The Times of England recently rated America’s presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush. Abraham Lincoln was ranked first and James Buchanan, the man who didn’t prevent the Civil War, finished last. Washington finished second; Richard Nixon and George W. Bush tied for fifth worst.
The president who invariably fares better than his record, however, is the Camelot-cocooned John F. Kennedy. The Times had him ranked 11th – right after Woodrow Wilson. A number of other surveys routinely place him in the top 10.
Makes you wonder how high JFK would rank had there not been a Bay of Pigs fiasco, no string of national-security-threatening bimbos and mistresses, no wink-and-nod complicity in the assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem, no CIA-mob collaboration to try and take out Fidel Castro and no lackluster legislative record.
And Lyndon B. Johnson, intriguingly enough, finished 12th.
Yes, he led the passage of Great Society legislation, but it was more of a paean to his assassinated predecessor. Moreover, his disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War cost nearly 60,000 American lives and undermined U.S. geopolitical credibility – creating an imperial-hegemon image that still haunts the U.S. today.