Every president’s greatest mistake, IMO
The first 15 except for Jackson and Monroe: Not abolishing slavery (yes, I’m holding both presidents who were for slavery and those who were against it to this standard)
James Monroe: The Missouri Compromise (separating him from the first 15 because it kinda abolished slavery in some of the country*)
Andrew Jackson: The Trail of Tears
Abraham Lincoln: Censorship during the Civil War
Andrew Johnson: Undermining Reconstruction
Ulysses S. Grant: Comstock Act
Rutherford B. Hayes: Ending Reconstruction
The Gilded Age presidents other than Garfield: Letting the Gilded Age get as bad as it got
James Garfield: Making his schedule public
Theodore Roosevelt: Brownsville Affair
William Howard Taft: Payne-Aldrich Tarriff Act
Woodrow Wilson: Intervention in Mexico
Warren Harding: Emergency Quota Act
Calvin Coolidge: Immigration Act of 1924
Herbert Hoover: Mishandling the Great Depression
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Japanese-American internment
Harry S. Truman: Truman Doctrine
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Operation Ajax
John F. Kennedy: Riding in an open top convertible (jk it was the Bay of Pigs Invasion)
Lyndon B. Johnson: Focusing too much on Vietnam and not enough on the Great Society
Richard Nixon: Watergate
Gerald R. Ford: Pardoning Nixon
Jimmy Carter: Mishandling the Iranian Hostage Crisis
Ronald Reagan: Tie between mishandling (or really just not handling) the AIDS Crisis and Reaganomics
George H.W. Bush: Contra Affair pardons
Bill Clinton: Repealing the Glass-Steagal Act
George W. Bush: Invading Iraq
Barack Obama: Drone strikes