You could make a good case for 1919. Including the fact that Edith Wilson was the unelected acting POTUS and her husband’s political enemies were languishing in jails.
You can make a good case for 2008 also. The Obamination and resulting bank bailouts, which only served to reinforce our gibmedat culture.
Yup. And yet it’s Harding that gets labeled as the worst president of that era. His family sat on Harding’s correspondences until 2014. Prior to that, Nixon’s tapes were available on line, but Harding wasn’t dead enough.
Half a dozen or more years in the 1930s were worse.
The thing about bad times now is that people still have ways of diverting themselves.
It was harder to escape harsh realities in bygone years.
FWIW Forrest Tucker, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Jack Palance turn 100 this month (all dead, natch).