Either the greatest or the stupidest presidential list ever compiled
Prelude: The List and the Gimmick
The wonderful, terrifying, complex, and wholly original United States turns 250 years old in a few weeks, and to mark the occasion, I’ve tried my hand at a great American tradition: the clickbait listicle. What follows is my amateur attempt to rank all 65 men and one woman who have served in the nation’s highest office or who have found themselves, for however brief a time, under the title of “American President” or one of its close corollaries.
The gimmick is this: between Independence and the first federal election, twelve men served the country under the title “President of the United States (in Congress Assembled)” – more commonly called Presidents of the Continental Congress. For very sensible reasons, nobody considers them in histories of “the presidency.” They shared a name, but the two roles were radically different, and it wouldn’t be fair to compare them; apples and oranges, etc. But in a very, very narrow and very, very technical sense, they count as Presidents of the United States, and nobody has ever ranked them properly, so here they are.
If you think that’s ridiculous, it gets way worse. There were also two short-lived sovereign Republics on American soil – the Republic of Vermont and the Republic of Texas – who boasted their own “American Presidents” in the brief spans of time before their annexation. Technically speaking, the Republic of Vermont had one other chief executive not on this list, Moses Robinson, but he was only ever called “Governor.” Thomas Chittenden, on the other hand, was called “President” and “Governor” interchangeably during the early days of independence— and so, by the extremely lax standards of this list, he counts.
And if we’re counting “legitimate” American Republics which were later annexed into the US, we should also probably count the illegitimate Republic that spawned on American soil and declared war on its host and was destroyed and reabsorbed by force. So Jefferson Davis, technically an “American President,” gets added to the list and immediately punted to the very bottom.
It gets even dumber. There were three times in the modern presidency – twice under George W. Bush and once under Joe Biden – where the chief executive underwent a colonoscopy under anesthesia and the VP became, for a few brief hours, the Acting President of the United States. Both of those individuals are on this list. How is it fair that Kamala Harris (85 minutes) and Dick Cheney (2 hours 15 minutes) share space on the same list as Lincoln and Roosevelt? It’s not fair. It’s not fair to anyone involved. But they had the nuclear football and the full vested power of the presidency. If those colonoscopies went south, they were already positioned to take over. They could have taken over anyway, if they really wanted to. It’s to their credit that their hours-long tenures were extremely boring. If Thomas Chittenden gets to be on the list, they get to be on the list.
It gets even, even dumber. Inauguration Day in 1849 fell on a Sunday, and Zachary Taylor refused to swear his oath on the Sabbath. So when Polk’s term expired, the powers of the presidency, according to a very, very niche and very, very suspect legal argument, devolved upon then-President pro tempore of the Senate, David Rice Atchison. Nobody aside from Atchison actually believes that he held the powers of the presidency. But his gravestone is inscribed with the words “President for a Day” (which is better than, I guess, “Butcher of Kansas,” which would be more appropriate). He has never been represented on a serious list of American presidents. This is not a serious list, so he is represented here.
Surely, you might think, there has to be a better way to represent all these “real” and “half” and “barely” and “probably illegitimate” presidents and all the complicated things that their very different tenures have meant to the country. Surely lists are all a bit silly to begin with— surely not every president needs a number. Surely, you might object, there’s a better way to honor the multiform weirdness and wonders of American history than with something as structurally flawed as a straightforward list.
Anyway, here’s the list. (Scroll seven paragraphs down)
The Real Introduction and Final Caveats
I’m not a historian, and this list has no authority. This is a purely personal exercise, published for the sake of hearing alternative perspectives.
The other issue is that this is a deeply, deeply unscientific list. Some presidents are given a lot of credit for what they might have done, had they lived longer (Zachary Taylor, James Garfield). Some are penalized for what they probably would have done had they reigned for longer (William Henry Harrison). Some are given credit for their personal character above their concrete accomplishments; others’ tremendous personal flaws get excused because of their accomplishments. Some presidents get credit for bold and ultimately failed visions (John Quincy Adams), while others’ failed visions count against them (Woodrow Wilson). Some presidents (John Quincy again) are bumped in the rankings because of their post-Presidency careers, while others’ remarkable retirements (Jimmy Carter’s) don’t count as much, and others’ (John Tyler) send them cratering down to the bottom. Alcoholics get small bumps if they were tragic and graceful drunks (Franklin Pierce) and get demoted if they were oafish buffoons (Andrew Johnson).
Many of the early presidents get credit for the butterfly effect: their otherwise mundane actions are rewarded because they set meaningful precedents for centuries to come. This puts modern presidents at a severe disadvantage, since even a sparkling modern record might have less of a benevolent influence than a mediocre tenure in the first few generations. John Adams at #3 is almost certainly a stretch, but he gets an enormous amount of leeway for being the second ever to hold the position
There’s also not a partisan program here. These are not the presidents with whom I am most “politically aligned.” Some of my personal favorites are very low on the list. (For reasons of sympathy alone, I wish I could bump Franklin Pierce higher) I tried to capture, as best I could, the men who “did the best job for their times,” keeping in mind that that looked like very different things in different moments. The closer the timeline gets to the present (W. Bush through Trump), the more uncertain and liable to change the rankings become. Trump, still in his second administration, gets a provisional asterisk.
