Presidents' Day is a stupid holiday. We used to have two presidential holidays. One for Washington, who showed noteworthy restraint in setting the precedents that his successors ought to live up to — and that's on top of successfully commanding the armies that won the Revolutionary War. The other was for Lincoln, who saved the Union from rupture and was murdered for his efforts.
Washington (1789-1797): First president. Revolutionary War hero. 'Nuff said.
Adams, J. (1797-1801): Kept us out of Europe's wars except for an undeclared naval war with France. Expanded army and navy, good. Signed Alien and Sedition Acts into law, bad. One of our most thoughtful Founding Fathers. Worth remembering.
Jefferson (1801-1809): Bought Louisiana, nurtured American industry, kicked Barbary a**. Our most philosophical Founding Father. Worth remembering.
Madison (1809-1817): Draw a nation-saving stalemate with Britain in the War of 1812. Our most politically practical Founding Father, primary author of the Constitution. Worth remembering.
Monroe (1817-1825): Signed Missouri Compromise, outlawing slavery north of 36°30'. Author of the Monroe Doctrine, protecting the Western Hemisphere from further European predations. Last Founder to serve as president. Gave us Florida Man. Worth remembering.
Adams, J.Q. (1825-1829): First nepo baby president. Ambitious big-government agenda (for the time) frustrated by Congress. Served in Congress after losing reelection. Political fecklessness helped give rise to Andrew Jackson and the Democrats. Meh.
Jackson (1829-1837): Ended the Second Bank of the United States, paid off national debt. Was otherwise authoritarian. Maybe not among the worst presidents, but among my least favorites.
Van Buren (1837-1841): Primary founder of the Democrat party, nevertheless opposed slavery. Otherwise forgettable.
Harrison, W.H. (1841-1841): Died one month into only term. Who?
Tyler (1841-1845): Strict constitutionalist, foreign policy successes with Britain and China, accomplished little domestically. Meh.
Polk (1845-1849): Took the western U.S. from Mexico, admitted Texas as a slave state, compromised with Britain over Oregon without war, yet helped set stage for Civil War. Worth remembering.
Taylor (1849-1850): Died after about a year. Meh.
Fillmore (1850-1853): Best remembered as our least-remembered president. Meh.
Pierce (1853-1857): Supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act, laying a foundation of the Civil War. One of the Top 10 worst.
Buchanan (1857-1861): Fiddled while the country slid into Civil War. Top 10 worst.
Lincoln (1861-1865): Saved the Union. 'Nuff said.
Johnson, A. (1865-1869): Impeached. Tried to readmit Southern states with zero protections for freed slaves. Top 10 worst.
Grant (1869-1877): Was a better general and memoirist than a president, but was still an excellent president who took Reconstruction and black civil rights seriously. Second term was sadly marred by scandal. Worth remembering.
Hayes (1877-1881): Won office in the House with a shameful deal to prematurely end Reconstruction. Ordered the Army against striking railroad workers. Meh.
Garfield (1881-1881): Assassinated before accomplishing much. Meh.
Arthur (1881-1885): Signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 that would help give birth to the Deep State. Meh.
Cleveland (Round One) (1885-1889): Helped birth the regulatory state with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Meh.
Harrison, B. (1889-1893): More big government shenanigans with the Sherman Antitrust Act, spendthrift. Sort of a George W. Bush Republican but with a beard. Meh.
Cleveland (Round Two) (1893-1897): Feckless. Meh.
McKinley (1897-1901): Gave us "sound money" with the gold standard, took Spanish territories (Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba) in war, showed how to defeat Muslim extremists, annexed Hawaii, great economy. Assassinated in second term. Defeated proto-socialist William Jennings Bryan twice. Worth remembering.
Roosevelt, T. (1901-1909): A force for good on the world stage, activist Progressive in domestic politics. Would go on to fracture GOP and give rise to Woodrow Wilson. Worth remembering but with serious caveats.
Taft (1909-1913): Quite large. Better SCOTUS than POTUS. Meh.
Wilson (1913-1921): Proto-fascist before his stroke, proto-Biden after. Top 10 worst.
Harding (1921-1923): Returned us to pre-Wilson normalcy. Died before accomplishing much. Mostly notable for some corrupt appointees. Meh.
Coolidge (1923-1929): Cleaned up Harding's personnel mess. Worked very hard at making it appear as though the president had little to do. Shrank the regulatory burden. Believed in low taxes and racial equality. Worth remembering.
Hoover (1929-1933): Inherited a great economy but did literally everything wrong when the crisis hit in 1929. Helped created the Depression that FDR would turn into the Great Depression. Top 10 worst.
