worst president in us history

worst president in us history

Analyzing the Legacy of the Worst President in US History

1. Introduction to the Concept of Presidential Legacies

A second scholarly metric focuses on the presidency as an office, in that, what happened when and why during a particular president’s term in office is evaluated. The conceptual framework here contains a two-part emphasis. The first part emphasizes presidential decisions made either by George Edwards in his study of leadership dynamics or by William Howell in his assessment of unilateral action. Presidents are singular individuals, making unique, idiosyncratic decisions that diverge from what agencies might choose or protocols would dictate. The second part considers what the administration has achieved. Administrative achievements are the results of presidential preferences in the context of the configuration of party power that the administration enjoys or the bargaining strategies advocated by the administration.

The concept of an individual president’s legacy has grown in terms of public and scholarly interest over the last several decades. In terms of academic analysis, the concept has traditionally been approached from a variety of perspectives. In one sense, the idea of legacy is concerned with what a president leaves behind – the policies, programs, and decisions made during the course of an administration. Such an essential yardstick of tenure acknowledges that a president operates in a political environment subject to constitutional constraints and that an administration is affected by policy initiatives undertaken by Congress or lobbyists in the private sector. The focus of such a metric concentrates on the president’s outcomes rather than the substance of the decision-making process. Data on the economy, conflict resolution, and social change can be brought to bear to make such assessments.

2. Historical Context: Factors Leading to the Election of the Worst President

To better understand how the US elected the worst president, one needs to understand the underlying demographics. The map of the red and blue is dominated by a large middle section of the country, while the East and West coasts are overwhelmingly liberal. The blue areas voted for a Gore/Lieberman ticket that promised marginal mainstream policies; no earth-shattering ideas there. Only one of the regions on the map was overwhelmingly blue, and that was the Northeast. The Northeast, home of the Ivy League, the SAT test, the elite prep school tradition at institutions such as Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, was the only area to be blue. It is also the home of the intellectually elite people who voted for Al Gore.

People can argue about the “worst” president in history. Historians have come up with rankings of the US presidents for over 50 years now, and it’s likely that Trump will end up at or near the bottom of every list. Would you be surprised to learn that our worst president was voted into office by 25.5% of the electorate in a year featuring “hanging chads” and a Supreme Court decision ruling in favor of George W. Bush? Negative opinions of the subsequent consequences can be displayed daily: unemployment, massacre of wars, children’s health, etc. We realized that our presidents are not just the good and great people who have governed us, but some genuine chuckleheads, some pretty mediocre guys, and some complete horse’s rear ends, to name a few.

3. Examining the Policies and Actions of the Worst President

In examining the damage done to the United States and the world by George W. Bush, it is essential to distinguish between the broad political and strategic objectives of the man who is the 43rd president and his incompetent policies and actions as president. Although he failed grievously in an overwhelming majority of his policies and impugned the presidency itself, Bush entered office with an ambitious and far-sighted agenda aimed at strengthening his own power and that of other Republican leaders who shared his hard-right views of needed changes. In early 2001, Bush planned to keep America in a permanent war while waging wars against domestic opponents. However, the Bush administration’s reporting of intelligence information was “badly served by top officials” and became the war on terrorism, with its tremendously dangerous impacts on America and the world about which the founding fathers of the nation were deeply and warmly concerned.

In specific terms, during the eight years of his presidency at the head of the “new conservative” Republican movement, Bush claims success in several broad areas as he demanded “wartime” reform of opportunities for further government deregulation and control of private resources. The President aimed to establish an absolute and unquestioned dominance in the world and to neutralize a growing worldwide economic threat to the viability of the consumer capitalist economy he was driving both in the United States and in the world at large. Bush sought to regain the dominance, through political containment of the threats to geopolitical security that had disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union. With the initial failures in Vietnam as his guide, Bush was determined to conduct a military buildup on such a grand scale that it would assure and stabilize the United States’ role as the world’s chief “balancer” and “playmaker.” Only then, in his thinking, could the United States hope to “compel continuing concessions to the United States in physical goods and financial markets, where American advantages are predominant”.

4. Impact on Domestic and International Affairs

One of the constant themes of the Trump presidency was the claim that Trump was a disruptor who was causing a policy revolution. There was some truth to this. The Trump administration showed that the weakness of the American administrative state was even greater than had been feared. This was evident when it took firms, some of which had no previous involvement in obtaining supplies from China, and directed them to find and purchase Personal Protective Equipment. It was evident in the ease with which bad actors looted the Payroll Protection Program designed to provide support for small businesses. It was evident when the executive branch contradicted its own health experts, at the expense of thousands of American lives. And it was evident in the speed with which the President issued executive orders, many of which stretched the limits of the President’s authority in ways that would clearly have been contrary to the intent of the drafters of the Constitution. The main reason that the revolution was possible was the remarkable weakness of the checks that the Constitution puts on the executive branch. But the Trump administration tried few new domestic policy ideas, and those ideas that Trump did put in place will be short-lived. When it comes to domestic policy, the Trump legacy is fleeting.

One area where the long-term impact of Trump’s presidency will be minimal is in his domestic policies, both in terms of immediate policy changes and the long-term policy trajectory of the country. In macroeconomic policy, Trump largely inherited the status quo policy agenda. In the early months of his administration, he retained Janet Yellen as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, a recognition that the relatively strong economy he inherited was largely a result of the recovery from the Great Recession that Obama had presided over. While Trump used the threat of placing trade barriers on a number of countries as a political device, he largely did not follow through on those threats for many countries and certainly did not follow through on them for the EU or China. His massive tax cut was standard Republican policy fare; it exacerbated inequality in the US, but it did not fundamentally alter economic trends.

5. Conclusion: Lessons Learned and Implications for Future Leadership

Trump’s presidency has had the obvious and abhorrent national security-related negative impacts and dispelled the long-held notion that “everything is possible” in the US. Hence, to analyze these legacies – we must put political meaning aside and examine this leadership case with Jack Welch’s advice to “boldly keep in mind the overall lessons, especially those that many people overlooked in the sheer sweep of events. Only in this manner can the past hurt and wisdom guide us through history.” Although one might wish that current or future administrators would be their own guide, the reality is that old leadership behaviors often influence the perception and conduct of new leadership. Hence, the lessons learned of the Trump era will guide future leadership practices.

Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, is considered by many to be the worst president in US history. He is the first political neophyte to hold the office and the first former president to be impeached in the House of Representatives – twice. An analysis of his leadership style and key policy initiatives reveals that, aside from a strong negative impact on government, he failed to execute his promised transformative changes. Trump bases his claim as an agent for change by pointing to three significant outcomes: Supreme Court judges, tax cuts, and deregulation. However, it is fair to question the strength of these outcomes and if they will survive a new occupant in the White House. With his current leadership accounts falling short of transformational leadership, I argue that only one leadership legacy is clear – Trump’s ascendancy has changed the political-social discourse in the US – where leaders no longer are necessarily civil and ethical, can talk and act without respect for others, and erring frequently is acceptable.