Ranking the Presidents #31

GEORGE W. BUSH (R) - 2001-2009

I'm sure it's too soon to say where he'll ultimately rank. I know some believe he's the worst president we've ever had; others believe he'll be vindicated like Truman. I have a hard time ranking him too high when I look at the state of the country in 2008. He would have had a better legacy had he only served one term.

Bush won a hard-fought campaign by electoral votes but not by popular votes. It wasn't the first time such had happened in US history, but never has an election come down to less than 1000 in one state. As such, Bush did not get a honeymoon phase, with millions in the country crying he stole the election. Then 9/11 happened. In the weeks after that terrorist attack, his popularity hit 90%. The country was behind him. He authorized an attack on Afghanistan, and later, on Iraq. It was a reversal of US foreign policy to pre-emptively strike against Iraq, and it wound up being on largely false intelligence.

While presidents usually raise taxes to fund wars, Bush decided to cut them. He passed the largest tax cut in history. He also passed the biggest budgets and largest deficits in US history (history that would be broken by Obama, but still...)

It was his second term where everything fell apart. The Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts had no end in sight, and were still going after his eight years were up. The Abu Ghraib scandal hurt the US's reputation around the world and started debates between what is torture and what are merely "enhanced interrogation techniques." Bush's slow response to Hurricane Katrina made him seem insensitive to the sufferings of the common folk, and the real nail in his coffin came with the financial collapse in 2008. The government bailed out banks and financial institutions, fearing that to not do so would cause the worst economic depression in US history. The national debt had doubled on his watch, and in the final year of his presidency the US lost an estimated 2.6 million jobs. His approval rating at one point hit 22%, the lowest in history since approval ratings have been recorded, breakign the record set by Truman.

Now with the wave of democratic protests in the Middle East, maybe Bush's legacy will improve, or maybe it'll look better against Obama's if the economy doesn't improve soon. I think it raising to Truman levels is a real stretch. Bush campaigned as a conservative but grew the government with increased spending, and suspended many civil liberties in the name of security. He inherited a recession when he came into office, and after some years of success, he left an even worse recession to the next guy.

Ranking the Presidents #32

JIMMY CARTER (D) - 1977-1981

After the resignation of Nixon and the pardoning by Ford, Jimmy Carter was elected to be the 39th President as a pallet-cleanser, an honest man. The former peanut farmer could just never gather a consensus together to achieve any of his noble goals.

Ted Kennedy attacked him from the left and Ronald Reagan from the right, and Carter never could come up with anything to solve the nation's problems with inflation, rising prices, and the energy crisis. He was sharply criticized for having the United States boycott the 1980 Olympics in the USSR, his response to the Russians being in Afghanistan. The Iranian hostage crisis dominated the last year of his presidency, and it was only after he lost re-election that the hostages were released.

Carter's gone on to do a lot of humanitarian work and is there to speak for any liberal cause, but while in office, no matter how smart he supposedly was, the nation spun its wheels in malaise for four years.

Ranking the Presidents #33

MARTIN VAN BUREN (D) - 1837-1841

The 8th President had an impressive pedigree. Secretary of State and then Vice-President under Pres. Jackson, he was also Jackson's personal choice to carry on his legacy. A dramatic deflation in his first year in office crippled the economy his entire, and therefore only, term.

To set himself up as his own man, Van Buren went against many of Jackson's old policies, and his political calculations added up to nothing. In the case over the Amistad, he sided with Spain to try to give the kidnapped men back as slaves. In the case of the Extermination Order in Missouri, where the governor made it legal to murder Mormons, he refused to interfere for fear to do so would mean losing Missouri's vote in his re-election bid.

While in office, he believed slavery was morally wrong but fiercely defended it on Constitutional grounds. Eight years after leaving office, he tried a re-election bid under the Free Soil party, which had an anti-slavery platform, but came in a distant third.

Ranking the Presidents #34

JOHN TYLER (W) - 1841-1845

I'll start with what the 10th president did well. When Pres. Harrison died a few weeks after his inauguration, the country questioned what exactly this meant for leadership. Vice-President Tyler, who didn't talk much with Harrison, established that it meant he was President now. Not Acting President, and not Vice-President. Some in Congress and in the nation tried to resist this, but his strength on the issue set the example for succession.

