As in recent Tuesdays, given today's other events, I decided to do a purely fun poll today. We previously did Worst Presidents pre-1945 covering George Washington to Herbert Hoover; but now is the time to ask worst president from Roosevelt to the other George W.
It is better if the "Demographic Tuesdays" community demographic polls stay up in the Recommended Diary list all day so that they can get an equivalent sample of us - morning to night, west & east coast.
And today did not seem like a good day to ask for that... but it is a good day to ask about what has been bad about recent presidents, even the Democrats.
Before just checking George W. Bush, please do think about how bad some of the others were, what was bad, and even how they set precedents for George W. Bush.
Yes, there is a good argument to be made that W is the worst ever, and serious academic historians of American history, including the great Eric Foner, Sean Wilentz, and Robert McElvaine have made the case.
But, trying to be Fair & Balanced, here are some items one could hold against each of them from 1933-2008:
Roosevelt: gave us deliberately racially exclusive New Deal, Japanese internment, and personal health cover-ups....
Truman: gave us deliberately racially exclusive Fair Deal (affirmative action for whites), nuked Japan, cold war, Korean war, interventions in Greece and Guatemala....
Eisenhower: gave us Iran coup, more interventions in Guatemala, Lebanon, beginning of Vietnam, more cold war (his great quotes against military-industrial complex came as he was leaving power; while in power he quietly promoted it), and waffling on civil rights....
Kennedy: gave us more cold war, build up of nukes, build up in Vietnam, tax cuts for the rich, and waffling on civil rights....
Johnson: gave us the big build-up of Vietnam....
Nixon: gave us the beginning the use by Republicans of racist southern strategy, more expansion of Vietnam, new illegal secret foreign wars (Cambodia, Laos), enemies list, spying and dirty tricks against Democrats....
Ford: gave us the Pardon, Indonesia & Timor, Cheney & Rumsfeld.
Carter: gave us Afghanistan with Al Qaeda/Taliban blowback...
Reagan: gave us the beginning of the destruction of the American Dream of domestic economic fairness/equity/security for America with tax cuts for rich, raising taxes on working class, hurting social security, killing unions, deregulation, de-enforcement, GATT setting the rules for free capital (but not free labor) version of "free trade" (essentially outlawing taking into account human rights, labor rights, environment as part of the rules), Wars in central america, Lebanon, Star Wars and more military industrial complex, Iran/Contra...
Bush I: More of Reagan era, his friends, his son and friends...
Clinton: You list on Clinton's bad may vary...? NAFTA, Finance deregulation and abolishing Glass-Stegall, Keeping Alan "Ayn Rand" Greenspan and his two bubbles, media deregulation and consolidation, general corporate hackery and DLCism, helping lose Congress during the (starting with Georgia run-off in 1992), welfare reform, Lewinsky (Clenis-gate), handling of health care reform resulting in its being DOA...?
Bush II: Do I gotta list it all... voter registration purges before the election, tax cuts for wealthy, deregulation, de-enforcement, signing statements, dismissed terrorism before 9-11, Iraq, Katrina, torture, suspension of habeas, politicization of DoJ and everything else.... ad nauseum.
You may also enjoy Wikipedia's article on Historical Rankings of United States Presidents and especially the elitist (aka: they know stuff) table of Scholars' surveys results as supplemented by a 2007 US News and World Report article.
Have at it!