Depending on how the next four years go I’m on the fence between Bush Jr. and Trump but I’d like to hear from you
Edit:
Top 10 suggestions so far (unordered):
- Andrew Jackson
- Andrew Johnson
- George W. Bush Jr
- Ronald Reagan
- Richard Nixon
- James K. Polk
- Woodrow Wilson
- James Buchanan
- Franklin Pierce
- Donald J. Trump
James K. Polk. He went into a bloody war for conquest with Mexico to conclude Manifest Destiny.
Going for the low hanging fruit, huh?
I’m having a hard time deciding between grape and kiwi what about you?
Strawberry, for sure
Everyone loves strawberries
(But ngl I just really wanted to know what people would say. I find some answers very reasonable, others quite debatable. But I’d also be interested in what Lemmy thinks is the best president the US has ever had)
Sorry about that, I wasn’t trying to say the question wasn’t asked in good faith, it was meant light hearted what with the general tension with the recent election.
Which, I think that also points to the likely pick for me, though I’d definitely say that Johnson is a damn good bed example of a president. I mean, dude came in after a civil war and set back part of what was accomplished by playing wimp with the ex confederate states. He single handedly set up another century of oppression and strife.
Best though? That’s actually harder. To be the best you have to have done something that stands out, which means there has to have been something big during your presidency to give you that opportunity. It means that some of the good presidents might not have shown their greatness as presidents because they didn’t have anything to work on, or maybe didn’t have a Congress willing to work with them.
That being said, Franklin Roosevelt has to be an option for best. The man made plenty of bad choices, but he was the leader that the country needed at the time, and did his best at every step (even when it turned out less than stellar), and that is pretty much all anyone can do.
Lincoln is another pick for the same reason. Gets elected during the most turmoil ridden era, and manages to get the country back together during a war that could well have led to a permanent split.
- Lincoln
- FDR
- Washington
- Teddy Roosevelt
- Jefferson
- Eisenhower
- Truman
- JFK
- LBJ
- Obama
JFK would have been top 5 if he hadn’t been gunned down 2 years into his presidency 😭
I prefer talking about the best, talking about the worst just makes me depressed.
Hell of a solid list. Might swap a few positions, but I wouldn’t argue about it at all.
I prefer talking about the best, talking about the worst just makes me depressed.
Oh I totally get where you’re coming from. I usually use my lemm.ee account for when I’m stable enough for discussion (because lemm.ee is still federated with both hexbear and 'grad and .world and the more pro western servers which helps me train my critical thinking and arguing) but sometimes I just don’t want any more negativity or politicised battlegrounds and then I just use my .world account to spread the good vibes and enjoy the memes.
Regarding JFK I heard he was a bit of a “you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain” kinda case but I also heard that he would have been a good president so I’m kinda split. It’s similar with William Henry Harrison, who was president for 31 days before he died. As a slave holder he would have probably been a horrible president but he never really made any calls so he’s not among the worst candidates.
I definitely have to admit some pro JFK bias as an Irish American 😅
But I obviously also have rationales for why I think he was a great president. Foremost among them is that I feel that he was a truly independent political force that was beholden neither to his party nor to external interests. His popularity, wealth, and personal relationship with the American people gave him the potential to do radical things against the wishes of the entrenched oligarchy, which is possibly why he was assassinated. He demonstrated a willingness and a capacity to upend the established order.
William Henry Harrison is often considered among the worst for the simple reason that he did die. Put on a coat mah boi, we didn’t elect your ass to get a cold and die instantly.
because lemm.ee is still federated with both hexbear and 'grad and .world and the more pro western servers which helps me train my critical thinking and arguing
I wish hexbear was more into debating and less into memeing. I find that they tend to run away from serious debate and prefer to troll. Honestly lemmygrad has seemed less annoying to me than hexbear lately because they seem more likely to take things seriously and make legitimate arguments. I don’t see too much of them because I’m usually on my main account and sjw blocks them.
I use my account at lemmy.myserv.one in a similar way to your lemm.ee account, but since I’m an admin here I end up spending way more time on this account.
