The truth is, presidents are like NFL quarterbacks. They get endorsement deals with Gatorade and marry supermodels. No, wait. We are thinking of rappers. They get too much credit when things are going smoothly and too much blame when it all hits the fan. Still, while it is popular to decry the presidencies of recent Chief Executives as (cue Comic Book Guy) “the worst ever,” the truth is, there were men screwing up our highest elected office for centuries before we were even born.
6) Herbert Hoover
Sure, Herbert Hoover cannot take all the blame for the Great Depression. Then again, George Lucas can’t be blamed for all of the wooden acting in the Star Wars prequels now, can he? Though both men sure can take a heaping helping of credit for their respective disasters. Hoover was an engineer who just didn’t do enough to engineer an improvement in the US economy, making things worse through his foreign policy decisions. Dam him. At least they named something after the fellow.
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/summer/hoover-2.html"Hoover's presidency showed the limitations of managerial government in a time of national emergency. With his stiff-necked refusal to play the political game, the President clung to the same theories of individual initiative and grassroots cooperation that had fed and salved war-torn Europe and ministered to flood victims in this country. "A voluntary deed is infinitely more precious to our national ideal and spirit than a thousand-fold poured from the Treasury," he said. Here was the practical idealism that had raised Hoover to the presidency, only to become a ball and chain hobbling him from galvanizing a nation in extremis."
5) Warren G. Harding
Let’s let Harding himself make our case for us: "I am not fit for this office and should never have been here." What else can we say after that? How about the fact that he was spectacularly underqualified, or that he was a scoundrel who spent most of his time in office doing anything BUT his presidential duties? He had unclear campaign promises and was selected for the office by his party because he was easy to control. Good thing he died in office, so the country had to deal with less of his buffoonery.
http://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2007/02/16/worst-presidents-warren-harding"Warren G. Harding's claim to infamy rests on spectacular ineptitude captured in his own pathetic words: 'I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.'"
4) James Buchanan
It’s one thing if the economy collapses on your watch, but if the entire nation splinters in two, well, chances are you have to take at least a wee bit of the blame, Mr. President. He did nothing to eliminate slavery, even though he was against it. He did nothing to deter states from seceding from the union, even though it would lead to Civil War. He did, though, manage to make it to office as a bachelor, so he at least gets some credit for that, doesn’t he?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesbuchanan"Presiding over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South."
3) Ulysses S Grant
Sometimes a great general can make a great president (see: Washington, George). Sometimes, he makes himself out to be a yutz. We’re looking at you, US Grant. He presided over one of the most corrupt administrations in history. And he was also in charge during the period our history textbooks lovingly call “reconstruction.” This is reconstruction in the same way that watching your father bang away under the hood of your family roadster for hours at a time can be called “rebuilding an engine.” Jim Crow thanks you, Mr. Grant, for helping him have such a long life.
http://www.presidentprofiles.com/Grant-Eisenhower/Ulysses-S-Grant-Reconstruction.html#b"The years of the Grant administration constituted a gradual retreat from Reconstruction, initiated in the South but increasingly tolerated by the North. Grant certainly wanted as rapid as possible an end to the special status of the former Confederacy as a domain of federal intervention. The basic question for him and his countrymen was what price to pay for this peace. From the start, southerners made clear that the road to reunion lay over the rights of their former slaves."
http://www.presidentprofiles.com/Grant-Eisenhower/Ulysses-S-Grant-The-scandals.html#b"During the second term, scandal rocked the Grant administration. Before the second inauguration came the exposure of Crédit Mobilier, a scheme to siphon off the profits made in building the transcontinental railroad, which soiled both Vice President Colfax and his successor, Henry Wilson. Regardless of the fact that the bribery of congressmen took place under Johnson and involved Democrats also, airing the details in 1872 stung the Grant administration. Congressman Benjamin F. Butler's scandalous salary grab paired a reasonable pay increase for government officials (the president's salary was doubled to $50,000) with an outrageous provision making the increase retroactive for two years for congressmen, including those defeated in the last election."
