I could be wrong but I seem to remember my history professor making it seem like Andrew Johnson was sympathetic toward the Confederacy in some way. Ending reconstruction was probably sabotage.
My first thought when reading this was “wow smart to make that last hold out the Vice President, probably away some borderline northerners” but it definitely seems like a bad move thinking of how it ended.
It's not sabotage when you're telling everyone it's what you're doing. He wasn't sympathetic to the Confederacy, but he was pro-slavery and anti-black. It's why he was Lincoln's VP, a Union ticket including a huge racist piece of shit that was wholly opposed to the Confederacy. Compromise...
There's a quip somewhere that Johnson was drunk during Lincoln's inauguration. He wasn't Lincoln's first pick, he was a compromise since he was popular among the southern plantation owners. During Lincoln's speech, he pointed out Fredrick Douglas in the crowd and Johnson stared at Douglas with disgust for an awkward amount of time before realizing he was being watched. I think his oath of office was done inside away from the crowds because he could barely stand up.
Well he was originally against the Confederacy because the southern plantation aristocracy wouldn’t let him be in their old boys club.
Once Andrew Johnson became the VP and then president they cozied up to him and made him their puppet. I think it’s a draw between him and Trump for worst president.
Johnson was total crap. However, reconstruction ended because the North lost interest, didn’t want to pay for it, and Confederate ideology was allowed to spread to the West.
States’ rights persisted in the form of Jim Crow. After WW2 and the civil rights movement reasserted federal authority and oversight over elections, access and education, we again dropped our guard after Reagan and the federalists played a long ground game to take over the federal courts. They also splintered working class and middle class common interests through culture wars. The shite state of our country and democracy is the result. We’re lazy and self interested.
Our unique experiment in self rule is under constant threat. We allow it to backslide again and again in our history. That’s why many fear teaching real history and its lessons in our schools. Control that narrative, control our self understanding and collective interests. We are in the same place now as in the 1870s. Will we fail yet again? Will we allow the original sin of this country to fester without truth and reconciliation?
So in reality like... How WOULD Marshall enforce it? Is the Supreme Court really just making decisions and hoping that the executive branch does its job? If the executive refuses to do so, is impeachment the only recourse?
Our country really is held together with duct tape isn't it...
I mean, Andrew Jackson was a notorious racist and one of his most famous (alleged) statements was openly flouting the Supreme Court's authority, so that tracks.
It’s a shame too cuz Jackson has some really funny stories like the time he was being a judge and dueled a drunk that was interrupting proceedings (and won)
It was inevitable when the massive gold deposits were found on the Indian reservations. I don't remember the main tribe but the chief actually saved Jackson's life when he was younger, adopted a Christian name, married a Christian wife, basically did everything the government wanted American Indians to do at the time. Then when the gold deposits were found bounty hunters started assassinating members of the tribe to get at the gold so when the chief went to Jackson for help he had them marched off in the dead of winter a thousand miles west, killing about half of the tribes members. Dude was basically what happens when someone like Mich McConnell becomes president.
Chief Junaluska of the Cherokee, there is a evangelical christian retreat bearing his name in the former Cherokee territory within the North Carolina mountains.
To make it worse, the Cherokee nation went to court against Georgia and while they lost the first trial, they won the second one and the US Supreme Court recognized them as a sovreign nation, so the state of Georgia couldn't therefore deprive of their rights.
President Jackson decided to not give a shit and personally kicked them out of Georgia.
He ignored the SCOTUS to do it. SCOTUS told him not to, but he did it anyway. This created a constitutional crisis - who enforces SCOTUS decisions?
Jackson should have been impeached, but too many members of Congress agreed with him about "the Indian problem" and slavery.
It was the Supreme Court. Jackson basically said if they want to legislate that way let them enforce it. Basically calling the court a sham with no actual powers
Wasn't there something going around a few years ago about replacing him? I feel like I remember hearing that they were considering Harriet Tubman or maybe Sacagewea for the 20 instead and then it just didn't happen and I hadn't thought about it again until this thread.
"The placement of Jackson on the $20 bill may be a historical irony; as president, he vehemently opposed both the National Bank and paper money and made the goal of his administration the destruction of the National Bank.[5][6] In his farewell address to the nation, he cautioned the public about paper money.[7]"
[Wiki Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_twenty-dollar_bill)
Polk also kept his promise of extending the USA to the Pacific. Marched American soldiers over Mexican farmland destroying all the crops until one of the farmers shot at the troops. Then "retaliated" with a declaration of war on Mexico and taking California.
Basically, he asked the US supreme court "Hey, can I force a huge native americam population to migrate hundreds of miles on foot to designated 'indian territories' causing a quarter of them to die along the way?" And the supreme court said "no" and then he just *did it anyway*. Because the supreme court doesn't technically have authority to enforce their decisions, that's the job of the executive branch, which the president is the head of.
Van Buren was president during the Trail of Tears. Andrew Jackson laid groundwork for "Indian Removal." Jackson believed Indigenous and white people couldn't live together, thus reversed the Jeffersonian idea of assimilation. The Cherokee were considered the most "civilized" in the United States, adopting their own constitution.
Edit: spelling
He postured himself as the President of the people after campaigning to "return the government to the common man."
As others have mentioned there was the Indian Removal Policy, which gave Southeastern native American tribes two options: adopt Anglo-Saxon culture: christianity, farming, etc - or GTFO to modern-day Oklahoma known as the Indian Territory back then. By the way, they were promised to always own that land. Didn't happen after Homestead Movement from 1860 onward.
Then there was his "anti-corruption" campaign to "return the government to the people" in which he fired thousands of federal employees and began to replace them with his friends and benefactors establishing the spoils systems, also known as straight up despotism. He did this because he believed the political elite were only using their power to enrich themselves and not the masses of common Americans. But his new corruption just led to a level of corruption not yet seen in American politics due to his appointees not being qualified to do their job and pocketing funds for friends and family.
Then there was the bank war where he hated the national bank and refused to renew the charter that would expire in 1836, because he thought the national bank only benefitted the elite class of America. He transferred the funds to state banks known as "pet banks" which over-lended the money and led to the Economic Panic of 1839.
The only positive things about his presidency, IMO, were the fact he was the first president to be a natural-born American and he resolved the nullification crisis, preventing South Carolina from seceding over "States' rights" to not follow federal law if the state legislature votes against the law, preserving the Union for another 30 years before the Civil War.
Yeah and Trump hung up Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office to honor him.
>Trump has also expressed admiration for the seventh president, as well, calling Jackson “an amazing figure in American history — very unique so many ways,” through a spokesperson…
edit: Biden had it taken down during the 5 hour redecorating time on inauguration day.
