mousey musings

Worst President Ever? -- Discourse.net ponders a new anti-Bush sticker and wonders whether Bush is indeed our worst President. My verdict? Not even close. James Buchanan takes the prize. As I wrote in the comments section: Buchanan seems to be the historians' consensus choice as the worst President ever, fiddling while the country descended into civil war. Indeed, his officials did more than just leak a name or break into an office here or there. His people actually shifted arms into vulnerable armories in the South, where they could be more easily seized by rebels in the event of civil war. Mere corruption cannot compare to what amounted to treason, and the results of Buchanan's negligence were surely worse (in terms of lives lost) than the negligence of any other President. Oh, and I forgot that bit about his private conversations with the Supreme Court justices urging them towards their decision in Dred Scott, the case that not only said that slaves didn't become free if brought north but also that Congress could never ban slavery from the US territories, and that by the way African-Americans could never be citizens, even if a state wanted to grant equal rights to freedmen. The decision sparked a reaction that eventually led to the civil war. So no, Bush isn't even close to our worst President. I'd put him in the bottom ranks, but we shouldn't get too carried away.

posted by Jeffrey # 11/18/2005 02:22:00 PM