2) Andrew Johnson
This man is lucky for several reasons. First, he is fortunate that middle school students around the country mix him up with either Andrew “$20 bill y’all” JACKSON or that OTHER President Johnson (Mr. Ladybird, as he is known to history). Also, thanks to Mr. Clinton, AJohn’s role as the answer to that infamous “Who is the only president to be impeached” trivia question has waned. Having taken over for one of the most beloved Chief Executives of all time (that Lincoln fellow) and allowing Reconstruction to begin certainly earns him a high spot on this list.
http://www.nndb.com/people/244/000050094/"During the summer of 1865 be set up provisional civil governments in all the seceded states except Texas, and within a few months all those states were reorganized and applying for readmission to the Union. The radical congress (Republican by a large majority) sharply opposed this plan of restoration, as they had opposed Lincoln's plan: first, because the members of Congress from the Southern States (when readmitted) would almost certainly vote with the Democrats; secondly, because relatively few of the Confederates were punished; and thirdly, because the newly organized Southern States did not give political rights to the negroes. The question of the status of the negro proved the crux of the issue. Johnson was opposed to general or immediate negro suffrage. A bitter contest began in February 1866, between the President and the Congress, which refused to admit representatives from the South and during 1866 passed over his veto a number of important measures, such as the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act, and submitted to the States the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Johnson took a prominent and undignified part in the congressional campaign of 1866, in which his policies were voted down by the North. In 1867 Congress threw aside his work of restoration and proceeded with its own plan, the main features of which were the disfranchisement of ex-Confederates and the enfranchisement of negroes. On the 2nd of March 1867 Congress passed over the President's veto the Tenure of Office Act, prohibiting the President from dismissing from office without the consent of the Senate any officer appointed by and with the advice and consent of that body, and in addition a section was inserted in the army appropriation bill of this session designed to subordinate the President to the Senate and the general-in-chief of the army in military matters. The President was thus deprived of practically all power."
1) William H. Harrison
Who’s this guy?
Remember those bizarre snippets of info that you somehow retained from your junior high history class? Stuff like “The Teapot Dome Scandal” and “The Fourteen Points.” Perhaps you remember this chestnut: “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.” Pretty catchy, eh? But what on earth could it mean?
It was the campaign slogan of William Henry Harrison, who was a war hero. Presumably battling on tipping canoes. Or Tippi Hedrin. Or maybe Tippecanoe was a place or something. Anyway, he ran with a guy named Tyler. Not Taylor. That was some other dude. And don’t confuse this guy with Benjamin Harrison who, though no one quite remembers what he did, was not a sucky enough president to make this list.
Oh, so Harrison was our ninth president. Briefly.
Why does he suck so hard?
Sometimes historians like to give presidents letter grades. A Jefferson or a Lincoln might get in the A range. A Grant or Buchanan might get in the D range. It’s chic these days to give W H Harrison an “incomplete,” but when I was in school, if I did about two percent of my assigned work, I’m pretty sure I would fail. Especially if it was my own idiocy that led me to miss all that work.
That’s just what happened to this clown who, apparently, was raised without an annoying worrisome mother.
Perhaps she could have warned him not to speak for three hours on a cold March day. Without a coat. In the early 19th century.
Sure enough, the leader of the free world caught pneumonia and the barbers doctors of the time were unable to work their magic with the standard leeches and chants and poultices (though we wish more doctors these days would prescribe a good poultice. Kind of a lost art).
So Harrison died. After 30 days in office.
EPIC FAIL.
After FDR, it became de reguer to judge a president on his first hundred days in office. Hard to do with a guy who fell 10 weeks short of that mark. Some would say Harrison had little time to do any HARM to the country in those 30 days, but if your greatest claim to fame is that you didn’t screw up the country all that much, we’d say your case is pretty good for being the (cue Comic Book Guy again…)
Worst. President. Ever.
http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/chronology/whharrison1841.cfm"Harrison delivered the longest Inaugural address on record. He died of pneumonia one month later, believed to have been brought on by prolonged exposure to bad weather at his March 4 Inauguration."
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