Best President from 1829-1860

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Easily Taylor. Adoration for Polk usually stems for blind valuation of "effectiveness" over actual policy merits —the presidency revealed him to be even more of an imperialist hack than the "Manifest Destiny" slogan implied, and by the end of the Mexican-American War his demands had grown so unreasonable that his ambassadors had to basically ignore his directives in order to settle the peace negotiations. He was still better than most of these by virtue of being somewhat competent, but I'll take the man who was prepared to veto the Fugitive Slave Act over the man who provoked an unnecessary war with a weaker power any day.