I think a list of worst presidents has to include Ronald Reagan somewhere. His war on drugs legislation gave the IRS the legal right to examine and monitor our bank accounts without a search warrant.
Very good point I forgot about this. I hate the right’s glorification of Reagan like some republican christ child. Reagan was just like every other politican; a lot of talk charisma and policies that were almost completely different from what they say. The republicans have a huge problem with this. Any person who says that Republicans today are for small government need psychiatric care.
The answer is the villain, the scum, the scourge, the left’s hero: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
No one else has come close. I hope that Hell sprung into existance just for him.
I think Lincoln was worse.
My list:
Lincoln, FDR, Wilson, LBJ, Nixon, Clinton*
Clinton is asterisked because he’s a bit different. I hate the others because of their policies and thier attacks on freedom. Clinton’s policies weren’t too bad, but he makes the list simply for being evil (as shown, in one of many examples, by his willingness to destroy the reputation of a young girl that he knew to be innocent just to save himself).
I don’t think Lincoln was intentionally trying to destroy liberty; FDR often gloated about it.
I realize that slavery was on its way out, but at least Lincoln ended it. FDR didn’t do anything right.
If all else is equal, I think there’s an argument for considering the earliest option to be the worst. After all, the earlier they were, the more “innovations” they get credit for, and the more precedent they set for later folks.
I will repost what I posted in our local newspaper forum on this topic a few days ago. Needless to say, it got quite a different reaction there. 
The disastrous Presidents:
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Abraham Lincoln - The slaughter of 600,000 Americans in an unlawful war of conquest. The forcible overthrow and subjugation of the Confederate States. To many abuses of power to even list. Lincoln’s tyranny set the pattern for the tyranny of the Federal Government and the subsequent Presidents, all the way to the current one. George Bush is merely raising the bar that was first established by Lincoln and his four thousand doesn’t hold a candle to Lincoln’s 600,000. To further add to his crimes is that he brought to fruition the centralization of economic power in Washington, D.C., that had long been pushed by the Federalists and later the Whigs, and long resisted by the Jeffersonian Republicans and Jacksonian Democrats.
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt - He never did solve the depression, by the way. He took the bad situation he received from Hoover and totally f***ed it up beyond repair. He did demonstrate once and for all that Keynesian Economics does not work. Sadly, most modern citizens have never absorbed this lesson. His greatest crime was the ending of the gold standard and confiscation of gold from Americans. His brutal intimidation and overthrow of the once independent Judiciary Branch of government also stands to his disgrace. Maneuvering the United States into conflict with Japan again stands to his disgrace. FDR continues to screw this country from his grave, with the many millstones he tied around America’s neck.
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Woodrow Wilson - His greatest crime, for which America may never recover, was the establishment of the Federal Reserve. In one stroke of the pen, he forever sold America out to the tyranny of inflation. He also set in motion the events leading up to the Great Depression. His needless involvement of this country in World War I and his incompetent foreign policy would end up dooming the world to experience World War II.
The failures:
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Theodore Roosevelt - Advocacy and advancement of central banking and his ultra progressive policies.
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Herbert Hoover - Turning an ordinary “panic” into a true disastrous with his interventionist policies. In fact, Hoover’s policies would very much foreshadow FDR’s later policies. In both cases they failed, badly.
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Lyndon Baines Johnson - The disastrous Great Society and Vietnam.
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Tie. William McKinley - advocacy of central banking and centralization of economic planning. Also, imperialist foreign policy.
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Tie. George W. Bush - No real need to explain this.
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Tie. Harry Truman - Use of an atomic weapon on a civilian city.
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Tie. Richard Nixon - Bad economic policy, particularly the ending of the gold exchange standard. He does get a reprieve for his foreign policy, which is why he is not tied for 4th with the others.
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Tie. Jimmy Carter - Just general ineptness for the Presidency.
It should be noted that government expanded both absolutely AND as a percentage of the GDP during the administrations of the eleven Presidents listed. It should be noted that the partisan breakdown is six Republicans and five Democrats, lest it be thought that I considered either party worth a damn.
At least the Democrats WERE a damn good party, up until 1896, that is.
