I agree with Smithwick – it's really impossible to rank a sitting president, and I'd be reluctant even to rank Clinton at this point. But he is definitely on his way to a bottom-of-the-list presidency. Otherwise, you're pretty much spot on, though I might rank Wilson lower (or higher, depending on how you view it) than LBJ, but it's a close call.

I'd rank FDR as #1, and swap Dubya (who I voted for twice) out with Harding, but otherwise this is a pretty good list. I really think you can't authentically rate Obama's Presidency until it is over, but if it ended to day he would be #2 on my list (Roosevelt paved the road though, so he ultimately gets the blame from me for every socialist step we've walked on it).

Honestly, we've had a pretty poor track record over the last 100 years. Some reputations are undeserved though.

Coolidge is vastly underrated, mainly because freedom-hating liberals try to tie his policies to the Depression without much supporting evidence.

Wilson gets a pass on some really ruinous policies because of WWI…of which he had little actual involvement in besides the decision to go to war, which he made grudgingly, then submarined the peace process. Totally undeserving of his reputation unlike FDR, who really played a central role in orchestrating the country in WWII.

But overall we've had a lot of terrible Presidents, a lot of average ones, and few that could be considered great or even good. As the quality of Presidents hasn't gotten any better but the power of the government increasing tremendously, it's little wonder that the country it teetering on the brink of disaster. Lesser men should be given less power.

Pretty good article, Hawkins. I agree with most of your assessments. Other presidents that could be on the “runner ups” list would include Grant and Andrew Johnson.

I echo what others have stated about it being too soon to rank Obama. Clearly he is an awful president, but until his term is over it's going to be inpossible to rank him compared to others who went before him.

I would not put Clinton in the bottom seven as others have proposed. His moral failings and criminal acts aside, he really didn't do that much damage to the country. After the GOP victory in '94 he was largely checkmated and had to move toward the center to get anything at all passed. While his first two years were awful, he shaped to be, while far from a good president, at least one I could tolerate. I doubt Obama will be the same when and if he loses control of congress come November.
Clinton certainly needs to be in the bottom half of US presidents, but really is not in the same category as losers like Harden, Lindon Johnson, and Carter.

Finally, I'll get to my most contraversial point. I think Abraham Lincoln should be somewere in the bottom seven. Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing the right or wrong of the South's cause in the Civil War here…I'm talking about Lincoln's behavior. He refused to pursue a diplomatic solution to the problem of succession and in fact pushed the South into a military confrontation. It was his provocation that led to the South attacking US military instalations, thus starting the war. Lincoln commited numerous civil rights violations during the conflict that would make the left's most paranoid fantasies about G.W. Bush pale in comparrison. Lincoln shut down newspapers that were critical of his policies and jailed political opponents. He also permitted his generals to commit widespread atrocities that would be considered war crimes in today's world.
But he is remembered as a great man by most for two reasons: the emancipation of the slaves (a cynical political gamble on his part rather than some grand humanitarian gesture) and the whole “martyr factor. He was murdered in office, so his failings are allowed to slip into history unrememebered. The same could be said about Kennedy as well.
So yes, Lincoln really deserves to be included in the botton seven of US presidents.

TR

Yeah FDR has to be worst, then Carter. Who knows with Obama, he's slightly less incompetent than Carter, so far, but in the end he may end up the worst of all of them. Clinton was a middle of the road guy, he wasn't actually an awful president, just an awful person with lousy politics.

I actually don't think Nixon was nearly as bad as people say; he was pretty lame (RINO, misused power) but he wasn't the horrific crook and monster that he's portrayed as. I'd drop him off the top 7.

I don't agree with the list entirely. Yes, Obama is bad, but until he joins Carter as a one term President, thus a complete failure and not just 'a' failure, he should only be a punchline and not a fact.

LBJ on the list makes sense: he won only one Presidential election and quit another, and that win was predicated on Kennedy's death, not anything he had done historically.

Nixon does make sense because of Watergate, because pure politicians like him get punished by the Establishment because they got caught, not because of the crime they committed. The Establishment now wants the feathered head of Maxine Waters, so know that the Establishment is an equal-opportunity exploiter of politicians who screw up the scam.

Jimmy “Use Molded Wood, It's Cheaper” Carter is self-explanatory, and worse he continues to build with his Habitat for Humanity homes with 'recycled' materials.

Woodrow Wilson once suggested that socialist eat catfood. The socialists did. That's how much of a prick Wilson was.

I would put Bush Sr. on the list because backflipping away from a winning election strategy at the expense of putting people in a recession, like President Obama has done without the promises, is pretty bad.

And add William Howard Taft. For what? The Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. It's not THE reason we are in the mess we are in now, but boy it contributed.

I would not put Warren Harding on the list.

Who was the President that was the Tammany Hall Machine's chosen guy? I see some similarity with our current President who is the Chicago Machine's guy. Course Truman was a Machine man as well.

My list…
I don't want to put Obama on because its easy to get swept up in the propaganda of the moment. I did this with Clinton. Granted, Clinton contributed greatly to the moral decline of the nation. Unfortunately D-Vega, if you're serious about putting Bush on this list, I have to think you're doing the same thing. I don't like Clinton, but to be fair, he doesn't belong on the worst list, adn if a liberal is being fair-minded, they'd realize the same thing about Bush.

There are good arguements that Obama has done very poorly. But I need to get some perspective on it.

As to Lincoln, I am leaning toward the idea that he provoked the war.
Let's just say that there were three groups at the time…Yankee industrialists, Southern planters, and Highland small farmers. And if the Highlanders had taken over the nation instead of the Industrialists, or even the Planters, it would have been better. Hillbillies rule.

7. Nixon was largely the victim of the same process that came after Palin. Granted, he did some pretty stupid things like Wage and Price Controls.

6.

5. LBJ…the passive-aggressive micromanager style really stomps on my personal annoyance factor button. We're not going to lead, nor do we follow, nor do we get out of the way.

4. Hoover…if he had done the right thing, aka, cut taxes, and limited gov't there might not have been a Great Depression. Instead, the Great Depression would have been a Trivia Pursuit question….”In Hoover's two-terms, the Panic of what two years? What are those two years?”

3. Wilson…what he said. And I suspect 'Lusitania' as well. He wasn't an idiot like LBJ, or an incipient statist like Hoover, but the full blown disease, I guess.

2. FDR…its a very good point someone made. Could another president have gotten us through WW2…probably.

1. Jimmy Carter….my parents have voted Republican for President ever since they voted for this guy. America overdosed on ludes and whiskey during his administration, and fell into a coma. But happily, we did not die.