Ask Scott Dreyer: (This question came from my son who is supposed to survey 100 people for his 12th grade civics class project. Several of his classmates have asked as well.)

Q: Who do you believe to be the 5 best and 5 worst US presidents, and why?

A: This is a great question and a great civics project! I have been thinking it over, and realize one’s answers will tell as much, if not more, about the respondent, as about the presidents. That is, people with certain biases or worldviews will tend to like or dislike certain presidents. For example, just in my lifetime, polarizing presidents like Reagan or Obama are likely to be in the top or bottom list of five, depending on whom you ask. Anyway, I have been asked this several times lately, so here goes:

5 BEST

1. George Washington

The longer I live, the more I appreciate the difficulty of leadership and the importance of a strong foundation. Washington provided both. Considering he led a rag-tag, unfunded army against the world’s superpower, Britain, and won, is amazing. He quietly presided over the writing of the US Constitution in Philadelphia, then was the first president for an upstart country trying to become one from 13 stubbornly-independent states. Most amazing to me, he was president for eight years, then quietly retired to go back to his farm home in Virginia. I do not know of ANYONE in WORLD history before that time to lead a country, then decide to retire and leave it all. That action set the precedent for the US to have limited presidential terms and avoid tyranny. As my friend and teacher-mentor Dave Flanagan liked to say, “Washington was a president and a precedent.”

2. Abraham Lincoln

His humble beginnings are legendary; I have had the chance to see his birth site cabin in Kentucky and boyhood home in Indiana. The locations are remote in our lifetime, so in Lincoln’s childhood, it was truly the frontier. His list of failures and setbacks is staggering, yet he endured and became the nation’s chief executive just in time to see the nation falling apart. His predecessor, James Buchanan (see #2 worst below) left the White House claiming to be “the last president of the United States.” As Lincoln came into DC, he had to travel by secret train, by night, so he would avoid angry crowds that might block his train in Baltimore, Maryland. From his new home in the White House, he could look across the Potomac River at night into Virginia and see the campfires of Rebel soldiers, his new enemies. His wife had mental issues and he had to deal with countless bad generals, but he endured it all and saw the war to preserve the Union through to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, in 1865, the 150th anniversary of which we will commemorate in a few days. The fact that he was killed on a Good Friday helped seal him in the American pantheon as a kind of modern-day Christ-figure.

Want to improve your leadership skill toolbox from Lincoln’s life? Read Lincoln on Leadership, a book I have required my history students to read.

3. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)

I am conflicted about this one, because there is so much negative I see from FDR’s legacy in America today: from the bloated, out-of-control federal government to the millions now dependent on the Welfare State for a handout because they can no longer care for themselves…many of these ills trace their origins back to Roosevelt’s New Deal. I also despise how he tried to “pack the Court” by placing new judges on the Supreme Court so he could get all he wanted. Still, on balance, I have always respected him as being the man who led the US through the Great Depression AND World War II. Just one crisis that size would undo most people, but he endured and led the US and free world through them both.

I recently saw a program about FDR on the day after Pearl Harbor. While most in the White House were running around in panic mode, he was calm and balanced though the day. Wow. What a lesson of “being calm under fire.” His personal stories of hardship also inspire. Years ago, I took my family to see his home in Hyde Park, New York. The guide told us he came home as a young man from a trip tired, walked upstairs to go to bed, and never walked by himself unaided again. Polio had struck. How easy to give up. Instead, he learned to walk with braces and crutches, and forced himself to walk his long driveway to the road and back daily, for exercise. Heroic. I sometimes wonder, did his personal struggle against polio give him the internal grit to face the Depression and WW II with a smile on his face?

4. Thomas Jefferson

A true Renaissance Man, Jefferson is an American great, and a mystery. He left instructions for his gravestone to read:
Here was buried
Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of American Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia

Note: he did NOT mention being US president!

And as much as I respect and honor the US Constitution, I am glad he conveniently ignored the fact that he had no constitutional authority to buy land, but he did anyway, because he got the Louisiana Purchase for a bargain from France and doubled the size of the US. Imagine the USA if it stopped at the Mississippi River today!

5. James Knox Polk

If Polk seems unknown today, he was unknown in his day too. In fact, the term “dark horse” was first applied to him as a politician, when he became president in 1844. A “dark horse” is a person unknown or not expected to be successful.

Why did I place Polk in the top 5?

He made five campaign promises, and kept every one…including to serve only four years and retire. How rare is that? They were:

to acquire California from Mexico
to settle the Oregon dispute
to lower the tariff
to establish a sub-treasury
to retire from the office after 4 years.

Polk was perhaps one of our hardest-working presidents. Maybe it was because he was a “dark horse,” but he worked with grim determination and almost never took a vacation. Sadly, Polk’s work habits caught up with him, because he died from exhaustion just a few months after leaving office.

