Higher Logic

President John F. Kennedy was considered a historian because of his book "Profiles in Courage," so he received periodic requests to rate the presidents, those lists that usually begin "1. Lincoln, 2. Washington ..."

But after he actually became president himself, he stopped filling them out.

"No one knows what it's like in this office," he said after being in the job. "Even with poor James Buchanan, you can't understand what he did and why without sitting in his place, looking at the papers that passed on his desk, knowing the people he talked with."

Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have served in the highest office. A lawyer, a self-made man, Buchanan served with some distinction in the House, served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and secretary of state under President James K. Polk. He had a great deal to do with the United States becoming a continental nation—"Manifest Destiny," war with Mexico, and all that. He was also ambassador to Great Britain and was offered a seat on the Supreme Court three separate times.

But he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.

Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered—maybe they were all crazed liberals—making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said—and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives—about the Bush record:

He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.

HL: Yeah, Dick surely takes the cake, but he's not the head figure of the Administration, so Bush would take the full force of that. Ya can't argue with historians

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WNB

It's hard to say who is the worst president ever because we know a lot more about recent administrations.

Let's just say that Bush is a really, really bad president.

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Buzzby

HL -

Since you put a comment at the end of the article I'm assuming that you didn't write it. Could you tell me the source? I'd like to pass it on to a friend.

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Murdock

Link

I was just browsing and decided to do the footwork and save both a bit of time.. found it on Yahoo...

PotShot

Awww.... everybody is being a bit ruff on Bushiekinpoo. He is barely a real president.

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Higher Logic

Oops, forgot about that. It's from Yahoo! but that's already been mentioned.

killer12382

There's alot of bad things to say about Reagon.
1. He turned deficit spending into something respectable for the GOP.
Cheney said "Reagon taught us that deficits don't matter." Nice legacy to pass on to your kids.
2. Reagon bankrolled the Islamic "freedom fighters" in Afganistan. Those "freedom fighters" would later be called the Taliban.
3. Reagon turned a blind eye to things happening in Iraq as they were fighting Iran by any means possible.
4. His handling of the crisis in Beirut resulted in over 280 dead Marines. We immediately pulled out of Lebanon. We should never have been there and as a result, Syria dominated Lebanon until the present.
5. Iran Contra.....that about says it all.
6. The neocons like to say Reagon generated a good economy. Well things can look rosey when you're spending 1/4 of a trillion dollars more than you're taking in......until the bill comes due.