Wonkette
On this very boring news day, let us rejoice that we have the fake birthday of George Washington to celebrate. Ken has already wrung two (2) posts out of this blessed shopping holiday, and (SPOILER ALERT) you may have another one coming in a few hours! So let’s take this occasion to look at an Official Ranking of American Presidents, brought to you courtesy of some elite historians in the pocket of Big C-SPAN.
In their latest ranking they decided once again to play it safe by declaring Lincoln our greatest president. Pretty unfair, when you consider everything Martin Sheen has done for our country!
After Lincoln you get the usual suspects: Washington, a Roosevelt, another Roosevelt, and the guy who dropped the H-bomb.
But LO AND BEHOLD, observe the more exciting “bottom part” of the list. Our own George W. Bush ranks below Herbert Hoover, the father of the first Depression, but just slightly above Millard Fillmore, without whom the nation might never have known the least funny comic strip of all time.
James Buchanan is deemed the worst president ever, because he was so gassy.
C-SPAN 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey [C-SPAN]
C-SPAN ranks presidents: Abe still on top, new shocker at the bottom [Top of the Ticket]
Bush is seventh worst, not first or second? Jeez, where are these historians getting their crack these days? It’s one thing to not reform civil service or put the nation on the bronze standard or whatever, but it’s another thing to start a bunch of billshit wars and use the Constitution like T.P. Ahh, but like wine, he’ll get better with age. Hobo beans, however, should be eaten soon after canning.
George Bush was deemed better than the dumbass who got pneumonia? This makes no sense at all.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa - this nutcracker poses the question, “How WILL the panel see President Palin?” !?!?!?!?! Does he know something we don’t?!
That’s it, I’m building a time machine to go back in time and terminate Palin. Who’s with me?
I don’t see no Barry, does this mean he TRANSCENDS the list of best presidents?
No, no, no.
Barry Obama is the worst president ever. All these websites say so:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=80642
http://sharncedar.newsvine.com/_news/2008/11/11/2101859-obama-judged-as-worst-president-in-30-years
http://redstateconservative.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-worst-president-in-us-history.html
http://www.yelp.com/topic/new-york-judging-by-what-hes-done-so-far-obama-is-the-worst-president-ever
http://civilliberty.about.com/b/2008/12/26/worst-president-ever.htm
toastandlove: John McCain would like to accompany you. Also, too.
Dumbya got rated high (24th) for “Pursued Equal Justice for All”
I guess it would make sense if historians defined Justice For All as “Waterboarding and Electrodes to the ‘Nads” for all and ignored the whole attempt at politicization of the DOJ.
toastandlove…
Please take out my Govn’r Ahhhnoulddd, too.
(Ahhhhh, cheap pop-culture reference done for the week….)
Soon Barry will pass William Henry “I don’t need no steenking coat” Harrison in longevity in office. Then he’ll be at least our 42nd best president, just for sticking around longer and not being W.
Reagan at #10 above LBJ (the guy who passed the civil rights act) – are they fucking kidding me? I mean what did Reagan do other than balloon the military spending and create a deficit. I think they are afraid if Reagan is not in the top tear there will be a mass murder of historians.
I can also quibble with Kennedy’s ranking – granted his presidency was cool but what did he do other than get us into Vietnam and ruin poor LBJ’s presidency in the process.
What are these “historians” on, and where can I get some?
Glad to see he out-foxed that ambitious bastard William Henry Harrison, that glorious leader who died a month after taking office because he didn’t have the sense not to stand out in the rain.
“the least funny comic strip of all time.”
You underestimate the appeal of B.C. and Family Circus.
If (as it should be) the standard of poor presnidentsy is “fecklessly engaging the nation in pointless and disastrously expensive wars out of pure hubris and Oedipal resentment of one’s own father,” Chimpy is the absolute winner forever and forever, although JFK comes close.
Nixon now looks like he was the Green Party’s only president: NEPA and the EPA, Medicare, wage and price controls. Plus he had a secret plan to get us out of Vietnam, which amounted to losing the war.
I more positive news, John Tyler: not such a bad guy. Tippy canoe and Cheney, too!
