For reasons that may be obvious, the question arises: Who was the worst president ever?
[image_credit]Daguerreotype by Mathew Brady[/image_credit][image_caption]James Buchanan[/image_caption]
A lot of rankings put President James Buchanan as the current holder of the “worst president” title. I don’t have a firm view, but I’ve always leaned toward Buchanan for worst based on a single simple fact. Buchanan, a Pennsylvania Democrat, was president in the four years leading up to the Civil War, including the final months of his term when southern states started seceding.
I believe his historical reputation has to take a fair bit of the blame for allowing the crisis to get to this stage, which his successor, Abe Lincoln, inherited in full swing. (Yes, the election of Lincoln certainly contributed to the rush of southern states to secede. As you probably know, Lincoln did not run on an abolitionist platform. His sin, in the eyes of the slaveocracy, was that he was opposed to allowing the spread of slavery into the new western states that were being admitted into the Union. Although he made clear that this plan, by changing the balance between slave and free states, would set slavery on what he called a path to “ultimate extinction.”)
But the secession crisis was building all through Buchanan’s term. And he obviously failed to get ahead of it. One could go deeper into the question of what Buchanan might have done to resolve or postpone or reduce the crisis before it had to be resolved by secession and Civil War.
But (and this is for history nerds only) it should be acknowledged that, in contrast with the current incumbent, Buchanan was, perhaps, the most “qualified” person ever to serve as president, having served, before his presidency, in the Pennsylvania Legislature, the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, as a U.S. diplomat including a stint as ambassador to Russia and to Britain, and as U.S. secretary of state.
I wouldn’t want to rely over-much on pre-presidential résumé in deciding who might be good at president-ing. Lincoln, widely viewed as the greatest president, had perhaps the thinnest pre-presidential résumé of any president other than Trump, consisting of service in the Illinois Legislature and one not-so-distinguished term in the U.S. House, before stepping into the White House and facing immediately the greatest crisis in U.S. history. Most people think he did pretty well.
Trump, despite his lack of relevant prior experience in government, might have been fine if it were just about experience. Hasn’t turned out that way, which might set us off (but not here today) on a consideration not of importance of pre-presidential experience but on such imponderables as character and morals. I predict, with a high degree of confidence, that Trump will not come down to future generations under the nickname “Honest Don.”
Well, who was Buchanan’s biographer? Has there been a modern effort? It would actually be quite interesting, given the rise of blatant “civil war” talk today-mostly on the right, but should Trump again prevail through the anti-democratic Constitution, on the left as well.
How the hapless Buchanan was going to “get out in front” of the Southern secessionist movement from 1856-60 would depend on the details of the various mini-crisis that erupted during his term, so would require rather a deep dive to evaluate. He had to confront a well-developed, longstanding radical movement that only gained in strength as the southerners elected more and more fire-eaters to Congress over the course of the 1850s. (Much as we now confront the plutocrat-funded 40 year old “conservative” movement that sends more and more insane rightwingers to DC.) And don’t forget that the Southern state legislatures were teeming with reactionary radicals who were not too inclined to compromise, just as so many state legislatures are today captured by “conservatism” as a result of extreme gerrymanders. (To be fair, there were several Northern state legislatures that were heavily abolitionist; I guess they were the “socialists” of that day.)
The federal government had quite limited power and reach in the 1850s. There was actually very little to hold the nation together, and it frankly wasn’t much of a “nation” anyway, what with its institutionalized devotion to chattel slavery! They had the memory of the Revolution and the Founding, and that was about it. Today, thanks to the New Deal, social welfare programs, the militarist American Empire and the federal debt, secession is basically off the table. The regions of the nation are stuck with each other, and our (currently only cultural) “civil war” is between rural and urban America, anyway. These are the things (together with professional sports) that hold the degenerating “nation” together in 2020. The fact that a clear minority of the electorate is primed to do everything they can to cram our current anti-American authoritarian down the nation’s throat for another 4 years shows that we haven’t learned very much as a people in 160 years.
Hell, we fallen backwards, as far as I can see. At least the nation in 1860 had the sense that the hapless dithering Buchanan wasn’t going to solve the crises of their day. We can’t even see that far into the future. One wishes that our (totally-unqualified) failure Trump had the patriotism of (highly-qualified) failure Buchanan!
It’s not a real biography, but as I recall, the protagonist of John Updike’s novel Memories of the Ford Administration was working on a biography of Buchanan that argued that he wasn’t all that bad. The theory was that Buchanan’s dithering gave the Union more time to prepare for war with the south.
I think Updike also wrote a play or novel that was supposed to be a Buchanan biography.
Indeed, the winner of a competition for “worst President” is a dubious distinction, indeed.
As we’ve seen from the outrage over displacing (or, in a few cases, destroying) monuments to figurative and literal traitors to both the letter and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not to mention the fact that such monuments were created in the first place, has always suggested to me that a segment of the population still can’t quite get its head around the notion that the Confederacy actually lost the Civil War, and / or that there was no honorable basis for the Confederacy in the first place, since the only “states’ right” that seemed to matter was the preservation of chattel slavery. Many Trump supporters seem to fit that same unfortunate racist mold, which makes them easy pickings for the full-blown demagogue their leader has turned out to be.
