"The worst president since James Buchanan."

[Zomby Woof]

That was about the first of 100 times I yelped in utter joy.

Study Buchanan and understand why that is the most damning indictment of Bush yet.

[Human Torch]

1. Buchanan...

http://www.nndb.com/people/080/000031984/

...Up to this time Buchanan's attitude on the slavery question had been that held by the conservative element among Northern Democrats. He felt that the institution was morally wrong, but held that Congress could not interfere with it in the states in which it existed, and ought not to hinder the natural tendency toward territorial expansion through a fear that the evil would spread. He voted for the bill to exclude anti-slavery literature from the mails, approved of the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the Compromise of 1850, and disapproved of the Wilmot Proviso. Fortunately for his career he was abroad during the Kansas-Nebraska debates, and hence did not share in the unpopularity which attached to Stephen A. Douglas as the author of the bill, and to President Pierce as the executive who was called upon to enforce it. At the same time, by joining with J. Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé in issuing the Ostend Manifesto in 1854, he retained the good-will of the South. Accordingly on his return from England in 1856 he was nominated by the Democrats as a compromise candidate for president, and was elected, receiving 174 electoral votes to 114 for John C. Fremont, Republican, and 8 for Millard Fillmore, American or "Know-Nothing."...

---

His high moral character, the breadth of his legal knowledge, and his experience as congressman, cabinet member and diplomat, would have made Buchanan an excellent president in ordinary times; but he lacked the soundness of judgment, the self-reliance and the moral courage needed to face a crisis. At the beginning of his administration he appointed Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, territorial governor of Kansas, and Frederick P. Stanton of Tennessee, secretary, and assured them of his determination to adhere to the popular sovereignty principle. He soon began to use his influence, however, to force the admission of Kansas into the Union under the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, contrary to the wishes of the majority of the settlers. Stanton was removed from office for opposing the scheme, and Walker resigned in disgust. This change of policy was doubtless the result of timidity rather than of a desire to secure re-election by gaining the favor of the Southern Democracy. Under the influence of Howell Cobb of Georgia, secretary of the treasury, and Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, secretary of the interior, the president was convinced that it was the only way to avoid civil war. Federal patronage was freely used to advance the Lecompton measure and the compromise English Bill, and to prevent Douglas's election to the Senate in 1858. Some of these facts were brought out in the famous Covode Investigation conducted by a committee of the House of Representatives in 1860. The investigations, however, were very partisan in character, and there is reason to doubt the constitutional power of the House to make it, except as the basis for an impeachment trial.

The call issued by the South Carolina legislature just after the election of Abraham Lincoln for a state convention to decide upon the advisability of secession brought forward the most serious question of Buchanan's administration. The part of his annual message of the 4th of December 1860 dealing with it is based upon a report prepared by Attorney-General Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania. He argued that a state had no legal right to secede, but denied that the federal government had any power forcibly to prevent it. At the same time it was the duty of the president to call out the army and navy of the United States to protect federal property or to enforce federal laws. Soon after the secession movement began the Southern members of the cabinet resigned, and the president gradually came under the influence of Black, Stanton, Dix, and other Northern leaders. He continued, however, to work for a peaceful settlement, supporting the Crittenden Compromise and the work of the Peace Congress. He disapproved of Major Anderson's removal of his troops from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in December 1860; but there is probably no basis for the charge made by Southern writers that the removal itself was in violation of a pledge given by the president to preserve the status quo in Charleston harbor until the arrival of the South Carolina commissioners in Washington. Equally unfounded is the assertion first made by Thurlow Weed in the London Observer (9th of February 1862) that the president was prevented from ordering Anderson back to Fort Moultrie only by the threat of four members of the cabinet to resign.

On the expiration of his term of office (March 4, 1861) Buchanan retired to his home at Wheatland, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he died on the 1st of June 1868. His mistakes as president have been so emphasized as to obscure the fact that he was a man of unimpeachable honesty, of the highest patriotism, and of considerable ability. He is the only bachelor president, and is the author of the first presidential memoir.

[Zomby Woof]

3. Bush is even worse

He doesn't even have the moral character, patriotism, or legal abilities ascribed to Buchanan.

