George W. Bush is the worst president the U.S. has ever had. The guy made us go to war in Iraq, which was an extremely moronic decision. He should've ONLY had us go to war in Afghanistan, and his handling of Hurricane Katrina was downright appalling. The Vice President at the time Dick Cheney was also arguably the worst Vice President ever (I'll admit, picking between him and Joe Biden is extremely difficult), making Bush and Cheney the world's most incompetent duo.

play4fun : Well, you do make a good point, because yeah, 40 years from now, they could be better or worse presidents out there and people today won't experience on how Clinton, Bust Jr, and Obama was because they wasn''t even born during the time, but instead, focus on their current president or the recent president during their lifetimes.

True, we have 44 presidents and the United States has been a country for the past nearly 240 years, and the average age of our lifetime is only 8-10% of that time-frame, and that is true right there.


Sure, they have been good ones and some bad ones. For an example for all the bad ones from start to finish.

Andrew Jackson.. Forced and crammed all the Native Americans into a small area on the map.

Franklin Pierce & James Buchanan.. Started the US Civil War.

Andrew Johnson.. Firing one of his administrative officials which got him impeached.

William McKinley.. Only cared about the Rich and Big Business, and never cared about any of the Poor and Middle Class people.

Warren Harding.. Too many scandals that he was involved to even list.

Woodrow Wilson.. Forced us into World War I when the United States didn't want to get involved.

Herbert Hoover.. Caused the Great Depression.

Richard Nixon.. Watergate, nothing else to explain..

janus :

The second worst was Jackson, who not only trampled the Cherokee tribes, but allowed excessive liberties and killed the founding fathers original ideas for the form of the government.

Txgangsta : "excessive" liberties? What does it even mean? The fact that he abolished the de facto central bank was a good thing in my book.

I'm surprised there are so many votes for Obama and Bush, they are both worthless presidents, but I think the numerous presidents that vetoed slave rights bills and funded slave trade were much more destructive than someone who is an idiot but hasn't done any unfixable damage. That said, Richard Nixon can go die on an overdose of legal drugs, because imprisoning "EVUL STUNERZ" isn't cool... and the Watergate scandal (getting away with it makes it worse)

   I don't think you can honestly rate a president if you were ten years old when they took office. If you weren't at least able to vote for Bush Jr(I didn't) you really can't have a good idea about what the country was feeling at the time. And a textbook will NEVER tell you the whole truth. After 9/11 the whole country wanted war, blood...  Not just Bush. We had been attacked like never before. Pearl Harbor was one thing but these were civilians, on the mainland! And if you don't think Obama has started any wars ask the drones working overtime. And the Syrians he sold out. The list goes on there. Just like I don't presume to rate Bush sr, Reagan, and Carter. Don't believe the garbage you hear on TV and other media. If you want to hear the facts, talk to actual people who don't have some kind of agenda in making you feel sympathetic towards them or their cause. And your "teachers" are usually the worst in my experience, I have to say Obama is the worst president I've known if for no other reason than all the lies he's told and shifting blame he does. It's one thing to not take responsibility, it's another to try to force it on a perceived enemy. What's in the news today? Gay marriage? Anyone remember that in 2012 before he was elected he was against it because he knows that homosexuals will vote democrat anyways. Then after he's sure it doesn't matter he switches. Not that I have a real opinion on that particular subject, just using it as a topical example. I guess those are my thoughts on the question. The end.

Ferdinand: I (respectfully) disagree. While, yes, historical context can bring an explanation as to why such president acted in such a way, the end action is still inexcusable especially if it's unconstitutional (the war in Iraq, FDR's policies), highly questionable (Guantanamo Bay) or violates basic human rights (Japanese internment).

And while, yes again, teachers tend to have a very skewed vision of society towards the left, their showing the facts (X did Y) will one day lead people (if they are curious enough) to look for answers. Like probably most people I thought that FDR saved the economy from "unfettered" capitalism... which never existed. Instead he transformed the economy in giant cartels that Mussolini thought was very clever. Ignorance (of economics in this context) is no excuse to act in a knee-jerking reaction, no matter what "the people" want.

