The worst US presidents in history. US Presidents: the best and worst "The Worst President"

According to Gallup, Ronald Reagan should be considered the best modern US president. PPP ranked George Washington first on its list of America's greatest heads of state. Experts tend to rate Franklin Roosevelt more highly.

Gallup version

Gallup periodically conducts surveys of US residents about their attitude towards the current president and former heads of state.

Respondents are asked to rate how well the White House occupants are performing, with three options available: “above average,” “average,” or “below average.”

Ronald Reagan showed the best result. 69% of respondents considered that the results of his activities were “above average”, 10% assessed them negatively. Thus, Reagan's overall rating was 59 points.

The last time Gallup conducted a similar poll was in January 2009. During this time, George W. Bush's rating has improved somewhat: three years ago he was in last place. The popularity of Clinton, Reagan and Bush Sr. also increased.

It is curious that Americans' assessments largely depend on their political sympathies. Democratic Party supporters tend to rate Democratic presidents more highly, while Republicans tend to rate Republican presidents more highly.

PPP version

In turn, the PPP (Public Policy Polling) company collected the opinions of Americans about all US presidents.

According to PPP, US residents consider George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and John Adams to be the best White House holders. They have the highest positive ratings.

The least popular presidents (the majority of respondents rated their performance as heads of state negatively) included Richard Nixon (the highest negative rating), Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

PPP also notes that Americans tend to rate presidents who belong to the same party as them more highly; that some presidents are especially popular with women (Carter, among others), and others with men (Nixon); and African Americans respect Barack Obama most of all.

Expert review

Similar surveys are conducted among experts. In the USA, the most famous rating is the Siena College Research Institute.

As part of this survey, American presidential experts (historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, economists, etc.) evaluate heads of state according to 20 criteria: such as “family background, quality of education and professional experience,” “communication abilities,” “luck”, “willingness to take risks”, “management of the US economy”, “leadership qualities”, “ability to avoid mistakes”, etc.

None of the modern presidents made it into the top ten. The list of the five best, according to experts, heads of American state looks like this: Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson.

This poll has been published since 1982, the top five presidents have not changed, although they constantly change places: there are two exceptions - Franklin Roosevelt always ranks first, and George Washington is fourth.

It is curious that the opinion of ordinary Americans (if we consider the data of Gallup and PPP polls as such) does not coincide with the opinion of professionals. Thus, experts put Bill Clinton in 13th place, Obama in 14th, Reagan in 17th, Bush Sr. in 21st, Ford in 27th, Nixon in 29th, Carter - to 31st, and George W. Bush - to 38th (fifth place from last).

The rating of presidents is, of course, a very subjective list, which is compiled by sociologists and political scientists in almost every major country. But still, it reflects the main trends in such a volatile environment. Disputes often arise on the basis of which such a rating should be compiled. American presidents, for example, are always judged by poll results. One of the objective criteria is the level of wages. The list presented to you estimates the income of heads of state in 2016.

Francois Hollande

Now the ex-leader of France found himself in 8th place in the ranking of presidents at the end of last year. He led one of the largest European countries for 5 years, since 2012.

During his reign, he did a lot to remain in the memory of the people. For example, he approved the bill on same-sex marriage. In addition, he took another step demonstrating European tolerance: he allowed same-sex partners to adopt children. It is worth noting that expanding the rights of sexual minorities was one of the main points of the election program of Hollande and his party supporters. In this they kept their word.

True, not all French agreed with this policy. Due to the legalization of same-sex marriage, numerous protests and demonstrations took place across the country. This was especially disliked by the right-wing parties that found themselves in opposition and the Catholic Church.

In the ranking of presidents, the position of the head of France is usually much lower, but by the end of his term Hollande had become an extremely unpopular politician in his homeland. His trust rating has fallen to a record 12%, making him one of the most unpopular French presidents ever. In addition, last year parliament threatened him with impeachment, suspecting him of revealing state secrets.

Hollande's salary is $194,000.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The Turkish leader has led the country since 2014. The election he won was the first direct democratic vote in this country. 2016 was not an easy year for Erdogan. In the summer, part of the military elite tried to carry out a coup d'etat, which was suppressed. After this, Turkey began to tighten laws against the opposition and strengthen presidential power, which was assessed negatively by many partner countries.

The coup attempt was very bloody. The mutiny killed 238 people. Erdogan himself barely escaped capture. He left the hotel shortly before it was stormed.

Erdogan seeks to strengthen his power on all fronts. So, at the moment, 26,000 people are accused of involvement in the coup. Many of them are in prison, the rest have lost their jobs, as a rule, they are law enforcement officers.

At the moment, the country has launched a campaign to return the death penalty to the criminal code.

The president's salary is $197,000.