Roosevelt, F.D. (1933-1945): Excellent war president, terrible negotiator against Stalin. Big-government bully. Fundamentally altered the relationship between the individual and Washington for the worse. Top 10 worst.
Truman (1945-1953): Saved countless lives with The Bomb. Stood firm against Stalin. Undid the New Deal's hostile business climate. Ordered the desegregation of the military, which didn't really "take" until Eisenhower. Coined Orwellian "police action" for Korean War. Worth remembering.
Eisenhower (1953-1961): Like Coolidge, worked very hard to make the presidency look easy. Massive economic boom. Generally successful foreign policy marred by choosing the wrong side in the Suez Crisis. Prescient warning against Military-Industrial Complex. Worth remembering.
Kennedy (1961-1963): Deeply flawed human, fast learner as POTUS. Supporter of civil rights, space program. Chose LBJ for Veep, a decision that still haunts the nation. Assassinated. Worth remembering but with serious caveats.
Johnson, L.B. (1963-1969): Vietnam, radical expansion of FDR's welfare state, dependency advocate, used civil rights "support" as a political cudgel, "guns and butter" approach led to serious inflation, sadly desperate to be loved. Top 10 worst.
Nixon (1969-1974): Both an enabler of and a victim of the Deep State. Sold out his own Veep for temporary political advantage. Sold out Taiwan for Beijing. Took us off the gold standard, worsening LBJ's inflation. Wage and price controls, Keynesian. Plusses: Ended the Vietnam War on decent terms; ended the draft; supported Israel after surprise attack in 1973. Like Clinton, barely missed out of Top 10 worst. Vietnam and the Yom Kippur War were his almost-saving graces.
Ford (1973-1977): Excellent restorer of norms. Pardoned Nixon to begin national healing — at great political risk. Hands tied by Democrat Congress when North Vietnam tore up peace agreement. Worth remembering, but mostly as a caretaker when that's what the country needed.
Carter (1977-1981): Malaise. Stagflation. Hostage crisis. Afghanistan. Departments of Energy and Education. Gave away Panama Canal. But he also deregulated airlines and craft beers. Top 10 worst.
Reagan (1981-1989): The Gipper was awesome in almost every way. Won the Cold War without firing a shot. Happy ideological warrior made conservatism cool. Tax cuts. Deregulation. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Challenger disaster address. Beset by scandal in his second term, chose a Bush for running mate, Lebanon. Worth remembering? I'll never forget.
Bush, G.H.W. (1989-1993): Oversaw peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union. Gulf War was a model of coalition-building and waging limited war (if less so on the latter). Clarence Thomas but also David Souter. Tax hike, immigration act, regulation, and post-presidency sullied GOP brand. Worth remembering but sometimes for all the wrong reasons.
Clinton (1993-2001): Normalized bimbo eruptions. Surprisingly moderate on domestic policy but only after the country turned against his Big Government projects (Clinton Care, semiautomatic weapons ban) in 1994 election. Corrupt to the core. Gave Beijing MFN status, setting stage for Cold War II. Barely missed out on Top 10 worst due to economic growth and firing hundreds of thousands of government workers.
Bush, G.W. (2001-2009): Innovative warfighting approach that ignored initial Pentagon advice toppled the Taliban in weeks. Took unearned blame for Katrina response, financial meltdown. Iraq War. Big Government Republican — PATRIOT Act, Medicare D, etc. — who did even more than his father to sully the GOP brand. On the bottom end of Meh.
Obama (2009-2016): America's first Red Diaper Baby president poisoned America's race relations, weaponized the federal government, strengthened and made the Deep State his own, radicalized the military's officer corps, normalized the word "trillions," and set multiple landmines that his successors are still setting off. First president to govern from behind the scenes after his departure. I could go on. Top 10 worst.
Trump (Round One) (2017-2021): Three years of solid policy (not to mention SCOTUS picks) undermined by Deep State and his own COVID response. Meh, but with a yuge asterisk for Round Two.
Biden (2021-2025): Puppet of Obama and Deep State/Progressive NGOs. Mean. Demagogic. Divisive. Senile. Normalized the mutilation of children. Ineffectual except at bankrupting the country and hamstringing the economy with massive regulatory schemes. I could go on some more. Top 10 worst.
Trump (Round Two) (2025-202?): Comeback kid with a vengeance. Will go down as one of the greats, truly transformative, if the next four years fulfill the promise of the last four weeks. Stay tuned.
It occurred to me as I got near the end of this list that we've been remarkably lucky. Considering the ego and ambition required to win the White House and the levers of power available to those who win it, we've had mostly Meh presidents. Especially in the last century or so, there's been increasing opportunity for genuine authoritarians. We've had very few.
That's something worth celebrating.
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