buchanan came closer to committing treason than any other President in American history.”
Jean H Baker, American historian
“James Buchanan... hesitated and backtracked and felt that his constitutional prerogative didn't allow him to do things, and he ended up doing absolutely nothing and threw everything into Lincoln's lap.”
Harry Truman, from the former Presidents on Presidents site
You can try and be iconoclastic all you want. You can be a contrarian Glaswegian on every day with a y in it. You can try and look for the positive in the most lost of causes, as Jimmy Stewart taught us when Mr Smith went to Washington. But sometimes, someone is often put in last place for good reason. And so here is James Buchanan, one of the worst leaders in Western history. If cometh the hour cometh the man, then Buchanan missed his cue. The next man in a list of bad Presidents lacking the courage to deal with the growing slavery issue, James Buchanan tried to deal with it by the ostrich technique. When that failed, he went the route Neville Chamberlain is accused of, giving everything to the opposition in the hope it would appease them. It never did. When the Supreme Court announced their decision in the Dred Scott case, when they said that black people in America could never have the same rights as white citizens, Buchanan supported the decision. Not only was he unwilling to take on the slave states as they threatened succession, but he also actively banned the US Congress from discussing slavery, or making decisions aimed at it. He wanted federal protection for slave owners! He picked a number of Cabinet members who were loyal to the South, all of whom later joined the Confederacy. When the War Secretary John Floyd embezzled funds, he ignored it.
However, James Buchanan’s flaws were not solely linked to “both sides” ing slave owning and secession. His decisions around that big issue led to the Panic of 1857, the first international financial depression. As the effects ravaged the tinderbox country, Buchanan announced that he sympathised but that the government could not help anyone. This directly led to the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank in my own hometown. The Utah War may have been triggered by his predecessor, but Buchanan’s amnesty for those involved in the massacres was his own doing. He also threatened to invade Paraguay, using gun boat diplomacy to force his will on South America.
A man for no seasons, James Buchanan was an collection of woeful decisions, and only the fact that the next guy rebounded from this somehow managed to save the country.
42. Andrew Johnson (1865-69)
PROS – The purchase of Alaska turned out to be quite useful for America.
CONS - ****ing up Reconstruction, deliberately.
“I have never been so tired of anything before as I have been with the political speeches of Mr. Johnson.... I look upon them as a national disgrace.”
Ulysses S Grant
Going from Abraham Lincoln to Andrew Johnson in the speed of a bullet is like going from a home cooked meal to having to eat rat for dinner… providing you can kill the rat first. Seemingly seeing all of Honest Abe’s proclamations about equal rights and humanity as being a dying man’s error, Andrew Johnson refused to protect the newly freed slaves in the South from white repressions. He pushed through his Reconstruction deal while Congress was on hiatus and considered it a done deal despite doing bugger all. All of the social reforms in the four years passed by Congress, Johnson tried to veto. He especially attempted to, and failed to, veto the Civil Rights Act of 1866. For all the discussion of impeachment, he fell into an obvious trap with the Tenure of Office Act. He looked the other way for the New Orleans Massacre, and your mileage may vary on his decision to universally pardon all civil war rebels. The 14th Amendment (the State is forbidden from removing life, liberty or property from anyone born or naturalised an American citizen) and 15th amendment (banning the denial of voting rights based on race) made the law books under his tenure and this, along with the fact that James Buchanan was frankly worse, keeps Johnson from the bottom spot. He was a committed racist who destroyed attempts to fully heal the nation post Civil War, by sticking to his firmly held prejudices.
41. Woodrow Wilson (1913-21)
PROS – Child labour bans, trust busting, Federal Reserve
CONS – hypocrisy over WW1, jailing political opponents, Sedition Act, all the racism
“I regard him as a ruthless hypocrite, and as an opportunist, who has not convictions that he would not barter at once for votes.... He surrenders a conviction, previously expressed, without the slightest hesitation, and never even vouchsafes to the public the arguments upon which he was induced to change his mind.”