Shinzo Abe

His annual income is $203,000. He has led the country since 2006. In this post, Abe will be remembered as a politician who began to pursue a unique economic policy. He managed to revive the economy, which had been stricken by stagnation and deflation for the previous two decades.

One of the methods was the artificial devaluation of the yen by doubling the money supply. This method is not new; leaders of other countries have used it many times. On the one hand, it can be very effective, on the other, it can provoke international currency wars, which is what critics of the Japanese prime minister fear.

Theresa May

British Prime Minister Theresa May closes the top five. She receives $215,000.

For her, 2016 was also a defining year in many ways. A national referendum was held in Great Britain, in which the majority of British people were in favor of leaving the European Union. May supported the previous British prime minister and was opposed to separation from Europe.

However, Eurosceptics won the vote. Cameron resigned and May took his place. A lot is expected of her. First of all, a smooth exit of the country from the eurozone, which will take more than one year. It should also be noted that May became only the second woman in British history to hold this post.

Russian President

It is impossible not to mention the Russian head of state in this list. Although he ended up in 9th place, receiving $136,000 a year.

But in the ranking of Russian presidents, Vladimir Putin is certainly in the lead. And according to surveys of authoritative publications, he has repeatedly been among the most authoritative people on the planet. For several years now.

At the moment, Putin holds the presidency for the third time. His last term was currently marked by serious steps in foreign and domestic policy. In particular, the Crimea peninsula was included in the country, after which a number of foreign countries introduced strict economic sanctions against Russia. In response, Putin decided to impose counter-sanctions, banning the import of food from states that wished to impose sanctions.

Jacob Zuma

Such high earnings allowed him to take a very high place in this ranking of world presidents. In South Africa, the head of state is not elected by members of parliament. Zuma received the support of MPs in 2009. Since then he has been in office for the second term. His government places great emphasis on economic development and infrastructure construction.

Angela Merkel

She has served as Chancellor of Germany since 2005. During this time, she managed to become one of the most authoritative politicians in the European Union.

Justin Trudeau

He headed the state in 2015. He pays great attention to the equality of women. Thus, in his cabinet of ministers there are exactly 15 men and women. In addition, the most popular nationalities living in Canada are represented.

Rating leader

The first place on this list at the end of 2016 was taken by American President Barack Obama. He receives $400,000.

At the same time, he occupies a very low position in the ranking of US presidents throughout his history. Many of his decisions were repeatedly criticized and challenged. Thus, in the ranking of US presidents throughout history, Obama is only in 12th place. The leader, by the way, is Abraham Likoln. Obama, who began by winning the Nobel Peace Prize at the very beginning of his term, then disappointed many with his aggressive foreign policy.

That's why he ranks so low in the ranking of American presidents. Americans value stability and self-confidence first of all. Obama failed to solve the main problem that faced him - defeating Islamic terrorism.

At the same time, there were many positive things in his work. That is why in the ranking of US presidents, the list of which in recent years is known to everyone, he surpassed both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

It is worth noting that the current US President, billionaire Donald Trump, will no longer be able to top this list. He stated that he would work for a symbolic payment of $1.

Alcoholism, trench digging, poker - what you don’t need to be able to do to become the president of the most powerful country in the world!

Natalia Suvorova

13.5. Jimmy Carter

President Carter did not endear himself to the United States because in 1977 he transferred the Panama Canal for the use of the Panamanians, although most Americans considered it theirs. Then came the revolution in Iran, which caused a sharp rise in oil prices and other troubles, but the worst moment of the Carter presidency happened when, in 1979, Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran demanding that the former Shah (who had just arrived in New York) be handed over to them for treatment and a return ticket, for obvious reasons, I was in no hurry). The hostage rescue operation launched by Carter failed miserably, and as a sign of contempt for the president, they were released only a year later, on the day Ronald Reagan took office.

13. Lyndon Johnson

Vice President Johnson took the oath of office directly on board Air Force One, a few hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with whom he was traveling in the same motorcade. It was Johnson who started the protracted and devastating war for the United States in Vietnam and sent troops to the Dominican Republic. Because of this, his rating fell through the roof, so in 1968 he did not even run for election, but went to a ranch in Texas and wrote memoirs for the rest of his life.

12. Zachary Taylor

The 12th President of the United States Taylor was not exactly the most failed president in the world... It’s just that no one remembered what he even managed to do. Taylor was not as interested in politics as the president of a fairly young power can afford, and was naive to the point of cretinism. Even when he was a military man, he rarely put on a military uniform, and his colleagues once tried to send him to dig a trench, mistakenly mistaking him for an ordinary peasant. Taylor could have fallen lower on our list, but fate did not: he died in 1850, having served as president for just over a year.

