I rank Johnson there for close to 70,000 reasons. Also because of his Great Society programs. They are the bane of the U. S. to this day, and sadly beyond...
I think Bush ranks in there with other bumbling presidents, although the melt down under him certainly ranks him a special mention.
Johnson did severe damage to our military, in that we were reluctant to use it for several decades.
This goes beyond the interventionist nation building thing IMO. Everything since was labelled the next Vietnam. Gulf War I went a long way to alleviating that fear, although it didn’t quite materialize into something we would call a war.
It was more like a deployment and a skirmish. Others may disagree with me on that, and I’m not trying to trash anyone’s deployment and service here.
I respect those that participated in that effort.
I was thinking of Vietnam and the great society too.
Any confidence we gained through Gulf War I was attenuated by Somalia.
It could be argued that the present disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan are on Bush. He left the job unfinished. Everyone knew 0 would mess it up so it should have been top priority to cobble together victories or otherwise safeguard our gains before he took office. Had Bush not been unbelievably, dangerously simplistic, milquetoast, and mainstream Obama would have nothing to screw up: that puts him among the worst.
But LBJ’s racist views on human potential have caused more death and misery than any war, and it’s likely to never end.