Historian Reacts - Mr. Beat's 10 Worst American Presidents

welcome back everyone to another reaction video and as you can see on the screen we're gonna check out a little mr beat today i have not watched this video in fact i've not seen any of his videos i've just seen the titles of all of his videos and so i know that he kind of has a particular focus on you know politics and presidents and states and you know so there's a lot of similar stuff in what his videos are about to mine so i'm i have no idea what his political biases are whether he leans left right center anything like that but i thought it would be fun to dive into one of his videos and so we're going to take a look at his video on what he thinks are the 10 worst american presidents now let me say up front anytime we get into this kind of video i recognize there's going to be a lot of very strong feelings on this topic and he may very well get into modern presidents and if he does i probably will tread lightly in my response to those because i very much try to avoid modern politics on this channel uh not because i don't have a no it's not because i don't have feelings on those things i have very strong political opinions it's just that i don't want to alienate people uh on one side or the other when i feel that we have a lot more in common that brings us together in our love of history so hopefully he's diving pretty far back and we'll be a little safer with that but we'll see what happens and i recognize upfront that just as he certainly probably has biases i have biases so do you whether we recognize them or not we all have biases and as long as we can recognize them and acknowledge them then we're okay but let's go ahead and dive in [Music] i am mr beat and president's day is over so no longer are we going to be praising past presidents but we are going to be talking trash about past presidents somebody send obama some life hacks on these are great a good president like i bet that would help i give you know and a lot of people if you haven't seen these mean tweets they're hilarious and a lot of people have gone on and done the mean tweets anybody who's willing to get go on and be self-depreciating like that i have respect for them being willing to do that here is my video counting down the ten worst presidents in american history according to my opinion this is just my opinion i'm a little biased we all are absolutely mind i'm also aware that this may reveal some of my political beliefs and that's fine but without further ado let's just jump right into it as philip defranco says number 10 benjamin harrison okay he was all about really high tariffs and you all know how i feel about tariffs right right i'm not a very big fan of tariffs bad job benjamin harrison was supportive of the overthrow of queen leo quilani and the taking of hawaii which is one of the shadiest parts of american history also the wounded knee massacre occurred under his watch okay okay not only did harrison approve but the army gave out medals of honor like your candy afterward for a massacre number nine all right so i don't i would not have put harrison in my top 10 worst presidents but i can't disagree with any of his reasons why i don't necessarily share the same strong opinions that he does on tariffs but i'm not going to argue with his reasoning i get it this one i'm going to strongly disagree with because this guy's in my top two worst presidents andrew johnson now i wasn't going to put him on this list i feel like a lot of historians talk a lot of trash about him unfairly but you know what i'm all about character right and this guy was driven by his ego this guy cared first and foremost only wait and can we all acknowledge that the man looks just like tommy lee jones uh both andrew johnson and alexander hamilton and some of the later paintings of him tommy lee jones about his own legacy and his own desires he refused to compromise and he seemed to dig in his heels when he faced opposition speaking of opposition just as blatant opposition to civil rights for african americans as seen with his fighting the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights act i mean that ended up holding back african americans for generations this makes him look exceptionally bad and he was a white supremacist but mostly though his stubbornness and politics i mean i know the radical republicans that he opposed were all so stubborn but his refusal to compromise with them just made it look like he only cared about his own selfish desires and didn't care about the greater good of the country how can you not put that man higher than ninth how are there eight presidents who have been worse than andrew johnson it's not there the only thing i can think is that he's going to be throwing a bunch of modern presidents that are on the opposite side of the political spectrum from him in the top five which i know that happens a lot and if you look at rankings people tend to vote in recent memory people tend to consider the people they voted for to be among the greatest presidents of all time and the people they voted against to be some of the worst presidents of all time that's why we shouldn't rank presidents in the last even 30 years because we really don't know what the long-term impact will be but johnson nine no way he's anywhere worse than second on the list number eight george w all right now i know where he is politically obviously i'm even more biased living through the presidency of george w bush but i disagreed with his response to the 9 11 attacks in several ways the aumf or the authoritation to use military force against terrorists basically gave a blank check for the president to fight terrorism around the world it's still in effect the patriot act which really was one of the worst laws ever passed in american history really just stripped many civil liberties that americans used to take for granted the iraq war dragging out the afghanistan war with no end in sight not a fan of all these things his response to hurricane katrina the great recession