Tokoro’s Reviews > The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game > Status Update

Many Americans, especially Andrew Jackson, blamed the Second Bank for the Panic of 1819 and the subsequent depression. It was, however, Madison's failure to renew the charter of the First Bank as well as his appointment of the incompetent Jones as president of the Second Bank that allowed the reckless lending by state banks that inflated an unsustainable land speculation bubble.

Criterion of character: Washington, Reagan, Ford, Lincoln (5s), Roosevelt I (4), Jefferson, Wilson (3s), Buchanan, Pierce, Nixon (1)—although for some of them, I didn't catch with clarity the reasoning for the rating (Wilson).