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.
Hope slick doesn’t live long enough to do this—he looks awful (boo hoo!). Hope Shrillary is too tired and washed up to run. She’s not looking that good either.
I would go with Woodrow Wilson as worst.
1. Resegregated the federal government.
2. Reinstituted slavery (conscription).
3. Sent soldiers off as cannon fodder to WWI without artillery, gas masks, or suitable machineguns.
4. Supervised the cheek by jowl concentration camps that were used in the military so that we took 800,000 deaths from flu epidemics to go along with about 100,000 deaths from WWI.
It was only through luck that British P-14 Enfield designs were available and could be converted to P-17s, or we would have sent the soldiers without even modern rifles. Government arsenals were unable to produce enough weapons.
The end of the war brought the deepest recession in history.
Only the brilliance of Warren Harding was able to pull us out of the recession.
There was no legal secession in 1860-61.
There was an insurrection, that Lincoln didn’t start.
If secession per 1860/61 was real, Lincoln didn’t have Americans killed, but Jeff Davis did.
If secession was not real, the insurrectionists were sadly not treated with sufficient rigor once the insurrection was over.
If you dislike your spouse, feel free to get a divorce.
Don’t shoot at her.
Don’t steal the property.
Don’t try to turn the children raised by you both against her.
Don’t empty the bank accounts.
Don’t burn down the house.
The confederates started shooting at Ft Sumter.
The confederates stole US property, at various forts.
The confederates offered US army officers high promotions in return for a promise of treason.
The prevented collection of US taxes.
They burned numerous cities to include Atlanta GA, Richmond VA and Columbia SC in an attempt to prevent reoccupation.
Per the constituion, controversies between states, or between the states and the federal government were to be resolved at the supreme court, not on the battlefield. The pretended confederates resorted to the war, an act of treason and insurrection.
Based on destruction of the republic and the constitution, I vote for
1. Wilson
2. FDR
3. Obama
It is inevitable that whenever the topic of worst presidents comes up, Lincoln’s name will be invoked.
I am not so certain that holding the Union together was a good outcome. Not an apologia for slavery, slavery is heinous, indefensible and barbarous. It is, of course, rank sophistry to maintain that the Civil War was not about slavery, but you have little chance with someone who takes that position, so why bother?
Without a Union victory there would have been no Spanish-American War, no American imperial designs, no Teddy Roosevelt, probably no President Wilson. Without Wilson, would Hitler have seized power in Germany? How would Europe have been worse if Wilhelmien Germany had prevailed over Edwardian England?
Lincoln was what he was, he played a role in the worst catastrophe ever to visit this country, but he was not the cause, and it is hard to imagine another leader who would have been better in that time and place. The Union would almost certainly prevailed with resolute leadership, and as far as resolute leaders go, few were better than Lincoln. I believe that America would have been a better place if he had finished his second term. America, today, might have become a better place if the states were allowed to abolish slavery on their own terms, but for the decades of waiting it would have been vastly worse for the slaves.
Only in the same sense that President Roosevelt "provoked" the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by moving the US fleet there.
Pearl Harbor and Fort Sumter were both US military bases on Federal property.
Pontiac: "It is my view regardless of Lincoln’s intentions his actions made war inevitable."
Only in the same sense that a woman might make rape "inevitable" by dressing attractively.
But regardless of how she is dressed, rape is still rape, and metaphorically, that's what the Confederacy did to Fort Sumter.
Pontiac: "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."
Wrong on both counts.
First, the US Constitution clearly contemplates and provides for vigorous Federal responses to "rebellion", "insurrection", "domestic violence", "invasions", "war" and "treason".
And slave-holding secessionists began committing all of these crimes immediately with -- indeed often even before -- formally declaring their secessions.
So Lincoln was simply doing what his sworn oath required: "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Second, while slave-holders did secede -- then started and formally declared war on the United States (May 6, 1861) -- in order to protect slavery, Lincoln was, in fact, committed to protect slavery in the states where it already constitutionally existed.
So Lincoln went to war to defend the Constitution against open rebellion and a formally declared war on the United States -- not to end slavery.
Only later -- after the Union learned that freeing slaves was a great way to defeat slave-holders militarily -- did Lincoln begin to consider emancipating all Confederate slaves.