I’d be lying if I wasn’t aware I was poking the beehive so no need for you to be sorry (or at least I should say that I am sorry too). Plus I could have made it sound less like I was turning the US into some sort of punching bag for bad emotions but to be honest I have to admit I wasn’t all too sober when I posted and whilst my main intention was curiosity I failed to phrase my question that way and I failed to filter my personal emotions so the question was negative. I’m yet another example why one shouldn’t be allowed to use social media drunk and I am sorry for that. :')
I agree with your picks for good presidents and your reasoning. Thank you for the added details :)
It’s tempting to pick someone recent, but the real answer is probably Andrew Jackson. He successfully engineered a genocide, trampled the Constitution and human rights, and was actively hostile to limits on Presidential power.
We’ll see if 47 surpasses him. He’s set up to do so. It’s going to be wild to see what happens when Trump order troops to fire into crowds of American citizens.
We always seem to get this crazy hyperbole that Trump is going to be some competent fascist that’s going to perform some great coup that will end the US, but in reality it always seems the real damage he does is the evil bureaucracy that erodes rights and liberties while exacerbating things in foreign policy.
Jan 6th was very flashy, but comparatively speaking, nothing really happened.
I’m not afraid of Trump’s competence. I’m afraid of Trump’s cult of personality and the competent people that are now handling him. We didn’t elect Trump, we elected Project 2025.
Handling is a somewhat strong word here though. For better and worse, he’s very impulsive and egotistically sensitive. His last administration left a huge wake of people that haven’t been rehired and likely won’t be.
Even if we assume his new lackeys care enough about the Heritage Foundation to attempt to implement their plan, I’d be amazed if they could corral his attention long enough to get him to sign anything in.
Have anyone but him and Biden overseen genocides?
overseen? Yes.
With Jackson, it’s not overseen, it’s orchestrated
Just wondering if you had a few other overseen examples off the top of your head since you seem knowledgeable on this.
Pretty much all of them actively participated in various genocides and massacres, either directly like native genocide or Philippines or all the aerial massacres of XX and XXI century (even the one who was president for a month), or indirectly like even the “most peaceful president” Carter supported the massacres in Indonesia.
Every president since the 70s has overseen genocide, even ignoring the one you’re likely alluding too.
Christ. most of them.
George Washington got to be in charge of a country that enshrined chattel slavery in its constitution for 20 years. Thomas Jefferson provided military aid to France’s efforts to quash a slave revolt in Haiti. Andrew Jackson personally orchestrated a genocide against the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw (all of whom were aligned with american interests). Zachary Taylor put a bounty on bison, in an effort to starve the native Americans of the great plains. Abraham Lincoln allowed his western military expeditions to do basically whatever to the native Americans. Andrew Johnson started the process of letting confederate leadership be who directed reconstruction rather than being punished for it.
And here we reach Ulysses S Grant. one of America’s favorite punching bag presidents because he got scammed rather frequently, but when you dig into why he was prone to getting scammed, it’s because he thought it was America’s duty to use its economic power to help the lowest people in society. it’s hard to be mad at a guy who was trying so hard to help people that sometimes he let someone con him into thinking they deserved help.
i can keep going on how a ton of our historical presidents have sucked. i’m still personally willing to say the top 3 are Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, and Donald trump
Reagan. Without a doubt Reagan.
I don’t care about others opinions on this one bit, for my money. When looking at how much long term damage they have done to the country, our global relations and to the world in general; it’s Donald and it’s not even a close contest.
The one that’s presiding over a genocide and is currently trying to start WW3.
Says the one that quick glace at is persistently extolling the virtu and might of Russia/China… 🤨
Last I checked neither Russia or China re committing a genocide or trying to start a nuclear holocaust champ.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
The Uyghurs would like a word, and the only person threatening nuclear war is Putin
Ah yes, prolewiki and tankie.ml, truly the gold standards in rational unbiased sources of information
amazing counterpoint kiddo
Keep believing US military-industrial complex propaganda like a good patriot, then. Whatever you do, don’t develop actual media literacy.
