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James Buchanan, the worst president EVER
A cursory glance at the ‘Most Popular’ news stories on Google unveils approximately 400 articles relating to today’s C-Span ranking of U.S. Presidents.
Most focus on the two we honor on President’s Day – Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, who happen to take the top spots in all such presidential rankings.
Lincoln – saver of the Union, freer of slaves and in the midst of a 200th birthday celebration – landed in the number one slot, with Washington, Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman rounding out the top five.
A significant number of Presidential-ranking articles, however, focus on the shock and awe of just-retired Dubya falling between Millard Fillmore and John Tyler, a full seven slots above the ‘worst’ designation.
Since C-Span’s last survey took place in 2000, this installment marked the first time George W. Bush was eligible for the list.
But for all the consistency in the top echelon of presidential performers, that same regularity can be found in the names that flounder at the bottom.
Our fifth worst president – according to C-Span’s panel of 65 historians who ranked all the top executives on ‘ten attributes of leadership’ – is Warren G. Harding, a Roaring ‘20s womanizer who himself was quoted as saying: “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”
Those words certainly ring true for our current 535 members of Congress.
Harding – the John Kerry of his time – was both for and against U.S. entry into the League of Nations, and also turned a blind-eye to his secretary of the interior; a cabinet appointee that sold (under-the-table, of course) government oil reserves to independent oilmen.
Fourth worst presidential honors belong to William Henry Harrison, famous mostly for the long-winded inaugural address that led to the pneumonia that killed him a mere thirty days after taking office.
Some see it as a “scholarly injustice” that Harrison be included on any list, given he had but a month to reward his friends with posh positions, appoint ne’r-do-wells to treasury secretary or even renege on campaign promises.
Others, such as Gregory Schnieder, author of “The Conservative Century”, sees Harrison’s quick demise as one of the great acts of any presidency: “Given the tremendous damage some 20th-century presidents have done to the country, Harrison’s administration was brief and to the point. He left no long-term legacy for the nation and did not crush the Constitution in pursuit of political advantage or power.”
Franklin Pierce clocks in at 3rd worst, mostly for his support of national expansion even if it meant adding more slave states to the Union, and for his proposal to annex Cuba – a plan his opponents thought would result in adding it as yet another slave state.
Teddy Roosevelt called Franklin Pierce, “A servile tool of men worse than himself.”
Andrew Johnson – that ‘other’ president to survive impeachment – was ranked as the 2nd worst, thanks mostly to a seeming indifference toward the plight of the newly freed Black Americans, including a veto of what was essentially the first civil rights bill and strong opposition to the 14th Amendment.
Which brings us to the man whom historians judge as the worst to ever serve the American people: James Buchanan.
Predecessor to Honest Abe, Buchanan talked a good anti-slavery game, but never did a thing to abolish it or stop it from spreading throughout western territories. In his inaugural address, Buchanan supported what would become the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott case, wherein the Court ruled that slaves and their descendants possessed no Constitutional rights.
Worse, Buchanan interpreted the Constitution in a manner that he claimed forbade him to confront any states that were threatening to secede from the Union.
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