Pontiac: "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."
In fact, over many years several alternate plans -- i.e., using Federal funds to purchase slaves' freedom -- were offered and rejected by slave-holders.
And the Civil War began not to free slaves, but rather to defeat the Confederacy's declared war on the United States.
Pontiac: "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. "
The Civil War, with all its costs in blood and treasure, was fought because secessionists started war, then declared war and sent invading armies into every Union state and territory near the Confederacy, including: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.
So there was no possibility that Lincoln could let the slave-holders "go in peace".
Pontiac: "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."
Wrong again.
First of all, both outgoing President Buchanan and incoming President Lincoln "did nothing to prevent secession".
Civil War did not start because of secession.
It started because the Confederacy made and formally declared war on the United States (May 6, 1861).
Second, in fact by 1860 slavery itself, and the South in general, became the most prosperous they had ever been, and there was no end in sight.
Average southerners were considerably better off economically than their northern cousins, and over half their growing wealth consisted of increasingly valuable slaves.
Nearly all southerners well understood that slavery was one of the biggest wealth-producing institutions ever invented, and were determined to defend it -- to the death if necessary.
Plus, Confederate military aims included not only defeating the Union to incorporate its remaining slave-holding states (i.e., Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri), but also foreign conquests in the Caribbean (i.e., Cuba) and Central America to which slavery was thought well suited.
So a Confederate victory over the United States would have stopped and reversed the long-term trend to abolish slavery world-wide.
Southern slavery would have a new lease-on-life, one certainly strong enough to survive until it could make alliances with the slavery-ideology of certain national socialists in central Europe...
Pontiac: "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."
The US Constitution and Federalism, plus the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments certainly did survive the Civil War.
Indeed, it survived another 50 years afterwards, until the "Progressive Era" 16th and 17th amendments put the Federal government on its current path of unlimited growth -- from 2% of GDP in, say, 1912 to nearly 25% of GDP in 2012.
And that "Progressive Era" was started and cheered on by the Solid Democrat South's votes for its heroes like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
Between the propaganda efforts of American Neo-Confederates and German imperialists, it's a wonder that historical truth ever sees the light of day, FRiend. ;-)
In fact, most of the horrors of the Second World War were prefigured in the First -- excepting actual gas chambers and crematoria, of course -- on the Eastern Front especially.
Indeed, Hitler's war aims in Russia began with restoring the old Brest-Litovsk treaty lines, and his attitude toward all Eastern "unter-menschen" was highly familiar to the old German Imperial military leadership.
Even "Lebensraum" -- replacing other eastern populations with Germans -- was part of the official 1914 German Imperial War plan.
And all that endless hew and cry of German propaganda -- about how terribly "unfair" and "unjust" were Treaty of Versailles reparations and territory loss!
In fact, Germans themselves imposed harsher terms on such defeated countries as Belgium and Russia.
But the bottom line (to answer your question), from Americans' perspective was not Eastern Europe, or even so much, Britain.
It was France: in those days Americans were unashamedly Francophiles -- "Lafayette, we are here" was their motto, and they meant our enormous debt to France for its help in the Revolutionary War.
Americans wanted to repay their debts (imagine that!), and could not accept the loss of Republican France to German imperial domination.
The Germans defeated the French in the Franco-Prussion war fifty years earlier and the French Republic got along fine without Alsace-Lorraine. (Where a kind of German was still spoken as recently as 1975.)
The French certainly considered the Great War a matter of life or death for France.
The put everything they had into it, and lost more lives than the US and British Empire combined.
German war aims in 1914 included annexation of Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of northern France, along with large eastern territories, plus many billion marks in reparations from France.
So France considered it a fight to the death, and Americans were highly sympathetic.
Also in his Speech, Lincoln refused to mention slavery, at all, as a reason to invade the South; and instead, Lincoln endorsed the Permanent Slavery Amendment recently passed by Congress.
Lincoln stated in his Speech,
"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts (import taxes); but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere."
The only property belonging to the federal government that Lincoln said he is willing to invade the Confederate States to possess are two tax collection forts: Fort Sumter at the entrance to Charleston Harbor in South Carolina and Fort Pickens at the entrance to Pensacola Bay in Florida.