Good Presidents <defined as those Presidents who abided by Article II of the Constitution and did not fundamentally abuse their offices, disregarding minor scandals>
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Grover Cleveland
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Martin van Buren
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Calvin Coolidge
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Warren G. Harding <this President is noted for his excellent handling of the panic of 1921, caused by WWI inflation under Wilson, if Herbert Hoover had only taken heed of this man’s excellent example.>
Adequate Presidents <generally as above, but had serious incidents during their presidency>
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Thomas Jefferson - Failed to abolish the Bank of the United States established under the Federalists and failed to undo Federalist tariffs. Also foreign policy blunders.
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James Madison - Same as Jefferson, plus War of 1812.
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Andrew Jackson - Overall an excellent President, however his brutal treatment of Indians gives him a major black eye.
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Dwight Eisenhower - Foreign policy problems.
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George Washington - Washington suffers mainly from being under the influence of Alexander Hamilton. The Bank of the United States is his major failure, followed by suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. To his credit, however, he kept the Presidency in deferment to the Congress.
Honorable mentions that I have not quite placed yet.
James Monroe and John Tyler.
The remaining pre-1896 Democratic Presidents, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan deserve some positive mention for at least trying, although both were ineffective. Andrew Johnson merits a thumbs up for standing up to the radical Republicans.
As for the rest of them, they go into the mediocre category. In chronological order the mediocres would be:
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
William Henry Harrison
James Polk
Zachary Taylor
Milliard Fillmore
U.S. Grant
Rutherford Hayes
James Garfield
Chester Arthur
Benjamin Harrison
William Taft
John Kennedy
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan
George H.W. Bush
Bill Clinton
I want to see it! On even weeks Lincoln, on odd weeks FDR. It is a toss up.
Oh he did some things right. He ended the diliberate practice of keeping freight rates high in the south to discourage industries that might compete with the north. From the inception of the Interstate Commerce Commision up to the FDR administration it was cheaper to ship steel from Pittsburgh to Atlanta than from Birmingham to Atlanta.
The usual suspects: (starting with worst)
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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Abraham Lincoln
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Woodrow Wilson
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Herbert Hoover
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George W. Bush
Lincoln; no contest.
On a related note, I noticed the “Libertarian/Classical Liberal” ranking has been removed from the Wikipedia article related to historical presidential rankings. In the discussion area the reason “inflammatory” was given. I guess only statist definitions are considered acceptable by that bunch.
I’m in no support of Truman or the nuclear bomb, but it is said that the nuclear bomb saved more lives then it destroyed. The Japanese, at the time, had a win at all cost mentality and would have fought tooth and nail until most of it’s citizen were either dead or unable to fight.
Why would it have been necessary to invade mainland Japan to protect this country?
Like I was saying, it was as much protection for us as it was for them.
Why are those the only two options? Don’t get me wrong; if the Japanese government had positioned itself so that the only reasonable way to defend American lives was to kill civilians, then any civilian deaths should be blamed on the Japanese government for creating the situation.
However, several people (including Dwight D. Eisenhower) have expressed that the bombings were unnecessary . In the case that the bombings were unnecessary, it amounts to little more than state-sponsored terrorism.
Absolutely Terrible
Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson
Terrible
George W. Bush, John Adams, Bill Clinton, William McKinley, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, John Quincy Adams, James Polk
Mediocre
Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, John Kennedy, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, William Taft, Ullyses Grant, James Madison, George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore
Decent
Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James Garfield, Chester Arthur
Good
Grover Cleveland, John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren
Propaganda. There was every indication the Japanese were looking for a way to end the war. There was never going to be a need for an invasion.
And why would killing 10 man be worst than killing 9 or 1 for that matter? Killing is killing a terrible crime, numbers has no meaning in it. The important thing is that you can kill someone in self defense (that is what soldiers does most of the time, or at least they kill someone who are a threat because caries a weapon and is ready to kill), and you can kill children, women, unarmed people, elderly people… now guess what was killed by the a-bomb? A soldier with a weapon, or thousands of infants, toddlers, children…
P.S. It isn’t important who was the worst president, that is history, instead the question is who will be the worst president? Because I think all of the current candidates (the 3 mayor one) are capable for being much worse than all the worse presidents in the history combined. Of course only the future can answer that question, and the future is the child of the present and the grandchild of the past, influenced by them but not neceserily is like them.
Says the U.S government- the droppers of the bomb. Obviously they are going to try to make it sound like their actions were heroic and the only choice available. Dbratton got it right.