Wow, makes you want to read more about those guys below Bush. How many useless wars did THEY start? How many tanked the whole US economy? Did any run secret torture camps and one not so secret? Those guys must have been a real mess!
freakishlystrong: They’re now to be found in the unemployment lines. I hear they’ll do analysis for hobobeans.
Best facial hair: Chester A. Arthur
These historians are just hatin on Buchanan because he was gay. Why can’t they just look past that and . . . what, he lost a war to the Mormons? Okay. Worst president ever.
James Buchanan didn’t know what would happen, or how to avoid it.
G.W. Bush has none of these excuses.
WPE - GW BUSH!
~
Bush’s plan to rise in the presidential rankings rests on the hope that the US will have hundreds and hundreds of really massively shitty presidents in the future, and in 2309 AD we’ll be thinking of Bush as our 36th-best president.
Ugh. Another dumb, misinformed “list,” this time from C-SPAN. Everyone by now knows that, in reality, there was no real Republican resurgence, revolution, power or anything. Nothing. Zilch. The cold, hard, reality is—and magazines such as “CQ” should know better, for God’s sake–that the Republican administrations of Reagan, Bush I and Bush II were three of the worst presidencies in the history of the United States, these fiefdoms pushed our progress back by 50 years in every way at every level, they were completely out of touch with the U.S. zeitgeist and the international zeitgeist. So any high ranking of the Reagan, Bush I or Bush II presidencies are just the wayward ramblings of delusional psychos.
bitchincamaro: Nuh uh. Grant. Or young T.R.
thefrontpage: I think it’s only fair that we get to rank the 65 “historians” who’ve wasted our time with this shit.
There was a whole lotta morphin’ goin’ on to get from Bush W. to Barry in the video.
Note to self: C-SPAN’s credibility is not to be trusted.
Oh, wait! I’ve known that for years.
(Let me hand-pick a bunch of historians and I guarantee they will produce a completely different list.)
Leave. William. Henry. Harrison. ALONE!
choinski: Too conventional. For sheer novelty effect, nothing beats the waterfall chops and canoe stash look of CAA.
Following a national disaster (explosion of the Maine), McKinley, with his war-lovin’ vice president invaded Cuba, deciding to keep a little corner of it for themselves - Guantanamo Bay.
After this “splendid little war”, they decided to invade the Phillipines, not because they had anything to do with the Maine, but because they were on a roll. Far from being greeted as liberators, they met a strong resistance, and ended up fighting a long insurgency. Denying it at first, news came out of torture of insurgents, including a new invention called “water boarding”.
Also, economy something something.
The biggest difference between McKinley and Bush is about 100 years. But McKinely is ranked just under Clinton in the list of greatest presidents.
Also, Andrew Jackson planned and carried out a peacetime campaign of genocide, and he’s near the top of the list.
Leon: Freaky. I think McKinley gets sympathy points for being assassinated, which is why it’s a good thing none of the modern-day libtards believe in guns.
I think this has already been said, but Reagan at #10. Da fuck? What criteria are they using? Can we please—once and for all!—do away with this complete fallacy that he somehow single-handedly defeated communism with folksy humor, Brillo cream, and afternoon naps? Keeee-rist. He got lucky, that’s it. The best we can say for him is that he didn’t make it worse. Poor Gorbachev never gets enough credit and he’s the one who really had to stick his neck out and make the conciliatory overtures. Reagan was the lucky recipient of Gorbachev’s reform-minded world view.
Don’t be disappointed by this poll, Dubya. To me, you’ll always be the most suck-ass motherfucker who ever occupied the White House.
On the bright side, Clinton shot up six places in the last nine years. It’s as though the historical record seems to think the shame of his getting blowjobs in the Oval Office is somehow overshadowed by years of peace and prosperity.
And why the hell is William Howard Taft ranked below Grant? Taft carried on TR’s legacy of trustbusting, whereas Grant did nothing but play poker and let the economy go to shit.
Whoa, I actually went and read the list… Raygun up from 11 to 10??? WTF?
Huge Military spending.
Two Massive mini-depressions.