Strange patterns emerge in this history that have nothing to do with politics proper. Others have pointed out that, pound-for-pound, the American Presidency is one of the deadliest workplaces in the country (nearly 18% of “real” presidents have died on the job). Also eerie is the number of sons who died while their fathers were in office. Lincoln lost 11-year old Willie; Coolidge lost 16-year old Calvin Jr.; Adams lost 30-year old Charles; Kennedy lost two-day old Patrick Bouvier; Franklin Pierce lost 11-year old Benny weeks before Inauguration; Biden lost Beau while still serving as VP. Many of these men took these losses as a personal punishment and never forgave themselves. Coolidge believed the loss was a macabre “price” for his own political success and became dissociated with politics ever afterwards. Pierce refused to swear his Oath on a Bible because he thought he was under God’s wrath; he is the second (or possibly third) president to use a book of secular law instead.
One final note, in case it bears repeating: the country has always been bigger than its chief executives. However great, or terrible, or forgettable our presidents have been, the country has never found its source and summit in them. Our history can be written through them only partly.
**And some last niche caveats: Among those not included in this list are: Presidents of other North, Central, or South American countries, though they are, properly, “American Presidents” (I challenge someone else to make that list); American monarchs (King Kamehameha, Queen Liliuokalani); Native American chieftains; presidents of unrecognized, fringe republics; William B. Ide (California Republic); Moses Robinson (Republic of Vermont); leaders of the Mormon State of Deseret; the Seven Presidents of Pennsylvania (aside from Thomas Mifflin), and anybody else I forgot to mention.
1. George Washington
President of the United States of America, 1789-1797
The most imaginative, brilliant, and level-headed collection of political philosophers of the last 500 years (the Founding Fathers) were only ever unanimously agreed on one thing: Washington was their leader. The man himself was, arguably, unimpressive (as a general, as a thinker, etc.)— scholars can handle that question. But within his lifetime Washington was elected to play the impossible role of Great Unifier and National Hero. He knew what was at stake, and he played it brilliantly. Consider: he was still alive when he was immortalized, a situation which defeats almost everybody who experiences it. And yet, knowing that the integrity of the frail republic depended upon such theatrics, he carried himself in public as the consummate “gentleman” politician: courteous, self-denying, dignified in everything— an American Cincinnatus called unwillingly from his farm to take up the cause of the nation. Was it a show? Maybe. Did he really know what he was doing, or was it a desperate put-on? Either way, he did the job that was expected of him: the narrow, unglamorous, undeclared job that actually mattered for posterity. A boring choice for #1? Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. Partisanship and party politicking, which would explode upon his resignation, were mostly kept offstage during his terms by the sheer respect that Washington commanded. But beyond all this, he belongs in this spot for the most important and consequential precedent of all: he willingly gave up his own power at the end of his term. When King George III learned that Washington was planning to do just such a thing, he replied, presciently: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
2. Abraham Lincoln
President of the United States, 1861-1865
An eternal enigma. A backwoods Kentucky boy turned failed statesman turned failed Senator turned most consequential president of American history, full-stop. A rhetorician. A folk hero. A winsome ghost. A Dark Angel. Presided over, and won, the deadliest war ever fought by Americans. Gunned down by a coward before the final stretch of victory. The wittiest, and strangest, and most mythopoetical president we’ve ever had.
3. John Adams
President of the United States, 1797-1801
A diplomat first and foremost, and one of the most misunderstood and slandered presidents of any age. Taunted and sabotaged while alive, treated as second-rate in posterity, his accomplishments are understated but world-shaping in their reach. Like Washington, his actually meaningful achievements are unglamorous, and in many ways unmeasurable. We simply can’t say how badly our first decades might have been without Adams’s steady hand and diplomatic adventurism. In the Revolution, he channeled support from France and, on his own initiative, from The Netherlands. As president, he prevented absolute catastrophes (like War with France) and he did so by playing the unforgiving game of soft diplomacy. He did almost everything right and was ruthlessly vilified for it.
4. Thomas Jefferson
President of the United States, 1801-1809
A sneak; a partisan; a manipulative genius whose successes somehow dwarf his gargantuan flaws. Doubled the size of the country; penned some of the greatest documents in the nation’s (and modern world’s) history; designed and built a world-class university; supplied his own book collection to rebuild the Library of Congress; a scholar and philosopher and amateur scientist and architect and debtor and cynic and slaveholder and author of religious freedom.
5. Dwight D. Eisenhower
President of the United States, 1953-1961
Hero of the Allied troops in Europe; architect of the Interstate; master of Cold War diplomacy and domestic politics; New Deal Republican; President of Columbia University; military genius and arch-skeptic of the “Military-Industrial Complex” (his phrase). A Kansas man in the best meaning of the term: affable, clear-eyed, humble, masking a quiet, disciplined ferociousness. A good man and a great leader.