William Howard Taft
Another bloody hardline racist! This is the most dispiriting episode of Blind Date ever. Woodrow Wilson was not only a racist, he proudly broadcast viewings of Birth of a Nation at the White House, and helped bring back the Ku Klux Klan, whom had been battered into a grave (temporarily, like Jason Voorhees, but less cuddly) by Grant decades earlier.
So let’s start with the positive for Woodrow Wilson, who got taught at school as the good guy of World War One. (Curious, given our shades of grey approach to learning appeasement but then, Chamberlain was a flawed but great Brit, Clemenceau was French and thus easier to blame, clearly.) Wilson had the novel idea of reducing tariffs, by actually increasing income tax on the wealthiest Americans instead to make up the deficit. He continued the work of Taft and Roosevelt by bringing in the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, and he brought in the Federal Reserves. This extended to the creation of the Federal Trade Commission. He also brought in the eight hour working day for railroad workers, created the US Coast Guard, and, despite being vetoed by the Supreme Court twice, successfully banned the use of child labour. The Seamans Act also aimed to improve the working and safety conditions for Merchant marines.
Despite being politically opposed to the deal, he signed the Federal Farm Loan Act. This was a sign of things to come as, however much he opposed prohibition, the 18th amendment came in under his watch. Although by that point, he was denuded in office, cut down by a massive stroke.
Woodrow Wilson publicly supported Philippines independence… eventually. There be the kicker for his foreign policy. He turned Nicaragua into a protectorate, while sending the US military into Panama, Cuba and Honduras. He had the US military occupy the Dominican Republic. He sent the US Navy into military action against Mexico during their Civil War, and sent and backed General Pershing’s actions in Mexico. He took on a policy of appeasement towards Germany to win a national election then immediately declared war.
Once in the First World War, he brought in the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, two viciously anti-liberty laws which helped lead to the jailing of peace activist and political opponent Eugene Debs. The Sedition Act made it a criminal offence to dissent against the US government or military, and was focused at punishing anti-war activists, socialists and even conscientious objectors. He brought in conscription and fuel rationing. Wilson fired nearly every single black federal employee, and segregated the army, while buddying up to the Klan. Some historians claim he was only conceding ground to racists for political reasons. There’s no difference between that and a true believer, the end result is misery for vulnerable folk. There was also the Californian Alien Land Law which prohibited (mostly Japanese) immigrants from owning land or establishing family roots in America. This directly broke an international treaty, but Wilson supported it. And when the Colorado Coal miners went on strike, Wilson sent in the army to quell it, leading to one of the most violent strikes in American history.
At least he was a major part of the Versailles Treaty! And his inability to sell his own Fourteen Points to anyone lead directly to the mess of the post-Versailles settlement and set in motion the issues which would lead to the rise of Nazism and World War Two. Still, history students a century later got to hear about his idealism rather than his rampant authoritarianism and racism, so it worked out well for Woodrow. Wilson is often marked among the top half of US Presidents in rankings. He was frequently ranked in the all time top ten Presidents until the last decade when a bit of de-appraisal of his negative spots has relegated him to the top fifteen instead among C-SPAN and Sienna academic rankings. But for me, any good he achieved is destroyed by his racist policies which vastly expanded suffering throughout the rest of the 20th Century in his homeland, by his attack on civil liberties, by his disastrous foreign policy which attacked many of his weaker neighbours, and even in the moments where his PR memory lauds him, his failure to act led to worse suffering and destruction. He was an absolute scourge on Western history, and a hypocrite to boot.
Wilson was a late convert to female suffrage but by that point it was probably his wife when she was pretending to be the President.
He also brought in daylight saving hours.
40. Warren G Harding (1921-23)
PROS - promoting Herbert Hoover
CONS – Teapot Dome, veto on veteran support
“He was not a man with either the experience or the intellectual quality that the position [of president] needed.”