happened under his watch and he responded to it with crony capitalism which i'm not a big fan of bailing out banks and corporations etc no child left behind no teacher i know actually is a fan of no child left behind not a good law he expanded the surveillance state the department of homeland security the tsa all that detaining suspects without warrants who were never charged with any crime never given any due process just showed that he often made decisions out of fear not out of reason but such a nice guy though i love you dub yeah sorry about this if you're watching numbers alright so and again i'm not going to get into the modern politics i i don't like ranking presidents that are that recent whether he has good reasons or not for how he feels i'm not gonna get into it number seven woodrow wilson all right woodrow wilson and andrew johnson are not in your top six all right i don't know i don't know what six presidents is he gonna rank worse than woodrow wilson and andrew john anyway let's go in first of all cipher from the cynical historian has definitely influenced my perception of woodrow wilson will son so a shout out to him go watch his two videos where he just completely bashes him and a lot of you have been asking me to talk about my reasons for why i think woodrow wilson was wilson was one of the worst presidents we've ever had we'll do some videos on him at some point so i can kind of explain myself a little better wilson was all about spreading democracy around the world a very egocentric foreign policy sure it said hey self-determination right but it assumed that americans knew what was best for the entire world and thus wilson paved the way for future american interventionism one big reason why he got elected in 1916 was because he said he kept the country out of world war one what happens after he gets reelected he gets the country involved in world war one and he was only elected in 1912 because the republican party split their vote between william howard taft and theodore roosevelt when roosevelt ran against taft who was his hand-picked successor uh for the republican nomination and didn't get it he broke off and did a third party run which uh gave wilson the votes he needed to win in 1912 and then he won re-election in 1916 as he mentioned but uh yeah wilson has this messiah complex where he thinks he can be the savior of the world and bring you know freedom to all these places things like that asking congress to declare war and they do and during the war the espionage act the sedition act two of the worst laws in american history urinating on the first amendment and cipher pointed this out in one of his videos i never knew this but apparently he wanted the sedition act before the united states even entered world war one and most of our presidents were racist okay we've got to consider historical relativism but wilson was exceptionally racist even for his time the screening of the birth of a nation at the white house and then calling it historically accurate not a very smart move by wilson ignoring all the lynchings that were going on across the country when he was president he ignored a lot of things apparently ignoring women's rights you know he they were marching across the country for the right to vote he ignored them he did ignore them but it was also during his administration that women got the right to vote though that wasn't necessarily his doing but um yeah the clan which was pretty much eradicated under grant as an effective national organization sees its resurgence at this time and it's not just anti-african-american it's anti-immigrant anti-catholic and the clan has incredible growth and strength that happens under wilson and wilson's last two years as president he really wasn't even functioning as president his wife wilson had a stroke a debilitating stroke at the end of his second term uh and his wife basically kept everyone from him uh and everything that went through her through him to him went through her including the signing of bills where she would take it in and come back out here he signed it that kind of thing he ignored the first red scare going on a lot of chaos around the country didn't do anything about it number six william mckinley okay so william mckinley is worse than woodrow wilson and andrew johnson so obvious political slant here and like i said i've got my own biases but this this is a definite uh anti-republican bias he's got going on uh because uh the two democrats that he's got in his list are two that pretty much ever i think most i wouldn't say everybody most people agree were two of the worst democrat presidents all the other ones are republicans this one may surprise many of you because mckinley is consistently ranked in the top half of presidents usually because the economy was good when he was president and the us was becoming a world superpower due to a more aggressive foreign policy well guess what this foreign policy sucked mckinley's foreign policy was based on a christian slash american exceptionalism mentality that met the us was going to be spreading its influence around the world in places it shouldn't be which is what every other major power in the world was doing at the time uh i don't blame mckinley for keeping up with the joneses so to speak i'm not excusing it but it was the mindset of the time it was that idea of imperialism and if you don't do it somebody else is going to the spanish-american war a war built on lies mckinley you know he struggled with the decision at first but after talking to god god said yes you should go to war with spain and so he went to congress after that and they declared war on spain the philippines that said you can't blame mckinley for the fact that congress was willing to declare war on spain there were a lot of people to blame for that fiasco and putting that whole kind of uh show together to make us declare war on spain an american war that happened as a continuation of the spanish-american war that doesn't get much attention because it makes the united states