The Who’s Who Of The Best Of The Worst Presidents In American History
Where this is all speculative given the particular source and criteria in which one gauges their answer — a greater inconsistency from historians by era and preconceived biases going into such a debate — there remain two American presidents in contention for The Worst President In History, the third of whom, Andrew Johnson — 1865 to 1869, having resisted Radical Republican policies targeted at securing the rights and well-being of the emancipated slaves, while manipulating the Reconstruction aims, as former president and historian, Woodrow Wilson suggested, it was a vindictive program that hurt even repentant southerners while benefiting northern opportunists, the so-called Carpetbaggers, and cynical white southerners, or Scalawags, who exploited alliances with blacks for political gain.
Johnson, had an unrelenting political ineptitude showing great indifference toward the newly freed African-Americans and their plight by vetoing the first Civil Rights bill and championed persistent opposition to the 14th amendment that would later form the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges regarding same-sex marriage. Notably, Johnson was the first president to be impeached.
Though Johnson had a blatant and overt disregard for the African-Americans, Trump was not the first racist president. Where Calvin Coolidge’s (1923–1929) Immigration Act of 1924 bipartisan measure further restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe, severely hindering African immigrants, and banned the immigration of Near East and Asians, he stated “America must be kept American,” during his first annual message to Congress in 1923.
But this is but a runner up lost in the quagmire of fellow racists like Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1961) that when NAACP lawyers persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to rule Jim Crow as unconstitutional in 1954, Eisenhower did not endorse Brown v. Board of Education and dragged his feet enforcing it previously stating that he could understand why white southerners wanted to make sure ‘their sweet little girls [are not] required to sit in school alongside some big black buck’ at a White House dinner a year prior to the Chief Justice, Earl Warren. It wasn’t long after the 1954 Brown decision that Eisenhower took a defiant hands-off approach to what was arguably a war on segregation.
Perhaps during his presidency, Donald Trump drew inspiration from James Polk (1845–1849), who while “Manifest Destiny” rang in his ears like a banging gong, stole land and slaughtered the indigenous people and Mexicans while turning a blind eye to the further exploitation of the African-American slaves. Through such racial alliteration within John O’Sullivan’s prose, the president took to the Mexican-American war (1846–1848) with little reticence. Polk, who initially tried to purchase the land sent diplomat, John Slidell, with a $30 million dollar offer to Mexico City yet the Mexican government vehemently declined meeting the American ambassador. Undeterred and malcontent, Polk, intransigent in wanting the territory escalating tensions between countries by stationing an army at the mouth of the Rio Grande. provoking the Mexicans into war in January of 1846. While reflecting upon his experience as a general in such battles, Ulysses S. Grant penned in his memoirs “…one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.” Where there was so much inherent fervor despite grave reservations by the Abolitionists, the war was fought primarily by volunteers the army swelled from just some 6,000 to over 115,000.
Yet, for as egregious as the Manifest Destiny led tenure of Polk was, it remains miles away from Trump. nor the man he challenges for the best of the worst. Where I can draw upon nearly ten others (perhaps more if you want to include slave owners that raped and fathered children from their slaves), but I will skip to the head of the line in suggesting that for all that Trump has done wrong, the myriad of ways in which he individually set the nation on a backwards trek, and the sheer ineptitude in which he governed(?), historically and contextually Trump fails even within this lofty task of cementing himself as The Worst President in American History, but only by a very slim margin.
The winner, and a wretched human being if ever there was one, Andrew Jackson, (1829–1837), whom shared the same predilections toward such exploitation of indigenous people and African-American slaves as did Andrew Johnson who, was the first ever impeached president, and arguably is the best of the worse presidents because of which, takes a infinitesimally close third in my book as an armchair historian. It was, like most of the other presidents enumerated within this post, the cavalier nature within his discrimination and the magnitude of disease, deprivation, and disease wrought upon a people that through seemingly genocidal ambitions rates him slightly higher than Johnson and Trump by the tainted scars left in his wake as president upon this very nation. Jackson was a gambler, a wealthy slaveholder, and a racist Indian fighter who murdered an opponent in a duel. For much of his life, including his time as president, Andrew Jackson callously broke the law. In campaigns to steal Creek and Cherokee land in Georgia and Alabama he allegedly ordered his forces to massacre women and children. Jackson illegally declared martial law in New Orleans during the War of 1812, invaded Spanish Florida without authorization; removed federal deposits from the Bank of the United States precipitating a major depression; and refused to obey a Supreme Court ruling favoring Native Americans in Worcester v. Georgia. Jackson’s two most lasting “achievements” as President were his veto of a law renewing the charter for a national bank, causing economic disruption for a decade, and the 1830 Indian Removal Act. The Trail of Tears left all but a vestige of an entire people — noble and true — that, as an unforgivable sin, shall linger… And we are a unwhole nation because of which.