Herbert Hoover
At the very least, Warren G Harding started the act of releasing the political prisoners jailed by Woodrow Wilson, though this was expanded and finished by Calvin Coolidge after Harding’s early death. Harding’s legacy runs directly through the Teapot Dome scandal. A classic corruption story, Harding’s Interior Minister (Albert Fall, a man clearly named by Terry Nation) profited personally over the sale of Navy petrol reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and other locations. Fall was heavily convinced (financially) by vested interests to only look at their own vested interest in the area. Or to put it another way, he was bribed extensively and made federal financial decisions based on it. This led to Fall going to prison (see modern life for how rare that sort of thing is). It is unknown if Harding knew personally about the corruption, but he did issue the Executive Order to put the deal through, and thus, he is forever connected to the scandal.
Harding refused to join the League of Nations, viewing it as a toothless organisation. He was right but American snubbing didn’t exactly help matters. (Harding was ethically opposed to Article X of the League which stated all League members would go to the defence of another League member under attack, as he saw this as a direct attack on the sovereignty of Congress.) He also refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty, opposed as he was to the League of Nations requirements within, and set about US independent peace treaties with Germany, Austria and Hungary. Any claims to great insight about the flaws of the Treaty that charitable reappraisals of Harding might give him are however undone by his steadfast refusal to reduce German war reparations.
He did withdraw troops from Cuba, and made peace with Colombia but, despite saying he would not do this pre-election, he kept American troops occupying Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, left over decisions from the Wilson Administration. He also managed to recognise the independence of Mexico. He increased farm product tariffs, and reduced income tax and corporation tax. In fact, he slashed taxes significantly, setting in stone the economic boom which lasted throughout the 1920s until the massive bust which led to the Great Depression. (What will boom unregulated must also bust eventually, basic economic fact, see also Reagan, Bush II etc etc.)
Harding appointed corrupt friends to high office. He vetoed financial support for World War One veterans. He was extremely anti-trade union, as seen in his dealing with The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, a three-month bloody strike of rail workers caused by a wage cut. He also refused to release money to help build American infrastructure or boost employment levels, he supported literacy tests for voters and he was so half assed on his own support of Leonidas Dyer’s anti-lynching bill he as good as let it fail for political reasons. This was combined with a number of frankly racist speeches given at the same time about “Great Migration” myths and his opposition to interracial marriage. There was also the Per Centrum Act, which banned European Jews and Italians from emigrating to the USA. A protectionist anti-immigration law which later horrifically cut off safe routes for people desperately trying to escape the Holocaust.
Harding does however manage to avoid bottom slot through the odd good policy. The Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act, for example, which focused on health and safety improvements for pregnant women and young children, and created thousands of health centres, was a policy greatly expanded on later by FDR. There was also the founding of the American Relief Association under Herbert Hoover, which had Harding’s backing to provide financial and food aid. In the Russian famine of 1921, this direct interaction is believed to have saved over ten million people. That Harding’s greatest achievement was letting another President do something speaks volumes, but given how often he was able to veto progress, either for political reasons or his own regressive viewpoints, it is notable that at least once or twice, Warren Harding committed to doing the right thing. Even if by accident.
39. Andrew Jackson (1829-37)
PROS – Created some Cracked memes about killing folk 190 years later.
CONS – Attempted genocide.
“He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was a Senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.”
Thomas Jefferson, speaking out against Jackson during the election of 1824.
“Historians, in pondering whether Jackson was right or wrong on financial matters, must allow... a third possibility... that he was confused.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went (1975) page 82
Andrew Jackson’s legacy is still being felt today, because every tough man President who shows up is following in his footsteps. James K Polk? Jacksonian. Nixon? Totally Jackson. Trump? You better believe he’s Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s road to power involved the use of the press to spread as many alternative facts about his opponents, the use of very committed fans as acolytes, the ability to spread mistrust in the infrastructure of government, and the ability to never meet a dog whistle he couldn’t use. Jackson also held Cabinet members and Supreme court justices in equal contempt. Certain more recent Presidents have been a blatant tribute act.
