If you want to review how we got here, these were the previous posts in “The Worst President Ever?”: Part I, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and a month ago, Part 6. Right now, the final field stands at eight, which is more than I wanted and a number that surprised me, especially since I disqualified one of the conventional wisdom favorites for Bad President infamy, Warren G. Harding. But poor Harding only was President for 2 and a half years, dying of a heart attack in August of 1923. He still had some good moments, and what he has always been marked down for is scandals in his cabinet that didn’t come to light until after he died. Like the other Presidents who didn’t serve a full term (W.H. Harrison, Taylor, Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Andrew Johnson and Gerald Ford), Harding never had a fair chance to distinguish himself (although Chester A. Arthur managed to do well in fewer than four years), so I felt it wasn’t ethical to include Warren in the Presidential Hall of Shame.

With that calculation, I realize that the field of eight must in fairness be reduced to seven. As I just mentioned, Andrew Johnson is one of the Presidents who didn’t get the opportunity to serve a full term. Yes, he only missed 41 days, but as the ghost of any President will tell you, a lot can happen in 41 days, good and bad. I think I may have been biased by the fact that when I first began studying the U.S. Presidency, literally everyone was taught that of course Johnson was the worst President: after all, he was the only President who was impeached! John Fitzgerald Kennedy while Senator helped the public understand that the impeachment was not as damning as widely believed by making Edmund Ross, the Republican Senator from Kansas who saved Johnson from conviction, one of his “Profiles in Courage”; still the stain of impeachment by the House hung like a black cloud over the first President Johnson. That cloud began dispersing a bit when Richard Nixon had to resign, a bit more after Bill Clinton was impeached (on stronger grounds than Johnson) and beat the rap as well as managing to remain a rock star in his party until that sexual predator thingy belatedly caught up with him. Then Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats managed to eliminate impeachment as a brand of disgrace by abusing the process with two purely partisan impeachments during Donald Trump’s first term. Johnson’s impeachment doesn’t look so damning now, and he didn’t get a full term in office. I am revoking his selection as a candidate for The Worst President.

Continue reading →

There is one last bit of ethics drama that arose from the Jimmy Carter funeral and its historic array of Presidents past, present, future, and sort-of, failed candidates, VPs and spouses. As USA Today pointed out, Kamala Harris put up a version of the event on Instagram that carefully copped out President-Elect Trump and his wife.

Stay classy, Kamala. USA Today writes, predictably attempting to cloak Harris’s back-handed slap at the man who defeated her (with her own invaluable assistance) by adding that “it was not clear if Trump’s exclusion was intentional.” Was the photo posted intentionally? Yes. Then Trump’s exclusion was intentional. The photo is cropped to make Harris the focus, and that also had the effect of leaving out the most important figure in the scene.

Well, it’s a better reaction than rioting at the Capitol, I guess.

Harris’s boilerplate words under the photo ( “President Jimmy Carter loved our country. He lived his faith, served the people, and left the world better than he found it. President Carter’s many contributions will echo for generations to come.”) has me wondering if a partisan conservative factchecker would label this “disinformation.” Did Carter really “leave the world better than he found it”? As for his “contributions” echoing for generations, that’s carefully deceitful line like fake compliments to untalented friends in bad theatrical performances (“Well, you can’t do better than that!” and “That was amazing!”).

Every man becomes President of the United States loves this country: you can’t get to the White House if you don’t and are unlikely to try. In that picture, the individual who demonstrated that he loved the U.S. in its present state least is Barack Obama. If that was a veiled shot at Trump by Harris, it was a particularly stupid one. A standard talking point from the Trump-Deranged is that “he only cares about himself.” Becoming President requires courage and sacrifice, and nobody runs for the position who isn’t determined to do a good job for all Americans.

Some have been more capable of achieving that goal than others.