11. Franklin Pierce

Despite such an enviable quality for any politician as the ability to speak without a piece of paper, an alcoholic and an avid supporter of American expansion, Pierce did not become a successful president. When the slave-owning party (yes, there was such a thing) in Congress demanded the territorial expansion of the United States, Pierce did not object, but happily began sending out soldiers left and right. Pierce's record includes a failed attempt to take Cuba from Spain and support for the dictatorship in Nicaragua. When he left his post in 1857, only his dictator friend cried about him.

10. Richard Nixon

Nixon might not have made it onto this list if not for the Watergate scandal. In general, the 31st President of the United States was not such a loser: he improved relations with China, concluded a couple of important agreements with the USSR, slightly breaking the ice of the Cold War, and began to slowly withdraw American troops from Vietnam. But when journalists discovered that the president was involved in bugging competitors at the Watergate Hotel, shame was inevitable. If it were up to us, Nixon would simply disperse NTV and kill a couple of hundred hostages with gas and fire during rescue operations to distract the public. Nixon had to resign - he was the first and last US leader to decide to do this.

09. Gerald Ford

The only US president who was not popularly elected to office, but received the reins of power after Nixon's resignation. Ford suffered not only a severe economic crisis, but also defeat in the Vietnam War. Ford was so unpopular that they tried to kill him twice, both times by women (although not for personal reasons). Two years at the helm was enough for Ford to lose the election. And his extreme bad luck remained the subject of jokes for a long time. Here, for example, is a fragment from the Saturday Night Live sketch show, translated by our humor editor (wait until the last minute, it takes a hell of a long time to load, because it’s a rarity):

08. Andrew Johnson

People with the surname Johnson generally had no luck as president of the United States. Andrew Johnson took the helm of the country after the death of Abraham Lincoln. Against the backdrop of a bearded man in a top hat, anyone would look like a loser, but Johnson did his best. He quickly turned the entire Congress against himself and became the first (before Clinton) US president to be evicted from the White House through impeachment. And even America’s purchase of such an important piece of land as Alaska did not help Johnson clear his name in history.

07. Ulysses Grant

The commander of the northerners during the Civil War, Grant proved to his descendants that being a good soldier does not mean being a good president. Bribery and corruption in America under Grant rampanted to a scale that United Russia would envy (well, almost). But the president successfully eradicated unemployment among his relatives, placing more than 40 of his cousins, uncles and second cousins ​​in government jobs, and also doubled his salary with the stroke of a pen. As a true military man, Grant had not heard of the word “diplomacy,” and therefore his attempts to unite the North and South after the war were not particularly successful.

06. Millard Fillmore

Another loser president, Fillmore became the 13th leader of the United States, which in itself did not bode well. There was absolutely nothing that bothered Fillmore about the existence of slavery; Moreover, in order to prevent the southern states from separating from the North, Fillmore compromised and signed several laws that made life much more difficult for black slaves. As a result, he only managed to postpone the Civil War, which his descendants never forgave him for.

05. William Harrison

If this story were not so sad, its main character could qualify for a Darwin Award. The ninth President of the United States, William Henry Harrison, was so proud of his victory in the elections that on March 4, 1841, on the occasion of his inauguration, he decided to give a two-hour speech. The day turned out to be dank and windy, the president, who had not put on either a coat or a hat as a matter of principle, was chilled to the bone, contracted pneumonia and died a month later. Harrison went down in history as the first leader of the country to die right at his job, and thanks to that longest inaugural speech in the history of the United States.

04. John Tyler

President Tyler was an ardent supporter of slavery. Already in the middle of the 19th century, this seemed not entirely decent, and one hundred and fifty years later, politically correct Americans are ashamed to remember it. In addition, Tyler interpreted the Constitution in a unique way: having taken the place of his deceased predecessor Harrison as acting leader, he considered himself a full-fledged acting leader, and everyone had to put up with his antics for four whole years.

03. Herbert Hoover

Hoover had the misfortune of being elected president just before the Great Depression. Along with the fall of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929, his rating also collapsed, and Hoover never managed to recover from the blow to his reputation. He was so unpopular with the masses that the homeless, whose numbers grew day by day, began to call their settlements of boxes and blankets “Hoovervilles.” But the worst thing was that in the midst of the crisis, Hoover decided to raise tariffs. This only drove the United States deeper into the crisis hole and forced the president to lose the election to Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide.

02. Warren Harding

A womanizer, a drinker, and an avid poker player, Warren Harding himself did not really know why the Republicans nominated him for president in 1920. His campaign speeches were so vague and non-specific that it seemed to Americans that he simultaneously supported the US entry into the League of Nations and opposed it (a win-win position for a politician, agree!). Once in the White House, Harding played golf and had fun with his mistresses, while members of his cabinet plundered the treasury in every possible way. And after Harding’s death, historians suspected that the first lady poisoned him for his endless betrayals.