6. Theodore Roosevelt
President of the United States, 1901-1909
In the words of his daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth: “My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.” Shot mid-speech on the campaign trail by a would-be assassin and, quite literally, kept speaking. A cartoon character of a man. The Ernest Hemingway president. His bizarre, outsized affectations threaten to outshine his actual presidential accomplishments—but the first Roosevelt president produced a remarkable and bewildering legacy (National Parks; trust-busting; the Roosevelt Corollary; the Panama Canal).
7. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
President of the United States, 1933-1945
Presided over the nation in some of the most consequential years in World (if not necessarily American) history. Every American seems to know something about FDR, and everybody has their pet theory and pet complaints about his reforms and about the man. Did the New Deal do more economic harm than good? Did Roosevelt know about Pearl Harbor in advance? Shouldn’t he have done [any number of actions leading up to, and after, the outbreak of war]? And these are good questions. But even so. The sheer range and scale of the only four-term president’s tenure is impossible to capture. The WPA; the Civilian Conservation Corps; Social Security; Glass-Steagall; Japanese (and Italian and German) Internment; the Fireside chats; rationing; the bulk of the deadliest and grandest war ever fought in the history of the planet. Whether or not he was a “good” man (and he almost certainly was), he was a textbook case of a “Great Man.”
8. Ronald Reagan
President of the United States, 1981-1989
With Reagan (and Kennedy, just below), the question of greatness drifts into the question of image. Were these men Important Men because of what they accomplished or because of the myth they built, or allowed others to build, around themselves? Reagan’s policy record is full of blunders and near-blunders even from the conservative side of the ticker (supply side economics, Iran-Contra, a ballooning deficit)—and yet, he is remembered (and probably will always be remembered) for the role he played at the End of History: the fall of the Soviet Union. Could another president have managed the delicate and showy pageantry that led to the final collapse of the Evil Empire and the Iron Curtain? Possibly; but Reagan did it in our timeline, and, like Washington, he understood the role brilliantly.
9. John F. Kennedy
President of the United States, 1961-1963
President for a thousand days and change, and yet, next to Lincoln, one of the modern nation’s most potent Myths. Sixty years on, nothing can break the spell of Camelot: not the affairs; not the drug regimen; not the health scandals; not the ghostwritten Pulitzer Prize; not the Bay of Pigs. Every now and again, someone poses the question: what if Kennedy had survived? Meaning: would we still love him? Or would he become, in our eyes, a sickly, lewd, small man? We will never have the answer to the question—but, as with Reagan, there’s also plenty behind the myth to sustain it. If nothing else: Kennedy shepherded the country, and the world, through one of its categorical near-misses with the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, as the president who threw down the gauntlet of the Space Program, he’s responsible for perhaps the noblest and most important project ever launched by any world leader.
10. James Garfield
President of the United States, 1881
One of the few men of unimpeachable character to hold the office and the greatest “What If” story of American presidential history. A Church of Christ preacher turned visionary president and the second Chief Executive to die by assassination. Almost certainly would have steered the country through the wreckage of Post-Reconstruction better than any of the men who followed him.
11. John Quincy Adams
President of the United States, 1825-1829
The most intelligent man ever to occupy the White House. Along with Henry Clay, advanced a vision of American greatness (“the American System”) which was dashed by the populist who succeeded him. Unafraid of a fight and willing to fight even in the inglorious arena of the People’s House. Afterwards, a voice of conscience until his fatal collapse on the floor of Congress at age 80.
12. James Madison
President of the United States, 1809-1817
An odd, mousy, joyless character immortalized more for his work on The Federalist Papers than for his presidency. A political genius whose genius seemed to wane the longer his career went on. The War of 1812 president. The one under whom the British burned DC. A mixed bag as a Commander in Chief. But—again—The Federalist Papers, and more importantly, the Bill of Rights (of which he was the principal author), are more than enough to redeem him.
13. Calvin Coolidge
President of the United States, 1923-1929
Silent Cal. An oddball “do-nothing” president who managed to oversee one of the strangest and most prosperous eras in national history (“The Roaring Twenties”). “The chief business of the American people is business.” An (apocryphal) dinner guest bet that she could compel more than three words out of him over the course of an evening; he replied, “you lose” and said nothing else the rest of the night. Rode a mechanical horse called “Thunderbolt” three times a day. Often pressed the “panic” button installed in the White House so he could play hide and seek with Secret Service. Sworn in by his own father. Lost a son while in office. Blamed by some for the crash that followed his term. But of all the horrendous abuses that occurred after him in the 20thand 21st century Modern Leviathan-Presidency, from so many different ambitious men, it’s refreshing to hear the story of somebody who transparently didn’t want the job, and did so little with it, and yet did so well.
