When assessing the worst presidents ever, it can't just be limited to their term in office. Why was Andrew Johnson so bad? Because he undermined efforts to reconstruct the South along the lines of a multiracial democracy, helping pave the way for Jim Crow. Why was Nixon so bad? Because he created a widespread mistrust in the honesty and efficacy of public officials.
The reason why Trump will almost certainly be evaluated as our worst president (so far!) is that his actions have created a terrible political environment that extends beyond his weak policy accomplishments. Sure, there's the reactionary Supreme Court, but what policies did Trump put into place? His tax cuts? The massive deficits were bad, true, but Trump's policy legacy is almost inperceptible.
Trump's real "contribution" to American politics is the destruction of norms we took for granted. Sure, the Harding and Grant administrations were corrupt, but Harding and Grant were personally not corrupt. Trump himself was corrupt.
Yglesias does some bullshit bothsides stuff on Clinton. I don't think the Clinton presidency has aged well, but that's primarily because of his unraveling of the Bretton Woods system of international trade and his repeal of Glass-Steagall that led directly to the 2008 crisis. The Clinton boom was built on sand. The idea that Clinton should have resigned over the Lewinsky Affair is not the reason why Clinton was a bad president. Presidents have had affairs forever. Rewarding panty-sniffing witch hunts, like Ken Starr's, would have been a terrible precedent.
To somehow equate Clinton's conjugal immorality with Trump...I don't even know what to do about that. As I just said, there's a case to made against Clinton, but that ain't it, and using the context of Trump sure as hell ain't it. Remind me again how Clinton made the Secret Service pay marked up prices to stay in his hotel. Remind me how Clinton launched an insurrection during the Florida Recount. Remind me how Clinton asserted that only his supporters were real Americans.
Trump took the fragile fabric of national identity and ripped it to shreds to glorify his own ego. He reveled in his "American Carnage" bullshit, a concept that still dominates rightist views of American cities. He pitted us against each other and elevated actual fucking Nazis as "very fine people."
What's so ironic is that Trump has perhaps one true policy success: Operation Warp Speed that produced the Covid vaccine. OK, he didn't do much to make that happen, but he didn't fuck it up like everything else he touches.
Now, the forces that Trump has untethered have given us a resurgent anti-vax movement that could have terrible effects in the years to come. People will die from this, just as people are dying from unregulated gun ownership, abortion restrictions and stymieing worker's rights.
The negative effects of Trumpism will largely be with us for a decade or more, even if Trump gets his clock cleaning in 2024. That's what makes him our worst president ever.
So far!
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