Did you ever nominate whom you think is the worst president ever? Just curious.
Then you have to consider two pretty much acknowledged failures: Hoover and Carter.
Beyond that, I don't know. Harding and Grant didn't do the presidency any service. If the criteria is managerial ability they score low, but how much permanent harm did they do the country?
FDR did a lot of harm, but the country did get through some really difficult times under his leadership without losing its representative system of government. So how do you balance out the good and bad?
The ones historians will puzzle over for a long time are the two Johnsons and Nixon. Once Andrew Johnson was a hero for saving the presidency. Now some historians see him as possibly the worst President for having botched Reconstruction and representing the worst racial attitudes, untempered by more humane concerns.
If someone names Lyndon Johnson as the most horrible President of the twentieth century, I won't argue. There's a lot to be said for that. The question is to what degree the resolution of the civil rights question outweighs Vietnam and the mess at home. I don't have an answer to that.
Nixon is another president we'll puzzle over for a long time. I'd understand if someone hates him. But would Humphrey or McGovern have done better with the cards America had thirty-five years ago?
We're fortunate that Reagan brought the country back in the 1980s or we'd have to judge Nixon and Johnson and Carter a lot more harshly. Another country with other leaders would have real trouble overcoming what we went through in the Sixties and Seventies.
How about yours?