14. Harry S. Truman
President of the United States, 1945-1953
The legacy stands and falls with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was either (the wisdom goes) a “tragic necessity” or one of the greatest crimes against humanity of the century. More and more, with distance, the latter seems to be the prevailing wisdom. That Truman felt no discernable guilt over his decision makes it incredibly, incredibly hard to keep him ranked this highly. But as both a wartime and postwar president, Truman gets an enormous amount of leeway that may or may not rightly belong to him. He presided over V-E and V-J Days. The Marshall Plan, and the rebuilding of the smoldering ruins of Europe, are to his enormous credit. Whether the Truman Doctrine can be blamed directly for all the disastrous entanglements of the rest of the century is an open question, but in the calculus of the early Cold War, it’s hard to imagine how else a chief executive ought to have addressed himself to the Soviets. They can’t all be John Adamses, after all.
15. Zachary Taylor
President of the United States, 1849-1850
The only good Whig president (because every Whig convention chose a disappointing candidate). A Southern slaveowner, he opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories, encouraged admission of California and New Mexico as free states, and promised action against Texas if it tried to encroach on New Mexico. Likely would have vetoed the disastrous Compromise of 1850 (including the Fugitive Slave Act), and threatened, with complete seriousness, to personally lead the Army to fight and hang the Southerner slavocrats who were then agitating for secession. His incredibly attenuated actual record as president is boosted enormously by the very real possibility that, if he had lived, the contest between secessionists and Unionists might have been brought to a head a whole decade sooner. Would it have meant Civil War? Was there an alternative path that might have avoided the war altogether, maybe conjured up with the black magic of Henry Clay (also a Whig, even if a rival)? It’s impossible to say. In the gonzo metaverse of presidential “what ifs,” there’s a world out there where Zachary Taylor plays the role of Lincoln in a far stranger Civil War than the one we got. All of this is speculation, and Taylor, probably, is getting far too much credit here. But he certainly stands as one of the most underrated of the forgotten presidents.
16. William McKinley
President of the United States, 1897-1901
Third President to be assassinated and a candidate for the bravest death on record (“go easy on him, boys”). Fought and won a morally grey war but inarguably launched a new era of American power—the United States as a global empire. Whether this was good, or right, or just, is, as always, an open question. Added Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii to the country’s territories before being gunned down by a Polish anarchist whose name nobody can ever pronounce.
17. James Monroe
President of the United States, 1817-1825
The Era of Good Feelings president. The closest president (after Washington) to receive a perfect electoral college score (short one vote by the end). The first president of the original lineup to be, really, a dud. The glory for most of his successes (like the acquisition of Florida) were John Quincy’s or had to do with the fact that the entire opposition party collapsed in the aftermath of the War of 1812. It’s not hard to run a country as a one-party system. But Monroe was there at the right time, and he did run it.
18. James K. Polk
President of the United States, 1845-1849
A genuinely terrifying man. Annexed Texas; acquired massive tracts of Western land after launching the Mexican-American War; bullied the British over the Oregon Territory and won; and famously accomplished all of his campaign goals in a single term and refused to run again. As with McKinley, the queasiness around his conquests makes the overall judgment a hard one to fully sanction. Undeniably the country would be far, far different – and ultimately, far, far weaker – without Polk. And yet, he is not the kind of man I’d like to share a room with.
19. Ulysses S. Grant
President of the United States, 1869-1877
One of the saddest success stories in the Executive branch. A business failure and a drunkard turned war hero and savior of the republic, turned president whose cabinet forever besmirched his reputation. Failed his bid for a presidential comeback and died nearly penniless, working on his (brilliant) memoirs to keep cash flowing in. A genius and a good man with a troubled reputation that, hopefully, will keep improving.
20. Sam Houston
President of the Republic of Texas (1836-1838, 1841-1844)
The first and third President of the Republic of Texas and a character so outsized, so enmeshed in the American story of the nineteenth century, so closely tied to the Union with which he struggled so long to enjoin his beloved Texas, that, provincial as his title might seem, he ranks easily with the upper-middle range of American Presidents. The “Washington of Texas,” the “hero of San Jacinto,” the only foreign head of state also to serve in the US Congress, the architect and figurehead not only of Texas independence but of later annexation—and so tied to the Union that, refusing to swear the Confederate oath after 1861, he had to be booted out of office by force by secessionists—he may just be a more consequential President than many of our “real” ones.
21. George H. W. Bush
President of the United States, 1989-1993
Next to his predecessor, Bush looks small, which is strange, given that he presided over the Cold War’s final act and presided over (and won) a greater war than ever occurred under Reagan.
22. Bill Clinton
President of the United States, 1993-2001
His name is synonymous with scandals, some of which are still “live,” meaning this ranking is highly conditional. Christopher Hitchens wrote a scathing takedown of him in order to be contrarian, but he also wrote a scathing takedown of Mother Teresa in order to be contrarian, and does not necessarily need to be humored. Internationally, Clinton was (mostly) solid. Domestically, he sparked the first modern reactionary wave which crested three decades later—but maintained a fairly steady economic hand.