Iran-Contra.
How the fuck can he subvert the Constitution by selling people-killing equipment to pay for people-killing equipment and not be down near the bottom? Did Nancy blow all these dudes in the 80’s or something? Whom had the Alzheimer’s again: Ronnie Raygun or the US people?
Ah, apparently that duck comic is by “right-thinking columnists/cartoonists”. ‘right-thinking’ seems to be the new name the deranged fascist community has taken for itself.
How did Clinton jump 6 places from 21 to 15? Think he might have benefited by having President Bam-Bam follow him?
Also, Dubya is ranked 25th in crisis leadership. All I can think is that if that’s true, then the US had already been completely destroyed 19 times before 2000.
MGBYG: Alzheimer’s is contagious, apparently.
Nice to see Slick Willie Clinton rising up six spot like the trouser snake that he is. Guess a bj is just a bj when it’s all said and done. I predict W will fall six spots in the next eight years and he only screwed Iraq treating their nation as a blue dress from the Gap. I’m done.
SayItWithWookies: equal as great minds, you win on the tie breaker- faster typist
Speaking of G-Dubs… can anybody find the clip from the O’Reilly factor where some guy (Jonah Goldberg, maybe?) says that Bush ‘had problems with the English language,’ trying to defend Dubs. I can’t remember all of it, but I think it was about some play Will Ferrell was in. Also, Regan is 10th cause he was an adorable old man. And by ‘adorable’ I mean senile.
Oh, sure, put the gay preznit at the bottom of the list. Granted, Buke looks fey enough to be a bottom, but I’m betting he was a flipper.
Bottom.
Mallard Fillmore started to make a whole lot more sense to me after jfruh pointed out that president Millard Fillmore was a Know Nothing. What I thought were insane ramblings of a deranged drunk is rather a tongue-in-cheek commentary on what the old xenophobic religious wingnut would think of society today. Or Bruce Tinsley is an old xenophobic religious wingut, and a deranged drunk.
thefrontpage: win. This amounts to C-Span’s self-imposed fairness doctrine, since there are lots of Goobers who make up the audience. Alas even C-Span must pander, making history look like last week’s Peeple magazine.
MGBYG: Oh dear dear Ronnie will be forever remembered for liberating the Russians from the oppressive yoke of Soviet tyranny. Except for the fact that Russia imploded of her own volition (with a little boost from her adventure in Afghanistan). Oh yeah, and in the days leading up to the complete collapse of the Soviet military, Reagan’s own generals and advisers were telling the President to increase military spending to counter the evil Soviet threat. Also, the collapse of the Berlin Wall was a foregone conclusion by the time Reagan appeared to give his “tear down this wall” soundbite. Reagan’s people were terrified at how badly they had misjudged the Soviet threat, and how badly the Soviet collapse had caught them by surprise. So they had to rush the Gipper over there to try to claim credit for events that were already certain to occur with or without him.
Yep, great, great, great President. Oh and he traded arms for hostages, which is awesome and a sign of strength, dontcha know?
Dreamer: Vietnam is all LBJ- he can suck it. That was the wost thing we’ve ever done.
This is total shit. Millard Fillmore below Bush? Give me a break. And I know all about MF because I went to MIllard Fillmore Elementary School.
Actually, we were in about third grade before someone thought to ask, “Who’s Millard Fillmore?”
But Buchanan totally deserves to get out of worst-president purgatory. All he did was fuck that slavery, civil war thing. Bush fucked up the globe. turned America in a feudal democracy and dumped more garbage into outer space. Outer space, people–think about it.
V572625694: “Nixon now looks like he was the Green Party’s only president: NEPA and the EPA, Medicare, wage and price controls. Plus he had a secret plan to get us out of Vietnam, which amounted to losing the war.”
You’re right, you know. The best days of the environmental moment were all in the 70s, before we got bored and gave up. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the REAL reason Nixon was impeached and driven out of office - he was hated by his own party for not being conservative enough, and hated by the Democrats for a) stealing their thunder and b) being resistant to liking Israel’s balls because of that whole anti-semitic thing
I can see W and the alleged next clown on the list, Millard F, hanging out together, knocking back some cold ones, snickering over how both snuck into the Oval Office without actually having being elected, reminiscing about their respective Know Nothing Party exploits and the relative merits of Fillmore’s Fugitive Slave Law vs. W’s Spy on Anybody Act. They’d be fast friends.