Andrew Jackson had been a war hero in 1824 when he ran for the Presidency, only to lose a tight contest and denounce the entire election as a fix and a fraud and make things difficult for his opponent for the next four years. In the 1828 election, he ran again and this time he spread as many rumours and innuendos about the Adams family in one of the dirtiest elections in history. This time, Jackson won the office, and promised to make himself accessible to the public, and to tighten the laws around embezzlement. He almost immediately created his own spoils system, replacing government officials with old cronies. He frequently sacked Cabinet members, preferring to listen to the advice of unelected friends.
It was his stance on Native American rights that cemented his place in history. The Indian Removal Act relocated various tribes from the East over a thousand miles to the West of the Mississippi River. By force. Thousands died. The Cherokee appealed to the Supreme Court, who ruled in their favour, only for Jackson to ignore them. “Let them enforce the ruling” he was alleged to have said (though the source is disputed). This led to the Second Seminole War over land rights in Florida, which ended in the ethnic cleansing of the area. All of this happened despite the fact that Andrew Jackson himself had signed treaties protecting private ownership of Native American land, treaties he himself refused to endorse. At the same time, he was quick to denounce slavery abolitionists.
Elsewhere, the first major copyright law came into being under Andrew Jackson, and Arkansas and Michigan were added to the Union.
Jackson also declared that an elite ran the National Bank, and therefore he vetoed the Bank’s charter, ending the federal bank at the time. This, and the nullification crisis of 1832 (a row over tariffs between slave holding states) led to a major recession which was to torpedo his successor.
Andrew Jackson was fond of duels, survived an assassination attempt by beating up his intended assassin, and said on his death bed that his only regret was that he hadn’t killed more people. These memes would be funny in an action film, but from a President who used the bully pulpit to hurt millions, the joke isn’t funny.
38. Marvin Van Buren (1837-41)
PROS – The Wilmington/Raleigh railroad was completed.
CONS – Trail of fn Tears, internment camps
“In the 1830s, under Andrew Jackson and then his successor Martin Van Buren, the military moved against the Indians in the southeastern United States in what was officially called, in the title of the law authorizing it, Indian Removal. Today we'd call it ethnic cleansing.”
Howard Zinn, Truth Has a Power of Its Own (2022)
Speaking of that successor, here he is. I had Martin Van Buren wrong for ages, and I blame They Might Be Giants for that. You know the song, James K Polk? In Martin Van Buren is a “former President and an abolitionist.” Makes him sound so much nicer than he was. If you have ever read Marian Gouverneur’s memoirs (and to be fair, most of you probably haven’t), the aging socialite remembered Van Buren as the dullest and least impressive of the many Presidents she had ever met! And she liked him!
Anyhow, you might have heard of the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of five tribes from their native lands. You probably blame Andrew Jackson for it, and he had a pivotal role in all of that (which is why he one spot below), but who was the man in charge when the abomination actually happened? Jackson’s former Vice President, Mr Van Buren. To aide this despicable act, he interned the Cherokee (who had tried to fight the decision by democratic means, you might recall from a few paragraphs ago) in concentration camps. Van Buren also brought in gag acts to stop the spread of abolitionism, which he viewed as a danger to the Constitution. And, yes, as made famous by the Steven Spielberg film, he was directly in the middle of the Amistad freed slaves legal case and tried to appeal the decision. Also, there was the capture of Seminole leader Osceola, when he was invited for peace talks under a truce flag, and immediately captured.
What a guy. I can’t think what the anti-slavery movement could have done without him…
Van Buren ended the Patriot War with Canada, and helped build the long lasting relationship between the US and Canada. He also lowered the working day for labourers to a maximum of ten hours, brought back Treasury independence, and… stood back to allow the Extermination Order against the Mormons. He also prohibited duelling, much to the disdain of his predecessor. There was also the Broad Street riot under his term in office.