I’d probably say someone like Andrew Jackson before even thinking about Trump being the worst. Jackson did a literal genocide with the Indian Removal Act
Touché. His first term wasn’t that horrible (although it wasn’t good either). I’m still mad they organised a meeting with Kim just to tell him to go fuck himself. That character development could become spicy. On the other hand would we even have had a meeting with Clinton in power?
But hey, he still has four years and a lot of plans to claim a podium place.
That meeting with Kim was probably to woo him like US previously did to Iran to make them abandon nuclear armaments, but thankfully DPRK govt can read and do know what happens to countries who believe empty US lies. So since that didn’t work, US in a second abandoned their friendly mask and went back to previous policies.
(the upside down book was photo shopped l
I think it does not make it less funny, everyone believes it because it’s so in character.
The idiot son of an asshole
Now there’s a song I haven’t heard in a long time. Thanks!
putting trump in the top 5 is lib shit
What’s wrong, snowflake, are you triggered by this conversation? Don’t worry, if his cabinet succeeds in their plans to eliminate vaccines and shut down life-saving agencies such as NWS, you’ll get to see genocide at home. And even though he hasn’t eliminated the department of education yet, there’s a chance you may already be one of the victims of the conservative agenda.
Trump’s not even bad by republican standards, he’s just vulgar and baffoonish. Replace him with Jeb! or Ron DeSantis or your garden variety Republican and you’d get the same defunding, same deregulation and same enshittification as him, just more subtle.
Come back when he’s killed a million Iraqi civilians over fictional WMDs or getting several million people addicted then dead over opioids by deregulating prescription.
He didn’t commit war crimes in Vietnam, spill over to Laos and Cambodia. Come back when he pardons the perpetrators of My Lai. Come back when he interns Japanese and nukes civilians. Come back when he Manifests Destiny.
Top 5 my ass
You have grossly misread the intent of that comment, chief. She’s saying that putting Trump in top 5 worst (atm) downplays America’s historical atrocities such as invading Vietnam, killing 20% of the population of North Korea, Iraq war, Afghanistan war, etc
Sorry, I wasn’t looking at it in terms of just the senseless loss of lives, but also how much damage was being done at home. Yeah there’s a lot of hard lines there to cross but Trump has made a policy of tearing the nation apart instead of trying to bring people together, and that weighs a lot to me.
Imagine it being a bad thing to tear apart an evil empire
If it’s about domestic damage, then every president who owned slaves or supported segregation still beats him.
E: Also every president who was involved in the genocide of the indigenous peoples of America to an extent more than Trump (IE he probably ties Biden and Obama on this).
Even by that metric he isn’t the worst.
critical support to Trump collapsing the genocidal American empire
WTF, I love Trump now.
im not even amerikkkan lol get a life you weird loser?
Scratched liberal.
☝️🤓
In addition to what everyone else has said to point out how absurd it is to put Trump in the top 5 worst presidents, there’s also the fact that almost every significant Trump policy was continued or worsened by Biden. Even the ones that democrats pretended to care about when it suited their agenda like kids in cages, building the wall, and increasing fossil fuel extraction. So if you want to talk about all the ways Trump is an evil piece of shit (which he most certainly is) to put him in the top 5 worst, then you had better make sure Biden is even higher on that list.
uh lets see,
- Andrew Jackson
- Harry S. Truman
- William McKinley
- George W. Bush
- Woodrow Wilson
pretty easy if you actually read a book
I’m still on the fence about W. just because he didn’t really do anything on his own, he just took the excuse to continue his daddy’s war. I think if Sr. had gotten another term in office he would have ramped things up, but either way I think the family as a whole pushes up there on the list.