[proud patriot]

2. here's a place to start

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan

[Zomby Woof]

6. I have been studying the presidents since I was 6

And I have always felt Franklin Pierce was the worst. Only Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, and Millard Fillmore have rotated with him for that spot.

I found out a few years ago that Pierce is an ancestor - a distant cousin - of Bush himself, through Barbara Bush, whose maiden name is Pierce. No surprise! He was a drunk and a mediocrity too.

[Art_from_Ark]

13. Andrew Johnson doesn't deserve his vilification

The real powers in the Republican Party (Edwin Stanton and his cronies) wanted to make the South pay dearly for the war. They couldn't stand Johnson, who was not only originally a Democrat, but a Southern Democrat who wanted to be conciliatory toward the defeated South. Like their Republican successors of the 1990s, the Republican leadership of the late 1860s sought any means possible to remove the President from office. The Republican Congress finally devised a means in the Tenure Act, which they hastily passed to keep Johnson from firing the much despised Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, whom he had "inherited" from the Lincoln Cabinet. (It was Stanton who had commissioned the military kangaroo court that convicted the Lincoln assissination "conspirators" out of the public eye, most likely to cover up his own involvement in the assassination). When Johnson tried to fire Stanton anyway, they brought impeachment proceedings against him, and came within one vote of removing him from office. Johnson was vindicated in the 1920s, when the Tenure Act was finally ruled unconstitutional.

[Zomby Woof]

14. I agree the impeachment was bogus

Which would mean we are two for two in that regard.

But... Johnson was a repugnant racist and a raging drunk, often prone to semi-coherent rages in front of dignitaries and staff alike. He was very ill-equipped to take on these powers allied against him - possessing none of Lincoln's dexterity or political prowess. Although it wasn't entirely his fault that neither side - Democrats from north and south, and the Radical Republicans (don't forget Thaddeus Stevens) - trusted him, his confrontational nature and complete lack of political skills and tact cost him more than it might have otherwise.

I will say that of all the "worst" presidents I listed, I usually find more compelling reasons to rank Pierce or Buchanan as worse. But I could never rank Johnson above mediocre.

[Art_from_Ark]

18. That raises the question,

Did Johnson's erratic behavior exist before he became Vice President or President, or was it the reaction of a man who had been relentlessly vilified after having succeeded an assassinated President and trying to implement policies that did not curry favor with the power brokers? And if it had existed before he was chosen as Lincoln's running mate in 1864, why did Lincoln go ahead and choose him over other candidates?

As for Johnson being a racist, not that I condone it, but it would have been very difficult in those days to find a white male who was not a racist, avowed or closeted. And not just in those days, either.

[Zomby Woof]

21. He exhibited it right after being chosen

Lincoln chose him to reward him for his loyalty - Johnson was the only senator in the Union from a southern state.

True about the prevalence of racism - but his tirades about black Americans went beyond the usual decorum of a president.

[npincus]

4. did Buchanan invade Iraq?

B*sh is the WORST.

[Zomby Woof]

7. I fully agree

For many more reasons beyond Iraq.

I still don't recognize him as legitimate, though. The asterisk will forever hang by his name.

[Art_from_Ark]

22. I'll never recognize him as legitimate, either

Anyone who runs to judges his father appointed to the Supreme Court to get them to stop the legitimate counting of votes, has lost whatever legitimacy he may have had.

[nealmhughes]

5. Bush is a much worse president than was Buchanan. JB has been given

short shrift, but given the impossible position in which he found himself, he was basicly beyond the reach of compromise. He tried, but the slavery question ate him alive.

Bush is beyond a doubt worse than the do-nothings, such as Pierce (his relative and a Democrat, who is mainly remembered as being from NH and very handsome and charming) and Coolidge and Hoover. At least Hoover was a hero for his Belgian war relief and a self-made China mining expert, and Coolidge was always good for a laugh (at him, of course). I'd say he is down there with Harding, or perhaps the first Harrison who did nothing, as he died a month after his inauguration.

[Zomby Woof]

8. Harding was wretched

As the scandals which became public knowledge following his death proved.

But he did pioneer one presidential innovation which has been the norm since: He was the first president to submit a budget to Congress, so that a compromise between what the two branches wanted could be hashed out. That's a significant development, and keeps him one-micron of a notch above Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Buchanan, or Fillmore.