The tenure of Martin Van Buren was permanently messed up by the five year depression (the Panic of 1837) he inherited from his former boss’s insane financial policy, but whenever civil liberties rose during Van Buren’s Presidency, he leant the wrong way. Years later, out of office, Martin Van Buren committed fully to the cause of abolitionism. By that time he had left it far too late to be remembered as anything but a block on progress.
37. George W Bush (2001-9)
PROS – El Toro wilderness creation
CONS – Iraq.
“We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.”
Statements to reporters during an interview on a golf course (August 4, 2002)
“The greatest terrorist in the world.”
Harry Belafonte, 2006
“I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound — with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.”
Stephen Colbert, White House Press Association Dinner (2006-04-29)
It’s been said to many times that, of all the modern Presidents, George W Bush is actually one of the most amiable guys you could ever meet. Well, that’s alright then…
Hey if we were judging folk on their amiability, we’d have spoken about creepy old Grover Cleveland long before now.
Unfortunately for Bush II, we are judging him on his Presidential achievements.
Oh boy.
We could start small here. Like funding autism cure research. Or reducing Medicare spending in the guise of reform. Or abortion law tightening. Or protecting firearm dealers from being held liable for crimes committed by guns they sold to dangerous individuals. Or the vast increase in ethanol production. The building of a fence along the Mexican border to deter immigrants. (The wall’s forerunner.) There was campaign reform, and the definition of brownfield sites, and the ability to block telemarketers from harassing you, and the making of stolen valour a federal crime, and sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, all of which were decent enough. The prohibition of protesting near soldier graves was either an attack on civil liberties or an attempt to allow families to grieve without the appearance of the Westboro church trolls depending on your view.
Then there were the laws that could have worked in sounder hands. Protection of copyright holders led to the protection of multinationals hoarding copyrights instead. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was a domestic violence law which hardened up pro-lifers (intentionally). No Child Left Behind? Who doesn’t support more equality of education for children? Well, funding discrepancies, attempts to game the systems and as many vulnerable kids were left out of the loop as were helped.
However, Bush’s legacy is through the War on Terror. Before 9-11, the US as a whole seemed more distracted by Bill Clintons blowjobs in the late nineties than the planning of Osama Bin Laden. In Afghanistan an international coalition toppled the Taliban in record time, only for Bin Laden to be allowed to escape over the border. At home, the Patriot Act… well, it was completely sh*t, and a stain on civil liberties. As was the expansion of surveillance and tapping without cause, and the ever wider definitions of terrorism, and the Homeland Security Act. The point of terrorism is to become so afraid you change your entire outlook and behaviour.
And then there was Iraq. Now, elephant in the room out of the way. Saddam Hussein was a complete monster and anyone who ever defended him should be side eyed with distrust for the rest of their life, no matter how good or bad a cat impression they do on live TV. That said, Iraq. It was a reunion for the lads. Bush’s administration was his dad’s and Ronald Reagan’s old mates all back to sort out old scores. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and friends. In 1990, the US had led an international coalition against Saddam Hussein, after his invasion of Kuwait, but when his colleagues wanted to topple Hussein, the elder Bush declined. But when the younger Bush took office, it was Iraq the Sequel, and all they needed was one willing ally (Blair), one trashed reputation (Colin Powell) and weapons of mass destruction that were totally going to be found in Iraq any minute.
Going to war in Iraq under false pretences led to the deaths of around a million people, most of whom were innocent civilians who had been at risk of murder from a despot for several decades, and the war led to the destabilisation of an entire region, increases in terror groups, and problems which are going to linger on for the long term.
And then there were the tax cuts. In this, George W Bush followed in the footsteps of Jackson, Harding, Coolidge and Reagan. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and like those previous tax cut related booms, Bush’s actions lead directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
I have been told he is a nice guy, and I see no reason to think people were lying when they said this. But as a President, he was a bloody omnishambles.
36. Rutherford Hayes (1877-81)
PROS – Well, he did try to deal with the spoils system, I guess
CONS – Compromise of 1877 and everything that came from it. Yes, I know Samuel Tilden also supported the end of reconstruction. Buck stops with the guy in actual power rather than hypothetical power.