01. James Buchanan

If you don’t notice a problem, it means it doesn’t exist! This logic was followed by the 15th US President James Buchanan. A democrat and the only bachelor elected president in American history, Buchanan resolutely dismissed the issue of slavery and turned a blind eye to the fact that the South of the country was about to separate from the North. And when the States split in half, Buchanan believed in stability until the last moment and refused to act, for which historians unanimously recognized him as the worst president in US history.

In which a little girl begins to cry heart-rendingly when she learns that Barack Obama is the President of the United States, not George Washington. Laughter and laughter, but US presidents have sometimes actually brought tears to their citizens. Let's remember which ones exactly.

Warren Harding

The twenty-ninth President of the United States was born on November 2, 1865 on one of the many farms in Ohio. His father was a modest farmer, and from an early age Warren began to understand that in life he could achieve everything only on his own. After graduating from school and then college, young Harding unexpectedly becomes a co-owner of a local popular newspaper, and a few years later he very successfully marries the daughter of one of the wealthiest bankers in the state. The girl's name was Florence Kling, she was 5 years older than the enterprising "newspaper boy", not very pretty, with a child from her first marriage, but had a gentle disposition and enormous financial capabilities.

With the advent of big money, Warren also began to enjoy extravagant hobbies: golf, poker, expensive alcohol and, of course, beautiful women. But one should not think that Harding was untalented, far from it, he was eloquent and persuasive when needed. Eloquence and money helped propel him from the rank and file of the Ohio Senate to federal senatorship as early as 1914. And 7 years later, on March 4, 1921, Warren Harding officially became the twenty-ninth President of the United States from the Republican Party. The dream was achieved, and here it would be worth giving up constant affairs and provocative behavior at parties with poker and alcohol. But the newly elected president did not even think about changing his usual way of life. At first, neither caustic newspaper articles about the waste of public money by his close associates, nor criticism of his colleagues for the constant violations of the “prohibition law” by the first person of the state stopped him.

But everything comes to an end. In April 1922, a loud political scandal broke out in the United States. One of Harding's close friends and team member, US Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, was accused of corruption. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. New revealing newspaper materials poured in, the people were extremely dissatisfied, and there were calls for early presidential elections. To calm the angry electorate in June 1923, the 57-year-old president makes the so-called “Tour of Understanding,” the goal of which is extremely simple - to regain the trust of voters.

The exhausting journey was already coming to an end when, not far from San Francisco, the president began to feel ill. It was in this city that he died on August 3, 1923, presumably from a stroke, leaving behind a bunch of ill-wishers and permanently undermining voters’ faith in the Republican Party.

Richard Nixon

Richard Millhouse Nixon was born on January 9, 1913 in California into a Quaker family. His parents were deeply religious people, which left its mark on all five sons. The family was almost always in need, and in order to earn a little extra money, in 1925 the Nixons moved to the Soviet Union, to the city of Degtyarsk. Here they work until 1930, and then return to their homeland.

As an adult, Richard graduated from law school at Duke University and was engaged in private practice in his native California. Nixon was a US Navy soldier during World War II. In 1946, after leaving the army, he became a member of the US House of Representatives from the state of California, and in 1950 he was already a senator from the same state. After serving eight years as vice president in the Eisenhower administration, he became the thirty-seventh president of the United States in 1968. The next five and a half years of Nixon's rule were akin to a roller coaster: the Vietnam War, the deployment of troops in Cambodia, numerous accusations of embezzlement and corruption. But nothing hit the president's prestige as hard as the Watergate scandal.

On June 17, 1972, five people broke into the Watergate Hotel, which was also the headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. During the arrest, the guards found listening devices and photographs of documents from the Democratic headquarters on the unknown persons. The public immediately linked these unknowns to the Nixon administration, although there is still no conclusive evidence of this.

The investigation, which lasted two years, and the subsequent trial, widely reported in the print media and broadcast as a late-night series on television, became the slow death throes of the president's career. If at the beginning of the investigation, despite all the political mistakes and obvious diplomatic mistakes of the Nixon administration, the people and, above all, fellow Republicans were on the side of the president, then by 1974 everyone abandoned the head of state. Richard Nixon went down in history as the only US president to resign early. The term "Watergate" is still used by journalists as a synonym for irreparable damage to the reputation of the first person of the state.

George W. Bush

The first thing that comes to mind when looking at the family tree of the Bush family is the word “dynasty.” How could it be otherwise if the ancestors of the forty-third US president have the name of another president - Franklin Pierce, his grandfather - Prescott Bush Ole was a close friend of Eisenhower, and the forty-first president is his own father!

George was born on July 6, 1946 in the town of New Haven. He received an excellent education: the Kincaid private school, Phillips Academy, Yale University and, finally, Harvard Business School. Since the mid-70s, the younger Bush began to actively associate himself with politics, was involved in his father’s election campaign, and tried himself as a candidate for the US House of Representatives. In 1994, Bush won the Texas gubernatorial election with a record number of votes, and in 1998 he won with an even more impressive record.

