By the Maui Curmudgeon (40th in a 43-part series)

How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 presidents, in the order of their administrations. Here are briefly the pros and cons of my discoveries, the interesting bits, and how I’d rank him. For comparison, I give you the 1982 Murray-Blessing ranking, a survey of hundreds of leading historians who ranked each president by number. This survey is the gold standard of presidential rankings and is most cited when this kind of thing needs bringing up in media.

RONALD REAGAN :1981-1989 ~ 40th U.S. President

For nearly 80 years, it was a political tenet that the worst president in American History was the republican (I know, they have so many to chose from) Warren G. Harding. The last 30 years have shown that the Republicans have been breaking the sound barrier to try to find increasingly dangerous, stupid, disastrous men to rule. The granddaddy of them all is Ronald Reagan.

A liar, a cheat, an incoherent mess of a man, Americans fell in love with him, and they deserved each other. it would take volumes to illustrate how many of our current problems – debt, war, mutual hatreds among citizens, White House Crime – begin with or were fed by Reagan. There was nothing good about him, or his administration. The bad is too long to list, but includes in part:

• trillions in debt
• busted unions
• secret wars
• negotiating with terrorists
• violations of civil rights
• the destruction of social services
• the begating of the power of the Bush crime family.

He is not ranked in the Murrary Blessing interviews and there’s some justice in that – he doesn’t belong with anyone. Please don’t waste a breath of your life more in reading about him.