# Who is the greatest crisis president in American history?

> Every one of these men took the job with something already on fire. Some of the fires were bigger than others.

*By YPB Team · Published August 19, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/who-is-the-greatest-crisis-president-in-american-history*

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## Current results (4 votes)

1. **Franklin D. Roosevelt** — 50% (2 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Met the Depression with the New Deal and then ran a global war from a wheelchair.
2. **James Madison** — 25% (1 votes · score 770/1000)
   Watched the British burn the White House in 1814 and kept the government running anyway.
3. **John F. Kennedy** — 25% (1 votes · score 719/1000)
   Talked his way out of the Cuban Missile Crisis over thirteen days in October 1962.
4. **Theodore Roosevelt** — 0% (0 votes · score 694/1000)
   Settled the 1902 coal strike that would have left American cities without winter fuel.
5. **Abraham Lincoln** — 0% (0 votes · score 642/1000)
   Inherited a country already breaking apart and spent every day of his presidency at war.
6. **Andrew Jackson** — 0% (0 votes · score 582/1000)
   Faced down South Carolina's threat to nullify federal law in the 1832 crisis.
7. **Barack Obama** — 0% (0 votes · score 513/1000)
   Took office in the worst financial collapse since the 1930s.
8. **Thomas Jefferson** — 0% (0 votes · score 434/1000)
   Doubled the country with the Louisiana Purchase while doubting he had the power to.
9. **Ronald Reagan** — 0% (0 votes · score 434/1000)
   Presided over the end of the Cold War and the arms deals that wound it down.
10. **Ulysses S. Grant** — 0% (0 votes · score 434/1000)
   Enforced Reconstruction and broke the first Klan in the states that had just lost the war.
11. **James K. Polk** — 0% (0 votes · score 342/1000)
   Set four goals for a single term, got all four, and left the country a third larger.
12. **George Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 233/1000)
   Took office with no precedent, no treasury and a rebellion over whiskey inside six years.
13. **Harry S. Truman** — 0% (0 votes · score 233/1000)
   Sworn in with no warning in 1945 and handed the end of a world war within weeks.
14. **Woodrow Wilson** — 0% (0 votes · score 233/1000)
   Took the country into a world war and through the 1918 influenza pandemic.
15. **Dwight D. Eisenhower** — 0% (0 votes · score 103/1000)
   Managed the coldest years of the Cold War and sent troops to integrate Little Rock.
16. **John Adams** — 0% (0 votes · score 103/1000)
   Kept the young republic out of a war with France that most of his own party wanted.

Tags: usa, politics, presidents