For the rest of the list… yeah it’s not hard to find a lot of presidents who have killed a lot of people. However the original question was about the worst president overall, which to me includes the damages done here at home. Trump is high on my list simply because of how far back he has set us in terms of equal rights, moving beyond the pettiness of racism, dealing with important things like the unfolding climate disaster, and his nonchalant attitude that Palestine and Ukraine need to just surrender because being in the news cycle is inconvenient to him. Looking at Trump’s agenda of just how much he wants to destroy things here, I find it concerning that the only thing stopping him is a few Republicans that still have a moral compass.
his nonchalant attitude that Palestine and Ukraine need to just surrender because being in the news cycle is inconvenient to him.
Motivations aside, if he really does want Ukraine to “just surrender” (which remains to be seen beyond rhetoric) then it’s one of the only good positions he has. Ukraine 100% needs to surrender. Absolutely nothing good comes from it continuing to fight. It only means more death and emisseration of working people and more profits for the military industrial complex. It’s honestly rather repulsive when people lump Palestine and Ukraine together like that as if they’re even remotely the same thing. One is fighting a deeply asymmetric struggle of survival against their own genocide by a settler colonial ethnostate that seeks to eradicate them from the earth, the other is a nazi coup government fighting a proxy war for imperialists that uses their own working class as cannon fodder in a conflict that could have been resolved years ago with no loss of life.
Republicans that still have a moral compass
Lib status confirmed. They don’t have a moral compass lmao they just don’t like him saying the quiet part out loud
He single-handedly launched the war on terror tf are you talking about
I’m still on the fence about W.
Don’t worry, if his cabinet succeeds in their plans to eliminate vaccines and shut down life-saving agencies such as NWS, you’ll get to see genocide at home.
So it’s ok when it’s happening to the browns? Fucking racist shit heel, liberals are all the same under whatever facade they’re mouthing off about.
Do they? I wouldn’t know, the only racists I’ve ever met were conservatives. Dems at least try to pass laws beneficial to everyone and not just rich white folks. But Liberals? No clue, I don’t pay much attention to them.
Dems, you mean the ones that were willing to throw immigrants in the trash and give Republicans everything they wanted wrt the border so they could fund a war directly leading to ww3? The ones also willing to throw as much money as possible and ignore the most popular position in their own constituency (permanent ceasefire) to allow Israel to keep killing Palestinians? The ones that intentionally barred Palestinians from speaking at their conventions? The ones that immediately turned to blaming Muslims, Mexican immigrants, and black people when they lost the election? OH YEAH THEY DEFINITELY TRY FUCKING MORON
terminal West wing brain lol
What the heck is going on with this reaction
I agree there have been (way) worse presidents than pre 2nd term Trump but he has a lot of potential.
Does worst mean:
- least able to achieve their stated agenda, ie worst at their job. (Trump)
- worst vision for America, ie most evil (Reagan)
- worst overall impact to America, ie one you’d kill with a time machine (Bush Jr, but Trump might catch up in term 2)
- Worst for the word, ie the one I’d kill with a time machine (Washington)
Although I’m not American and don’t know your history that well.
Idk I think Jackson beats Reagan there. He was the trail of tears guy. He ran on genocide against the indigenous peoples of the continent and delivered
You probably know it way better than the average American. I say this not only as an American, but as one who has been outside North America. I find that our own perspective on us is pretty skewed, and it takes a lot of work to set it straight. More than most of us are willing to do.
Andrew Jackson and it’s not even close. Not to downplay the horrible crimes committed by many of our other presidents but I don’t think anything rises to the level of the Trail of Tears.
For that matter so were the conditions that lead to the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
That’s Obama. Sure Trump continued but it’s mostly on Obama for pushing the neonazi monstrosity to power and Biden for constant escalations to proxy world war and possibly to real world war soon.
For that matter so were the conditions that lead to the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
Complete mind palace nonsense. We literally impeached him for threatening to not send weapons there for the civil war that ended up exploding into the full scale invasion.
Not that he had good reasons to do a good thing, but your recollection of history is completely fucking inverted
but beyond that I’m not sure there are a lot of crimes in the history of America’s presidency.
okay maybe I’m expecting too much from you
…you know we genocided an entire continent of people, right? And continue to?
We literally impeached him for threatening to not send weapons there for the civil war that ended up exploding into the full scale invasion.
