Posted on 02/18/2006 12:20:02 PM PST by ncountylee
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - From engaging in sexual relations with an intern to letting the Vietnam War escalate, U.S. presidents have been blamed for some egregious errors. So who had the worst blunder? President James Buchanan, for failing to avert the Civil War, according to a survey of presidential historians organized by the University of Louisville's McConnell Center.
The survey's top 10 presidential blunders were announced Saturday during a President's Day weekend conference called "Presidential Moments."
"We can probably learn just as much - or maybe even more - by looking at the mistakes rather than looking at why they were great," said political scientist and McConnell Center Director Gary Gregg.
Scholars who participated said Buchanan didn't do enough to oppose efforts by Southern states to secede from the Union before the Civil War.
The second worst mistake, the survey found, was Andrew Johnson's decision just after the Civil War to side with Southern whites and oppose improvements in justice for Southern blacks beyond abolishing slavery.
"We continue to pay" for Johnson's errors, wrote Michael Les Benedict, an Ohio State University history professor emeritus.
Lyndon Johnson earned the No. 3 spot by allowing the Vietnam War to intensify, Gregg said.
Where does Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky scandal rank? Many scholars said it belonged at No. 10, saying that it probably affected Clinton's presidency more than it did American history and the public.
The rest of the top 10 blunders:
-4: Woodrow Wilson's refusal to compromise on the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.
-5: Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate cover-up.
-6: James Madison's failure to keep the United States out of the War of 1812 with Britain.
-7: Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807, a self-imposed prohibition on trade with Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.
-8: John F. Kennedy allowing the Bay of Pigs Invasion that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
-9: Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair, the effort to sell arms to Iran and use the money to finance an armed anti-communist group in Nicaragua.
The biggest err in Vietnam was not winning it. The country is still a friggin mess because the commies are in charge.
They have to be far left historians. To place Pres. Reagan on any such list is pure asininity. And Clinton did far more harm to the nation than most others. His open door to Chicoms and the sale of nuke and missile technology to their military is far worse than anything the others may have done. His failure to take Osama Bin Laden when he was offerred by the Sudanese was another huge failure as was his administration's erection of legal walls between the intelligence agencies, a stupidity that proved to be a direct cause of 9/11. His anti-military acts devastated our nation's prepardness and capability against our enemies. And then there was Somalia... Clinton rates number one as the very worst in history!
Wage and Price Controls are an old FDR New Deal screw up that Democrats and Nixon kept trying in an effort to stop inflation. It does more damage than good.
Clinton & Gore giving missile guidance and intercontinental rocket technology to the Chinese so they could now nuke us anyplace in the USA whereas they couldn't do that before didn't make the top ten?
Heck, I think that is by far #1 and made Clinton the most dangerous President for America ever.
Bill Clinton for marring Hillary !
Depends on your point of view I guess. I consider blunders those things that a president did that hurt the most people. I guess you consider them things that hurt the president himself. Different persepective.
Probably ones who didn't think that the New Deal was a mistake.
Absolutely - we are just about to begin paying for his grand missteps in Iran.
I can't believe that someone assembled their 10 worst blunders by U.S. Presidents and Jammah Cahtuh's name is no where to be found, obviously a severely tainted listing.
Especially what he did to enable Commie China with technology exports that enabled the Chinese to gain MIRV'd ICBMs with a fairly high degree of reliability courtesy of Loral, Boeing, and Motorola. That is more than likely going to come back to haunt us. Didn't he sign over the Long Beach ports to some Chinese company?
It is remarkable that they didn't put the invasion of Iraq at the top. These must be the far Right of the University set.
He "let" the Soviets partition? Maybe you should look at the map at the end of the war and where the Soviet army was.
He didn't have a mandate for that.
Buchanan was as bad as it gets and he could have done a hell of a lot beginning with not having a cabinet controlled by Slavers.
I think it started when we refused to allow Ho Chi Minh to take power through an election.
Lincoln was our next best president. He and Washington are in a class by themselves. Many of the rest pygmies.
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