Learn more

Limited to only the top 5, I had to leave off these others I like much, for different reasons. Presidents Truman, Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge, and Ford.

5 WORST

5. Warren Harding

A scandal-ridden womanizer with no real accomplishments…what’s left to say? It was claimed “his only qualification to be president is that he looked like one.” His enduring legacy was a mistake: after the horrors of WW I, he promised to restore the US to “normalcy.” Problem was, there was no such word until he coined it. Now, it’s a real word.

4. Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ)

An egotistical, foul-mouthed politician, we can thank him for committing the US military into Vietnam, the “War on Poverty,” and the “Great Society”…all at the same time. As one wag quipped 40 years later, in the 1990’s: “the War on Poverty is over, and Poverty won.” Untold treasure was spent to defeat poverty, yet we still have poor people, plus millions now enfeebled and dependent on government handouts. And as Johnson himself boasted and predicted, many of those dependent persons are now well-trained to vote for Johnson’s party (Democrat) every election.

The “Welfare State” Johnson created has generally continued to mushroom, under both Democrat and Republican presidents. The size of these payments grow year by year, yet there is only so much tax money the government can take from hardworking taxpayers. So what happens? The US government BORROWS more and more money, thus creating crushing INTEREST payments that threaten the future of our country and the younger generations. To see the scandalous size of the US debt, visit usdebtclock.org.

3. Richard M. Nixon

A true waste. There was so much about Nixon that was good: he put the US on the path to remove our combat forces from Vietnam, he calmed relations with the USSR and opened dialogue with China, he created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Yet, the Watergate Scandal was his undoing. Originally a small-level crime that he was unaware of, he could have easily denounced it and had eight successful years. I see Nixon as living proof of Proverbs 28:13.

Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

If he had “confessed” Republican involvement in the Watergate break-in when it was small news, it would have remained small. But, he engaged in “stonewalling” and lied about it, thus the shame of Congressional hearings and finally resignation. At this same time, the US was reeling from war and defeat in Vietnam and residuals from the tumultuous 1960’s, so Nixon’s resignation injured America further.

2. James Buchanan

To be fair, he was president at a terrible time: the late 1850’s, as the US was unraveling and heading to Civil War. Still, he did almost nothing to help. Ironically, Buchanan had one of the best resumes of any president, based on his earlier career, while he was replaced by a man with an incredibly poor and scant resume: Abraham Lincoln. (See #2 above). As the US slowly unraveled, he allegedly said, “I am the last president of the United States!” (source)

1. Barack Hussein Obama

It may be too early to place President Obama on this list, but I believe he is doing great damage to our country. Whereas other presidents on the “worst” list were inept or dishonest, I see President Obama’s danger as more fundamental. On October 30, 2008, speaking at a campaign rally he boasted:

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Think about that: what does “fundamentally” mean? It means basic, foundation. Foundations are important! I began this blog post about how Washington set a strong foundation for our country (See #1 above). If someone wanted to change the foundation of your house, wouldn’t you be concerned? But here, Obama promised to change our nation’s foundation, and how many people asked then, or now: What is wrong with the old foundation? What are you planning to replace it with? Thanks to a largely fawning media, that question is seldom asked even today. Below is one commentator’s take on the Obama administration:

Note: a good friend of mine, Kevin, told me,

“I read your blog about the 5 best and worst presidents. Why didn’t you list William Henry Harrison as one of the worst, since he died after a month [31 days] in office?”

That is a GREAT question! Since Harrison was in office such a short time, he didn’t have much time to do much damage.

Harrison delivered the longest inaugural speech of any US president, and he did so in a cold, driving rain. His aides urged him to wear a hat because of the terrible weather that day, but he refused. His wife had not yet arrived in Washington to help take care of him, he went about his chores, fell ill, and died–the first US president to die in office, and thus the first to cause a vice president to become president.

Other poor presidents our nation has had to survive:

Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton
U.S. Grant (great general but a terrible president)

Who do YOU think are the 5 best and 5 worst US presidents, and why? Also, what sort of president do you think the US needs?

Since 2010, based in the friendly USA State of Virginia, DreyerCoaching.com has been providing customized, high-quality, real-time language instruction via the internet to a global audience in their home, school, or office. Think how comfortable, confident and successful you or your child will feel, receiving personalized guidance from college-educated teachers who are native speakers and have bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees plus decades of teaching experience. Whether you are looking for help with the ABCs or the SATs, or college admissions to conversational English to business writing, we serve all ages and levels to help our students make dreams come true. Discover the Dreyer Difference. Take the first step and visit DreyerCoaching.com, send Scott an email, or schedule a free consultation to get started.

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Opinion: the 5 Best and 5 Worst US Presidents