“He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.”
Benjamin Harrison, giving me the side eye, Executive Order (18 January 1893)
Rutherford Hayes won the tightest Presidential election in American history, when Democrat Tilden won the popular vote, but Hayes won the electoral college by one vote difference. Ever since, the accusation that he did a backroom deal with Southern Democrats to end reconstruction in return for the Presidency have been rife. Although Hayes’s less vitriol opponents (he has few fans) point out that, by the very nature of it being Southern Democrats, reconstruction was dead whoever won the 1876 election. This is true. It’s also true, that it ended on Rutherford Hayes’s watch. Hayes ended the enforcement of racial equality, stood back while the Jim Crow style segregation era took route in the South, and did nothing as Congress repealed Ulysses Grant’s Enforcement Acts which had been used to crush the Klan. During Hayes turbulent time in office, there was the Great Railroad Strikes, where Hayes sent the troops in to supress strikers.
On the less dubious side, Hayes signed the Arrears Act, which brought in pensions for veterans of the Civil War and their widows. These financial increases were backdated from the war too, crucial aid to a large section of the working class at the time. The Lockwood Bill also allowed women to become lawyers. Hayes’s government also took aim at the spoils system that had infested large chunks of government since Andrew Jackson (50 years earlier) by starting the investigation into Roscoe Conkling's powerbase around the New York Custom House. This investigation outlasted Hayes’s time in office, but became one of the defining reforms of the 1880s under his successors. As Conkling had enough allies in Congress who didn’t want to vote for an early Christmas as turkeys, Rutherford Hayes passed his early reforms through as an Executive Action. Proof if ever needed that someone can be a weak and uninspiring President, yet still manage to do the right thing at a crucial moment.
That said, over a century on, the legacy of Hayes’s inaction on the South cast a far wider and crushing shadow than these achievements.
35. Franklin Pierce (1853-7)
PROS – Granting citizenship automatically to children born outside the US to American citizens
CONS – Kansas-Nebraska Act.
“You have summoned me in my weakness. You must sustain me by your strength.”
Franklin Pierce, Inaugural Address (4 March 1853)
There is no disputing that Franklin Pierce is among the worst Presidents in American history, but he is also the single President I have the most sympathy for.
Not for his policies in office, mind you. Pierce was unwilling to deal with the issue of slavery, even as it tore the country apart. In fact, his attempt at a compromise, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, was one of the bloodiest errors of the decade. (Also, by naming it the Kansas-Nebraska Act, I have failed every Sporcle geography test ever since, since counterintuitively to the name, Nebraska is to the north. Not quite as bad as all that bloodshed and both sides ing abolition admittedly.) First, there was the Missouri Compromise, which outlawed slavery above a certain line in the old Louisiana purchase territories. Then, Kansas and Nebraska joined the Union, and both were above the line. Not wanting to make a firm statement about either being pro or anti-slavery, Pierce allowed them to decide themselves. This led to a vast influx of pro-slavery and pro-abolition campaigners flooding into the territories to campaign and fight each other. Violence and murder followed, with the sacking of the city of Lawrence a notable infamy, and the term Bleeding Kansas covered the horrors in the state. (In the 1990s, political scientists used to refer to the Kansas Problem to determine people who vote against their supposed self-interests. That time when everyone arrived to murder the shit out of them might just stick in the memory!)
Away from the slavery issue for a moment (apart from that, how was the play, Mrs Lincoln?) Pierce managed to get his fingerprints on the Gadsden Purchase, a large purchase of land from Mexico which is now known as New Mexico, on which a major railroad infrastructure was built. There was also the Guano Islands Act which allowed the US to claim uninhabited islands as their own territory, even if they belonged to another country. That one, not so good. The Treaty of Kanagawa opened up trade and diplomacy between the USA and Japan, and while it overly favoured the Americans, it did lead to Japan signing more trade deals with the West. The route to your Nintendo Switch, via several major wars and trade disbalances, started here.