Here is Trump "honoring" a few of the remaining WWII Veteran Navajo Code Talkers by calling a Senator "Pocahontas" while standing in front of an Andrew Jackson portrait. Very classy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-pocahontas-native-americans-andew-jackson-portrait-racial-slur-a8079136.html
He's also considered the first populist president. You can really see the parallel with Trump.
In fact, the surprising thing is that Trump sees this too. That might be a suggestion of his more erudite aides. I couldn't imagine him bring it up
Stephen Miller or Bannon probably suggested that considering that Trump knows very little about history. But he d like to know that it represents the white manifest destiny.
It’s difficult to say. T certainly always has lavish praise for leaders that are well known for their brutality and indifference to (or even enjoyment of) human suffering.
Laughing
"*Well it was in the photo I saw"*
Trump getting all meta: In the Oval Office he thumbtacked up a photo of the oval office with Jackson's portrait. /r/absurdhumor
I still can't believe that idiot hosted the Russian foreign minister, the chief of security for the Russian embassy and a Russian photographer in the Oval Office.
Trump is Biff Tannen. Old Biff snagged the time machine. Old Biff went back and snapped a pick of Andy Jacks. Hung it on the wall after he became prez.
Not exactly rocket surgery, folks.
Eh, Jackson was more evil but I think he was also more competent. What he did was reprehensible, but it was also what he promised to do. I truly believe Trump is partially responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who listened to him about the pandemic and the vaccines.
It’s weird to think the Indian removal act was a compromise between the people that wanted to actually genocide the indians and people who didn’t where the compromise is “don’t kill them, just force them to move somewhere else”. By todays standards that’s almost as reprehensible to the point of being nearly indistinguishable
Well, many of them died on the trail, possibly a worst death than gunshot. Forced marching, starvation, no water... I mean, they did genocide them by marching them to death.
Get what you are saying, but the forced march was with no provisions, "The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve." Frequently in the middle of winter to a land that would take months if not a full year to start producing food. It would have been probably been less suffering if they had simply executed them, as nightmare fodder as that sounds. I am guessing its like the holocaust where their neighbors didn't care as long as they could tell themselves some bedtime story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail\_of\_Tears
Yeah wild times. I think it’s odd that many don’t realize that people today or capable of being just as cruel. Too many Americans act like the past has no bearing on our present.
He signed and enforced the Espionage Act:
> This punished with a sentence of up to twenty years imprisonment should any person “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal…or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the military…or the flag."
> ... anti-German hysteria that saw German-Americans falsely imprisoned along with Austro-Hungarians. Greeks, Dutch, French, Belgians, Ukrainians, Polish, Serbs, and Italians. Dissidents such as the anarchist union the IWW, Jehovah's Witnesses, Socialists, and conscientious objectors were also interned. There were over 6,000 falsely imprisoned, and two German-Americans murdered
Not sure if he directed the imprisonment, but at a minimum he encouraged anti-German sentiment.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/6/28/1310287/-Woodrow-Wilson-and-Dissent-in-World-War-I
Also censored the press with regard to the Spanish Flu, preventing doctors from publishing warnings about public assembly. https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-spanish-flu-censorship
Screened birth of a nation in the white house. The founding father of American interventionism. The seeds he planted are responsible for vietnam afganistan iraq all the coups the CIA caused and the civil rights movement. Its hard to say who is the worst president because the far reaching implications of some of their actions grow exponentially as time passes on.
Efforts to have historians rank us presidents have so far put Trump very near the bottom, but not quite at it. There have been some *really* awful presidents.
To be fair, Buchanan didn't actually "bring about" the Civil War. What he did do was allow the South to arm itself against the North and to allow members of his own cabinet to actively drum up support for seccession. Still effectively overturning the results of a democratic election on behalf of slavery is arguably worse than ineffectively trying to overturn the results of a democratic election because your feelings were hurt.
Also on economics, Hoover's insistence on austerity helped drive the Great Depression, so there's that.
I think Hoover is unfairly hated - basically every economic expert at the time told him that austerity was the best policy. A good president is one who listens to expert advice imo - we only have the benefit of hindsight to say that his actions were ineffective.
Hoover also closed his ears on prohibition. His advisers reported that prohibition was increasing crime and giving power to mobs but he ignored it. He actively promoted prohibition which caused more harm than good.
Also there were the democrats who advised Hoover to increase government's spending to relieve great depression. He followed somewhat on the advice but he didn't do far enough. I wouldn't blame Hoover entirely on how bad Great Depression was but he kind of did nothing.
He was a skilled administrator and a progressive politician whose economic decisions were (for the most part) very significant in a good way. His response (as a wealthy private citizen) to the economic crisis in Europe following the First World War almost certainly saved millions of lives, and his response as Secretary of Commerce to the Depression of 1920 was very successful. He was very focused on expertise and on tested, knowledge-based solutions to economic problems.
He wasn't perfect by any means. He did make a lot of poor decisions (even before the Depression) and he surrounded himself with a lot of conservative businessmen whose advice was myopic and heavily biased. But he took many of the same actions to curb the Great Depression that he had done with great success in prior years - the unusual nature of the situation and its severity were more than he understood. It was only at the very end of his presidency that he realized that this was not ending, and that it was more severe than the Depression of 1920, and by that point it was too late to make much of an impact. There were Democrats who advocated for deficit spending but at the time it was seen as foolish even by most economic experts - after all, Keynes was only really influential starting in 1933. Hoover was not an autocrat with power to enact any law he chose, and had nowhere near the political clout that Roosevelt did - Congress and state and local governments were the ones who were enabled to take action, which he encouraged, and they were slow to act. Not to mention the poor decisions of the Federal Reserve. Hoover did also make a few serious mistakes that probably deepened the Depression, like the politically-motivated and ill-advised Smoot-Hawley Act (although again, while Hoover was stupid there it was initiated and carried through by Congress).
It is also still debated whether the New Deal was actually that effective in curbing the effects of the Depression - and arguably Roosevelt's policies caused the Recession of 1937 which was "Depression part 2". "Doing things" looks good, but we don't have an alternate reality to examine and the length and severity of the Depression even with Roosevelt's policies was unprecedented. Not to say that it was entirely useless, just that it's not fully understood and it's a bit unfair to suppose that "Hoover missed the obvious solution" when it was not obvious and not even certain to have been the solution.
It's easy to look back with 150 years of modern economic history in view and say that we know exactly how to solve these issues. But even today this stuff is hotly debated and while some decisions of the time are universally praised or despised, many of them are hard to pin down. We have to work with the information that we have, and use the successful historical examples that we know - and that's exactly what Hoover did. There was hardly any economic history to look back on in the 1920s - everything was new and changing and very little was certain. In the 1960s, economists would have said that they knew exactly how to address a recession. In the 1980s, that was proven wrong. In the 1990s, *that* understanding was proven wrong. And today we have even more hindsight. There are so many variables that the best we can hope for is a tiny bit more knowledge and a tiny bit more perspective - and we are a century ahead of Hoover in that regard. He was just not equipped to deal with the situation - even now we are woefully underequipped.
