History isn't a straight line up. Sometimes, it’s a jagged drop into a canyon. When people argue about the worst presidents in US history, they usually start shouting about whoever is currently in the Oval Office. It’s a reflex. But if you actually sit down with a group of historians—the kind who spend their lives in dusty archives reading letters from the 1850s—the names that come up aren't usually the ones on your Twitter feed.
They’re the names of men who let the country shatter.
It’s about more than just a bad policy or a mean tweet. We are talking about fundamental systemic collapse. We’re talking about the guys who saw a literal civil war coming and decided to take a nap, or worse, helped light the fuse. Honestly, the competition for the bottom of the barrel is surprisingly stiff. You've got the drunks, the conspirators, and the ones who were just painfully, tragically out of their depth.
The Disaster of James Buchanan: A Masterclass in Doing Nothing
James Buchanan is almost always at the bottom of the C-SPAN Presidential Historian Survey. Why? Because he sat there and watched the United States dissolve. Literally.
Imagine your house is on fire. You have a hose in your hand. Instead of turning it on, you stand on the sidewalk and explain to your neighbors that, legally speaking, you don’t think you have the authority to put out fires on Tuesdays. That was Buchanan in 1860. He believed secession was illegal, but he also believed the federal government didn't have the power to stop a state from leaving. It’s the ultimate "not my job" moment in world history.
He was a "Northern man with Southern principles," or a Doughface. He actively pressured the Supreme Court to rule on the Dred Scott case, thinking it would "settle" the slavery issue once and for all. It didn't. It just made the explosion bigger. By the time he handed the keys to Abraham Lincoln, seven states had already left. He basically slunk out of the White House saying, "If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this country."
Talk about a low bar.
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Andrew Johnson and the Great Sabotage
Then there’s Andrew Johnson. If Buchanan let the war happen, Johnson tried to lose the peace.
After Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson took over. He was a Southern Democrat who stayed loyal to the Union, which sounded great on paper. In practice? He was a disaster. He was a blatant white supremacist who spent his entire presidency fighting with Congress to make sure the newly freed slaves didn't actually get, you know, rights. He vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. He vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill.
Congress ended up overriding his vetoes so often it became a routine. He was the first president to be impeached, and he escaped removal by a single vote. His legacy wasn't just "bad politics." It was the direct foundation for a century of Jim Crow laws. He had a chance to fix the country’s original sin and instead, he chose to rub salt in the wound. Historian Eric Foner has written extensively about this era, noting how Johnson's intransigence basically derailed Reconstruction before it could even start.
The Corruption King: Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding is a different kind of "worst." He wasn't necessarily evil; he was just a guy who wanted to be liked and had absolutely no business being in charge of a lemonade stand, let alone a superpower.
"I am not fit for this office and should never have been here," he once told a friend. At least he was honest?
His administration was basically a crime syndicate with a flag on the front lawn. You've heard of the Teapot Dome Scandal. His Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, took bribes to lease Navy oil reserves to private companies. Fall became the first cabinet member to go to prison. Harding spent his time playing poker and drinking bootleg liquor during Prohibition. He died in office before the full weight of the scandals hit, which was probably the best career move he ever made.
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Franklin Pierce: The Man Who Made the Civil War Inevitable
People forget Franklin Pierce. He’s often just a footnote, but he’s a dark one. Pierce was charming, handsome, and deeply broken. He saw his son die in a horrific train accident just before his inauguration. He spent his presidency in a fog of grief and heavy drinking.
Politically, he signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This single piece of legislation effectively ended the Missouri Compromise and led to "Bleeding Kansas," a period of pro- and anti-slavery violence that was essentially a dress rehearsal for the Civil War. Pierce didn't just fail to stop the tension; he fueled it. He was a tool for the "Slave Power" interest, and his weakness convinced the South that they could get whatever they wanted if they just pushed hard enough.
Why These Rankings Actually Matter
You might think, "Who cares about a guy from 1853?"
But looking at the worst presidents in US history tells us exactly where the guardrails are. It shows us that a president’s most important job isn't passing a budget or giving a good speech. It’s maintaining the social contract. When a president stops believing in the institutions they lead—or when they use those institutions to target specific groups of citizens—the whole thing starts to tilt.
The "Competence" vs. "Malice" Debate
There’s a big debate among historians: Is it worse to be a "bad" person or an "incompetent" leader?
Take Herbert Hoover. By all accounts, he was a brilliant man and a great humanitarian before he became president. But when the Great Depression hit, he was paralyzed by his own philosophy. He didn't want the government to provide direct relief because he thought it would ruin the American character. So, people starved. Is he a "worst" president? Some say yes. Others say he was just the wrong man for a specific moment.
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Compare that to Richard Nixon. Nixon was incredibly effective. He opened China. He started the EPA. But he also tried to subvert the entire democratic process to win an election he was already going to win anyway. The "worst" list is a mix of the weak, the wicked, and the unlucky.
Red Flags of a Failing Presidency
If we look at the common threads between Buchanan, Johnson, Harding, and Pierce, we see three specific behaviors:
- Isolation: They stopped listening to anyone outside their inner circle of "yes men."
- Legalism over Morality: They used the law as an excuse to avoid doing what was obviously right.
- Sectionalism: They prioritized one part of the country (or one group of people) over the whole.
It's a recipe for disaster. Every single time.
How to Evaluate Presidential History Like a Pro
If you want to dive deeper into this, don't just look at one list. Use these steps to build your own perspective:
- Check the C-SPAN Surveys: They poll hundreds of historians every few years. It’s the gold standard for seeing how reputations shift over time (Ulysses S. Grant, for example, has moved way up the list recently as people re-evaluate his civil rights record).
- Read the Primary Sources: Look at the actual letters Buchanan wrote. Listen to the Nixon tapes. It’s much harder to dismiss a "worst" ranking when you hear the person's own words.
- Contextualize the Crisis: A president who fails during a time of peace is bad. A president who fails during a crisis is catastrophic. Judge them by the size of the waves they were trying to navigate.
The reality is that history is constantly being rewritten. A hundred years from now, our current era will be sliced and diced by academics who haven't even been born yet. But the lessons of the 19th-century failures remain clear. Leadership requires more than just winning an election; it requires a sense of responsibility to the future, not just the base.
Practical Next Steps for History Buffs:
- Visit the National Constitution Center's online archives to read the original documents behind the Dred Scott decision and the Kansas-Nebraska Act to see how presidential influence shaped the law.
- Listen to the "Presidential" podcast by the Washington Post. They have an episode for every single leader, and the Buchanan and Johnson episodes are particularly eye-opening for understanding why they are consistently ranked at the bottom.
- Compare the Brookings Institution's recent "Presidential Greatness" surveys with those from the 1990s. Note how the perception of "worst" shifts as our modern values regarding civil rights and executive power evolve.