23. Barack Obama
President of the United States, 2009-2017
Alone among 21st century presidents, Obama embodied the specific range of “intangibles” which tend to activate lifelong sympathies even among political enemies: tempered speech; personability; charity; impassioned but humane oratory; nuanced writing; and, more than anything else, a good sense of humor (and, slightly different, a sense of good humor). The ACA’s legacy remains questionable, and the administration’s foreign adventurism led to slow-burning catastrophes. But Obama also implicitly understood the real limitations of the modern American president amid the machinery of the modern American presidency: surrounded by the thousands and thousands of Executive branch lifers, and hemmed in by thousands and thousands of people employed by the government’s shadow agencies, sometimes the most powerful avenue of influence available to a president is the soft power of being a good man on the world stage.
24. Woodrow Wilson
President of the United States, 1913-1921
The only president to hold a PhD. President of both Princeton University and the United States during his lifetime (the first of two Ivy League presidents who also held the highest office). An ambitious and ultimately failed visionary whose dream of the League of Nations went unrealized and, in the succeeding decades, collapsed in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. Went back on his word about the Great War. Was secretly incapacitated during the last stretch of his presidency. But he foresaw, and in many ways shaped, the future of American power on the international stage.
25. Martin Van Buren
President of the United States, 1837-1841
A politician’s politician — after serving beneath the architect of the Trail of Tears, became a Free Soiler and a voice for abolition in his post-presidency when it was costly to his political reputation. Diplomacy-minded and able to calculate disasters well in advance, he staved off war with Britain and delayed the annexation of Texas, buying the country a few more years of balance on the slavery question before Westward expansion dashed those hopes forever.
26. Benjamin Harrison
President of the United States, 1889-1893
Grandson of President #9. Lost the popular vote. Reigned over the Billion Dollar Congress (when a billion dollars still went a long way). Added the Dakotas and several mountain states to the Union (which, not entirely accidentally, helped shore up his party’s Congressional representation and electoral college votes). Often ranked as the most forgettable president of all time, perhaps for good reason—but a perfectly fine president even so. A president can do an incredible amount with a supermajority, which he had for the first two years; and a president can’t do much when he’s lost his supermajority, which happened during his last two years.
27. Jimmy Carter
President of the United States, 1977-1981
Charismatic, born-again, and famously philanthropic until his death at age 100. Presided over disastrous and humiliating economic and diplomatic crises. Challenged the American people to be braver than they felt like being, and paid the political price. A good man – perhaps a great man – at the wrong time.
28. Gerald Ford
President of the United States, 1974-1977
A good man who only ever wanted to be Speaker of the House. Famously gained the presidency without earning a single vote. Much maligned for pardoning Nixon — although, in hindsight, it’s almost impossible to imagine any alternative.
29. William Howard Taft
President of the United States, 1909-1913
A good man who only ever wanted to be the Chief Justice. Contender for most brilliant office-holder (along with Adams Jr. and Jefferson). A rare voice of conscience in the Philippines before his presidency and a distinguished legal genius after his presidency. His actual presidency was overshadowed by the two Great Men who sandwiched him. (Mis)remembered mostly for (not actually) getting stuck in a bathtub. Betrayed by Roosevelt during reelection. Like Coolidge, a man who didn’t really want the job and yet did a mostly fine job with it anyway.
30. Richard Nixon
President of the United States, 1969-1974
It is no defense of Nixon as a person or as a commander in chief to say that Watergate was peanuts compared with Iran-Contra or MKUltra or the entire 21st century (Abu Ghraib, PRISM, Little Saint James/Epstein Island)— and, really, anything before or since. Nixon broke public trust in an unprecedented way, but that has more to do with the high quality of investigative journalism during his terms in office than with the moral rectitude of his predecessors. The National Guard committed atrocities stateside under his watch (Kent State), just as they’d been committing them under Johnson’s watch. He had bizarre, druggy, borderline psychotic breaks. But he also implemented the only feasible path forward for a war he inherited (Vietnamization). He ended the draft. He opened diplomatic relations with China. He was a complicated president.
31. Lyndon B. Johnson
President of the United States, 1963-1969
The soaring peaks that might have enshrined Johnson’s legacy – the Civil Rights legislation, the promises of the Great Society – cratered against the realities of a devastatingly unpopular war. Johnson the political muscle man, elsewhere so brilliant at corralling (and threatening) votes out of Congress, could not muscle his way out of the morass of Vietnam and the cultural atrophies of the Sixties. I’m not sure what leader could have—but it wasn’t Johnson. The horrendous aftermath of the Chicago convention in 1968 (in which Johnson’s late abdication played no small part) essentially took his own party out of power for another decade.