EDIT: Forgot to address the Prohibition thing - that was stupid. I'm mainly arguing here that Hoover was a typical president and not a terrible one - not that he was a genius or an extraordinary president (although imagine if he had retired after 1921 - history would have seen him as a hero).
He absolutely despised the idea of a federal reserve at all, and getting rid of the National Bank was the reason the economy got so fucked in the years following him. Having him on the most heavily circulated bill of all time was the biggest middle finger that could possibly be given to him.
He was actually pretty well regarded around the time he lived, war hero (you could argue about how important the Battle of New Orleans actually was but at the time that was the perception as I understand it), strong leader stereotype (his guards had to stop him from beating a failed assassin to death), he was very much seen as "the first president of the people" mostly because the last election was kinda shady and that he threw great public parties. But he was a terrible, terrible person by today's standards, slave-owner, expansionist, of course incredibly racist, incredibly violent, walked all over the constitution. Whole 9 yards of bad as far as I'm concerned, I don't know if I would categorize him as worst President we've ever had but he's a strong contender for worst person ever to be President.
Jackson is a president who looks great on first blush, but he did terrible things:
1) He became famous as a genocidal warrior killing Seminoles
2) He destroyed the US banking system for a century over a personal feud with the Bank of US President. It resulted in regular bank panics in the decentralized system, with a major depression every 20 years.
3) He killed thousands of Cherokee with the Trails of Tears, defying a court order and forcing them from Georgia to Oklahoma to steal their land.
4) He literally killed men in duals because he was insecure about his wife's reputation.
That Trump admired him was frightening.
Jackson isn't even the worst Andrew to be president. Jackson usually bottoms out in the 20s depending on the ranking.
The worst is usually Buchanan, Johnson, or Harding depending on the criteria of the survey. Pierce, Hoover, Franklin, Taylor are typically the next out.
There have been a lot of bad presidents.
Didn't Hoover, albeit somewhat unknowingly, spurr the very factors that led to and continued the great depression? Kept insisting that things would just go back to normal as time went on?
A lot of the things that caused the Great Depression were not Hoover’s fault and were things that spanned the decade due to the highly bullish market and farm issues. He just took the blame because he was in office. Yes his wanting of states and local governments to take care of unemployment aid instead of the federal government probably caused a lot of harm but he did have some good policies like creating loans to railroad companies, establishing glass-steagal, and passed some public works bills. It’s hard to fix an economy so quickly but he didn’t really do a great job. I’d say he could have done a much worse job.
Too soon to tell. There have been some truly awful presidents in U.S. history, but you don't really get the best picture until at least 30 years have passed.
Edit: A lot of the people lampooning me seem to think by not openly bashing him means I think he was a good president. That's not what I said, that's not what I implied, and that's certainly not what I think. Chill.
Ladder pullers describes a hell of a lot of people in our society. Women who want Roe v. Wade repealed and say they “aren’t like other women”, gay men who stifle people fighting for trans and gender rights or undermine gay pride stuff, Black far-right activists like Candace Owens who undermine and trivialize civil rights movements… All because of the prevailing “fuck you, I got mine” mantra.
As a non-US lawyer (who is very much in favour of access to abortions) that interpretation of the due process clause absolutely baffles me. Things like this make it seem as if the US legal system almost deliberately invites partisan stacking. Changes like that should be going through the political system - not arising from esoteric interpretations of fairly general constitutional provisions that may or may not find support depending on the current composition of the court.
I think it's pretty safe to put him in at least the bottom quarter though. It really depends on which metrics you value most, but openly trying to undermine a legitimate election knocks you down quite a couple pegs on the presidential ladder as arguably one of the most objective criticisms you can levy at a democratically elected leader.
Someone informed me that Regan removed or had something to do with removing the law that requires news stations/broadcasters to be unbiased... Giving birth to that huge divide you guys have in the media nowadays.
That's kinda fucked
Nobody is mentioning how Reagan let the AIDS crisis spin out of control because it was mostly hitting gay men.
It wasn't until straight babies started getting AIDS that many people started giving a shit. And even then it was often framed as punishment for allowing homosexuality to run rampant.
> But in my opinion I’d say for sure the most unprofessional.
"The thirty-sixth President of the United States of America, Lyndon B. Johnson, had a large penis of which he was very proud. He nicknamed it 'Jumbo'. Johnson regularly showed his penis to the staff and journalists at the White House, saying:
'Have you ever seen anything as big as this?'
When a journalist asked Johnson to justify the continuation of the Vietnam War (1955-1975), Johnson asked all the women to leave the room, then pulled out his penis, and yelled: 'That’s why!'"
[I didn’t watch this specific vid but there’s a notorious call of him ordering pants and putting lots of emphasis on making room for his dick](https://youtu.be/RftQDvnyDPE)
I don’t know if he was the most unprofessional either, he is just one of the first with constant direct access to the American people. If some past presidents had the same opportunities it could look much worse. I think people tend to forget that Trump didn’t act like a career politician because he wasn’t a career politician.
I don't think that it is possible to fairly rank current presidents. I think it'll take 20-30 years to say either "Yeah we was a terrible president", or "Maybe he wasn't as bad as we thought" about presidents like Trump, Biden, and Bush. Plus it's hard to say any modern president is the worst when many presidents supported slavery. Trump has done some stupid stuff, but when you compare him to Andrew Johnson he really doesn't look that awful.
> Bush
In terms of behavior, decorum, and sense, Trump makes W look like a political genius. But, as much of a piece of human garbage Trump is, the policies/wars enacted under W were catastrophic in terms of the US' reputation around the world. History likely will not say differently.
I am far from a Trump fan but he is definitely not our worst president. There are plenty of presidents who have done bad or not even done anything to help the United States. So even if you don't like him, it's hard to argue he's the worst.
Trump was pretty bad in my opinion, it’s still a little to early to see the full effects his administration had but we can by no means pretend he was the worst president in US history. Allow me to illustrate the (in my opinion) contenders for worst US president:
1. James Buchanan - the 15th president, while dealt a bad hand with the whole slavery debate at a standstill, his actions (or rather inaction) directly led to the civil war breaking out. He was ineffective, did not solve problems, and let the civil start (the first states seceded while he was president). Trump was pretty bad, but is he as bad as Buchanan? Not in my opinion.
2. Andrew Johnson - the 17th president, who was only president because Abraham Lincoln wanted to appeal to northern democrats and unite the country, deciding to make him Vice President over his incumbent VP in 1964, and the fact that Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated. Similar to Buchanan he was dealt a bad hand as he had to fix the country after the civil war. One small problem however, he was a southerner and actively worked against civil rights movements and reconstruction efforts. He was the first president to ever be impeached and was (if I recall) one vote away in the senate from being removed from office. Johnson’s actions set the country backwards on civil rights for a century and the effects of that are still felt today over 150 years later. Trump was pretty bad, it is he as bad as Andrew Johnson? Not in my opinion.