look pretty bad but mckinley justified that war a war in which americans killed civilians and rounded them up and put them into concentration camps okay so if we're going to use that argument i'm assuming he's going to put fdr at the top of the list too right because he did the same thing mckinley justified this because he thought the filipinos were incapable of self-governing he was the first to bypass congress to send troops to fight in china during the boxer rebellion as i said earlier yes the economy was doing well under mckinley's watch but he had high tariffs and again i am not a fan of high tariffs but mostly i'm a critic of mckinley due to his brash imperialism and his general disregard for the sovereignty of nations that just wanted to be left alone number five richard republican he was a pathological liar who mostly just cared about himself and his own legacy not the general welfare of the country i'll say this nick you cannot ignore nixon's corruption it's there it's a part of his legacy and it should be acknowledged that said again out of 40 what 46 45 people that have been president 46 presidents 45 people because grover cleveland gets counted twice there's no way that richard nixon is one of the five worst people that have ever held that office if you just look at the impact his presidency had on the on the nation and on the world no way he's he's five worst boy did that backfire i know there are a lot of obvious reasons to hate on nixon he was a crook i mean watergate his paranoia and backstabbing make it seem obvious why he's on this list and most people's lists however the war on drugs is probably the biggest mistake of nixon nixon started the war on drugs and we are still seeing the horrible effects of it so that's why that tops my list of problems with nixon nick and again however you feel about the war on drugs i feel like there have been policies far far worse and damaging to the country than that i'm not trying to downplay that and honestly i don't have a strong opinion either way on the whole war on drugs things i know a lot of people do and it's usually one of the first things that people throw out when uh i talk about presidents uh is that and i know a lot of you have strong opinions on that i just don't happen to be one of those people again we all have biases that just happens to be one of mine nixon got elected promising to end the vietnam war but the war just dragged on during his presidency meanwhile while secretly dropping bombs and cancer-causing chemicals on civilians in both vietnam and cambodia he implemented wage and price controls and this was horrible for the economy a big reason why the horrible stagflation of the 70s occurred was because of his administration now don't get me wrong nixon did a lot of good and was highly intelligent opening up relations with china the policy of de taunt with the soviet union and the creation of the epa are probably my favorite three accomplishments of nixon but he had such poor character and the boogers sticking out number four republican hoover herbert hoover of course makes many lists because of the great depression it's actually a myth that herbert hoover did nothing in response to the early stages in what would become known as the great depression the smoot holly tariff act for example in 1929 raising import taxes increasing income taxes to balance the budget the reconstruction finance corporation to bail out businesses and increased crony capitalism likely just made things worse under his watch a recession became the great depression i don't know if i agree that hoover bears responsibility for the depression i think that was inevitable i could be wrong on that but from everything i've read and studied on the whole situation i think it was kind of inevitable by the time he took office i'm not suggesting that he necessarily made the right decisions on how to deal with it but uh again not wouldn't put him in my five worst his treatment of the world war one bonus army veterans in dc was disgraceful hoover did try to end the great depression but simply made it worse fdr didn't have much success either after that but at least fdr seemed to be more in touch with ordinary people hoover seemed very out of touch with most americans and i agree with him on that i don't think fdr's policies which obviously were much more on the the left side of things um made things any better either and it was really world war ii that got us out of the depression um but yeah i don't know be curious to see who his next three are number three franklin pierce can't argue with that oh pierce where do i begin i know how about with the kansas nebraska act again a law that was one of the worst laws passed in american history and he signed it in the law a doe face sorry that was a little harsh there but he's consistently ranked as one of the most attractive presidents in history let me know what you think about that um but that's what i always hear from people is that franklin pierce is considered to be one of our more attractive presidents uh on his way to take the inaugurate inaugural to be sworn in as president uh his only son was killed in a horrible train accident right in front of him and decapitated i think and he just kind of drank himself stupid during his administration uh and he happens to be in that long string of one-term presidents right before up to the civil war that kind of kicked the can down the road kansas nebraska act was one more attempt at compromise to stave off civil war which by that point was kind of becoming inevitable but yeah franklin pierce consistently ranked as one of our worst i wouldn't argue with that you know a northerner who was perfectly fine with slavery the austin manifesto pierce seemed to be okay with declaring war on spain if it refused to sell cuba to the united states pierce wanted cuba annexed as a slave state boy did that make northerners happy at a rocky time when the country needed unity pearce arguably helped further divide the country also at a time when the country needed a more