On January 20, 2001, after the most confusing and mysterious campaign in the history of US presidential elections, George W. Bush officially became the forty-third president. After the famous events of September 11, 2001, Bush speaks to the nation, as a result of which his trust ratings reach sky-high levels.

On this wave, he announces the creation of a military coalition to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The main purpose of the invasion of Afghanistan was retaliation against Osama bin Laden, accused by US intelligence services of organizing the September terrorist attack.

In 2003, a new military campaign follows. This time the target was Iraq, and the pretext was its possession of weapons of mass destruction. A new war, and even under a dubious pretext, is beginning to undermine confidence in Bush. The numerous American losses in Iraq do not help the rating too much. The public cannot understand why their soldiers are dying: to maintain world order and destroy terrorists, or for the oil rigs that American companies are starting to mine in Iraq?

In 2004, George barely won the presidential election, but his ratings continued to fall. A new blow to his reputation is the flood in New Orleans, or rather, the complete inability of the authorities to coordinate services and save the city’s residents. The state's economy was also not doing well.

Gradually, from the leader of the nation that Bush became after the events of September 11, he becomes a major loser who not only is not going to correct his mistakes, but also continues to worsen the situation. In December 2008, Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi throws shoes at George Bush. There are widespread accusations: from brutal torture by the military in Guantanamo Bay prison to the future bankruptcy of the US economy. In 2006, the international news and analytical agency Washington ProFile, based on a poll, stated that George W. Bush topped the “List of Worst Presidents Since 1945” with 34 percent of the vote.

Barack Obama

“Yes, we can!”, we can say that over the past 2 years, President Obama's rating has been steadily declining. As stable as the international authority of the United States with it at its head. But from the very beginning, the life of Barack Obama seemed like a fairy tale about Cinderella.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was born on August 4, 1961, to anthropologist Anne Dunham and gifted Kenyan student Barack Obama Sr. His parents met, curiously enough, during Russian language classes at the University of Hawaii. But there was no happy family. Obama Sr. was completely devoted to science, was not interested in the child, the couple divorced in 1964, and the next and last time father and son would meet only in 1971.

After the divorce, the mother and the little future president move to Jakarta to live with her new lover, and a prestigious private school is found for the child. Next will be Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Obama's political career began in 1996; he was elected to the Illinois State Senate, and in 2004 to the US Senate.

In 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. His election program was based on the main mistakes of the administration of President Bush Jr. He promised increased funding for health care, a speedy withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and so on. His well-known campaign slogan was “Yes We Can!” (translation - “Yes, we can!”). From this moment on, a kind of “Obamamania” begins in the United States and around the world. Prominent politicians and figures show support for the candidate, and then the president. The magnitude of his trust rating breaks all records; he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Who would have thought that the moment of launch would be the brightest spot in Barack Obama's presidential career?

The protracted withdrawal from Iraq and significantly increased casualties in Afghanistan have raised eyebrows among his recent supporters. After all, one of the pillars of the current president’s election promises was precisely a departure from Bush’s aggressive policies and minimizing the losses of US troops.

Then everything only got worse. And if the first mistakes at the helm could be attributed to the inertia of the previous leadership, then subsequent mistakes lay entirely on the shoulders of the forty-fourth president. And there were more than enough of them: accusations of state oppression of the media, the scandal with Edward Snowden, wiretapping of negotiations of one of the closest political allies of the United States - German Chancellor Merkel, another military conflict, this time with the Islamic State.

Recently, “anti-Obamaism” has already begun in American society, and if these attacks belonged to ordinary journalists or businessmen, then it would not be worth giving them much importance. But the legendary millionaire Donald Trump, who advised Obama to apologize and leave, as well as former President Jimmy Carter, who said that there is no democracy in the United States, spoke out categorically against the president’s policy. It got to the point that in mid-October 2014, at a rally in Maryland, where the forty-fourth president spoke in support of the Democratic candidate for governor, people began to... Yes, so zealously that they created a traffic jam at the exit, and the performance itself had to be interrupted.

The Washington Post and ABC News conducted a survey among the population and found that the percentage of those dissatisfied with Obama's domestic and foreign policies ranged from 51 to 53 percent of respondents. In the summer of 2014, Quinnipiac University conducted a study on the title of “worst US president since 1945,” where 33 percent of respondents favored Obama's candidacy. According to this rating, only 28 percent voted for his predecessor, Bush Jr.

When talking about America these days with our compatriots, it is difficult to hear anything good from most of them. However, not only we are inclined to blaspheme our overseas neighbors; the Americans themselves are ashamed of something in their history.