Dreamer: Everyone knows Reagan made Americans believe again that they’re the most important in the world. It’s all delusional bull shit of course, but in Her Noonington’s world, what more is there?
We are the mediocre presidents.
You won’t find our faces on dollars or on cents!
There’s Taylor, there’s Tyler, there’s Fillmore and there’s Hayes.
There’s William Henry Harrison, “I died in thirty days!”
We… are… the… adequate, forgettable, occasionally regrettable
Caretaker presidents of the U-S-A!
thank you for the opportunity to throw in a gratuitous simpson’s reference.
By the way, to paraphrase an Ent. Wkly comment on Jane Austen on PBS: A ranking of presidents is like Shark Week for history majors.
ManchuCandidate: Don’t forget the genital cutting that recently surfaced. Waterboarding was apparently way down on the list of tortures ordered by Darth Cheney.
freedomfrieswidat?: Maybe they could make moonshine together in Fillmore’s bathtub. Snort, snort. History major joke.
What I really want to ask is whether I missed the wonkette’s editors’ take on the Israeli elections? The opportunity to comment that Liebermans suck worldwide seemed too easy to pass on. (Okay, I typed that ie combo three times and no matter how I arranged them, they didn’t look right. I tried, okay?)
Obv. there’s a 10-point bonus for being a Repub. TR was many things, among which a war-mongering egomaniac. Reagan was lucky, but otherwise the worst president of the second half of the century. So George W. Buttfuck’s position is a courtesy ranking. Most historians work at state universities, where the pursestrings are controlled by Republican and/or retarded legislators. That’s all you need to know about them.
Kennedy at 6th best? Eh, overrated.
Reagan at 10th? WAY overrated.
Bush II at 36th? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overrated.
Lascauxcaveman: add clinton at 16 to the overrated list.
Leon: You gotta give credit to Teddy for being willing to kill him some spics with his own two hands. For better or worse, I think he was the last Republican president with actual testicles.
Truman in the top five? This is all neocons. He was teh suxx. Really!
Also, Warren G. Harding pardoned all of Wilson’s political prisoners and generally failed run an efficient police state, so that earns him a lot of credit in my book, oil scandals aside. Again, all neocons.
Guppy06: Hey, Ike was a bonafide soldierin’ man. He even fought in a war it made sense to be in. Our last completely sane Republican pres. Even took the time to watch out for those military-industrial bastards.
I like Ike.
Presidential lists based on things like talent and crisis management? Meh.
Photos of the world’s hottest leaders? Now that’s a President’s Day I can get behind (with buttsecks)….
http://www.petergreenberg.com/2009/02/16/presidents-day-the-globes-other-hottest-leaders/
OK, just to recap the folks that Dubya actually beat:
Millard Fillmore: Know-Nothing Whig that ended his party, signed Fugitive Slave Act
Warren G. Harding: Teapot Dome, starting the tradition of being in bed with the oil industry
William Henry Harrison: forget the no-coat thing, he gave a two-hour speech!? Started tradition of nothing good ever coming out of Ohio.
Franklin D. Pierce: Let all those damned Mexicans into the country by invading and annexing half of it. If nothing else, he’s the man to blame for Texas.
Andrew Johnson: Got impeached (but didn’t get any head), and seemed to generally fuck up Reconstruction so that North and South hate each other forever and ever.
James Buchanan: War of Yankee Aggression.
So, yeah, all things considered… the economy’s fucked and we’re losing blood and lucre halfway around the world for no apparent reason, but at least the people we’re shooting at aren’t our brown neighbors or even ourselves. So, yeah, I can see where they’re coming from. Or do you think the Union could stand to have another Texas or another California?
toastandlove: You would just end up knocking her up, and thus we have Trig.
Interesting, but why keep us hanging? Where did Cheney rank?