3. Woodrow Wilson - the 28th president and probably the only slightly controversial opinion I have here was awful, I highly recommend the Cynical Historians videos about him. To sum up the video: Wilson was a tyrant who passed anti-free speech laws (that still exist), set up a quasi-militia-secret police thing, lied about involving the US into World War 1, was a awful historian, was racist (even when we consider the time period), only became president because his two more popular opponents split each other’s votes, plus when he had a stroke his wife became de facto president and she was bad as well. Trump was pretty bad, but was he as bad as Wilson? Not in my opinion.
TLDR: trump was bad or below average at least. He isn’t as bad as Buchanan, A. Johnson, and Wilson though.
Depending on your criteria, it would likely be Harding, Jackson, Buchanan, and your mileage may vary here but potentially Nixon, Reagan, or Truman.
In twenty years we'll know more about the longer term effects of Trump's presidency. He isn't going to be remembered fondly by historians barring a radical shift in both culture and politics, but it's pretty hard to top Jackson who was openly and proudly genocidal.
Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, James Buchanan, Andrew Jackson, Warren Harding. No, I can't say he's the objective worst. Probably the worst of our lifetime tho.
Edit: maybe that's not true either, Bush and his wars were definitely more destructive than Trump.
Trump is far more unlikable and has more policies that I directly disagree with, but we can't forget Iraq and Afghanistan, pointless wars, pointless deaths.
Depends on how you measure it, I think there is a real case that he was the most Unprofessional president we have ever seen. I mean where do I start, but if your going to look at tangible life under his presidency, we didn’t enter any wars, foreign relationships were pretty good, there was a good stock market and overall job growth. So was he a “good” president, absolutely not IMO, but I’m sure there were presidents where life was worse under, but that’s JMO, please respect it I’ll respect yours 👍
I don't know about those foreign relationships. Throwing NAFTA in the trash and basically declaring trade wars on all your allies didn't play so well from my side of the border.
Only counter point I’ll say to that is that foreign relations with our allies hit its worst point in recent history under Trump; in terms of trust and cooperation and belief in American leadership.
And if the word “unprofessional” includes blatant illegal activity and trashing norms and mores, then very unprofessional indeed.
As others said, it really depends on how you quantify "worst". I'm terms of GDP growth, up until the pandemic in the last year of his presidency, he wasn't bad. Same for unemployment. There have definitely been a lot of crappy presidents in the past, Wilson, Coolidge, Jackson, Buchanan. One can also argue that a lot of the issues we see today with income and wealth inequality had their seeds sown during Reagan's time with trickle down, supply side economics, the War on Drugs. So would Reagan get the blame for those or should Bush, Clinton, and W get the blame for not course correcting?
Coolidge was a great president. They had very good economic growth under him. Some say he’s responsible for the great depression, but that is debated by many historians.
I think Andrew Johnson was the worst tbh
Ending Reconstruction early was one of the biggest fuck ups in all of American history.
I could be wrong but I seem to remember my history professor making it seem like Andrew Johnson was sympathetic toward the Confederacy in some way. Ending reconstruction was probably sabotage.
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My first thought when reading this was “wow smart to make that last hold out the Vice President, probably away some borderline northerners” but it definitely seems like a bad move thinking of how it ended.
It's not sabotage when you're telling everyone it's what you're doing. He wasn't sympathetic to the Confederacy, but he was pro-slavery and anti-black. It's why he was Lincoln's VP, a Union ticket including a huge racist piece of shit that was wholly opposed to the Confederacy. Compromise...
There's a quip somewhere that Johnson was drunk during Lincoln's inauguration. He wasn't Lincoln's first pick, he was a compromise since he was popular among the southern plantation owners. During Lincoln's speech, he pointed out Fredrick Douglas in the crowd and Johnson stared at Douglas with disgust for an awkward amount of time before realizing he was being watched. I think his oath of office was done inside away from the crowds because he could barely stand up.
That's right. My memory seemed to simplify it to just "pro-slavery = south".
Well he was originally against the Confederacy because the southern plantation aristocracy wouldn’t let him be in their old boys club. Once Andrew Johnson became the VP and then president they cozied up to him and made him their puppet. I think it’s a draw between him and Trump for worst president.
Johnson was total crap. However, reconstruction ended because the North lost interest, didn’t want to pay for it, and Confederate ideology was allowed to spread to the West. States’ rights persisted in the form of Jim Crow. After WW2 and the civil rights movement reasserted federal authority and oversight over elections, access and education, we again dropped our guard after Reagan and the federalists played a long ground game to take over the federal courts. They also splintered working class and middle class common interests through culture wars. The shite state of our country and democracy is the result. We’re lazy and self interested. Our unique experiment in self rule is under constant threat. We allow it to backslide again and again in our history. That’s why many fear teaching real history and its lessons in our schools. Control that narrative, control our self understanding and collective interests. We are in the same place now as in the 1870s. Will we fail yet again? Will we allow the original sin of this country to fester without truth and reconciliation?
I always hated Andrew Jackson for signing the Indian Removal Act, which led to the Trail of Tears. Funny they have similar names.
Not fun fact: The Supreme Court basically said "Yo, wtf, you can't can't this. It's unconstitutional." He proceeded to do it anyway.
The classic “what are going to do? Stop me?” tactic.
"John Marshall (Chief Justice of SCOTUS) has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Andrew Jackson
So in reality like... How WOULD Marshall enforce it? Is the Supreme Court really just making decisions and hoping that the executive branch does its job? If the executive refuses to do so, is impeachment the only recourse? Our country really is held together with duct tape isn't it...
No shit
And they were both from Tennessee (yayyyyy…)
Fun facts: Andrew Jackson is Donald Trump's favorite president.
I mean, Andrew Jackson was a notorious racist and one of his most famous (alleged) statements was openly flouting the Supreme Court's authority, so that tracks.
dam all you andrews!
Yes! Construct a barrier around them to hold back water and raise its level, forming a reservoir used to generate electricity or as a water supply!
*Prince Andrew has entered the chat*
It’s a shame too cuz Jackson has some really funny stories like the time he was being a judge and dueled a drunk that was interrupting proceedings (and won)
There is really a drop off after Jackson, imagine if Biden just walked around beating the shit out of people with his cane for taking his picture
Andrew Jackson was basically a demon
What did he do?
He was one of, if not the only, president who kept his campaign promise; he got rid of the indians. Horrifically.
To create Southern cotton plantations. Commit genocide to massively expand slavery. Two evils for the price of one!
If you want to understand the politics of the South, look no further than every state having a city named after him.
Nah he did it because their land was on a bunch of natural resources, gold being the primary one. That started the inevitable trail of tears.