He also tried to annex Texas. Eventually that was a good thing, but at the time, it increased the sectionalism in the US that was dividing the North and South. Texas allowed slavery, and Tyler appointed staunch pro-slavery advocate John Calhoun as his Secretary of State to seal the deal.

Tyler had been a compromise as a VP pick, switching parties to the Whigs to get the nomination. After Harrison died, he went against his party on most issues and policies, veoing almost every bill put before him. Former president turned Congressman John Quincy Adams led a movement to impeach Tyler, finding his use of the veto power abusive, but it never got off the ground. Despised by the Whigs he'd joined and the Democrats he'd abandoned, Tyler tried to win re-election on a third party ticket. Once it was clear he had no chance, he threw his endorsement to James Polk.

Later in life he supported the Confederacy in the Civil War and was elected to the CSA's House of Representatives but died before he could take office. It meant he's the only President in US history to not have his death officially mourned in Washignton DC.

Ranking the Presidents #35

HERBERT W. HOOVER (R) - 1929-1933

Hoover was Commerce Secretary under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, and many gave him the credit for the booming 1920s. As such, he must shoulder the blame for the stock market crash of 1929, and all his economic expertise failed him in getting it turned around.

The 31st President, who believed he would end poverty, saw unemployment rise to a staggering 24.9% on his watch. Banks went bust, companies folded, tens of thousands found themselves homeless, and Hoover rejected calls for a welfare program for fear of the budget deficits it would cause. He did raise taxes from on the top earners from 25% to 63%, doubled the estate tax, increased the corporate tax by 15%, and added a two-cent "check tax" on all bank checks. He tried many government programs to turn things around, and he lost re-election easily to FDR, who campaigned against Hoover's "reckless" taxing and spending.

At least he got a Dam.

Ranking the Presidents #36

MILLARD FILLMORE (W) - 1850-1853

One of those rare presidents whose dubious distinction was that his administration led to the annihilation of his political party.

After President Taylor's death, Fillmore became the 13th President, and while his past would have indicated anti-slavery positions, he immediately started instigating pro-slavery measures, his worst being the Fugitive Slave Act. Many Whigs instantly regretted approving him as Taylor's Vice-President, and after Fillmore failed to win a second term, he joined the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party, while many of the anti-slavery Whigs, including Lincoln, flocked to the Republican party.

Ranking the Presidents #37

WARREN G. HARDING (R) - 1921-1923

Harding often ranks lowest in presidential polls, but when I look at what he actually accomplished as president, I don't know how fair that is. He helped get the country out of the post World War I depression. He also surrounded himself with some of the worst scoundrels to ever have access to the White House, and that must ultimately tip the scales. Had Harding lived, it's hard to say if the corruption would have been worse, or if any new policies could have overshadowed them.

The 29th president had to fill a leadership vacuum when Woodrow Wilson's term finally ended. His affable nature, his comfort with the press, his openness in the Oval office all seemed to indicate he'd be a good leader. He did start the Bureau of Veteran Affairs, cut taxes to jump-start the economy, argued for reconciliation with Germany while being opposed to the League of Nations, and presided over a drastic reduction in unemployment. His attempts at anti-lynching legislation were killed in Congress. His re-election still seemed a shoo-in when he died suddenly. Then the truth came out. The dishonesty of the "Ohio Gang", the Teapot Dome scandal, and the affairs hurt, and for decades he's been the main one to take the blame for what led to the Great Depression.

It's really the hypocrisy he and his men exhibited during Prohibition that's the sore thumb. Bribes, grafts, and payoffs were common. Bootlegging boomed as a business for a criminal few thanks to the underhanded ways. More than one government official committed suicide (or was murdered, who can say). Harding kept his own liquor stash. He squandered his time.

Ranking the Presidents #38

FRANKLIN PIERCE (D) - 1853-1857

I've always felt sorry for the 14th president. Here was a man who probably should have recused himself before his first day in office. After he was elected but before he could take office, he saw his last living son die in a railroad accident. Alcoholism and depression marked his entire term.

But even without his personal tragedy, he still wouldn't have been very good. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was keeping slavery in check. A showdown would have eventually come, but he stocked his cabinet with pro-slavery Southerners and made the "Kansas Question" worse. The Ostend Manifesto, where the US asserted they had the right to seize Cuba from Spain in the name of security if Spain wouldn't sell it to them, was laughable.

After his presidency, he condemned Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and sided with the Confederate States of America.