Ah yes, the impeachment that accomplished so much and is extremely relevant.
I don’t care what Trump said or would have preferred, under his administration our government continued to fuel and escalate tensions in the region when we should have been pushing Ukraine to implement Minsk II and end the civil war. Maybe you could classify it as a mistake on his part instead of malice that he didn’t stop the arms shipments even though he really wanted to, but people are still liable for mistakes.
you know we genocided an entire continent of people, right? And continue to?
I literally cited an episode from that genocide as my reasoning for Jackson being the worst president.
This question is too difficult, there are too many candidates…
While W. sucked in many ways, there is no way is he the worst. Off the top of my head I can easily think of four: Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan (both guilty of pro-slavery fuckery before the Civil War), Andrew Johnson (fought to let the Confederates off the hook after the war and opposed the 14th amendment), and Donald Trump (first president to be impeached twice, first to be convicted of a felony, and may be remembered by future historians as the spark that ignites the next Civil War).
Btw. question from Germany regarding Trumps Felony: I read that people convicted of a felony may not vote yet I also read that Trump cast his in Florida. Hoe does it actually work?
He was convicted in New York so Florida doesn’t care.
It is complicated because the rules are different in each state. Also, Trump was convicted in New York state but he resides and votes in Florida.
For out-of-state convictions, Florida defers to the other state’s rules. New York would allow Trump to vote if he resided there because he is not currently in prison, so Trump can vote in Florida legally.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-felony-conviction-can-he-vote-b95e7b4c9158d999e8bc89b00fbda911
America doesn’t have laws and isn’t a functioning society.
He’s rich and white so laws don’t apply to him.
He is kinda orange
Question from another European about that, he’s convicted but never got a sentence? Or did he and why in that case isn’t he serving?
Sentencing was delayed until after Nov. 5th, and now it’s been permanently delayed. I’m sure the conviction will be overturned at some point while he’s in office
But have can you delay a sentence?
I mean it sounds so foreign to be told in court that “Yeah you’re deemed guilty… but we’re telling you your punishment later. Maybe.” instead of just BAM guilty, straight to jail it will be!Sentencing isn’t always done at the same time a verdict is given. Often a judge will take time to research the punishments available in the law. Sometimes they’ll take advice on a person’s character, and consider the level of remorse the convict has for the crimes.
There was a small public outcry last year when a celebrity was convicted of sex crimes, and other celebrities known for their work against sex trafficking wrote to the judge to ask for leniency. It made the news because famous people were involved, but it’s a common occurrence.
He also wanted to wait to see what the Supreme Court would rule in the presidential immunity case, and I honestly can’t blame the man for delaying indefinitely following the results of that. This judge and his family received a lot of death threats and harassment from Trump’s supporters, but he also had to consider that Trump is immune to whatever crimes he chooses to commit in office.
Non burgers here: I believe the sentencing for the conviction was delayed till after the election. And since that they have announced it has been delayed indefinitely.
How is this even possible? Aren’t sentences supposed to come with the verdict?
The punishment might come at a later date (it might in my country where you can be told that in 3 months you will serve jail time), but the sentence?
donvict ain’t done yet, either. i think the damage and legacy he leaves behind, leaking out that giant diaper, will be the worst of the bunch.
Andrew Jackson???
Andrew Jackson was also a bastard, especially for his treatment of natives. But I meant Johnson.
I know you did, I was just adding 1
Ah, gotcha. I misunderstood.
me if enough of you write in “EstraDoll” in 2028
lmao BASED
Agree with most of the comments about jackson being the worst, but I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Eisenhower and Hoover, who would easily go in the top ten.
I also wanted to throw Truman in the ring for signing off nuclear strikes on mainly civilian targets (i.e. cities) and for the American war crimes in Korea (but I mainly blame MacArthur for that) but he also fired MacArthur and roasted him and the other generals whilst doing so. So maybe somewhere in the top 15 to 25. If MacArthur’s run for president had succeeded tho we’d have another strong candidate.