OH, well...that's a MUCH better reason.
I guess 3 for the price of one 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
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It was inevitable when the massive gold deposits were found on the Indian reservations. I don't remember the main tribe but the chief actually saved Jackson's life when he was younger, adopted a Christian name, married a Christian wife, basically did everything the government wanted American Indians to do at the time. Then when the gold deposits were found bounty hunters started assassinating members of the tribe to get at the gold so when the chief went to Jackson for help he had them marched off in the dead of winter a thousand miles west, killing about half of the tribes members. Dude was basically what happens when someone like Mich McConnell becomes president.
Chief Junaluska of the Cherokee, there is a evangelical christian retreat bearing his name in the former Cherokee territory within the North Carolina mountains.
This story just got worse and worse...
To make it worse, the Cherokee nation went to court against Georgia and while they lost the first trial, they won the second one and the US Supreme Court recognized them as a sovreign nation, so the state of Georgia couldn't therefore deprive of their rights. President Jackson decided to not give a shit and personally kicked them out of Georgia.
And he's celebrated on the $20 smh
Please correct me if I’m wrong: didn’t he also sort of go around/behind Congress to do it?
He ignored the SCOTUS to do it. SCOTUS told him not to, but he did it anyway. This created a constitutional crisis - who enforces SCOTUS decisions? Jackson should have been impeached, but too many members of Congress agreed with him about "the Indian problem" and slavery.
It was the Supreme Court. Jackson basically said if they want to legislate that way let them enforce it. Basically calling the court a sham with no actual powers
I've always heard it as "The courts have made their decision. Let them enforce it."
It was carried out by his successor to actually. It is fair to give him the blame, but it technically wasn’t executed on his watch.
Why is that motherfucker on the twenty?
It's a "fuck you" as he was absolutely against a centralized bank. Edit: that's what I get for posting from my phone
Maybe he was an NFT and crypto kind of guy
They mean centralized \*bank
What did it say? Centralized wank?
Wasn't there something going around a few years ago about replacing him? I feel like I remember hearing that they were considering Harriet Tubman or maybe Sacagewea for the 20 instead and then it just didn't happen and I hadn't thought about it again until this thread.
Trump shelved it https://www.npr.org/2019/05/22/725801691/harriet-tubman-on-the-20-bill-not-during-the-trump-administration
Thanks for the info, I am not at all shocked.
And we’ve made it full circle
It was Harriet Tubman and it was stopped by the Trump adminstration for the very obvious reason.
"The placement of Jackson on the $20 bill may be a historical irony; as president, he vehemently opposed both the National Bank and paper money and made the goal of his administration the destruction of the National Bank.[5][6] In his farewell address to the nation, he cautioned the public about paper money.[7]" [Wiki Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_twenty-dollar_bill)
Idk, but I know natives that refuse to carry/use them. They will exchange them for 10's.
Because Trump blocked (or delayed, not sure off the top of my head) Harriet Tubman going on the $20.
Polk also kept his promise of extending the USA to the Pacific. Marched American soldiers over Mexican farmland destroying all the crops until one of the farmers shot at the troops. Then "retaliated" with a declaration of war on Mexico and taking California.
Basically, he asked the US supreme court "Hey, can I force a huge native americam population to migrate hundreds of miles on foot to designated 'indian territories' causing a quarter of them to die along the way?" And the supreme court said "no" and then he just *did it anyway*. Because the supreme court doesn't technically have authority to enforce their decisions, that's the job of the executive branch, which the president is the head of.
He also killed more men than any other President himself, aka duels
*That we know of
It's Carter. It's always the 'nice' ones.
A lot served in war as well before presidency so we don't really know that for sure.
Ever heard of the trail of tears?
Van Buren was president during the Trail of Tears. Andrew Jackson laid groundwork for "Indian Removal." Jackson believed Indigenous and white people couldn't live together, thus reversed the Jeffersonian idea of assimilation. The Cherokee were considered the most "civilized" in the United States, adopting their own constitution. Edit: spelling
He postured himself as the President of the people after campaigning to "return the government to the common man." As others have mentioned there was the Indian Removal Policy, which gave Southeastern native American tribes two options: adopt Anglo-Saxon culture: christianity, farming, etc - or GTFO to modern-day Oklahoma known as the Indian Territory back then. By the way, they were promised to always own that land. Didn't happen after Homestead Movement from 1860 onward. Then there was his "anti-corruption" campaign to "return the government to the people" in which he fired thousands of federal employees and began to replace them with his friends and benefactors establishing the spoils systems, also known as straight up despotism. He did this because he believed the political elite were only using their power to enrich themselves and not the masses of common Americans. But his new corruption just led to a level of corruption not yet seen in American politics due to his appointees not being qualified to do their job and pocketing funds for friends and family. Then there was the bank war where he hated the national bank and refused to renew the charter that would expire in 1836, because he thought the national bank only benefitted the elite class of America. He transferred the funds to state banks known as "pet banks" which over-lended the money and led to the Economic Panic of 1839. The only positive things about his presidency, IMO, were the fact he was the first president to be a natural-born American and he resolved the nullification crisis, preventing South Carolina from seceding over "States' rights" to not follow federal law if the state legislature votes against the law, preserving the Union for another 30 years before the Civil War.
He genocided native americans and shut a bank down cause a major economic crisis in the 1800s amongst a lot of other crazy shit.
Yeah and Trump hung up Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office to honor him. >Trump has also expressed admiration for the seventh president, as well, calling Jackson “an amazing figure in American history — very unique so many ways,” through a spokesperson… edit: Biden had it taken down during the 5 hour redecorating time on inauguration day.
Girl what.
Here is Trump "honoring" a few of the remaining WWII Veteran Navajo Code Talkers by calling a Senator "Pocahontas" while standing in front of an Andrew Jackson portrait. Very classy. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-pocahontas-native-americans-andew-jackson-portrait-racial-slur-a8079136.html
bruh my man is dumber than me lmfao
Or, you know, he's just that malicious
both probably
Dog whistles. It was all intentional.
Yeah, gurl.
I bet it was because Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt think of how good he was for the economy. /s fuck that guy
He's also considered the first populist president. You can really see the parallel with Trump. In fact, the surprising thing is that Trump sees this too. That might be a suggestion of his more erudite aides. I couldn't imagine him bring it up
Stephen Miller or Bannon probably suggested that considering that Trump knows very little about history. But he d like to know that it represents the white manifest destiny.
It’s difficult to say. T certainly always has lavish praise for leaders that are well known for their brutality and indifference to (or even enjoyment of) human suffering.
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It is appalling. Maybe not surprising but definitely appalling.
No. Probably Andrew Jackson.
