US presidential rankings (42-33)

A poll of American historians recently selected Buchanan’s failure to prevent the American Civil War as the greatest single mistake made by any president and our panel agree that he was the worst ever President.

By the time he left the White House his Democratic Party had split in two, seven slave states had rebelled and formed the Confederacy and the country was embroiled in the American Civil War.

Pierce was one of the few presidents to be abandoned by his own party after a single term. Pierce became hated for signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was designed as a compromise between northern and southern states but was seen as kowtowing to slave power.

Served as Andrew Jackson’s Vice President and made it clear he wanted a continuation of many of his predecessor’s policies, including the expulsion of Native Americans from their homelands. The draconian Indian Removal Act was passed by Jackson but brutally enforced under Van Buren.

Harrison only lasted 32 days as President so our panel struggled to push him very far up the table. He had unsuccessfully stood as the Whig candidate for the White House in both of the previous elections and was eventually sworn in, aged 68, as the oldest President until Ronald Reagan.

he was forced to resign in disgrace after White House tapes suggested he had covered up a break-in at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

The September 11 attacks, eight months into his presidency, created a central focus for the Bush administration that lasted into his second term. Bush responded by declaring a “war on terror” and leading military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as part of his doctrine of pre-emptive military action. The lengthy operations have plummeted in popularity throughout his time in office.

Domestically, he implemented tax cuts and the “no child left behind” education programme but has been criticised for his failure to deal with the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the US financial market.

Hoover came into office at the start of 1929 when the economy was apparently booming. Within months the Wall Street Crash meant he was doomed to years of struggling through the Great Depression.

Hoover’s policy proposals included slum clearance, prison reform, pension increases and tax cuts for low-income families but he failed to enact any of them and was routed at the next election.

After his death, however, the scandals emerged. Harding may not have profited directly but he seemed to have known that many of the friends he had appointed to the administration were up to no good. Court cases, suicide, bribes, fraud and lengthy jail sentences clouded his reputation in the years after his death.

The second shortest Presidency after William Harrison’s 32 days but the panel still prefers him to Nixon. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office-seeker who had been overlooked by the President just four months after his inauguration.

Fillmore crept into the bottom ten because of his abject failure in solving the slavery crisis.