Ranking the Presidents of the U.S.A

Obama to Washington
Then, best to worst
Then, how I judge them and what I hope to see

Barack Obama--failure; I hope he repents of his political sins and improves his ranking.Wasted bloated budgets, huge deficits, wasted almost a trillion on a stimulus bill he should have known would be completely worthless, claimed he could cut health costs while increasing demand without reducing existing demand or helping supply ...

George W. Bush--near failure: wasted bloated budgets, huge deficits, mismanaged wars...Did target Saddam Hussein's head.

Bill Clinton--near success: two years of failure, then he let Republicans reform welfare somewhat and balance the budget. Failed to head off 9-11, but Bush had another 18 months to do so.

George H. W. Bush--failure: broke his promise to not raise taxes (and after that, how can we trust anything a Presidential candidate says? Bush horribly cheapened political discourse.) Failed to execute the murderer (war-starter) Saddam Hussein.

Ronald Reagan--great success: turned the Cold War around (nice surprise for Kissinger and Carter), slightly reduced D.C.'s percentage of GDP. Some deregulation. Strength. One of our top Presidents.

Jimmy Carter--failure. Unemployment, deficits, weakness, inflation, and high interest rates. Did deregulate airlines, trucks and gas prices, and started stealth fighter and other weapon developments.

Gerald Ford--middling. (GOP establishment; we need the Tea Party/libertarians, who have right ideas.)

Richard Nixon--middling average,: near-success AND failure (resigned for coverup. And see Ford.)

Lyndon Johnson--failure. Babysitter government instead of freedom, limited and mismanaged war. Did balance one budget?

John F. Kennedy--middling. (Murdered by a Communist for being a Cold War Democrat. See Ford).

Dwight D. Eisenhower--near success. (See Ford.) Some balanced budgets.

Harry Truman--near success. Did cut D.C. by half at end of WWII (cut defense too much), did keep half of Europe and Korea. Lost China (unwinnable?) and half Korea (could've kept three-quarters, I think). At home, see Ford.

Franklin D. Roosevelt--failure. Kept the Depression going by stupid stimuli instead of making it go away by ignoring it, as Warren G. Harding had done earlier. Less bad as a war leader, but gave decoding too little and Stalin too much. Set country on wrong, babysitter-government track. Third term not needed.

Herbert Hoover--failure with a frown instead of a smile. Economy was recovering from stock crash until he started meddling.

Calvin Coolidge--success: growth with balanced budgets. But didn't block stock bubble.

Warren G. Harding--success: see Coolidge. Most recent President under whom no U.S. military personnel died in combat situations. (Carter came close: 2 Marines in Pakistan and 8 dead in hostage fiasco.) Ignored a recession and it went away. But disarmament led to Hiroshima by giving Japan strongest navy in the Pacific.

Woodrow Wilson--failure. Federal Reserve, increase of babysitting at home, income tax that exceeded the 10% that had been promised to be unthinkable, blundering interference in World War I, blundering peace (broke up Austro-Hungarian Empire), blundering rigidity re peacemaking (and adultery to boot, which didn't help him, or FDR, or JFK, or LBJ, think straight.)

William Howard Taft--lower middling: not re-elected. (From here down I sometimes don't know enough to judge.)

Teddy Roosevelt--upper middling: Panama Canal, active navy, some regulation...

William McKinley--upper middling.

Grover Cleveland 2^nd term--middling. (Some say his work for insurance companies between terms worsened his politics.)

Benjamin Harrison--lower middling: not re-elected and wasted predecessor's balanced budget.

Cleveland 1^st term--success: balanced the budget.

Chester Alan Arthur--middling.

James A. Garfield--middling. (Shot after very short term.)

Rutherford B. Hayes--middling.

Ulysses S. Grant--lower middling.

Andrew Johnson--middling overall. Had a rough time (in over his head; too bad Lincoln was shot).

Abraham Lincoln--success. Ended slavery and secession (the latter might be defensible)--ended an evil and mastered a great crisis--but enlarged D.C. (reducing freedom in general): censorship, war he MIGHT have avoided, federal paper money...

James Buchanan--lower middling. Elected to compromise, and did, but didn't handle secession.

Franklin Pierce--middling.

Millard Fillmore--middling.

Zachary Taylor--middling. Died fairly early in his term.