Therefore, if there is to be a war, observers are predicting that Lincoln will start the war by invading Charleston Harbor with warships to hold Fort Sumter, a tax collection fort.
The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the Thirty-eighth Congress, on the 31st day of January, 1865. At that time the USA and the CSA were still at war and so the representatives and Senators of Southern States were not seated in congress and did not vote in the amendment process. So either the Southern States had law fully seceded or the 13th Amendment was not passed lawfully.
Many Southern states ratified the 13th Amendment only because Congress had made ratification an official condition of their readmission to the Union after the Civil War. So the 13th was ratified under duress. So maybe the Constitution did not survive the Civil War intact.
Forget the divorce thing. Point is it’s not a good relation if you have to keep a gun to her head to stay together.
BTW, all those terrible things you list happened some 80 years prior. Stop being a hypocrite. Or maybe you feel sorry for the redcoats.
By 1917 the Germans might have settled for a whole lot less, even without U.S. intervention. The Allies imposition of the Treaty of Versailles was counter to the terms of the Armistice and left the Germans resentful. I am not sure that American involvement was not a net negative. It’s hard to predict the trajectory that German antisemitism would have taken in the absence of the Versailles.
So, a federal fort bristling with guns and cannons in Charleston harbor is certainly no call to confront the threat. Not one of the 640,000 thousand American lives squandered was worth less than lincoln’s. That is where we most differ. Any leader who can’t prevent a war within his own country, is unfit to lead anything.
If secession per 1860/61 was real, Lincoln didn’t have Americans killed, but Jeff Davis did.
If secession was not real, the insurrectionists were sadly not treated with sufficient rigor once the insurrection was over.””
Just because someone, some group, or some state wishes to be left alone is no reason to kill them or force them under your control.
As I said in my first post above (#57), you have been badly misinformed by pro-Confederate propaganda.
Lincoln's First Inaugural contains no such language.
Pontiac: "Lincoln stated in his Speech, 'The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts (import taxes)...' "
Lincoln made no such statements in his First Inaugural before Fort Sumter and the Confederacy's formal declaration of war on the United States, May 6, 1861.
Pontiac: "Therefore, if there is to be a war, observers are predicting that Lincoln will start the war by invading Charleston Harbor with warships to hold Fort Sumter, a tax collection fort."
But Lincoln made no move to "invade" Fort Sumter, or any other Federal properties before the Confederacy started and then formally declared war on the United States.
I'll say it again, it's like blaming President Roosevelt for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, because he moved the US fleet there, and then saying FDR should have ignored Hitler's declaration of war on the United States.
FRiend, no Confederate admitted they were part of Lincoln's "own country" when they attacked and seized Fort Sumter, and when they soon after formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861.
Lincoln was the constitutionally elected President who both restored the Union and destroyed slavery.
I'd call that great leadership, among the greatest.
Sorry FRiend, but you won't get me to defend Woodrow Wilson, on this subject or any other.
I merely point out the historical fact that the actual terms of Versailles were certainly no harsher than those a victorious Germany would have imposed in 1914 or did impose on such defeated nations as Belgium and Russia.
Therefore, by their own standards, all complaints from the Germans about "unfair" or "unjust" treatment are rubbish propaganda lies.
Of course, the fact that Germans believed their own lies is a matter of huge historical consequence, but they were lies nonetheless.
Finally, the rise of Hitler's anti-Semitic Nazis to power in 1933 is a subject of great historical tragedy, for which there is tons of blame to be spread around.
But the key fact which everyone forgets is that Hitler was never elected chancellor, he was appointed by none other than the Old Prussian himself, Paul von Hindenburg.
“Lincoln was the constitutionally elected President who both restored the Union and destroyed slavery.
I’d call that great leadership, among the greatest.”
Of course you would. Because, you have no regard for those 640,000 innocent, mostly young lives, that were sacrificed to glorify some organizational unit called big government. Keep in mind, most slaves were far better off being slaves in the US than in Africa. It is a barbarous practice, but one promoted from both sides of the ocean and sanctioned by the ship owners in the north that brought them here. Obviously, you worship this concept you call a Union. You put an organizational unit above human life—you got a few screws loose somewhere. Something is missing from you.
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