Going in order:
Andrew Jackson was definitely the worst Democratic president of all time. His economic policy was horrible, and his human rights policy was horrific.
Martin Van Buren was a continuation of Andrew Jackson.
James K. Polk went to war with Mexico to expand slavery, but he also lowered tariffs.
Franklin Pierce attempted to lead the country through compromise to avoid a Civil War. Compromise is the hallmark of great leaders, so I’m sure that worked out well.
James Buchanan continued Pierce’s statesmanship by attempting to avoid inflaming tensions with the South. I’m sure that worked out; compromise is the hallmark of great leaders after all. Just work with the slave owning fascists, I’m sure they will compromise.
Grover Cleveland was our first good Democratic President. He regulated the railroads, was an anti-imperialist, but was a fiscal conservative.
Woodrow Wilson was a southerner from Virginia, so he was racist. But he was also a major voice in the formation of the League of Nations, which is foundational in the rise of international organizations as forces in their own right to maintain peace between nations. This idea led to the formation of the United Nations and the European Union. That is his legacy.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents. He fought Nazis and rescued the country from the Great Depression. The internment camps for Japanese Americans were his one black mark.
John F. Kennedy was working towards the Civil Rights Acts when he was president and defending our allies against further Soviet aggression.
Lyndon Baines Johnson fulfilled Kennedy’s legacy by passing three major Civil Rights Acts, making him the greatest president in American history, while at the same time defending American allies against Soviet aggression.
Jimmy Carter had a below-average presidency, with few accomplishments. His post-presidency, however, was the most accomplished of any president.
Bill Clinton deregulated the railroads, but also saw the formation of more free trade agreements and the expansion of NATO into former Warsaw Pact colonies. He sold off Conrail. He signed the Budapest Memorandum with Ukraine. He was an average president, to be charitable.
Barack Obama expanded health care to millions of Americans, pulled out of Iraq, which was an unwinnable war, continued to defend Afghanistan against Saudi aggression, but was not strong enough against Russia.
Joe Biden has no major legislative accomplishments. His foreign policy was comprised of three historic failures in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Israel/Palestine.
So here is my ranking of every Democrat since Andrew Jackson:
- Lyndon Baines Johnson
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Barack Hussein Obama
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- Grover Cleveland
- Jimmy Carter
- Bill Clinton
- Woodrow Wilson
- Joe Biden
- James K. Polk
- Franklin Pierce
- James Buchanan
- Martin Van Buren
- Andrew Jackson
There are two eras of Democratic presidents: your antebellum and post-Civil War presidents. Democrats before the Civil War were awful, with the exception of James K. Polk, who was mediocre. Since Grover Cleveland, the Democratic Party has become the party more defensive of freedom, our international relations, and good economic policy. Before the Civil War, they were the opposite.
Compared to every other Democrat in the last 150 years, Joe Biden was the worst Democrat we have had. He doesn’t even have a legacy like Woodrow Wilson, which led to liberal constitutionalism. Joe Biden has the mindset of a mid-19th-century Democrat in the 21st century. There is a reason why there was a quarter-century gap where Democrats could not win the presidency after that mindset was last popular. He wants to return to the politics of Pierce and Buchanan, where they attempted to secure stability through compromise.
It did not work then, and it does not work now.
Joe Biden was the worst Democratic President since the end of the Civil War for that reason alone.
Grover Cleveland’s foreign policy of non-interventionism was in an era before Russia’s colonial ambitions extended across the world. America was not the world’s penultimate superpower in the 1890s, so the US president could focus on domestic issues. We have not had that luxury since the First World War. The United States is the most powerful country in the world, and we have successfully roped our allies into being dependent on our military-industrial complex for their militaries. We have the power to shut off our allies’ militaries today thanks to decades of cooperation, which in theory is meant to keep Europe at peace. But this comes with immense responsibility as the arsenal of democracy, where we need to defend any democratic nation that is attacked.
Joe Biden failed to do this in Afghanistan and Ukraine, which has led to the most severe leadership crisis the world has seen in a century. We were moving in this direction with Clinton and Obama, given their policy towards Ukraine. But Joe Biden finalized it by refusing to send Ukraine aid, which Congress had already allocated, on time, and the aid that was sent on time was given absurd restrictions on its use, which has prolonged the war. 30 years of abysmal advice regarding Eastern Europe for the last three Democratic Presidents has led us to this point. But the advice Joe Biden received was far worse than the poor advice Clinton and Obama received. This has caused the suffering of 40 million people, the slaughter of a hundred thousand Ukrainians, and nightly campaigns of terror by the Russian Horde against the Republic of Ukraine. There is no excuse for such a lack of leadership.
Europe needs to step up and supply Ukraine itself. But given decades of reliance on the American military-industrial complex, they don’t have the capacity to do so quickly. They are now increasing their domestic military production, which has already reduced American military power compared to where it was 5 years ago. This is 100% the fault of Joe Biden. Europe needs to sideline Trump and send Ukraine everything it can to end the war.
That by itself makes Joe Biden the worst Democrat since the Civil War.
Purpose
Why am I writing this?
Because we need a change. We need the next Democratic President to realize that you cannot win the domestic battle in a world going up in flames. We need a president who will be more like LBJ, be strong, and support our allies. Do it because it is the right thing to do, but also because these problems will come home to roost if not dealt with efficiently. If Vietnam is why Nixon squeaked out a win, and I do not believe that is the case, then we will find future Democrats have the same fate as Humphrey in 1968. But at least we wouldn’t be seeing an allied country like South Vietnam collapse under the weight of totalitarianism while a Democrat is in the White House, which would be a guaranteed foreign policy failure. In the worst case scenario, a Democratic President is in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. In the best case scenario, it keeps the foreign policy Keys to the White House true, giving the Democrat a second term. There is no case where allowing a country we have a defense obligation to, such as South Korea, South Vietnam, or Ukraine, being invaded is the winning scenario for a Democratic President. If you get crushed by propaganda leading to social unrest, you have the fate of Humphrey. If you allow a country we have a defense obligation to be invaded and you do not sufficiently defend them, like we have done in Ukraine, you are damned morally, history will judge you harshly forever, and your party will likely lose the next election.
Defending democracy is always the winning move.
We cannot afford another president like Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party needs to significantly adjust its foreign policy. We need to be staunchly in favor of NATO membership for Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova (GUAM). We need to be clear that we are still part of the Rio Pact and fix our immigration policy. We need to depart from the failed Trump/Biden manifesto of foreign policy and adopt a perspective more in line with Europe.
While President Wilson was the first politician to adopt the idea of institutions as major forces in politics, Europe has moved far beyond us in the evolution of that idea. We need to join the rest of the free world and work towards building a more open world where we can freely trade and travel between democracies. We need to open free trade agreements, not to force our policies on others, which has been the main goal of the attempted free trade agreements with the European Union, but as an end in themselves as equal partners.
This is how future American presidents can fix the mistakes made in the last decade. This is how we can fully depart from the plague of Trumpism, which is tearing this country apart. We cannot solve the problem of Trumpism by compromising. We can only solve the problem by proposing a bold vision aligned with our values and our allies. This vision of international cooperation, friendship, alliance, free trade, and free travel is the path forward.
The candidate who is most likely to do this based on her votes and speeches is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is an outspoken proponent of supporting Ukraine, a staunch defender of NATO, and she needs to be president.