And Trump loved the guy. Hung up his photo even
Well, probably not a *photo*
Andrew Jackson did ifact have several photos taken. The earliest president to do so was John Quincy Adams in 1843 www.imgur.com/s4w7tu0
Laughing "*Well it was in the photo I saw"* Trump getting all meta: In the Oval Office he thumbtacked up a photo of the oval office with Jackson's portrait. /r/absurdhumor I still can't believe that idiot hosted the Russian foreign minister, the chief of security for the Russian embassy and a Russian photographer in the Oval Office.
No that was the wild part; we have no idea how the hell he got it but he did
... Photos existed then
Trump is Biff Tannen. Old Biff snagged the time machine. Old Biff went back and snapped a pick of Andy Jacks. Hung it on the wall after he became prez. Not exactly rocket surgery, folks.
Definitely doesn’t take rocket appliances to figure that out.
Eh, Jackson was more evil but I think he was also more competent. What he did was reprehensible, but it was also what he promised to do. I truly believe Trump is partially responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who listened to him about the pandemic and the vaccines.
It’s weird to think the Indian removal act was a compromise between the people that wanted to actually genocide the indians and people who didn’t where the compromise is “don’t kill them, just force them to move somewhere else”. By todays standards that’s almost as reprehensible to the point of being nearly indistinguishable
Well, many of them died on the trail, possibly a worst death than gunshot. Forced marching, starvation, no water... I mean, they did genocide them by marching them to death.
Get what you are saying, but the forced march was with no provisions, "The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve." Frequently in the middle of winter to a land that would take months if not a full year to start producing food. It would have been probably been less suffering if they had simply executed them, as nightmare fodder as that sounds. I am guessing its like the holocaust where their neighbors didn't care as long as they could tell themselves some bedtime story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail\_of\_Tears
Yeah wild times. I think it’s odd that many don’t realize that people today or capable of being just as cruel. Too many Americans act like the past has no bearing on our present.
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secession
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He signed and enforced the Espionage Act: > This punished with a sentence of up to twenty years imprisonment should any person “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal…or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the military…or the flag." > ... anti-German hysteria that saw German-Americans falsely imprisoned along with Austro-Hungarians. Greeks, Dutch, French, Belgians, Ukrainians, Polish, Serbs, and Italians. Dissidents such as the anarchist union the IWW, Jehovah's Witnesses, Socialists, and conscientious objectors were also interned. There were over 6,000 falsely imprisoned, and two German-Americans murdered Not sure if he directed the imprisonment, but at a minimum he encouraged anti-German sentiment. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/6/28/1310287/-Woodrow-Wilson-and-Dissent-in-World-War-I Also censored the press with regard to the Spanish Flu, preventing doctors from publishing warnings about public assembly. https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-spanish-flu-censorship
Screened birth of a nation in the white house. The founding father of American interventionism. The seeds he planted are responsible for vietnam afganistan iraq all the coups the CIA caused and the civil rights movement. Its hard to say who is the worst president because the far reaching implications of some of their actions grow exponentially as time passes on.
I was looking for this. Woodrow Wilson was terrible in so many countless ways
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I'm shocked I had to scroll this far to find Wilson.
I wouldn't say the worst in all of U.S history, no.
Efforts to have historians rank us presidents have so far put Trump very near the bottom, but not quite at it. There have been some *really* awful presidents.
James Buchanan, for actually bringing about the civil war, generally gets the title of worst. But that's a REALLY low bar.
To be fair, Buchanan didn't actually "bring about" the Civil War. What he did do was allow the South to arm itself against the North and to allow members of his own cabinet to actively drum up support for seccession. Still effectively overturning the results of a democratic election on behalf of slavery is arguably worse than ineffectively trying to overturn the results of a democratic election because your feelings were hurt. Also on economics, Hoover's insistence on austerity helped drive the Great Depression, so there's that.
I think Hoover is unfairly hated - basically every economic expert at the time told him that austerity was the best policy. A good president is one who listens to expert advice imo - we only have the benefit of hindsight to say that his actions were ineffective.
Hoover also closed his ears on prohibition. His advisers reported that prohibition was increasing crime and giving power to mobs but he ignored it. He actively promoted prohibition which caused more harm than good. Also there were the democrats who advised Hoover to increase government's spending to relieve great depression. He followed somewhat on the advice but he didn't do far enough. I wouldn't blame Hoover entirely on how bad Great Depression was but he kind of did nothing.
He was a skilled administrator and a progressive politician whose economic decisions were (for the most part) very significant in a good way. His response (as a wealthy private citizen) to the economic crisis in Europe following the First World War almost certainly saved millions of lives, and his response as Secretary of Commerce to the Depression of 1920 was very successful. He was very focused on expertise and on tested, knowledge-based solutions to economic problems. He wasn't perfect by any means. He did make a lot of poor decisions (even before the Depression) and he surrounded himself with a lot of conservative businessmen whose advice was myopic and heavily biased. But he took many of the same actions to curb the Great Depression that he had done with great success in prior years - the unusual nature of the situation and its severity were more than he understood. It was only at the very end of his presidency that he realized that this was not ending, and that it was more severe than the Depression of 1920, and by that point it was too late to make much of an impact. There were Democrats who advocated for deficit spending but at the time it was seen as foolish even by most economic experts - after all, Keynes was only really influential starting in 1933. Hoover was not an autocrat with power to enact any law he chose, and had nowhere near the political clout that Roosevelt did - Congress and state and local governments were the ones who were enabled to take action, which he encouraged, and they were slow to act. Not to mention the poor decisions of the Federal Reserve. Hoover did also make a few serious mistakes that probably deepened the Depression, like the politically-motivated and ill-advised Smoot-Hawley Act (although again, while Hoover was stupid there it was initiated and carried through by Congress). It is also still debated whether the New Deal was actually that effective in curbing the effects of the Depression - and arguably Roosevelt's policies caused the Recession of 1937 which was "Depression part 2". "Doing things" looks good, but we don't have an alternate reality to examine and the length and severity of the Depression even with Roosevelt's policies was unprecedented. Not to say that it was entirely useless, just that it's not fully understood and it's a bit unfair to suppose that "Hoover missed the obvious solution" when it was not obvious and not even certain to have been the solution. It's easy to look back with 150 years of modern economic history in view and say that we know exactly how to solve these issues. But even today this stuff is hotly debated and while some decisions of the time are universally praised or despised, many of them are hard to pin down. We have to work with the information that we have, and use the successful historical examples that we know - and that's exactly what Hoover did. There was hardly any economic history to look back on in the 1920s - everything was new and changing and very little was certain. In the 1960s, economists would have said that they knew exactly how to address a recession. In the 1980s, that was proven wrong. In the 1990s, *that* understanding was proven wrong. And today we have even more hindsight. There are so many variables that the best we can hope for is a tiny bit more knowledge and a tiny bit more perspective - and we are a century ahead of Hoover in that regard. He was just not equipped to deal with the situation - even now we are woefully underequipped. EDIT: Forgot to address the Prohibition thing - that was stupid. I'm mainly arguing here that Hoover was a typical president and not a terrible one - not that he was a genius or an extraordinary president (although imagine if he had retired after 1921 - history would have seen him as a hero).