Franklin Pierce’s tenure was an absolute disaster, but it is hard not to feel for the man on a personal level. He had never personally wanted to be President, and wound up drafted by the National Convention because, as a war hero he was one of their most popular figures. By that point, he had buried two children. Shortly before his inauguration, he saw the death of his last surviving child, eleven-year-old Benjamin, in a train crash, where Pierce himself saw his son dying before his eyes, horrifically crushed and decapitated. His wife became terribly ill for the rest of her life, dying a decade later. Pierce was never able to recover from the trauma, and turned to the bottle, becoming increasingly unwell and more erratic in his approach to life. Throughout his post-Presidency, he made more outlandish statements, doubling down on his anti-abolitionist moves during the Presidency, further ruining his once popular image, aided by more drinking until alcoholism and cirrhosis took over. At the end of his life, he had expressed admiration for Ulysses Grant, but the damage was done, and he died from liver failure. Grant, in an act of great charity, focused the nations mourning on Pierce’s sterling war record as a soldier, rather than his dismal Presidency. He knew only too well that while Franklin Pierce was a dreadful President, he was also a frail and damaged human being who, for all of his many flaws, should never have been given the position in the first place. Sometimes power comes to the unaware and they rise to the occasion magnificently. Sometimes, it takes a popular young man and destroys him utterly. Pity Franklin Pierce, certainly but remember the terrible errors of the time, that put a man like him in office while the country burns and innocents die by the thousands.
34. William McKinley (1897-1901)
CONS – Annexing Hawaii, invasion of the Philippines
“McKinley has a chocolate éclair backbone.”
Theodore Roosevelt, speaking in 1898
“There have been people who suggest my ideas would take us back to the days of McKinley. Well, what's wrong with that? Under McKinley, we freed Cuba!”
Ronald Reagan
“We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.”
Remark to personal secretary George Cortelyou (1898).
McKinley is mostly ranked by professionals around the mid-20s in the Presidential Ranking these days, so we’re not that far off his reputation here. As an avid fan of civil liberties however, his actions abroad forced him into my bottom ten Presidents.
William McKinley is best known today for being shot by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, a man who I had to google to correctly spell the name of, and have no chance of pronouncing without checking it.
So I’ll start with the Open Door policy, where by McKinley actively sought to protect the sovereignty of China, and open up the country to trade deals with all of the West while protecting Chinese land and customs. This proved to be a tricky proposition (the Tsar of Russia outright refused it) but McKinley loudly supported the pro-Chinese route, and actively encouraged the immigration of Chinese students to the USA. Now, as a result of this, he found dealing with the Boxer Rebellion tricky, as he understood the disputes, but overall this was a strong bit of diplomacy and proof that someone can make bad decisions often but that doesn’t mean they have to make bad decisions always.
So, yeah, the Philippines. It all started with Cuba, and the American-Spanish War. America won that, which pushed the Spanish out of their territories in the Philippines, who wanted their own sovereignty. McKinley thought better, and so the American troops occupied the Philippines instead. He viewed it as a war prize, and when the locals began to resist, the Americans built concentration camps to hold them in. This lead to the deaths of 200, 000 Filipinos from illness and violence, with reports of horrendous atrocities and surrendering civilians being shot. This is one of the gravest moments in US history. It ranks alongside the current Russian war in Ukraine, and some of the crimes of Stalin and Hitler. It is a stain on McKinley, who deservedly shares a bottom ten spot with racists, attempted genocides and war mongers.
Not to worry, he also forcibly annexed the independent country of Hawaii. This was following in the footsteps of Benjamin Harrison, who had done much of the hard repression work there but is another bloody mark on McKinley. He also had minimal response to repeat large scale incidents of racial violence in America during his tenure.
Some might go in wondering if William McKinley deserves to be this low. I think he’s lucky so many have forgotten his dubious achievements in office, or that so many terrible Presidents existed that he only ranks in 34th place. I feel worse for Bush II, as he apparently was a nice guy, until I remember how terrible his Presidency was.
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