There's something special about the fact that when you Google "worst American," "president" is the word the online search engine suggests to complete your query. Many people cannot understand why this is so. Well, sometimes in order to understand the reasons for modern events, it is worth turning to the past...
There are many different reasons why a particular president is considered bad. You can use presidential opinion polls that track preferences in the modern era. You can go to the experts who regularly compile lists of presidents from worst to best. Other criteria may include economic indicators such as the federal debt and unemployment rate.
But some elements of the presidency are not so obvious. When it comes to earlier presidents of the 19th century, particularly during the era of slavery and the eradication of the Indian population, tendencies that are considered bad in the modern world will be quite common. The choice between money, expediency and, say, people's lives perfectly demonstrates what dark and terrible corners sometimes lurk in the human soul, and in comparison with these traits economic mismanagement seems like a cute prank and forgivable nonsense.
So, follow me, reader, if you want to see those who are not usually proud of even in American society.

15. Woodrow Wilson, (1913 - 1921) - fan of the Ku Klux Klan

Woodrow Wilson became president decades after the Civil War, but that didn't stop him from using his position to try to undo any progress in the rights of black people in the United States. His father, a clergyman, was a slave owner and defended slavery from the pulpit. Before becoming President of the United States, he was chancellor of Princeton University in 1902 and did everything he could to prevent African Americans from having any chance of admission. In 1901 he wrote a book called The History of the Americans, in which he justified the Ku Klux Klan. As president, he instituted workplace segregation by the government and supported it in the military during World War I. He told the protesters, “Segregation is not a humiliation, but a benefit, and that is how it should be regarded by you, gentlemen.” He is known for screening the overtly racist film Birth of a Nation - which glorified the Ku Klux Klan - at the White House. The film, in fact, quotes himself, “The whites were awakened by the simple instinct of self-preservation, until at last the great Ku Klux Klan arose, the true empire of the south, ready to defend the southern country.” Woodrow also hated first-generation immigrants along with free speech. He passed the Sedition Act of 1918, which made criticism of the government illegal, and he ordered the infamous Pilgrim Raids, a series of actions by the US Department of Justice that attempted to illegally deport up to 10,000 radical leftists.

14. Richard Nixon (1969 - 1974) - cunning Dickie

It only took five years as President No. 37 for Tricky Dicky to rank on most America's lists as the worst president ever. Despite the positive aspects of his presidency, including the opening of relations with China, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Nixon's name is inextricably linked with just one event that ended his political career: Watergate. What is Watergate? The name comes from the Watergate Hotel in Washington, and refers to a series of scandals associated with Nixon and his team. In 1972, members of Nixon's re-election team stormed the hotel that was the site of a meeting on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were arrested, and the ensuing scandal began to engulf his closest advisers, including aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr., who were convicted of conspiracy, theft, and wiretapping. Nixon tried to make it difficult to obtain information and interfered with the investigation at every turn, but it did not work. By August 1974, he was forced to resign, forever linking his name with political corruption. Nixon was officially pardoned by No. 38 - President Gerald Ford. When the complete White House transcripts of Nixon's presidency were released in 2013, another fascinating characteristic of the man emerged - his blatant anti-Semitism. You can hear him complaining about “the Jews” all the time.

13. George W. Bush - Jr. (2001 - 2009) - "Dubieu" and his expensive wars

Dubya's presidency began with the electoral vote controversy in Florida - under his brother's governorship - with a disputed victory over former Vice President Al Gore. It seemed that he won with a slight majority, but the famous scandal soon came to light. In fact, many precincts still used cardboard punch cards for voting, and when the punched holes or holes were not completely removed, it turned out that the machines did not count the vote. The Supreme Court intervened, stopping the recount and giving Bush the presidency. As a result, he was the sitting president at the time of the attacks of September 11, 2001, a national tragedy that also ignited the next round of global conflagration as Bush dragged the country into war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Along with the astronomical cost, estimated at approximately $5 trillion, the Iraq War was entered into on the basis of unsubstantiated evidence of weapons of mass destruction and flimsy accusations that he was simply ending the Gulf War that his father had started as president. Bush also faced criticism for his disastrous handling of the Hurricane Katrina crisis, as well as the 2008 financial crisis. Against the background of all of the above, his fame for his so-called Bushism or incorrect use of the English language seems to be an unimportant trifle. Lately, he seems to be trying to gain some traction in the polls with the campaign as he attempts to provide informed criticism of President No. 45's actions.

