Franklin Delano Roosevelt makes the top of my list.
His term was the start of the National Debt.
Carter was def worse than Bush Jr.
Carter was def worse than Bush Jr.
But I kinda think it's been downhill since Jefferson.
I believe the national debt has existed since the nation's inception. In any case, Lincoln presided over one of the biggest explosions of the national debt.
Worst of all time:
Wilson
FDR
Lyndon Johnson
Truman
Highest American body counts:
Lincoln
FDR
Wilson
Truman
Johnson
FDR brought us civilian massacres to rival Genghis Khan and Hitler, and threw conscripted Americans into the meat grinder on an industrial scale -- all for his Uncle Joe, one of the worst butchers of humans in history.
Truman gave us the nuking of non-military civilian population centers -- a horrific war crime like no other, and not replicated since (but to be remembered until the end of time).
For all his faults and large death toll, I can't find it in my heart to say Lincoln was a bad president. I wish he would have followed Ron Paul's path instead of the one that led to our most destructive war. But whatever his motives, he did end slavery in the United States, preserved the Union and gave us the Gettysburg Address.
http://www.die.net/musings/national_debt/debt_linear.png
Not at the level FDR did, then FDR had spent more than the entire first 150 years of the country in it's entirety. Now Obama thinks he can one up FDR and try the same scheme once again a fools endeavor.
On Lincoln I'd say that with the freeing of slaves we moved more towards capitalism and free markets, the soon coming Industrial Revolution did far more for the Common Man than any other period in World history.
Then the South did lose with salve labor at it's disposal and that should be a lesson for Socialists.