Then let's look at Dubya, ranked 37th worse in a tie with Richard M. Nixon. Yes, he did mishandle the occupation of Iraq for a time. But in the end, he prevailed, just like Lincoln did. Yes, homeland security is still not what it should be, but at the same time, he kept us safe from terrorist attacks by keeping the terrorists busy going down to defeat in Iraq, which is now emerging as a new democracy, the first positive change in the Middle East since 1967 (heh). And what's up with those quotes around the "war on terror"? Would they work to downplay "World War II," which their number 3 best president used to justify the massive internment of US citizens of Japanese descent? Finally, they bizzarely mention Dubya's approval rating at the end of his term. But their number 8 best president, Ronald Reagan, also left office with low approval ratings over Iran-Contra! Since when are approval ratings even a factor in determining the historical worth of a president?
These "experts," I suspect, are a bunch of left-leaning, ivory tower-skulking academics without an ounce of integrity between the lot of them. Dubya is in the spot more appropriate for Jimmy Carter. As for his ultimate place in history, let's wait ten years or more to find out. Such judgments are best made posthumously.
FDR was the worst president we have had so far. The New Deal alone earned him that title, but signing the death warrants of millions of Europeans by handing them over to Stalin solidified his position.
Woodrow Wilson in the top 10??!!?
KKK Wilson re-segregated the federal government. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised that leftist historians love that.
It would help your argument to be factually accurate at the start. Lincoln was inaugurated Monday, March 4th, 1861. He was shot on Friday, April 13th, 1865 and died the next day, 4 years and 40 days of the Presidency. The U.S. Civil War officially started with the firing on Ft.Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12th, 1861 and principally ended April 26th, 1865 with the breakup of the last CSA Army under Joe Johnson in North Carolina, 4 years and 14 days of battle. Your best usage is 4 years long and IF I would say mishandled, I would put that length from First Bull Run (7/21/1861) to March 2nd, 1864 when US Grant became Lincoln's top general and WT Sherman top general in the West, 2 years and 8 months. You could make a case for the start of mishandling in failing to accept General-in-Chief Winfield Scott's proposed strategy called the Anaconda Plan in May of 1861 which was the essential winning strategy by the end of the war.
Also Atlanta was surrendered to Sherman in September of 1864, not October, after Joe Johnson abandoned its defense as unsustainable. I agree and disagree with other items in this paragraph but Lincoln wins the U.S. Civil War while being the most attacked President in history, loses a son to disease, tolerates a difficult wife, fights depression, gives some of the best speeches in history and then dies a martyr's death. Hard to fight that hand.
It should be required that these “experts” wait 75 years (min.) before ranking any president.
My list...
WORST
1) Abraham Lincoln
BEST
1) Ronald Reagan
How can FDR be on the 10 best list? Because of his big government policies the depression was prolonged for years longer than it would have if he had done nothing. WWII got us out of the depression, FDR kept us in it.
Any ten worst list that doesn’t include Jimmy Carter is inaccurate. Carter gave is an Islamic Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a horrible economy that he didn’t know how to fix, and he fiddled while all sorts of disasters happened around the world. He was a one term president, unlike either Nixon or W. for a reason. As for best presidents, Washington belongs on the top of that list and Ronald Reagan should definitely be in the top 5.
Sure, these academics are mostly lefties, and have a bias against Dubya and Nixon. Regarding the top 5, leaving Lincoln out for a moment (I’ll get to him later), it astonishes me beyond measure that Harry Truman, a political hack if there ever was one, was picked as the 5th greatest President! Any President in 1945 would have made the decision to use the atomic bombs on Japan, so that does not count as some great act of courage. The Soviet Union gobbled up all of Eastern Europe under Truman’s watch (he did save Greece and the tiny enclave of West Berlin, though), and the Communists overran China. Now he may not have been able to do much about Eastern Europe, but his support to Chiang Kai Shek was horribly ineffectual. Worse still is Truman’s desire for American troops to “die for a tie” in Korea, after the Red Chinese intervened in Nov. 1950. And then, having the temerity to fire the foremost military commander in American history, Douglas MacArthur, because MacArthur disagreed with Truman’s fecklessness. The cowardice (and there is no other word) and backstabbing of MacArthur’s fellow general officers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is also apalling. Truman claimed that the decision to fire MacArthur was unanimously endorsed by Secretary of Defense General George Marshall, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Presidential Adviser Averell Harriman, and by General Omar Bradley and his entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. MacArthur replied by pointing out each of these individuals had personal prejudices against him: Marshall disliked MacArthur from way back—at least to the time the Phillipines were lost to Japan on Mac’s watch; Harriman resented a heated conference in Tokyo; Acheson had a spiteful attitude against MacArthur because of MacArthur’s interference with the State Department’s socialistic concepts for Japan. As for Bradley, his enmity undoubtedly had its origin in MacArthur’s refusal to accept him as his senior ground commander for the invasion of Japan because of his decisions and actions connected with the Battle of the Bulge, where he was the ground commander and which resulted in approximately as many American casualties as were sustained in the entire Southwest Pacific Area campaigns. Why the other Joint Cheifs didn’t step up, I don’t know; presumably they were cowed by “Brad.” If an organization, even such a select group as five-star general officers, doesn’t behave as a family, with utmost loyalty toward, and expected from, it’s members, how can it function properly?
As for “Honest Abe”, yes, it’s true, he fosterd incompetent bunglers as generals for at least the first 2 1/2 years of the Rebellion (Grant, Sherman et al. would rise to the occasion later), but it must never be forgotten that he treated the Union like it was a Mafia family or a roach trap, to wit: “Once your in, there’s no gettin’ out. IMO, that’s shameful.