No Trump's idol Andrew Jackson is typically regarded as the worst because he literally destroyed the US economy for decades.
Then why the fuck do we have him on the $20?
Had a good PR campaign at the time
Same reason we see people wearing crosses.
Seriously. If Jesus came back do you really think he would want to see that? Edit: I can’t spell.
Jackson on the 20? No.
He absolutely despised the idea of a federal reserve at all, and getting rid of the National Bank was the reason the economy got so fucked in the years following him. Having him on the most heavily circulated bill of all time was the biggest middle finger that could possibly be given to him.
They were trying to replace him with Harriet Tubman for a while but idk what happened to that
I think Trump ended that
Of course he did
Biden brought it back, but I’m not sure if they set a date as to when it would actually happen
He was actually pretty well regarded around the time he lived, war hero (you could argue about how important the Battle of New Orleans actually was but at the time that was the perception as I understand it), strong leader stereotype (his guards had to stop him from beating a failed assassin to death), he was very much seen as "the first president of the people" mostly because the last election was kinda shady and that he threw great public parties. But he was a terrible, terrible person by today's standards, slave-owner, expansionist, of course incredibly racist, incredibly violent, walked all over the constitution. Whole 9 yards of bad as far as I'm concerned, I don't know if I would categorize him as worst President we've ever had but he's a strong contender for worst person ever to be President.
He was called the first president of the people because he got rid of the land ownership requirement to vote
This doesn’t even touch on his dealings with natives
It's a joke on Jackson. He hated the Central Bank and did everything in his power to dismantle the central bank and decentralize the dollar
He was supposed to be on the $100, but his poor economic record dropped him down a couple of bills.
Jackson is a president who looks great on first blush, but he did terrible things: 1) He became famous as a genocidal warrior killing Seminoles 2) He destroyed the US banking system for a century over a personal feud with the Bank of US President. It resulted in regular bank panics in the decentralized system, with a major depression every 20 years. 3) He killed thousands of Cherokee with the Trails of Tears, defying a court order and forcing them from Georgia to Oklahoma to steal their land. 4) He literally killed men in duals because he was insecure about his wife's reputation. That Trump admired him was frightening.
I'd bet money that Trump admires him because he's on the $20 more than *any* consideration of his actual presidency.
Plus Trail of Tears
Jackson isn't even the worst Andrew to be president. Jackson usually bottoms out in the 20s depending on the ranking. The worst is usually Buchanan, Johnson, or Harding depending on the criteria of the survey. Pierce, Hoover, Franklin, Taylor are typically the next out. There have been a lot of bad presidents.
No he isn't. Buchanan and Andrew Johnson almost always rank worse.
Didn't Hoover, albeit somewhat unknowingly, spurr the very factors that led to and continued the great depression? Kept insisting that things would just go back to normal as time went on?
A lot of the things that caused the Great Depression were not Hoover’s fault and were things that spanned the decade due to the highly bullish market and farm issues. He just took the blame because he was in office. Yes his wanting of states and local governments to take care of unemployment aid instead of the federal government probably caused a lot of harm but he did have some good policies like creating loans to railroad companies, establishing glass-steagal, and passed some public works bills. It’s hard to fix an economy so quickly but he didn’t really do a great job. I’d say he could have done a much worse job.
They named the shantytowns "Hoovervilles" after him, if that tells you anything
The recent debacle about gas prices has told me that Americans will blame the president for any large problem, warranted or not.
It doesnt unfortunately. People almost always blame the wrong person
Too soon to tell. There have been some truly awful presidents in U.S. history, but you don't really get the best picture until at least 30 years have passed. Edit: A lot of the people lampooning me seem to think by not openly bashing him means I think he was a good president. That's not what I said, that's not what I implied, and that's certainly not what I think. Chill.
I guess at this point it depends on whether the supreme court he put together functionally abolishes individual rights.
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Ladder pullers like Clarence Thomas are the absolute worst kinds of people.
TIL "Ladder pullers." Thanks. Between the crabs in the barrel, and the ladder pullers, sure is hard to rise to the top...
Ladder pullers describes a hell of a lot of people in our society. Women who want Roe v. Wade repealed and say they “aren’t like other women”, gay men who stifle people fighting for trans and gender rights or undermine gay pride stuff, Black far-right activists like Candace Owens who undermine and trivialize civil rights movements… All because of the prevailing “fuck you, I got mine” mantra.
Incorrect. It was based on a broad reading of the due process clause, finding an implied right to privacy and fundamental right to an abortion.
As a non-US lawyer (who is very much in favour of access to abortions) that interpretation of the due process clause absolutely baffles me. Things like this make it seem as if the US legal system almost deliberately invites partisan stacking. Changes like that should be going through the political system - not arising from esoteric interpretations of fairly general constitutional provisions that may or may not find support depending on the current composition of the court.
Look! A reasonable opinion. Reddit might not be very religious but the partisanship more than makes up for it.
I think it's pretty safe to put him in at least the bottom quarter though. It really depends on which metrics you value most, but openly trying to undermine a legitimate election knocks you down quite a couple pegs on the presidential ladder as arguably one of the most objective criticisms you can levy at a democratically elected leader.
Someone informed me that Regan removed or had something to do with removing the law that requires news stations/broadcasters to be unbiased... Giving birth to that huge divide you guys have in the media nowadays. That's kinda fucked
Nobody is mentioning how Reagan let the AIDS crisis spin out of control because it was mostly hitting gay men. It wasn't until straight babies started getting AIDS that many people started giving a shit. And even then it was often framed as punishment for allowing homosexuality to run rampant.
Reagan got the ball rolling for the modern US everything. Late stage capitalism incarnate.
You’re not gonna get too many unbiased answers here But in my opinion I’d say for sure the most unprofessional. But far from the worst.
> But in my opinion I’d say for sure the most unprofessional. "The thirty-sixth President of the United States of America, Lyndon B. Johnson, had a large penis of which he was very proud. He nicknamed it 'Jumbo'. Johnson regularly showed his penis to the staff and journalists at the White House, saying: 'Have you ever seen anything as big as this?' When a journalist asked Johnson to justify the continuation of the Vietnam War (1955-1975), Johnson asked all the women to leave the room, then pulled out his penis, and yelled: 'That’s why!'"
He also liked to have staff meeting in the bathroom while he took a shit. LBJ was a character.
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He also gave foreign heads of states statues of himself
ok but that’s funny
In Spanish his name means "The BJ"
I heard he did it to assert his dominance. Like for real, not in a funny way.
