Atlas ranks the presidents -- week 9 (WORST OF THE WORST)

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   1. Lincoln
   2. Grant
   3. Taylor
   4. Harrison
   5. Polk
   6. Fillmore
   7. Tyler
   8. Johnson
   9. Pierce
   10. Buchanan

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I guess other people are doing the first week, too, so I will.

   1. George Washington
   2. Thomas Jefferson
   3. John Quincy Adams
   4. John Adams
   5. James Monroe
   6. Andrew Jackson
   7. James Madison
   8. Martin Van Buren

[I don't think it's really possible to separate one's personal politics from one's view of history entirely, but I've tried to be reasonably objective up to a point. I tend to agree presidents should be judged by their accomplishments in office first, but I don't think accomplishing bad things should earn you points —which is why JQA is ahead of Jackson here. Otherwise I tend to follow the conventional wisdom, with a few noteworthy exceptions. (With regard to Jackson, I'd argue expanding the power and importance of the presidency was his biggest achievement in office, and I'm not totally convinced that was on the whole a good thing. Monroe's actual presidency was a very mixed bag: JQA was responsible for most of his significant accomplishments, while Monroe escaped the blame for a bad economy and foreign policy blunders due mainly to the lack of a real opposition party after 1815.)]

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As a slight aside, I strongly recommend the History Channel's Ultimate Guide to the Presidents that I mentioned earlier.  All of the episodes through Woodrow Wilson are on YouTube for free, and that only requires you to purchase three more ... they were $1.99 each on Amazon, so I of course did.

I had already seen it before, but it's easily the best documentary I have seen on the Presidents.  Instead of sharing random trivia about them or giving an overly moralizing narrative that is void of historical context, it really tries to look at how each man shaped the office for better and for worse.  I came away with different perspectives on a few different Presidencies:

Better Than Before: James Madison, Andrew Johnson, John F. Kennedy

On those last 2, how? Johnson was admittedly put in a can't win situation of whatever he did, everyone was still going to hate him, but still didn't handle the situation well. Kennedy in contrast is completely lionized in death. If anything him being shot meant historians pass the buck to LBJ for stuff they don't want to blame Kennedy for.

Most Johnson apologism runs along the lines of "he preserved the principle of an independent executive." (This is the story the official White House website tells, IIRC.) That mostly isn't true, and some would argue it's even a reason to hate Johnson more, but hey.

Tangentially related, one of my favorite anecdotes re: Johnson is that initially some Radical Republicans were pleased that he had become president, assuming that because of his humble upbringing and known dislike for slaveholders that he would be a more reliable ally than Lincoln. A cautionary tale against assuming everyone perceives their self-interest the way you do.

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Guys, let's not derail this thread.

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   1. Theodore Roosevelt
   2. William Howard Taft
   3. Benjamin Harrison
   4. Chester Alan Arthur
   5. James Abram Garfield
   6. William McKinley
   7. Stephen Grover Cleveland
   8. Rutherford Birchard Hayes

Arthur was so bad he ended decades of Republican rule.

That's a pretty dubious assertion, considering the last two elections were very close and the Republican nominee (not Arthur) was widely disliked and suspected.

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Garfield
Arthur
Taft
Roosevelt
Harrison
Cleveland
Hayes
McKinley

Why the dislike for Roosevelt?  I would think as a socialist he would be one of your favorite presidents for decisively moving to break up monopolies and dilute the power of American oligarchs.

Why would a socialist like Roosevelt for saving capitalism?

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   1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
   2. Lyndon Baines Johnson
   3. Harry S. Truman
   4. Dwight David Eisenhower
   5. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
   6. John Calvin Coolidge
   7. Warren Gamaliel Harding
   8. Thomas Woodrow Wilson
   9. Herbert Clark Hoover

This sequence of presidents might see the greatest average divergence between my opinion of them as chief executives and my opinion of them as human beings.

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Ted Kennedy was an idiot so it's not surprising he'd subscribe to the galaxy brain idea that the Nixon pardon was somehow a good thing

Holding the president accountable for crimes he committed in office would erode confidence in the system, you see.

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Imagine thinking it is possible to have an "objective" opinion of Ronald Reagan less than twenty years after the man died. This entire exercise is arbitrary and silly (though enjoyable), so I don't know why some people are pretending there is an inherently correct order outside of maybe the top three.