And poor George W. Bush. He couldn’t even get being a failure right.
shanemacgowan: BC and Family Circus have at least run one funny strip in the last forty years. Hell, Mary Worth has run at least one funny strip. shanemacgowan: BC and Family Circus have at least run one funny strip in the last forty years. Hell, Mary Worth has run at least one funny strip.
Guppy06: “Or do you think the Union could stand to have another Texas?
I’ve always blamed Santa Anna (Santa? Is that right? Half my face remains paralyzed and that side of my brain with it) for not making something bitter out of that Alamo victory.
Not bitter, better. I consider the fact John Adams hasn’t been moved up but rather down is clearly proof these cheap bastards haven’t paid for HBO. Also, if you’ve read McColoush, or better, Ellis, you kind of think that Jefferson was a bit of a wingnut.
Near the bottom of my list is Woodrow Wilson. It’s not enough just to screw up, incompetent, corrupt etc. To be the worst, your accomplishments must be long lasting and pervasive. On Wilson’s watch we got the Federal Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, and Prohibition - both drug and alcohol - funding organized crime by the government and the Mafia. Intervention in WWI we made sure there would be no negotiated peace, therefore Versaille Treaty and the Russian Revolution. Hitler *and* Stalin. That’s a record hard to beat.
I’m sure this ranking was, once again, taken away from the voters of Florida and decided by the Supreme Court. We all know Buchanan can’t be trusted with the “hanging chads.”
Thats Great!, now I have to go buy a mattress.
Guppy06: He didn’t let that pretzel kill him though, which would have given us President Cheney. I figure that’s good enough for 5 or 6 spots.
Historians generally drink heavily.
Lascauxcaveman: Ike was only a Republican president because the GOP asked him first.
OK then, fine, Bush is the worst president in anyone’s memory.
Number6: “Intervention in WWI we made sure there would be no negotiated peace, therefore Versaille Treaty and the Russian Revolution. Hitler *and* Stalin.”
You forgot to include Sam Goldwyn, George Steinbrenner and Mr. Blackwell.
Number6:
Wilson?
The first federal income tax was created by the warmongering Lincoln government in 1861 to fund Operation Southern Freedom and was ended in 1866 when Jeff Davis was dragged incoherent, filthy and hirsute from his spider hole.
The second federal income tax law was adopted in 1894, but declared unconstitutional by the Supremes because it violated U.S. Const., art. I, § 2, cl. 3, which required that direct federal taxation be apportioned among the states by population. In order to get around the Supremes and fund the Republican’s proposed bailout of the floundering Newport yacht clubs, the 16th Amendment was proposed in 1909 by Taft, our first socialist-marxist president, and was ratified before Wilson took office.
Number6: Hmmm. Tinfoil hat?
Yes, Wilson was a racist twit who showed Birth of a Nation in the WH and, probably, told jokes about “darkies.” But all the wack shit you mention–as S.Luggo so rightly mentions–was well on the way to happening before Wilson. Hell, Wilson was not the founder the WCTU, and I suspect he’d have prefered to hang with his “wet” Dem buddies. Still, when I was a kid, Wilson was held up as the 14 Points guy (they didn’t mention that Clemenceau, that dirty french fuck, said that Moses only had ten commandments) and the martyred proponent of the League of Nations that Sen Lodge, the jerk, opposed, thereby creating Hitler and WWII, the end. But then he was redeemed by the creation of the UN. And Massive Resistence in the south (Oh, howdy, Gov. Faubus), also. So, in the end, he is a fuckwit.
Buchanan sucks even more than Bush cause he let rednecks and other assorted ancestors of Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell run wild and make the north look like idiots, meaning Lincoln had pull out the big guns when he took office.
Bush is the 3rd from the last after Hitler and Stalin among world prezes…how about that? complied by an early cave man prehistorian?
a talking duck!?! now that’s funny!
You can just automatically discount any list that has Reagan ranked that high. Or, if you get a pass for having Alzheimer’s dementia for a good chunk of time you were in office (and being a dick the rest of the time), give William Henry Harrison a similar pass for getting dead 30 days in.