12. Herbert Hoover (1929 - 1933) - hated presidency

Number 31 was elected just before the Great Depression, which plunged the United States and the world economy into years of turmoil and millions of Americans into years of poverty and uncertainty. Hoover was a fiscal conservative and resisted the idea of ​​direct relief for hordes of unemployed citizens. Instead, he began major public works projects, such as the Hoover Dam, which bore his name. It wasn't a completely bad idea - but it was his refusal to use government funds to directly provide relief to the unemployed that made many Americans hate him. Unemployment rates stood at 25 percent, and about 5,000 banks closed. As if that weren't enough, a drought arrived and destroyed much of the American heartland. As the homeless began to build large makeshift towns on the outskirts of many cities, they called them Hoovervilles, in a kind of bitter ridicule of the man who would not help them when he had the opportunity to do so. “Prosperity cannot be restored by raiding the public Treasury,” he argued. Politically, he only made the Depression worse by triggering a worldwide fight against tariffs. To top it all off, he was a big fan of Prohibition, which led to the criminalization of the drinking business.

11. Franklin Pierce (1853 - 1857) - slave tool

Teddy Roosevelt, President No. 26, loathed his predecessor No. 14, calling him “a slave instrument worse than any ... ready to do any job entrusted to him by the leaders of the American slave trade.” That pretty much sums up the essence of Pierce's presidency. Judge for yourself - called "Doughface" by his political opponents - who believed in the expansion of the territory of the United States, and who believed in the benefit of slavery. He supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which replaced the Missouri Compromise of 1820, a law that prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. The new law allowed people living in what was then the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether to own slaves. Among his other stellar achievements was the proposal to take Cuba by force and the official recognition of the new regime in Nicaragua. The Central American country was invaded by an American pro-slavery man named William Walker, who made himself president. In addition, Pierce was an avid alcoholic, and, after the end of his sentence, he issued the phrase: “Well, everything is done, all that’s left is to drink.”

10. Andrew Jackson (1829 - 1837) - Indian killer

Andrew Jackson was a hero of the War of 1812 and was considered a champion of the common people - the white people. Immediately after he took office, he fired 919 government officials and installed his supporters in these positions, saying, “Winners are not judged.” Seems familiar... When he arrived among the Native Americans, his hatred knew no bounds; he was known as the “Indian Killer.” He was a strong supporter of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which allowed any state to remove Native Americans from their lands at will. He began by participating in brutal military raids against the Creek and Cherokee tribes under President Jefferson, and ordered the killing of women and children to clear the way for vast plantations in Alabama and Georgia. When gold was discovered on Cherokee lands in Georgia, he rejected existing treaties and brought in one of his own agents to ostensibly negotiate on behalf of the locals. This led to the Agreement regarding the resettlement of the Ekota tribe to the West. Jackson was also the largest slave owner in the southwestern United States.

9. Martin Van Buren (1837 - 1841) - trail of tears

Martin Van Buren, it must be said, inherited the collapse of the dollar from his predecessor, Andrew Jackson, under whom he served as vice president. But a great man would prove what he is capable of. For Van Buren, this meant simply going with the flow. Van Buren continued Jackson's anti-Indian policies, including going to war with the Seminoles in Florida, who objected to the idea of ​​forced migration westward. In 1838 he announced, “It is my special pleasure to inform Congress of the removal of the Cherokees to their new homes.” He oversaw the implementation of the Ekota Agreement. The forced deportation of Native Americans from the East Coast to lands west of the Mississippi River in midwinter became known as the Trail of Tears. It caused illness, starvation, and death among thousands of Cherokees along the way. Fun fact: Martin Van Buren was such a drunk that his nickname was the Blue Whiskey Van.

8. Warren G. Harding, (1921 - 1923) - unfit

Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, said it best himself: “I am unfit for this office and should never have been here.” Considered handsome in his day, a gambler essentially, he was apparently chosen by the Republican Party because he was a good old boy who didn't have much in the way of beliefs, moral character or political opinions. He was supposed to have spent his time in office partying with women, playing poker and golf, and oblivious to how his Republican cronies were doing their business. His Interior Secretary, for example, allowed oil industry officials to buy out a stake in the use of government reserves, which led to the Teapot Dome scandal, named after an oil storage site in Wyoming. He was an irresponsible brat. At the time, America's participation in the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, was the subject of bitter controversy. Harding's views were so vague that both sides thought he supported them. Democratic leader William Gibbs McAdoo called Harding's speeches "a pile of pompous blather, clawing its way through its own clutter in search of meaning." Harding died of a stroke in 1923 while still in office.

7. Zachary Taylor (1849 - 1850) - an inexperienced slacker

Zachary Taylor was a major general in the US Army and became something of a national hero during the Mexican-American War. By and large, he was able to become president thanks to his reputation. He made the list mainly because of his refusal to do, well, anything during his 16 months in office. Slavery was a huge issue at the time, causing significant debate in Congress. Perhaps it was the mistake of the Whig Party, a sort of forerunner of the Republicans, to place someone with no real political talent or experience at the top of power. Taylor was a southerner from Louisiana and at the same time an ordinary slave owner and chose not to notice the problem, leaving its solution to the discretion of the government.