James K. Polk--great success. Peace north, victory south.

John Tyler--middling.

William Henry Harrison--middling. Died very early in his term.

(The U.S. economy grew faster A.D. 1840-1860, Tyler through Buchanan, than it has grown in any 20-year-period since. In those days we had far less regulation, e.g. banks printed their own money.)

Martin van Buren--lower middling. Severe recession, but followed by sound-money prosperity.

Andrew Jackson--success: he put down the Federal Reserve of his day, and paid off the national debt, and headed off a secession crisis...but unjust to Cherokees.

John Quincy Adams--lower middling; not re-elected.

James Monroe--middling.

James Madison--lower middling, a muddled war.

Thomas Jefferson--near success for Louisana Purchase; weak navy and embargo policies.

John Adams--lower middling, Alien and Sedition Acts and a muddled war with France.

George Washington--great success, set a huge number of good precedents.

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By rank, top to bottom; somewhat arbitrary within each grouping

Great success*************************

1. George Washington

2. Ronald Reagan

3. James K. Polk

Success********************************

4. Andrew Jackson

5. Abraham Lincoln

6. Calvin Coolidge

7. Warren Harding

8. Grover Cleveland, 1^st term

Near success. (Hard group to rank).************************

9. Thomas Jefferson

10. Dwight D. Eisenhower

11. Harry Truman

12. Bill Clinton

Upper middling

13. Teddy Roosevelt

14. William McKinley

Middling (oldest to newest; quite a mix, here for different reasons)**********************

15. James Monroe

16. William Henry Harrison

17. John Tyler

18. Zachary Taylor

19. Milliard Fillmore

20. Franklin Pierce

21. Andrew Johnson

22. Rutherford B. Hayes

23. James A. Garfield

24. Chester A. Arthur

25. Grover Cleveland 2^nd term

26. John F. Kennedy

27. Richard Nixon

28. Gerald Ford

Lower middling (newest to oldest for a change)************************************

29. William Howard Taft

30. Benjamin Harrison

31. Ulysses S. Grant

32. James Buchanan

33. Martin van Buren

34. John Quincy Adams

35. James Madison

36. John Adams

Near failure*******************************

37. George W. Bush

Failure (newest to oldest, but I do think I'd rank them this way)*****************************

38. Barack Obama (top of group by benefit of doubt; he could go down)

39. George H. W. Bush

40. Jimmy Carter

41. Lyndon Johnson

42. Franklin D. Roosevelt

43. Herbert Hoover

44. Woodrow Wilson

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I glanced at a Wikipedia article on Presidential rankings and decided to do one myself. A cereal box gave me a list of Presidents. 30 years ago I read historian Thomas Bailey's rankings; my ranking of Washington as #1 follows Bailey.

Obviously I consider modern liberalism a failure, and its Presidents failures: it keeps costing more while schools get worse--its 'war on ignorance' has failed, it pays people not to work instead of encouraging production, its war on poverty has failed, it's broke, its 'generosity' is bogus (at taxpayers' expense instead of personal), its very ideal of egalitarianism destroys itself because to equalize requires a non-equal Equalizer (to spread out wealth concentrates power--to equalize destroys equality), its paternalism is loathsome (our President and Secretary of State may be geniuses, but are they fit to tell me what to do?), it's unconstitutional (the Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate private warships, but does not authorize most of what D.C. does), it does not work, it does not protect liberty as the Declaration of Independence tells government to do, and--for Christians such as most Americans and most U.S. politicians claim to be--it is contrary to the personal example of Jesus Christ who gave his own life instead of crucifying the taxpayers and who rejected political power, and it is contrary to the Bible's constitutional advice (I Samuel 8) and the Bible's short list of purposes and jobs for government (Romans 13, I Timothy 2).

We need to shrink government a lot: Disney does parks, Harvard does schools, World Vision does welfare, insurance companies could license cars and drivers, a lot of regulations protect monopolies from competition without really protecting consumers. Make risks clear, but let people chose what risks to take, instead of letting rich and powerful people take choices away from poor people. The Institute for Justice (www.ij.org) does a lot of good work: Clint Bolick for President? (A libertarian who lets us use our own heads puts more brainpower to work than a liberal who wants to do our thinking for us. Ronald Reagan was a good President and Jimmy Carter a bad one.)