Trumping Trump

Because there are so many biographies of great Presidents from the founding fathers – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and James Madison to Lincoln, who led the nation through its civil war and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who got the US through economic crises and World War II – Americans tend to forget presidential duds.

History favours charismatic leaders like Ronald Reagan, who injected a bit of Hollywood drama in his presidency (“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”), or John F Kennedy who gave great speeches.

Many bad Presidents have had a difficult time finding their way to the bottom of the heap. Richard Nixon had the Watergate break-in of the Democrats’ headquarters, but Nixon established diplomatic relationships with China so that redeemed him somewhat.

Warren G Harding had the Teapot Dome Scandal. Harding transferred federal oil reserves from the navy to the Department of the Interior in 1921, and his Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall, granted the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome in Wyoming. Fall fell further from grace when US$200,000 in Liberty bonds found their way to his account. Congress stepped in to straighten out the mess. Harding’s reputation was in shambles, but he’s guilty mostly of trusting miscreants.

You could ask, “How did Americans manage to put a peanut farmer in the White House?” But Jimmy Carter’s historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel trumps his inability to secure the release of US embassy hostages. Carter’s bungled rescue attempt left Special Forces operatives dead in the Iranian desert, but he’s not at the bottom of the pile of Presidents.

Bill Clinton had his sex scandal, but a buoyant economy saves him from the wall of infamy. Poor behaviour won’t land you at the bottom of the heap nor will crudeness.

Trump is crude, but he walks through doors when entering the White House. Andrew Jackson climbed in and out of the windows.

Trump behaved despicably bad towards Hillary Clinton in the election campaign, but no one could throw a monkey wrench in a presidential election like Jackson. When Jackson lost the election of 1825, which had to be decided by Congress, Jackson prevented the sixth President of the US, John Quincy Adams (a much more qualified candidate than Jackson), from achieving anything in his presidency by stirring up Congress against Adams. In my book, the two top candidates for worst President are James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, bookends for the civil war.

Buchanan, who could make no decisions unless they were bad ones, invaded Paraguay and supported the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which allowed slave owners to reclaim runaway slaves.

South Carolina seceded from the union under Buchanan’s watch on December 20, 1860, months before Lincoln took office. Buchanan basically sat back and allowed it to happen.

Arguably, the civil war would have started some time so that leaves Andrew Johnson as the winner of the worst President.

The southern President from Tennessee, who inherited the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, bungled reconstruction by not forcing the South to comply with procedures that would have forced civil rights issues.

He allowed questionable, racist characters to reclaim their positions in the South. Johnson’s lenient position with the South affects civil rights’ issues to this day.

So far I’m casting my vote for worst President with Johnson.

I’m hoping Trump won’t end up the worst President ever.