AMERICA'S WORST PRESIDENTS: A MATTER OF OPINION by Tim Siggia

AMERICA'S WORST PRESIDENTS: A MATTER OF OPINION

By Tim Siggia

February 28, 2007

The February 26 issue of U. S. News & World Report has as its cover story, "America's Worst Presidents", subtitled, "From Richard Nixon to John Tyler, a fresh look at our most dismal commanders in chief." The article was surprisingly fair in that it not only did not exclude Democrats from the list, as expected -- the pick for worst president of all was, in fact, a Democrat -- but even went so far as to include the inputs of conservatives and others whose picks disagreed with theirs -- but reserved judgment on George W. Bush on the grounds that he is still in office, and it is therefore too early yet to assess his presidency.

The following is the list of America's ten worst presidents, according to U. S. News & World Report:

1. James Buchanan, Democrat, 15th president, 1857-1861

2. Warren G. Harding, Republican, 29th president, 1921-1923

3. Andrew Johnson, Democrat, 17th president, 1865-1869

4. Franklin Pierce, Democrat, 14th president, 1853-1857

5. Millard Fillmore, Whig, 13th president, 1850-1853

6. John Tyler, Whig, 10th president, 1841-1845

7. Ulysses S. Grant, Republican, 18th president, 1869-1877

8. William Henry Harrison, Whig, 9th president, 1841

9. Herbert Hoover, Republican, 31st president, 1929-1933 (tie)

9. Richard M. Nixon, Republican, 37th president, 1969-1974 (tie)

10. Zachary Taylor, Whig, 12th president, 1849-1850

The list carries with it a short resume of each president, including his strengths as well as failures. It was apparently the result of much thought, consideration and comparison. That having been said, I personally found myself in disagreement with three of the picks, as well as three who I believe should have been on the list but weren't. First, the three on the list who didn't deserve the dishonor:

1. William Henry Harrison (#8): Harrison, the "Tippecanoe" of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," made the Guinness Books twice: for longest inauguration speech and shortest presidency, with only one month in office before he died of pneumonia. In the words of Jay Tolson, who wrote the article for U. S. News & World Report, "That the ninth president makes any list at all is an act of scholarly injustice." And so it is. Harrison's presidency was not so much a failed one as one that never got off the ground. That he was somehow responsible for his own death, an event which nobody could have foreseen, is at best a stretch. Had he lived, there is no telling what he might have done as president, but it is totally unfair to brand him one of the ten worst when he in fact never had a chance to prove himself either a good or bad president.

2. Herbert Hoover (#9): In his assessment of Hoover, Tolson writes: "For all his good qualities, Hoover failed to rise to the greatest challenge of his time." That challenge, of course, was the Great Depression. The truth was that so great a challenge was this that no one man on his own could have risen to it -- including the Democrats' own Saint Franklin, whose New Deal programs, contrary to what is generally taught as history, did not end the Great Depression. Roosevelt, in fact, had no more success in rising to the challenge than did his predecessor, though he did, in fairness, make every effort. In the end, it was three men, none of whom were Americans, who ended the Depression, though this had not been their intent. Those men were Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. It took a world war to end America's decade of doldrums, and while Roosevelt deserves credit for his part in it as a wartime president, his New Deal had nothing to do with the end of the Depression. Unfortunately for Hoover, his was a peacetime presidency, and so he was not even dealt this card with which to play. He did all he or any other man in his circumstance could have done to end the Depression, though it was obviously not enough. He does not deserve the ranking.

3. Richard M. Nixon (#9): Even his staunchest critics could never doubt his strength and leadership. In the area of foreign policy, he was in a class by himself. He opened the door to diplomatic relations with China, took charge of an inherited nightmare in Vietnam and ended America's involvement there, and did much to battle crime within the United States. He was reelected to his office in the greatest landslide in history in 1972, with his Democratic opponent, George McGovern, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. In fact, McGovern's own home state of South Dakota went for Nixon in that election. What brought it all down was a botched burglary attempt at Washington's Democratic headquarters, located at the Watergate complex in Washington, D. C. Nixon's failed attempt to cover up the Watergate episode resulted in his resignation of the presidency in 1974, by which Nixon averted his certain impeachment. Whether it was ended by resignation or impeachment, the time had most certainly come for Nixon to go. It is unfair, however, to assess an otherwise highly successful presidency by the yardstick of a single event, however momentous that event might have been. Nixon does not belong on this list.

Now for the three who should have been on it, but were left off. Two, in fact, did get mentioned in Tolson's article. The other, the second-worst president in my estimation, was not mentioned at all, whether that omission came about as the result of political favoritism or by the generally prevalent overrating of his presidency. Here, in order, are my personal picks for the three worst presidents of all time:

1. James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Democrat, 39th president, 1977-1981: Perhaps the most damaging effect of the Watergate break-in, other than what it did to Richard Nixon's presidency, is that it enabled Jimmy Carter to become president. When he first announced his presidential run, the one-term Georgia governor was almost totally unknown outside his home state. He was the quintessential dark horse. But public opinion had been so stirred by the events of 1974 that virtually any Democrat would have won in 1976. The Republican incumbent, Gerald R. Ford, was an opponent made to order for the Democrats. First of all, he was a Republican, and second, he had been Nixon's vice president. As if this weren't enough to assure his defeat at the polls, Ford was also the only president never to have been elected either president or vice president, having been appointed to the number two spot after the resignation of the elected vice president, Spiro Agnew, and then succeeded to the presidency upon Nixon's resignation. True, Ford was not Nixon, and even his political adversaries did not question his honesty or integrity. But Ford had pardoned Nixon after becoming president, which voters remembered at election time, and had been too closely associated with Nixon to suit public mood at the time.

Enter Jimmy Carter, Annapolis graduate, hand-picked by Admiral Hyman Rickover as a nuclear power officer, who had resigned his commission to take over his family's peanut farm in Plains, Georgia. To voters grown weary of the brooding, suspicious-minded Nixon, the modest Georgian with the aw-shucks demeanor came as a breath of fresh air. Once in office, Carter proved himself a hard worker and a habitual burner of the midnight oil. He was also, in keeping with his Rickover training, deeply attentive to detail -- perhaps a little too much so, in that Carter tended to get so bogged down in details that he often either lost sight of the Big Picture, or probably never had it to begin with. That, along with his liberal idealism, proved to be his undoing.

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