Steve-O-in NJ contributed a well-reasoned and researched resolution of the Ethics Alarms series “The Worst President Ever?” after the penultimate installment, which I posted last month. At the time, I still wasn’t certain how the Wilson-Biden contest would come out, and since (spoiler!) his analysis came down to the same final two, I resolved to hold this obvious Comment of the Day until I had finished my final installment, which went up (finally!) last night. Steve’ alternate analysis is excellent, as all of Steve-O’s historical epics are.

Here is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on “The Worst President Ever? Part 6: The Final Field.”

An interesting list, certainly. I believe that if you asked 100 people who the worst presidents were and why, you’d probably get 100 answers that would all differ at least slightly, although some common threads would run through them, and you’d get one group from conservative folks and another from liberal folks. I’m not sure I 100% agree with this list, but it’s the list you’ve given us to work with, so here are my thoughts:

Franklin Pierce – Had a life-long problem with alcohol, to the point where other military officers (yes, believe it or not he is one of the ten presidents who was a general) called him the “hero of many a well-fought bottle.” Tragic family history, and let grief and drink paralyze his single term in office.

James Buchanan – Took almost no steps to stop the Civil War from happening. Started to dislike the office to the point where he told Lincoln that if Lincoln was as happy upon assuming the presidency as he was upon leaving it, he was a happy man indeed.

Andrew Johnson – Never meant to be president, put on the ticket because he was a Democrat and a southerner. Couldn’t control the radical Republicans. Was impeached (probably unfairly) and came the closest any president ever came to removal from office. Also had the hardest act of all to follow.

Woodrow Wilson – Biggest racist ever to sit in the White House. Also probably one of the 3 or 4 most arrogant presidents. Led us into WW1 when we might not have needed to go, then alienated the world with his attempt to impose his own morality. Also alienated most of his political allies back home and was a willing participant in hiding that he had had a debilitating stroke from the country.

Richard Nixon – Popular president who didn’t trust his own popularity to take him past the finish line and overreached, then tried to cover it up.

Jimmy Carter – A creation of the media who was incompetent, arrogant, almost didn’t do the job, and brought the US to its weakest standing in the world in the second half of the 20th century. Would not have been elected had the US not been so fed up after Watergate that it didn’t really want a president, just a trustworthy pal.

Bill Clinton – Adulterer, perjurer, and the man who, as you say, laid the groundwork for Donald Trump, although he didn’t know he was doing it at the time.

George W. Bush – Assumed office under a shadow, then became, briefly, a hero after 9/11, then presided over a second term where everything fell to crap and he let it.

Joe Biden – Shouldn’t have won and shouldn’t have run, governed by lies, gaslighting, and hiding, until the fateful debate forced him from the race.

Well, the idea here is to winnow down a list of 9 to one winner, albeit an ignominious one. I think Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson should be the first to be removed, since they were dealing with almost impossible situations, the first because his son was killed in a horrible way right before he was to be President, the second because he was handed an almost impossible situation to handle and asked to step into the shoes of a near-saint.

I think I’ll remove GWB next. He tried to do the right thing and was pretty good at it for a while, until the Iraq war went south and the other side politicized Hurricane Katrina. Still, 20/20 hindsight. That takes us down to six.

I’ll let Jimmy Carter out because he wasn’t really up to the job and wasn’t intended to be. This doesn’t mean I don’t think he sucked, it just means he isn’t the worst of all.

That leaves Buchanan, Clinton, Wilson, Nixon, and Biden. The only reason I’m not going to put Clinton at the bottom is that his presidency was mostly successful and didn’t drag the US into any major external crises.

Nixon I won’t put at the absolute bottom because he achieved the greatest political comeback ever and I don’t think his political career, or he, should be defined only by the way things ended. So the three finalists are Buchanan, Wilson, and Biden.

The only reason I won’t put Buchanan at the bottom is that he was just incompetent, not actively doing wrong things, and I believe the fact that he was a very unhappy man for most of his life contributed to that. Still, the consequences of his non-action brought this nation very close to tearing itself apart.

Tough decision to make at the end here, between Wilson and Biden. Both tried to put a huge deception over on the American people about their own competence even to live, leave alone lead, but that alone isn’t enough, since they are not alone in that issue (Kennedy’s plethora of issues, Cleveland’s cancer).

Both were also hugely arrogant and acted on that arrogance, Wilson with the handling of WWI and what came after, Biden with the insistence on inflationary policy, the Afghan withdrawal, and the attempts to force electric vehicles.

Both also found themselves abandoned by almost everyone because of their actions. A president who stands alone is not an effective president. In all fairness, I’m not weighting Biden’s situation as heavily as Wilson’s because he was only abandoned when his debate performance made him undefendable. Wilson was just so arrogant and so peevish that he pushed EVERYONE away.

Both were also seriously deficient in character, Wilson with his racism and attempt to resegregate government in some areas and Biden with his disgusting behavior toward nearly every woman and girl who crossed his path. I’m not weighting Wilson’s racism as much as I might in a modern president, for it was still a common and accepted attitude in 1912 America, especially in a southerner.

In the end, I have to give the nod to Wilson, who might not have been quite as selfish as Biden, but who did more damage and whose influence continues today. He thought he could impose some great moral framework on the world, but he was only willing to do it his way, and his arrogance not only set the stage for the rise of the dictators and World War II but also the stage for artificial nations that weren’t mean to be to fall to pieces, with consequent damage. Czechoslovakia managed a peaceful divorce into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, but the disintegration of Yugoslavia was a decade long dumpster fire, and we may yet see the disintegration of some of the nations created from what was the Ottoman Empire. Not only that, but it was his grandiose plans that sent both America and the nations it had aided into isolationism, and the Finns, the Chinese, the Austrians, the Czechs, and ultimately the Poles all paid the price as tyrants went unopposed.

I have to say that I think that Obama merits a dishonorable mention, for reasons you already set forth, and that Grover Cleveland also merits a dishonorable mention not only for concealing potentially deadly cancer but for what was probably a rape and for grooming a child to be his wife.