But after
he actually became president himself, he stopped filling them
out.
"No
one knows what it's like in this office," he said after being
in the job. "Even with poor James Buchanan, you can't understand
what he did and why without sitting in his place, looking at the
papers that passed on his desk, knowing the people he talked with."
Poor James
Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst
president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected
in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have
served in the highest office. A lawyer, a self-made man, Buchanan
served with some distinction in the House, served as chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and secretary of state
under President James K. Polk. He had a great deal to do with
the United States becoming a continental nation -- "Manifest
Destiny," war with Mexico, and all that. He was also ambassador
to Great Britain and was offered a seat on the Supreme Court three
separate times.
But he was
a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil
War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South.
His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious
American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions
probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration
was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to
be homosexual.
Whatever
his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to
move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and
attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the
pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling
in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not
people but property.
He was the
guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president,
Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to
beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W.
Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked
with three significant historians in the past few months who would
not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will
be remembered as the worst of the presidents.
There are
some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University
has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four
hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered
-- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as
unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338
said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding.
Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse
than Buchanan.
This is what
those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the
criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came
from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:
He has taken
the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe
alike in the process;
He is bankrupting
the country with a combination of aggressive military spending
and reduced taxation of the rich;
He has deliberately
and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
He has repeatedly
"misled," to use a kind word, the American people on
affairs domestic and foreign;
He has proved
to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign
(Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
He has sacrificed
American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit
elimination) to increase overall productivity;
He is ignorantly
hostile to science and technological progress;
He has tolerated
or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating
in supplying the military in wartime.
Quite an
indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president.
That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times
as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the
historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed
since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many
say Vice President Dick Cheney.