Coolidge was worthless, but had the good sense to bail when he saw the writing on the wall.

I don't rank W.H. Harrison, because a month is just not a fair barometer for evaluating a presidency.

[bleedingheart]

9. only if Buchanan had invaded Canada to resolve the slave issue

could we really compare him to Bush...

[Crunchy Frog]

10. Was James Buchanan really that bad?

I really don't know anything about him as he was a little bit before my time. I can't imagine anyone being worse than the Chimp (though I fear what the next election may bring us).

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. Buchanan's actions and inactions led to the Civil War...

he comletely mishandled the issue of slavery in Kansas, for instance, by pushing for Kansas to be admitted as a slave state (this was one of the major issues that led to a split in the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions and led to Lincoln's election in 1860); when secession came, he personally felt that it was unconstitutional, but that he had no authority to prevent it, and so he did nothing at all (and the months between then and Fort Sumter made the war essentially inevitable; had things not been allowed to get to that point the war moght not have happened, but Buchanan was too much of a weakling). Bush is bad, but he's still not AS BAD as Buchanan.

[flaminbats]

17. I disagree...

I believe many of the problems that lead to the Civil War were handed down from Franklin Pierce. Its fair to say that Buchanan certainly didn't show much leadership in addressing these problems, but no compromise was going to end slavery or reunite a country without any common definition of freedom.

Bush only had advantages handed to him in his first term! A budget surplus, a Democratic opponent willing to step aside even though Gore won the popular vote, and a country that united behind him after 9/11. Instead of making any productive use of the surpluses leftover from the Clinton years, he cut taxes and increased government waste. Instead of using his support from 9/11 to track down bin Laden and raise the funds needed for military actions, somehow he made things even more chaotic and dangerous in the Middle-east! And now this idiot has put our government into a financial hole so large it probably couldn't have been conceived in 1860!

[lonestarnot]

12. I don't need to study the worst to know this motherfucker is the

most dreadful piece of shit for an excuse of a wannabe president in history. He's no president. He's a disgrace!

[Ready4Change]

15. Why Stop There?

IMO, Buchanan was merely incompetent. There is no indication he meant harm. It just seems he was incapable of doing any good.

Bush, on the other hand, seems to be deliberately making the worst moves possible. He appears to me to be an enemy of the state. His touch destroys everything. His Mars initiative is ripping apart NASA. His War on Terrorism is destroying the most powerful military force in history. He has turned one of the most vigorous economies our nation has ever seen, reversed it's course, and turned it into a hollow shell of health. His No-Child-Left-Behind program not only leaves children behind, but leaves their teachers behind as well. His solution to dwindling oil supplies and increased oil prices? Burn more oil! His solution to the encroachment on National Parks? Sell parcels of parks to the encroachers. His alternative energy plan is to fire alternative energy researchers.

I could go on. You could too, I'm sure. In fact, I know formerly zealous right wingers who go on about this even more than I do.

In fact, the only people he seems to be serving are the very wealthy, who are gaining relative power due to the widening gap between the rich and poor, or rather, the ultra-rich and everyone else.

And even that, I think, will be viewed in history as a disaster, as they are merely getting a larger share of a shrinking pie. In the end, 99% of nothing is still nothing.

Worst President Ever.

We all know it's true. Some are just too aghast to admit it at this point.

[Zomby Woof]

16. Did anyone else notice the other day...

That ALL 400 of the Forbes 400 Richest Americans are BILLIONAIRES? This is the first time this has happened.

I knew then and there that the growing wealth gap is very real, very large, and very consequential.

[Jack Rabbit]

19. I was going to comment on that

KO owes Buchanan an apology.


Graphic: The History Place.

[hfojvt]

20. someone told me that at a meet-up in early 2004

I mentioned that there is a grade school in my hometown named after Buchanan. So whoever named the schools apparently was not aware tha Buchanan was that bad. Imagine 100 years in the future schools being named after Shrub. :scared: Bush is doing what he can to prevent this from ever happening, though, with policies and inaction that make it increasingly unlikely that our nation will last another 100 years.