32. Warren G. Harding
President of the United States, 1921-1923
A jolly old man discovered, after his death, to be a scandalous lech. Perhaps the most harmless, but least important, and least impressive, “real” president of them all. (And then there was Teapot Dome—a scandal so boring that even APUSH students can barely remember it)
33. Herbert Hoover
President of the United States, 1929-1933
Universally blamed for a Depression he did not cause; eclipsed by his successor for solutions he initiated. Spent the rest of his life complaining about it. Deserves credit for his humanitarian and food aid work during World War I, saving upwards of ten million Belgian civilians from starvation.
34. Grover Cleveland
President of the United States, (1885-1889, 1893-1897)
I used to teach classes right across the street from Cleveland’s historic birthplace monument, so he will always have a special place in my heart. He represents, more than any other president, the now-foreign politics of the Gilded Age (when gold and silver were serious policies). First, before Trump, to serve non-consecutive terms. The source of absolutely, filthy scandalous rumors which turned out to be only partially filthily scandalous.
35. Chester A. Arthur
President of the United States, 1881-1885
Candidate for the greatest personal White House redemption story: Roscoe Conkling’s consummate toadie turned halfway-almost-nearly decent man. There is, even so, a reason he is forgotten.
36. George W. Bush
President of the United States, 2001-2009
Of all the presidents on this list, Bush was the hardest to rank. The standard reading from pundits tends toward disaster: the Florida recount debacle, 9/11 security failings, two extraordinarily destructive wars with extraordinarily destructive legacies, the 2008 crash. Even the modern Right has no love for him: he’s a neocon (or some other slur), an “establishment hack,” a puppet of the Deep State, Israel’s stooge. All of this is fair territory. It’s hard even to begin to respond. And yet— and yet— there is something about Bush which, if it isn’t “Greatness” (in the sense that FDR gets excused by being a Great Man), is some strange, barely articulable combination of affability, resolve, personal courage, Texas charm — all the things which, probably, count for very little in the moral calculus of war — but Bush the commander in chief,
Bush the wartime president, Bush the national unifier on September 12 — these
are all real images with real potency that come from some real subterranean
surfeit of something. I know many brilliant people who rank Bush a little lower than the Antichrist, who were fully conscious during the Bush years and kept track of every disgrace, and for whom Bush represents the worst of failed American promise. But I cannot help but be drawn to Bush the individual.
37. Andrew Jackson
President of the United States, 1829-1837
The first “personality president.” A man whose greatest and most celebrated political accomplishment involved saying “no” to good ideas. Stood against the “American System” and anything that smacked of Federalism and in doing so, stopped a level of national development that might have transformed the country (in a good way) beyond recognition. Praised, like Jefferson before him, as a “man of the people” and a populist—but like every populist since, overextended the powers of the executive branch to the point of crisis (on the Supreme Court: “John Marshall has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it!”). Most significantly: responsible for the mass removal of Native Americans from the Southeast and setting the blueprint for the mass exterminations to come.
38. John Hancock
President of the United States in Congress Assembled (1775-1777, 1785-1786)
Chronologically, in the most technical sense, the “first President of the United States.” The signing of the Declaration happened on his watch, bearing his infamous enormous signature. Presided over some of the bloodiest and most difficult days of the Congress’s history and discharged his duties admirably, raising funds and supplies for Washington’s forces when they were needed most. Like most other Revolution-Era “presidents” on this list, he was a wartime president first and foremost, and his legacy extends impressively far.
39. John Jay
President of the United States in Congress Assembled (1778-1779)
Brilliant, versatile, and cool-headed in nearly every post he held, Jay is in the top rank of greatest Founding Fathers. Contributor to The Federalist Papers; first chief justice of the Supreme Court. His presidency (of the Congress) was the least interesting of his positions, but he performed it unobjectionably.
40. Rutherford B. Hayes
President of the United States, 1877-1881
How much blame he deserves for the disastrous 1876 election is an open question, but his entire presidency is marred by the bloody pact that it took to get over the electoral finish line. The end of Reconstruction and the resurgent ghosts of the Confederacy and the new reign of Jim Crow all happened, or started, on his watch. A largely forgettable, ineffectual leader of a nation starting to crack again into pieces.
41. Thomas Chittenden
President [sic] of the Republic of Vermont (1778-1789, 1790-1791)
The first and third governor of the sovereign Republic of Vermont and occasionally, in very scant records, called “President” during his first term, Chittenden almost certainly should not be on this list at all. And yet the Green Mountain State should be proud to have him (as first head of state in both the republic and the eventual 14thstate). Ably handled border disputes with New York to the West and the British to the North.
42. Joe Biden
President of the United States, 2021-2025
An impressive tenure in the Senate and Vice Presidency which led to a dreadful, slow-motion, unbearable lame-duck interregnum. Botched the possibility of national unity when it was most needed and neglected the good counsel of his team when it might have counted. The wrong man at the wrong time.
43. Franklin Pierce
President of the United States, 1853-1857
Inarguably the most handsome president ever to serve. Also the most tragic. Lost all of his children in childhood, and lost his son right before inauguration in a horrific decapitation accident. Drank himself to a slow and grim death. Stayed loyal to the Union in retirement but crept close to Copperhead territory.
