The thread might also be moved to the philosophy section, since evil has yet to be defined to everyones satisfaction.
There was a book written post ww2 that wanted to answer the question of how basically decent German citizens could be enlisted in the destructive cause that was National Socialism. The author came up with a definition of evil that is not the flamboyant sort of badness that many people think of when it comes to evil, but that could include much that mankind should be ashamed of, and that is THE BANALITY OF EVIL.
Some people could use themselves as a definition of what is good and then subscribe evil as those most unlike themselves, that is a narcissistic understanding of what evil and good are.
There is another definition of evil and that is like darkness is the absence of light, so evil is the absence of good, but that begs the question of what is good, and back to what is evil.
Many might take their definitions ideologically, for instance a person committed to free market capiitalism or Keynesian govt controlled capitalism might view each other as evil by definition, but that to me is a subset of the narcissistic view of evil.
Or one could take a view of evil from traditional religious sources and try to fit the presidents into that template. Even so there is such a diversity of those religious traditions that even people that are ostensibly one of the main world faiths might find themselves disagreeing about the moral state of certain presidents.
One answer so far to this thread picked Andrew Jackson as being evil because he hated Indians. I think it is far from true that Jackson hated Indians, I would be more inclined to believe he hated the British than that he hated Indians, wether his hatred was such that all British were hated just for their origins, or wether he could rise above those personal feelings I have not much information. I do know that Jackson adopted an Indian son.
One definition of the personalization of evil is that it is a liar, which seems right there to make a case for practically every politician that ever lived. Another personalization is that it is very prideful, which could make a case for most every president also. A third personalization of evil states that it only comes to steal kill and destroy.
Simply then every president that presided during war time had a lot of killing done under his orders, but how much of that was due to personal animus it is hard to know, unless like some modern day oracales we can routinely pronounce what feelings those personages were acting under.
Lincoln seemed to defend himself by stating in his second inaugural address, "with malice towards none, with charity for all".
I also highly doubt that Roosevelt, Wilson, or Mackinley, or Truman or Johnson hated the peoples that they were at war with, but I would say in Johnsons case, his self love was such that he did not ever love anyone but himself.
So my personal pick is not sad devious Nixon, nor corrupt narcissistic Johnson, but card playing corrupt empty suited Warren Harding. Unfortunately for history his widow burned reams of documents and papers in order to preserve the memory of her husband.