Vox populi, non vox sagere.

janus :

He allowed everyone 18 plus to vote, and his campaign slogan was "I'm a warhero, vote for me".

I might say Herbert Hoover because he couldn't do anything to financially help the country at the start of the Great Depression. Although, George W. Bush was like that during the 2007-08 recession, everyone was just poor as heck back then. Somebody can argue with me that the 2007-08 recession could be as bad as the Depression, but I was actually okay back then. It wasn't all depressing for me.

I don't think we've had a truly awful president in recent history. When I think of the worst president in history, names like  pop up. Johnson was, in essence, a Confederate sympathizer in the Presidency, coming to the seat following Lincoln's assassination. Johnson helped support the onset of Jim Crow, policies that would lead to the discrimination against blacks for another century in a large portion of the nation. Johnson also opposed the 14th Amendment that would expand the citizenship base of the United States.

I'll put Wilson on this list, but breaking our isolation was not one of them. Isolation from the outside world is dangerous at it leaves a nation vulnerable and it can't trade to its full potential, opting to instead ignore competitive advantage and attempt to do everything by itself. We saw that happened to China in the 1800s. Wilson, rather, was a proto-fascist. Wilson signed the Sedition Act of 1918 that clamped down on speech and expression, restricting some of the basic rights that citizens are granted. The suppression of dissent does not leave us with a free nation, and we saw another president, John Adams, pass one over 118 years prior. Interestingly enough, Adams the First was a one term president. Also, it was Wilson that ordered the Department of Justice's Palmer Raids: the persecution of the far-left and those that Wilson saw as political threats. These were not the actions of a president concerned with a free-society.

Mission accomplished.

Look at Iraq and Isis these days.

All of them
Nah, I put Carter.  I realize that he did/does a lot of stuff after his presidency, but ...
Iran Hostage Crisis and the Panama Canal.
Losing full control of the Canal that allows a strong two ocean navy and throwing in the Iran Hostage Crisis (read up on it if you're interested) kind of mars the presidency in my eyes.  
Honorable mention to Ford for falling down a flight of stairs coming out of an airplane.  The SNL skits afterwards show that he wasn't taken too seriously after that (and wasn't re-elected, too.)

Obama.

None of the other US presidents fined my grandmother because I couldn't afford healthcare.

How does no one list William Henry Harrison??? Why do people only vote for the recent guys? You people are nuts...

Txgangsta : Haha! A good point to consider.  That's SOME legacy...

Sheesh. So much for diversity.  Knee-jerk downvotes to current president(s) is not what I was really expecting here.

endings : I actually kind of was. Since most people here are below 30 AND do not seem to be historically minded, it was to be excepted that the worse votes would be for "modern" presidents.

I votes for FDR because of his fascist policies, but I barely know about presidents before 1900 that I couldn't possibly evaluate them

DestinyHeroDC : It is true Hoover reacted very slowly and while the Depression was not his fault,he really did not do much about it. The Hoover Dam is not a bad thing,it did provide work and power for a nation that sorely needed both at the time. The Hoover Dam was only named after Hoover,it was commissioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Txgangsta : When you post this question on a site where the majority of the users are younger to mid teenagers, all they really draw on are the recent ones. There is also the fact that the majority of the population, kids and adults alike, are not well read with their history. I guarantee that almost every person here who voted a recent president could not tell you a single fact or detail about 90% of the Presidents we have without doing some quick google search.
It could also stem from the fact that since the Clinton Presidency, online information has become extremely vast and instant. Information, both truth and lies, are instantly accessible to EVERYONE. Not too long ago, you were limited to if you happen to watch the news, listened to the radio, at the right time to get certain information, or the newspaper content was different depending on where you lived. The amount of information you could get was SEVERELY limited compared to what you can get now. You can get more information about what is going on in Washington within a 6 month time span today than all the information that exists for any single (heck, maybe 5) President before television was a common household possession. I have no doubt in my mind that if information back then could spread even half as quick as it can now, almost every single President in history would have just as bad of a legacy as what our modern Presidents have. But with so little real information on most of our historical Presidents is even available, there is just this assumption that they must be much better than the Presidents now. I mean, if there isn't evidence of so many scandals, they must not have happened. That is how most kids seem to think.