I think if you judge a president by their inability to do anything, then sure, ineffective do-nothings like Jimmy Carter and WIlliam Henry Harrison, or even historical villains like Franklin Pierce and Calvin Coolidge, can be pushed into "Great presidents" territory. "Wait, but I thought Franklin Pierce was one of the worst presidents ever...?" "OH! But he didn't DO anything and so no one died -- compared to Lincoln who presided over the most bloodshed in American history!" Carter is often considered one of the worst presidents since World War II because given the challenges his administration faced, his administration failed at most of them. This is why Trump will also go down as one of the worst presidents since World War II, that given the challenges his administration faced, he failed at all of them. Calvin Coolidge famously/infamously didn't do anything: He pulled the American military home from wherever they were, he defunded military expansion, he didn't believe that the federal government should be interfereing in the business of states, a stark contrast from an opponent Woodrow Wilson, Coolidge believed in equality between the races ... a Progressive ideology, but because of his infamous do-nothingness, he never advocated for civil rights, and of course, his presidency would be defined by do-nothingness as he stubbornly refused to provide support to drowning states during the horrific Great Mississippi Flood. Herbert Hoover, by contrast, was elected as "The Great Humanitarian," because of his work during the Flood and as a humanitarian coordinator during World War I and in other scurges... A far cry from how we'd perceive him today. Coolidge is conventionally perceived as a failed president, but, the spirit of do-nothingness ... He didn't start any wars after all ... would promote him much higher than he deserves to be.
This is the tension or contradiction of "The Great Man" theory, that the thing that drives Lyndon Johnson to introduce social security, expanded welfare, expanded access to affordable medical care, sign the CIvil Rights Act, desegregate the schools, extend basic human rights to African Americans when 50% of his party was dead-set against it ... or even prior to becoming president, bringing running water, medicine, and electricity to destitute poor Texas HIll Country, ... That thing that drives him is also the thing that drove him to massively expand the war in Vietnam, sending hundreds of thousands of American servicemen to fight, kill, and die in a civil war that Europe and the United States shouldn't have been involved in at all, contributing to a massively expanded body count than had Westerners not intervened. So is Lyndon Johnson a worse president than Carter? The Vietnam War lies at his feet more than any other president, yet, so does the Civil Rights Act and Desegregation, the Education Act, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Public Broadcasting ... the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, minimum wage hikes ... Basically, the things that conservatives like Mitch McConnell have all been trying to destroy for the last 20 years, were things that Lyndon Johnson could do, but Jimmy Carter was not capable of. And yet, that same driving force is what drove the military that he presided over to drop hundreds of thousands of tons of Napalm on destitute Vietnamese children.