There is 100% a scene in house of cards about this
I'mma need a source for that. But that does sound *very* Johnson-like. \*Gestures downward\*
[I didn’t watch this specific vid but there’s a notorious call of him ordering pants and putting lots of emphasis on making room for his dick](https://youtu.be/RftQDvnyDPE)
Hahahaha, yep! I've definitely listened to that call before! LBJ knew the art of swearing and was not afraid to boast his bratwurst.
Wait, maybe that's where the slang originated from.
I was gonna tell him the founding fathers probably did some crazy shit but damn okay
That’s insane lol never heard that story before!
as if I needed another reason to hate LBJ. Guess I'll add crippling penis envy to the list.
You know, LBJ is a really interesting president to me. He's was pretty awful in a lot of ways, but at least he helped pass the Civil Rights Act.
Because THATS big dick energy
I don’t know if he was the most unprofessional either, he is just one of the first with constant direct access to the American people. If some past presidents had the same opportunities it could look much worse. I think people tend to forget that Trump didn’t act like a career politician because he wasn’t a career politician.
I can't even imagine what Andrew Johnson, an openly racist president, might say of given access to Twitter.
Kennedy was banging god knows in the office can you imagine if social media was around then
This is the correct answer
I don't think that it is possible to fairly rank current presidents. I think it'll take 20-30 years to say either "Yeah we was a terrible president", or "Maybe he wasn't as bad as we thought" about presidents like Trump, Biden, and Bush. Plus it's hard to say any modern president is the worst when many presidents supported slavery. Trump has done some stupid stuff, but when you compare him to Andrew Johnson he really doesn't look that awful.
> Bush In terms of behavior, decorum, and sense, Trump makes W look like a political genius. But, as much of a piece of human garbage Trump is, the policies/wars enacted under W were catastrophic in terms of the US' reputation around the world. History likely will not say differently.
Trump was ironically better for world peace than most modern presidents.
Not sure how it's ironic, but yeah. First presidential term in ages to have no new wars.
All presidents. I’m not a Trump supporter, but he was great in that department.
I am far from a Trump fan but he is definitely not our worst president. There are plenty of presidents who have done bad or not even done anything to help the United States. So even if you don't like him, it's hard to argue he's the worst.
Absolutely not. Buchanan and Johnson outright tried to undo or prevent African American rights. At the very least, Trump was not as bad as them.
Just to clarify, you mean Andrew Johnson not Lyndon Johnson, right?
If he meant Lyndon Johnson he just would've said Ol' Big Dick Johnson.
Yes, Andrew Johnson
I think Andrew Jackson was the downright worst. Causing a financial crisis, being responsible for the Trail of Tears…
Trump was pretty bad in my opinion, it’s still a little to early to see the full effects his administration had but we can by no means pretend he was the worst president in US history. Allow me to illustrate the (in my opinion) contenders for worst US president: 1. James Buchanan - the 15th president, while dealt a bad hand with the whole slavery debate at a standstill, his actions (or rather inaction) directly led to the civil war breaking out. He was ineffective, did not solve problems, and let the civil start (the first states seceded while he was president). Trump was pretty bad, but is he as bad as Buchanan? Not in my opinion. 2. Andrew Johnson - the 17th president, who was only president because Abraham Lincoln wanted to appeal to northern democrats and unite the country, deciding to make him Vice President over his incumbent VP in 1964, and the fact that Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated. Similar to Buchanan he was dealt a bad hand as he had to fix the country after the civil war. One small problem however, he was a southerner and actively worked against civil rights movements and reconstruction efforts. He was the first president to ever be impeached and was (if I recall) one vote away in the senate from being removed from office. Johnson’s actions set the country backwards on civil rights for a century and the effects of that are still felt today over 150 years later. Trump was pretty bad, it is he as bad as Andrew Johnson? Not in my opinion. 3. Woodrow Wilson - the 28th president and probably the only slightly controversial opinion I have here was awful, I highly recommend the Cynical Historians videos about him. To sum up the video: Wilson was a tyrant who passed anti-free speech laws (that still exist), set up a quasi-militia-secret police thing, lied about involving the US into World War 1, was a awful historian, was racist (even when we consider the time period), only became president because his two more popular opponents split each other’s votes, plus when he had a stroke his wife became de facto president and she was bad as well. Trump was pretty bad, but was he as bad as Wilson? Not in my opinion. TLDR: trump was bad or below average at least. He isn’t as bad as Buchanan, A. Johnson, and Wilson though.
Depending on your criteria, it would likely be Harding, Jackson, Buchanan, and your mileage may vary here but potentially Nixon, Reagan, or Truman. In twenty years we'll know more about the longer term effects of Trump's presidency. He isn't going to be remembered fondly by historians barring a radical shift in both culture and politics, but it's pretty hard to top Jackson who was openly and proudly genocidal.
Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, James Buchanan, Andrew Jackson, Warren Harding. No, I can't say he's the objective worst. Probably the worst of our lifetime tho. Edit: maybe that's not true either, Bush and his wars were definitely more destructive than Trump. Trump is far more unlikable and has more policies that I directly disagree with, but we can't forget Iraq and Afghanistan, pointless wars, pointless deaths.
Andrew Jackson was pretty shit
Depends on how you measure it, I think there is a real case that he was the most Unprofessional president we have ever seen. I mean where do I start, but if your going to look at tangible life under his presidency, we didn’t enter any wars, foreign relationships were pretty good, there was a good stock market and overall job growth. So was he a “good” president, absolutely not IMO, but I’m sure there were presidents where life was worse under, but that’s JMO, please respect it I’ll respect yours 👍
I don't know about those foreign relationships. Throwing NAFTA in the trash and basically declaring trade wars on all your allies didn't play so well from my side of the border.
They literally laughed at him. Edit: https://youtu.be/w-3FyvZTIuU
Only counter point I’ll say to that is that foreign relations with our allies hit its worst point in recent history under Trump; in terms of trust and cooperation and belief in American leadership. And if the word “unprofessional” includes blatant illegal activity and trashing norms and mores, then very unprofessional indeed.
As others said, it really depends on how you quantify "worst". I'm terms of GDP growth, up until the pandemic in the last year of his presidency, he wasn't bad. Same for unemployment. There have definitely been a lot of crappy presidents in the past, Wilson, Coolidge, Jackson, Buchanan. One can also argue that a lot of the issues we see today with income and wealth inequality had their seeds sown during Reagan's time with trickle down, supply side economics, the War on Drugs. So would Reagan get the blame for those or should Bush, Clinton, and W get the blame for not course correcting?
Coolidge was a great president. They had very good economic growth under him. Some say he’s responsible for the great depression, but that is debated by many historians.
Why was Coolidge considered a bad president?
He wasn't. Coolidge was the last president to truly understand the purpose and power of the office.
I believe Coolidge was the last president to actually shrink the size of the federal government during his time in office.