6. William Henry Harrison (1841) - at least he was around for a short time

If it seems unfair to include someone who died of pneumonia just 31 days into his presidency, we can at least blame him for an empty presidency. We can also remember what he was famous for. As governor of the Indiana Territory in 1811, he led American forces against the Shawnee Indians under Tecumseh and a confederation of Indian tribes united to resist American occupation of their lands. Harrison's goal was to destroy the confederacy, and he did this by 1813 during the Battle of the Thames, when Tecumseh was killed and the confederacy dissolved. Harrison earned the nickname “Tippecanoe” after the site of one of the battles. The only success was that he gave the longest inauguration speech in American history.

5. John Tyler (1841 - 1845) - his Destruction

After Harrison succumbed to illness after only one month of his presidency, Vice President John Tyler became the 10th President of the United States - the longest-serving unelected President. Tyler seems more like a self-righteous opportunist than a politician. He started out as a Democrat but then joined the Whigs after opposing Andrew Jackson. As president, he continued to alienate both Democrats and his own party, believing that the president, not Congress, should set policy. He did so by vetoing many of his own party's bills—and he became the first president to have his veto overridden by Congress. He was a great proponent of so-called Manifest Destiny - or the divine right of America's European colonists to expand throughout the continent - and set in motion the annexation of Texas. His own party called him “His Destruction.” He tried to run for a second term, but was unable to gain support. Tyler eventually joined the Confederate government of the South after the Civil War began in 1861 shortly before his death.

4. Millard Fillmore (1850 - 1853) - Fugitive Slave Law

Sometimes when you're president, the question is, how much compromise do you have to have to save the world? In the case of the 13th President of the United States, this meant complete loyalty to slavery. Millard Fillmore became president after the death of Zachary Taylor in office. The former vice president disagreed with Taylor's empty approach to slavery and instead supported the so-called Compromise of 1850. The compromise consisted of five separate acts, the most notorious of which was officially called the "Fugitives from Justice and Runaways Act" and stated that all escaped slaves were to be returned to their owners. He did buy peace with the South for several years before the Civil War broke out, but in fact, he contributed to the spread of slavery. As the New York Times noted, it was “the mistake of President Fillmore, who considered slavery a political rather than a moral issue.”

3. James Buchanan (1857 - 1861) - judicial intervention

The Dred Scott case. Sanford was decided by the US Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, just two days after James Buchanan took office. But it turns out that the court's controversial decision was reached under pressure from the future president, who was eager to address the issue of slavery. Dred Scott was born a slave but was taken by his owner, who served in the armed forces in various states, some of which outlawed slavery. When the owner died, Scott married and had a child and tried to buy his freedom from the owner's widow. She refused, and Scott sued. This is the one where Buchanan appears on the scene because the case was seen as being decisive when it came to slave rights. The court ruled in Scott's favor, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the decision. Scott appealed to the US Supreme Court, which was ruled by a 7-2 majority - but, thanks to the intervention of James Buchanan and his cronies, Associate Justice John Catron and Associate Justice Robert Cooper Greer - it was ruled that people of African descent were not were citizens of the United States and therefore not entitled to liberty. It was widely reported that at Buchanan's inauguration, he met with Chief Justice Taney, who assured him that all the slaves would soon be dealt with. Fun fact: Buchanan was also a known alcoholic.

2. James Polk (1845 - 1849) - higher purpose

James Polk was a great believer in higher purpose. It is the belief that America and Americans were literally so special that they had a divine right to spread their colonies throughout North America. The Journal of the United States and the Democratic Review, a periodical published from 1837 to 1859, described him as “the man destined to spread us over the continent.” Polk used faith to justify the Mexican-American War of 1846 - 1848. It was a bloody conflict that had many famous opponents, including the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who refused to pay taxes that would support the conflict and went to prison for it. When things calmed down, the United States paid Mexico $15 million for half of the territory it had previously seized. Polk said, “Our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.”

1. William McKinley (1897 - 1901) - civilize and convert to Christianity

Many historians remember McKinley's presidency as one of rapid economic growth and protective tariffs. We will, however, point out his overinflated belief in his own divine mission, which led to one of America's most imperialistic presidencies. While other presidents have made similar moves, none have been successful; McKinley added much of the territory to the American map. At the time, the people of Cuba had gone to war against Spain, and McKinley saw opportunity for his aspirations in the Caribbean and the Pacific Coast. Secretary of State John Hay called the Spanish-American War of 1898 a “splendid little war,” and it opened up lucrative sugar and other Caribbean markets to the US and companies such as American Tobacco, Bethlehem Steel and United Fruit, which took over millions of acres of land. The treaty that ended the war with Spain through Cuba created the American Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. McKinley was said to not know what to do with the Philippines, believing that “they were unfit for self-government.” In his opinion, America's goal was to “educate and convert them to Christianity.”