Hmm…
The precedent seems to be to get the best President ever it helps a lot to follow the worst President ever.
Looks like good old Joe from Scranton may be the guy to find his way to Mount Rushmore…
Well, Lincoln was a great wartime president, facing a tremendous challenge, even with the immense resources of the (Northern) Union behind him. One of the best Civil War books I know is “Lincoln and his Generals” by T Harry Williams. Long out of print, unfortunately.
The real question is whether Lincoln should have used military force to invade the Confederacy and defeat the Southern rebellion, or allowed their sadistic charade of a “nation” to proceed into cultural backwardness and economic failure, as it surely would have done. As EB says, Lincoln surely did not run as an abolitionist, and indeed explained that the Constitution itself protected the (mostly southern) institution of slavery in the slaves states of 1789-which it quite clearly did!
But it’s likely that had the Confederacy been “left alone” as their leaders advocated, there surely would have been armed violence and war over which nation got to control the great expanses of North America west of the Mississippi. And naturally sharing an enormous border with an essentially hostile power would raise huge “national security” issues, as the German/Russian and German/French border(s) showed over the centuries. So Lincoln’s course for war was likely the better one for the future of the United States of America (not to mention rather better for the enslaved people), despite its enormous cost. So the US Civil War ultimately has to be laid at the feet of the radical Southern secessionist movement.
(And my apologies for not working the horrendous Trump into the comment, but I think we know which nation he would have preferred to preside over. There, I did it!)
“Worst” has several aspects, one being “of bad character,” where Donald Trump, Warren Harding and Richard Nixon take their place. The other is “of consequential bad decision,” including acts of commission or omission: James Buchanan , George W. Bush (2nd Iraq war), Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam), John Kennedy (Vietnam, Bay of Pigs) and Dwight Eisenhower (toppling Mohammad Mossadegh) take there places. But Johnson, Kennedy and Eisenhower also took consequential good steps.
Trump has taken numerous but smaller bad steps; a second term would surely place him high on the second list because of their sheer accumulation and longer-term consequences. And he would have a greater opportunity to do something very very bad.
Perhaps if we are to learn the lesson of what makes for a bad President, we need to have a set of criteria against to judge. What we from Buchanan and Lincoln is that you do not serve your country well if you do nothing about its most urgent problems. Buchanan kicked the can down the road, and Lincoln took on the existential crisis. How many problems has Trump kicked down the road, or made worse, after he claimed only he had the solutions. Multiple problems he has never acknowledged – climate change is the worst, but one could list dozens of others. Another one is the growing disparity in wealth in our society, which is hammering the American middle class and creating a very uneven set of opportunity for our children. Then, when presented with a once in a century pandemic, he pretends it isn’t serious when he knows better, congratulating himself that by the end of the year, only a quarter million Americans will have died. When we need to break the pandemic to restart the economy, he tries to reopen before we are ready, prolonging our agony.
Buchanan got dinged for one really big problem he failed to address, although had the war started a few years earlier, things might have turned out worse than they did with a weak leader and the military talent of the Confederacy. Fortunately, he only had four years to do damage and someone else came in. That is the message for bad presidents – good countries admit their mistake after one term and to not reelect them.
Very interesting take. It’s very likely that the Democrat Buchanan was seen as “coddling” slavers and secessionists. I wonder if Lincoln was seen as one who would take a “firmer hand” toward the South’s increasing bellicosity.
Well, he did.
At the very least, 1860 was a “change” election…
To follow you ‘can’ metaphor:
Buchanan simply kicked the can down the road.
Trump stored the can in the hot sun until it started to swell, -then- opened it and kicked it down the road.
For a President with such great paper credentials, Buchanan made a hash of US foreign policy. He was distracted by domestic matters, but he established the US as a bully in Latin America and the Caribbean. He was obsessed with the idea of annexing Cuba, and was prevented from starting another war with Mexico only because Congress was too distracted by secession to vote the money for it.
Who knows what havoc he could have wreaked without the domestic distractions?
While our habit seems to be to blame the elected President, perhaps we ought to own some of the blame. Was the electorate of 1856 better or worse than the electorate of 2016? At least the earlier crew elected someone with a track record. But the folks on 2016 didn’t seem to find qualifications quite as relevant. More importantly, what is the 2020 electorate up to?
Buchanan won a clear majority in the Electoral College, but only a plurality of the popular vote. Millard Fillmore (“A bad President, but better than Buchanan.”) ran as a third-party candidate and got a healthy share of the popular vote.
Buchanan won in the south because of his “hands off” approach to slavery. He thought the Dred Scott decision had resolved the issue forever.