hands-on and active president he was not but you know who was worse number two james buchanan also won't argue buchanan was worse wouldn't put him in my top two because i've got woodrow wilson and andrew johnson there but i'll acknowledge buchanan probably one of the five worst he took over as president after pierce and instead of learning from pierce's mistakes he just let the country become even more divided another case you didn't have to bleep that out i think i know who his number one's gonna be okay doe face he was a president who did nothing he didn't want to make anyone mad but he also didn't want to make anyone happy he was personally against slavery he said it was morally wrong and yet proceeded to speak out in favor for the dred scott decision one of the worst supreme court decisions in american history in fact he was so pro-south that he basically just let the south do whatever they wanted which is interesting because buchanan was from pennsylvania when the states seceded after the election of abraham lincoln in 1860 he blamed the northerners and the abolitionists by the time he was out of office the united states was on the brink of civil war and the union had fallen apart and he did absolutely nothing to stop it and the worst president in american history in my opinion is warren harding he once said quotes i am not fit for this office and should never have been here you know for a long long time we did not elect senators as president it was very very rare um people elected directly to the presidency from the senate warren harding uh john f kennedy barack obama and i think that's about it i'm trying to think off the top of my head if there's been another person elected directly from the senate to the office of president it's very very rare it never really happened again harding would be in my top 10 maybe even my top five not sure he's my number one but i get it here i agree he appointed many of his corrupt buddies to be in his cabinet some of them famously got in trouble for bribery in what became known as the teapot dome scandal i know this sounds bad but he was probably our dumbest president he was not a deep thinker at all he seemed to just let all of his corrupt buddies make all the decisions he didn't stand for anything you didn't know where he stood because he rarely stated where he stood on issues he seemed to have no moral compass while president he would often cheat on his wife and he had parties in the white house where they would illegally gamble now let's talk about wow president cheating on your wife because the list gets pretty long here i mean fdr did it jfk did it warren harding did it uh pretty sure grover cleveland did it and those are just the ones i'm thinking of off the top of my head i am sure there are far more than that and smuggle in alcohol at the height of prohibition he didn't ever get much work done he preferred socializing and partying to working when he actually did work he signed crappy laws one law he actually did sign was the emergency quota act which was really a law designed to favor western and northern european immigrants and limit immigrants from southern and eastern europe as well as most of the rest of the world to sum it up while harding was a nice guy who was easy to get along with he surrounded himself with shady characters and avoided any action whatsoever while in office he was just a horrible president and if you haven't noticed by this point character means a lot to me in terms of how i view a president though there are of course exceptions like harding who i just mentioned and george w bush i love you man but you just made some really bad decisions while in office and you know a lot of people say that about bush regardless of how they felt about him as a president there were a lot of people who said privately they liked him as a person and that's true with a lot of politicians well that will do it those are my 10 least favorite presidents the 10 worst presidents in my opinion let me know in the comments below who you think was the worst president in american history i'm sure you will agree with some of them you might be surprised by others though a shout out to buck russell so i'll say this and he acknowledged up front that he has biases and i i can respect that because we all do so i'm not going to criticize him for being true to his biases i'm just going to disagree with them uh so and obviously he's probably on the opposite side of the political spectrum than i am and that's fine i have no problem with that but uh so you know just thinking about his top ten zero i mean the most recent democrat on his list was james buchanan and that was pre-civil war so 170 years none of the democrats in the last 170 years made it into his top 10. but almost his entire list was made up of 20th century republicans so um you know i get that that's part of who he is and and if you view presidents as having an impact one way or another on the country and if you believe that those types of policies are bad for the country then you're necessarily going to rank presidents in that way so that's fine i just have some disagreements with that but i would love to hear your thoughts use the comment section below and let me know what you think about his list we'll take a look at his top ten i'll be curious to do that sometime as well and some folks have been requesting that maybe i go back and redo my tier list of presidents but instead of doing it as a stream do it as a video where without the interference and the interruptions of dealing with the chat i can just kind of flesh out my ideas a little more and why i feel the way i do so i'll probably do that at some point off to vicksburg this week can't wait hope to see some of you guys down there thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 202,471

Keywords: mr. beat, historian reacts, american presidents, american history, top 10 worst american presidents, us president, mr beat reaction, worst presidents

Id: 9y0H9Ce9ZnY

Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021