Posted on 02/13/2013 7:59:52 AM PST by Kaslin
As President Obama prepares his State of the Union Address and the nation looks forward to a Presidents Day holiday, Americans should consider the warning examples of our worst chief executives.
While few of Washington and Lincoln's successors could hope to replicate their epic achievements, every president can — and must — focus on avoiding the appalling ineptitude of John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and their feckless fellow travelers on the road to presidential perdition. The common elements that link our least successful leaders teach historical lessons at least as important as the shared traits of the Rushmore Four: Broken promises and gloomy temperaments lead inevitably to an alienated public.
All the chief executives unmistakably identified as failures displayed a self-destructive tendency to violate the core promises of their campaigns. Take Tyler, the unbending Virginia aristocrat who won election to the vice presidency in 1840 and assumed the highest office when his predecessor died just a month after inauguration. The new chief executive, dubbed "His Accidency" by critics, used 10 unpopular vetoes to block implementation of his own party's longstanding ledges. Most of his Cabinet resigned in protest, and eventually they all quit while the hostile Senate voted down four new Cabinet appointments — a record that stands to this day.
Between 1853 and 1861, Pierce and Buchanan completed back-to-back disastrous terms in which personal weakness and pro-Southern sympathies shattered confident promises of unifying leadership. Buchanan pledged to stop "agitation of the slavery question" and to "destroy sectional parties." By the end of his term, seven Southern states seceded from the union and the nation lunged toward the Civil War.
After that war and Lincoln's assassination, Andrew Johnson (Lincoln's vice president) defied members of the martyred president's Cabinet and congressional leaders, ignoring commitments to lead former slaves to dignity and full civil rights.
In the 20th century, Herbert Hoover's slogan promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage," but he presided over the beginning of the Great Depression. Similarly, Jimmy Carter's 1976 platform pledged to reduce unemployment to 3%, but Carter ran for re-election with more than twice that rate.
No wonder that Hoover and Carter, like other unsuccessful presidents, came across as gloomy, self-righteous sufferers. Hoover's secretary of State said that a meeting with him was "like sitting in a bath of ink." Carter staked his presidency on a notoriously sour televised address that became known as "The Malaise Speech," warning the appalled public of a "crisis of the American spirit."
None of our least successful presidents displayed the self-deprecatory humor of Lincoln or the sunny dispositions that powered the Roosevelts (Theodore and Franklin) and Ronald Reagan. A visitor described the Pierce White House as a "cold and cheerless place," noting the isolation of the invalid first lady, in deep mourning for three dead sons.
When Buchanan welcomed successor Lincoln, he plaintively declared: "My dear, sir, if you are as happy on entering the White House as I on leaving, you are a very happy man indeed."
The result of the depressing and erratic leadership of our six most conspicuous presidential failures is that all managed to estrange a once-admiring electorate within the space of a single term. Tyler,Pierce, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan all earned rejection by their own party, failed to win their own party's nominations, entering retirement as discredited figures. Hoover and Carter appeared on national tickets and campaigned vigorously but got wiped out in historic landslides, with each incumbent carrying a mere six states.
Democrats, who denounce George W. Bush as the worst president ever, along with Republicans who apply the same ugly title to Barack Obama, can't explain away the inconvenient fact that both of our most recent incumbents won re-election with 51% of the vote. Regardless of controversies blighting Bush's second term, or setbacks that might afflict Obama's, their legislative and electoral successes place them in a different category from the White House worst.
This baleful history should warn the current occupant and all successors against visibly disregarding commitments while encouraging voters to steer clear of presidential candidates with dour, inflexible temperaments. By selecting aspirants with clear, consistent agendas and cheerful, persuasive personalities, we'll face fewer shattered presidencies that leave reviled incumbents and a disillusioned electorate.
Needless to say: I agree 100%
I'd say the same thing about Slick Willie. If his plans work out, Beastie gets into the White Ruin in 2016, and starts working to get Slick "created" General Secretary of the U.N. .... then Slick and Beast do a treaty that gives Slick a working U.S. Army and other forces, which makes the U.N. a World Government for the first time, and Slick Willie its first President, a world-historical, foundational figure, a colossus that can finally live down impeachment and the blue dress.
That's what Slick is all about.
Concurring bump. The top four have to be FDR, Slick, LBJ, and Bozo in some order .....
I would also add Lincoln, for destroying the old Republic and substituting this monstrosity that Wilson and FDR were able to pump up into some kind of regulatory and economy-manipulating Leviathan. Wilson, I think, was responsible for the Federal Reserve, so he deserves a large slice, too.
Lincoln opened hostilities by sending troops on March 31 to reinforce Ft. Pickens. Putting troops in someone else's country is a hostile act of a belligerent.
Jefferson Davis (No relation) was a crossdressing coward..
He was neither. You are a liar.
I think Buchanan has been subjected to a lot of demonization. His place on the list is dicier. His Administration was made very difficult by people in it who were choosing up sides and feuding; in addition, outside interests were actually interfering with his cabinet officers and, I think, his army chief of staff, Gen. Scott.
I didn't the text, only the list. Sorry
War is the health of government. The Civil War did more to uproot and destroy this country’s founding principles than any other event.
Still.
There was a profound contradiction between the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, and the notion that some people could own other people and that some people were not entitled to the fruits of their own labor, enshrined in the Constitution.
I believe that slavery would have died in the South within a generation or two without the Civil War. The Peculiar Institution was moribund. Abolitionists in the North did as much to percipitate the Civil War as sessionists in the South.
Still, slavery needed to end, and to the bondman, a generation or two was his entire remaining life. Lincoln conducted a war that was initiated by hot heads who had no idea how horrible it would be, and become, and how it would change profoundly and forever cherished and abiding institutions, not just the “peculiar” one.