44. William Henry Harrison
President of the United States, 1841
“Tippecanoe.” Inexplicably gained the nomination that was rightly Henry Clay’s. Gave a two-hour inaugural address in the freezing Washington air and died barely a month into his office. His vision for the country was a dim one, and he almost certainly would have aided and abetted the expansion of the slavocracy had he lived longer. Of the three bad Whig presidents to give the Whigs a bad name, he was the first.
45. Millard Fillmore
President of the United States, 1850-1853
A small-minded, petty man whose entire legacy stands (and miserably falls) on the Fugitive Slave Act and so-called “popular sovereignty.” Later put in his lot with the Know Nothings and failed at reelection. A disgrace to the realpolitik abolitionist legacy of his predecessor and a disgrace to the state of New York.
46. Anson Jones
President of the Republic of Texas, 1844-1846
The last Texas President (but not the last President from Texas). Negotiated the terms of annexation and lowered the Lone Star flag himself to make way for the Stars and Stripes. A dignified send-off to the Republic of Texas.
47. Andrew Johnson
President of the United States, 1865-1869
It’s true that much of Johnson’s leniency towards ex-Confederates was also Lincoln’s. His pardons and his perhaps-too-eager-reconciliation with the South would also probably have been Lincoln’s tack. But Johnson was transparently ill-equipped for what turned out to be the most significant political transition in American history. If not for an activist Republican Congress, Reconstruction under Johnson would have been mangled worse than it was (and it was already very, very bad). A Union Democrat and an embarrassing drunk, Johnson was probably more liability than benefit to Lincoln’s second campaign. The cause of his impeachment was frivolous, but the nation probably would have been better off if it succeeded. Returned at the end of his life, briefly and bitterly, to the same Senate that nearly ousted him. A sad, unfortunate presidency.
48. David G. Burnet
President of the Republic of Texas, 1836
Interim President of the Republic of Texas for less than a year. Responsible for relocating the barely-formed government in a bid to flee from Santa Anna, an allegedly un-Texan thing to do, but as Santa Anna was in the business of executing prisoners, it likely saved the lives of heads of the interim government, and Burnet rode with the Texas Declaration of Independence in his saddlebags as he fled, which, on further consideration, seems like a very Texas thing to do.
49. Richard Henry Lee
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1784-1785
The man who motioned for Independence on the floor of Congress and the man to thank for the Declaration’s inception. As president almost a decade later, he provided a sensible (if ultimately inadequate) method of meeting federal debt that didn’t rely upon federal taxation or issuing new debt.
50. Elias Boudinot
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1782-1783
The first Jersey president. Called for reforms in treatments of British and American prisoners of war. Signed the Preliminary Articles of Peace. A deeply religious and deeply moral man all his life.
51. Thomas McKean
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1781
Presided over the effectual end of the Revolution with the Battle of Yorktown. Helped draft the Articles of Confederation. A few years earlier, was booted from Congress by his own state’s (Delaware’s) General Assembly for his “scandalous” vote for independence, until the British inroads into Delaware made the Delawareans hate the British again, and was promptly reinstated.
52. Samuel Huntington
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1779-1781
Spent most of his presidency (understandably) asking for money. Saw through the ratification of the Articles. Resigned (understandably) for health reasons. Had an illustrious gubernatorial career afterward.
53. Henry Laurens
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1777-1778
The only American (so far) to be imprisoned in the Tower of London. Crisscrossed France and the Low Countries around the same time as John Adams and played key diplomatic roles in the eventual creation of the Treaty of Paris.
54. Thomas Mifflin
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1783-1784
The seventh and final President of Pennsylvania (a fact and a position of which I was unaware until I was nearly done compiling this list and which nearly drove me to despair). As president of Congress, accepted Washington’s resignation as commander in chief and then struggled to get enough states to continue to take Congress seriously in the immediate aftermath of the war.
55. John Hanson
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1781-1782
A man who, in the noble tradition of a very few select and brave American presidents, did not really want the job, and wanted to give it up after only a week, but stuck it out for the sake of duty. A very charming campaign was launched, nearly a century later, to call Hanson “the first President of the United States,” which is not true in any sense of the term but which has made him a sort of Maryland legend.
56. Arthur St. Clair
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1787
President during perhaps the messiest of the years under the Articles – Shay’s Rebellion, stonewalling state governments, a weak central government – but did pass the Northwest Ordinance.
57. Cyrus Griffin
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1788
The last President before Washington. I’m sure he did a fine job. Information is light on Cyrus Griffin. There is no argument against Cyrus Griffin’s having been a fine president.
58. Nathaniel Gorham
President of the United States in Congress Assembled, 1786-1787
Apparently – and this is still, technically, a rumor – Gorham is the man who proposed that the United States offer the role of head of state to Prince Frederick Henry Ludwig of Prussia. He made this suggestion while serving as president, making him, in terms of far-sighted judgment, the worst of the Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled.