Good point. In 2016, it was perfectly obvious that there was no basis whatever for thinking the woefully unqualified failed biznessman and mentally damaged Trump would be anything but a total disaster as president. The same cannot be said of the Buchanan vote in 1856. As for 2020, the calculus is obviously far, far worse, given Trumpolini’s (now demonstrated) manifest inability to perform the most basic duties of the office, as well as his tsunami of lawbreaking and corruption.
The nation can never erase the stain created by “electing” Donald Trump. Re-electing him likely ends the “system”, given the antipathy which the majority of citizens now harbor against him. Indeed, his election in 2016 can only be seen as a sign of the colossal incompetence now afflicting an enormous percentage of the electorate, and proof of the total dysfunction of our constitutional order. Only a thoroughly failed system could produce a “President Trump”; his very existence is Exhibit A for the desperate need of significant reform.
“In 2016, it was perfectly obvious that there was no basis whatever for thinking the woefully unqualified failed biznessman and mentally damaged Trump would be anything but a total disaster as president.”
Unfortunately, 62,984,828 well distributed geographically voters missed the point.
Not this time though. Joe messaging has not been found on Anthony Wiener’s lap top and my Price is Right guess, without going over is Biden 324, Trump 214. Senate D = 51 R = 49.
Can we get a pool?
I suspect Buchanan was simply a victim of the times. I doubt anyone could have done much better at least as far as the north-south divide is concerned. With or without Buchanan the slavery issue would inevitably have torn the country apart.
Wouldn’t want to discourage a spirited back-and-forth concerning Pres. Buchanan — history is great for escapism — but does it really take a historical pause before placing Trump atop the list? I doubt if German historians needed to wait until Hitler was kaput before judging him the worst since Louis the First.
Slavery was poison pill for the more perfect “union” long before Buchanan or Lincoln came along, and there’s nothing any president could have to do forestall that crises. Slavery was a sword of Damocles hanging by a thread that was bound to break; US presidents INHERITED that problem. Trump has CREATED and magnified several crises not the least of which is an existential threat to our democracy itself.
The worse case scenario under Buchanan was a Civil War or less violent division resulting in two nations, one a democracy, the other a slaveocracy. The US survives THAT scenario, albeit with a smaller number of states. Trump threatens to tear the nation apart entirely and establish himself as a nationwide dictator.
Then of course I don’t see Buchanan ever described as running a criminal regime riddled with corruption and incompetence on EVERY level. Nor is Buchanan or any other president noted for such massive levels of dishonesty which have taken a massive toll in terms of human life and the economy.
Mostly, I agree with Paul Udstrand. Buchanan inherited a problem, and his sin, if you want to call it that, was one of inaction. Trump inherited a nation with some major flaws, but overall, in decent shape, and has created not just one, but a list of new problems. In the process, he has actively worked to make those problems worse than they might be otherwise, and done much to create an atmosphere in which he might become – with the support of sycophants in the Republican Party – a full-blown dictator, ignoring what we used to think of as “the rule of law,” and free to indulge his every prejudice without fear of consequences or retribution beyond some minor hand-wringing among supporters, who will nonetheless not make any serious attempt to stop his destructive impulses.
Yeah, I guess it’s the difference between facing and existential threat (Buchanan and Lincoln) and BEING the existential threat (Trump). Since no other president ever actually became a credible threat to our nation’s democracy, it’s hard to put Trump in the same room with anyone else, Buchanan or otherwise.
Harding and the Coolidge/Hoover duo come close, considering it can be argued the lassiez faire economic approach they favored, (and the out and out corruption of the former) combined with the last gasps of 19th century European feudal malfeasance to bring about 2 world wars. Of course, American power is far more pervasive today, so the impact of Trump’s malevolence is far more profound.
Not to get too nerdy here, but I don’t think any US president needs to take responsibility for the European Civil War that broke out in 1914 and didn’t end until 1945-46. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t didn’t mention Wilson’s dictatorial impulses as well.
We can also bear in mind that despite Hoover and Coolidge, between 1920 and 1945 the near collapse of capitalism actually promoted liberal democracy rather than bring it to the edge of the abyss. Women got the vote, labor rights, safety nets emerged and were expanded. Wealth distribution contracted, etc. Europe emerges with durable and stable liberal democracies after their civil war and economic collapse. We actually emerged from the Great Depression into decades of liberal progress and reform, albeit with a Cold War pall hanging over the entire era.
Coolidge, Wilson, and Hoover weren’t “reformers” of any kind, and that’s exactly why they didn’t threaten to draw us into Fascism. Trump’s failings have been colossal and almost too numerous to count. From trade wars, to border walls, and the pandemic response, Trump has blown so many holes in our economy, budgets, federal capabilities and credibility, not to mention the integrity of federal officials. One advantage Trump has actually created for himself is that he’s screwed up sooooo many things that we’ve lost track. Does anyone remember what Carson is doing over at HUD? or the latest Devos fiasco?
You can point to bad US presidents in history, but Trump has taken it to a whole new level.
And then he’s a Fascist on top of it all, our only Fascist president thus far.