It is easy to take potshots at Lincoln from this great remove in time and seemingly in place. But Lincoln had witnessed the effects of slavery first hand growing up in Kentucky, and had made his way in the rugged frontier of early America. He was no effete philosopher, viewing the world from an ivory tower, he as a hard-scrabble, tough and principled man.
He was often wrong. He erred.
But he was wise, and he was magnanimous. When he heard that Lee had surrendered during an outdoor concert at the White House, he requested the band play Dixie.
In Lincoln’s day you could not casually assert, “You were never a slave, and I never owned one.”, because all too often, quite the opposite was true.
We can rue the Civil War, and curse its consequences. But it was in our national DNA, the contradictions of our founding played out, and our national character and characters played their roles.
I think we were providentially fortunate to have had a man like Lincoln at that time, and his untimely loss was a catastrophe for the entire nation, North and South, black and white, alike.
Sorry the slave loving nation fired the fist shot. Yes he did when it was over instead of showing honor like General Lee he fled..
Lost causers prefer a simple(minded) binary right/wrong, good/bad, black/white world to the more complex real world that we inhabit. In this case they can’t see that Lincoln was merely the guy who was at the helm when their ancestors played at insurrection - and got their butts kicked for their trouble. He earns their wrath because he opposed their treason. In truth no self-respecting conservative would accept any less if they were thrust into a similar situation.
Lincoln held our nation together. For that I regard him as one of the best.
I actually agree with you quite a bit.
My view is Lincoln was basically a good man who made some horrible decisions. Like Carter. His abandonment of habeas corpus and stationing troops in my state is exactly like British privileges in an earlier time.
BTW, it wasn’t really about slavery, it was about the union. He didn’t think it should be split nor lose those resources.
Blaming Lincoln, and saying he should have ignored Confederate war against the Union is like blaming President Roosevelt for Pearl Harbor and saying he should have ignored Hitler's declaration of war against the United States.
Certainly the CSA is not faultless in the start of the war but you seem to be ignoring Lincoln’s provocations against the CSA that led to the attack on Fort Sumter. There has been speculation that after Lincoln’s inauguration and the South’s secession that Lincoln deliberately provoked war.
It is my view regardless of Lincoln’s intentions his actions made war inevitable.
Most historians would place Lincoln near the top of our presidents because of his freeing the slaves and saving the Union. I however can not agree. In saving the Union he sacrificed the Constitution. In freeing the slaves he sacrificed the lives 600,000 citizens and the liberty of millions more.
Yes I agree that the slaves had to be freed but I do not believe that the Civil War was the only way to achieve that goal. I can not agree that the union had to be saved. Yes it was desirable to save the union but I do not agree that it was worth the price paid in blood and treasure and in my opinion the repercussions of the Civil War have been largely for the worse.
Had Lincoln stood by and done nothing to prevent secession slavery would have eventually died of its own accord. The world was on the verge of the industrial revolution that would have made slavery less and less economical. Slavery’s spread to the west would have been checked by the North being in position of the western territories.
After some period of time reunification may have been possible but even if it did not the two countries could remained friends and have had profitable trade between them and the Constitution and Federalism could have survived.
Think of the only Republican president liberals not only like, but revere. There aren’t too many limbs who dislike Lincoln.
That says it all.
Agreed.
I don’t see why holding states together BY FORCE is so nice. If you are disgusted with your spouse is it really a great thing you were forced at gunpoint to stay together?
Cotton farming wasn't mechanized until the 1940s, and sharecropping, the debt peonage labor system that replaced slavery, didn't die out until after that.
It's nice to hear from somebody who dislikes John Tyler as much as I do. Losing the support of your entire party probably also counts as a sign of major failure. But I think of Tyler as more like Benjamin Harrison -- somebody who might have been a lousy president but didn't do the country lasting harm.
The 20th century failures would be Hoover and Carter, neither was as bad as Pierce or Buchanan. Obama's on track to join them (and Bush?). Wilson and Johnson may have done more harm, but when it's not just a matter of gross incompetence it can be hard to weigh the good against the bad. So for "worst presidents" we should probably say, "most incompetent."
This is true:
None of our least successful presidents displayed the self-deprecatory humor of Lincoln or the sunny dispositions that powered the Roosevelts (Theodore and Franklin) and Ronald Reagan.
The Adamses were also pretty humorless, and also had trouble in office. Pompous, self-important candidates who don't have a sense of humor and can't laugh at themselves shouldn't get our vote. Unfortunately, there are enough speechwriters and press shills to create the impression that even the dourest candidate is a glittering wit. Bill Adler's been doing that for 50 years and is still around and on the job as of now.
Whatever Lincoln did or didn't do the country was in dire shape in 1860.
Thanks to the incompetence of the political class in the 1850s the country was in chaos.
The old Republic was dead, and a new and probably worse era had begun.
The different parts of the former United States would eventually have gone to war and that war, whenever it was, would most likely have been long and bloody.
So, logically, whoever it was that got America into that mess -- Pierce? Buchanan? Somebody else? -- had to be worse than Lincoln.
If you're a liberal perhaps.
The following come to mind—
Wilson, with his statist philosopy and erratic behavior due to uncontrolled extremely high blood pressure, a corrupt LBJ, a corrupt and immoral Clinton, and Obama, the worst in hisotory and who unlike even the other three, hates this country and wishes to destroy it.
Teddy Roosevelt and his relative FDR had little regard for the Constitution but it would be unfair to say that they hated the country. They thought themselves to be mentally and morally superior to the citizenry and thus ordained to rule.
I left out Cater—my mistake!
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