59. Dick Cheney
Acting President of the United States from 7:09am – 9:24am EDT on June 29, 2002 and from 7:16am-9:21am EDT on July 21, 2007
It is to Cheney’s everlasting credit that, in the 260 minutes of Bush’s colonoscopies in which he, Cheney, held the nuclear football, he did not pull a Kevin McCallister. From all accounts of the 260 minutes Cheney served in the highest office, he spent part of the time writing a rather touching letter to his grandchildren so that they might have a souvenir from the then-unprecedented occasion.
60. Kamala Harris
Acting President of the United States from 10:10am – 11:35am on November 19, 2021
It is to Harris’s everlasting credit that, in the 85 minutes of Biden’s colonoscopy in which she, Harris, held the nuclear football, she did not pull a Kevin McCallister. From all accounts of the 85 minutes Harris served in the highest office, she continued working in the West Wing (though not in the Oval Office), prepping for a trip to Columbus, Ohio to promote legislation on infrastructure. There is, however, no souvenir letter on record, so by the air-tight scientific methodology of this list, she ranks below Cheney.
61. Mirabeau B. Lamar
President of the Republic of Texas, 1838-1841
A difficult ranking. On the one hand, he ranks with Houston as one of the most consequential men to emerge from the Republic of Texas. His vision for the republic was expansive—his legacy in state education lasts to this day (Texas A&M and the University of Texas exist in part thanks to his vision). He was, in contrast to the two other Texas Presidents (besides Houston), an actual “leader of note.” On the other hand, in stark contrast to Houston, he advocated a complete, uncompromising policy of extermination when it came to the Cherokee and Comanche. While Houston lived for three years among the Cherokee as a young man (they called him “Raven”) and had a fundamentally level-headed outlook when it came to “Indian policy” in Texas (and even tried to curb some of Lamar’s more heinous ideas), Lamar upended that diplomacy completely and bears the direct blame for multiple massacres conducted with his full blessing.
62. James Buchanan
President of the United States, 1857-1861
Often called the worst president for his refusal to act during the long, slow, miserable secession crisis. But the Dred Scott case, “popular sovereignty,” and his Kansas policies are far more repugnant. Henry Adams, in The Education of Henry Adams, admiringly described a political phenomenon he called “The Pennsylvanian”: “supple in action,” “large in motive,” “the strongest American in America.” Looking at the two Pennsylvanians who made it to the highest office, you could never tell.
63. Donald J. Trump
President of the United States (2017-2021, 2025-)
The president we deserve.
64. John Tyler
President of the United States, 1841-1845
An opportunist who, through sheer luck, got a free ride on the ticket that was rightly Henry Clay’s. The only (former) president who joined the Confederacy after 1861 and betrayed the country he was elected to serve. It happened 15 years after his presidency, but it’s enough to rank him the lowest of the “official” presidents. He lies buried, unloved and forgotten, in a coffin draped with the Stars and Bars. Sic semper tyrannis.
65. David Rice Atchison
Acting President of the United States, March 4, 1849 (disputed)
“Acting President” for a measly 24 hours, and of all the men on this list, he is the only one who demonstrably did nothing during his “presidency.” If he was not single-handedly responsible for so, so, so, so much bloodshed during Bleeding Kansas (where he still bears a town and county after his own name), that fact alone might actually have skyrocketed him to the top 20 in this list (after all, do-nothings like Coolidge made a good showing). But Atchison was who he was, and he belongs down here—along with Tyler, he is one of the few “Presidents of the United States” who later switched to the dark side. Of his own 24 hours in office, he wrote: “if I was entitled in it I had one boast to make, that not a woman or a child shed a tear on account of my removing any one from office during my incumbency of the place.” I suppose that’s a consolation.
66. Jefferson Davis
President of the Confederate States of America, 1862-1865
Amazingly, astonishingly, bewilderingly, bafflingly, bamboozlingly, after everything, the man lived out an ordinary retirement on a bucolic coastal estate in beautiful Biloxi, Mississippi, daylighting as an insurance executive, receiving glowing letters and autographs from the Pope, turning down cozy sinecures from prestigious universities (for their low pay), scribbling away at his memoirs and histories, enjoying, we can imagine, a refreshing mint julep in the steamy summer mornings on his porch while pondering the autumn of his life and not, as one might fairly imagine, hanging from the shortest rope on the tallest tree in Washington. Maybe this is the reality of justice—or if not justice, grace. Maybe this is what Lincoln meant by “malice toward none.” Maybe Lincoln would have preferred this to Davis’s summary execution as a traitor (in fact: from the evidence we have, he almost certainly would have preferred it). But it’s still inconceivable that while Lincoln’s body was mouldering in the grave, Davis’s, in such consummate comfort, went marching on, unmolested, for so, so long.
If you’ve read even a fraction of this mess, God bless you, and God bless the USA.
The Procrastinating Poet 