The U.S. Presidency: The Worst of the Worst!

By Jack R. Johnson 12.2020

When we talk about the worst presidents in U.S. history, it’s a pretty tight club. Not surprisingly, the presidents chosen share a few characteristics: insolence, narrow ideological fervor coupled with pride, obstinacy and short-sightedness. For years, the consensus among historians was relatively straightforward—a horse race between Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson for the race to the bottom, with Warren Harding and his Teapot Dome scandal occasionally thrown in for good measure.

Franklin Pierce earned a spot on the worst list because of his reckless passion for expanding U.S. borders disregarding the sensitive issues surrounding slavery. The Mexican War veteran believed ardently in national expansion even at the cost of adding more slave states. To that end, he vigorously supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which, along with the earlier Compromise of 1850, effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Not happy with merely queuing the nation up for the bloodiest war in its history, Pierce also managed to secure U.S. recognition of a colonial regime in Nicaragua, presided over by an American proslavery adventurer, William Walker, who had instigated an insurrection and installed himself as president. The repercussions of this act were felt well into the 1980s with the Sandinista revolution and subsequent Iran/Contra affair that tainted Reagan’s administration.

Theodore Roosevelt later wrote of Franklin Pierce that he was "a servile tool of men worse than himself ... ever ready to do any work the slavery leaders set him." Not even the talented Nathaniel Hawthorne, his erstwhile biographer, and college bud, could rehabilitate the mischief Pierce created during his four-year stint.

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Following hard on the heels of Franklin Pierce was the often cited candidate for worst president ever, James Buchanan. His term began March 4, 1857 with tensions simmering over the new territories and how they should be allowed into the Union.

Then, shortly after Buchanan’s inauguration, the Supreme Court infamously ruled in the Dred Scott case that Blacks were not and never could become U.S. citizens, and the federal government couldn’t outlaw slavery in its territories. Buchanan allegedly influenced the case’s outcome and thought it would permanently put the slavery issue to rest. But the effect was quite the opposite. James Buchanan refused to challenge either the spread of slavery or the growing bloc of states that would later secede.

Historian Jean Baker argues that Buchanan's failure as a leader stemmed from his ideological roots. "He really worked quite conscientiously to support what became the Confederacy," Baker wrote.

Baker’s final observation on Buchanan might proof instructive about another contemporary president, "He failed miserably to understand an important thing, which was that the South was becoming a minority. That's why they were behaving the way they were. They saw more and more that they were going to lose the Electoral College and indeed they lost it in 1860 to Abraham Lincoln."

In response to Lincoln’s presidential victory in November 1860, seven Southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy. Buchanan did nothing. He claimed to have no authority to block them, thus leaving Lincoln to contend with the newly formed Confederacy and a bitterly divided country.

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The last ‘best’ worst president usually cited is Andrew Johnson. Never formally elected president, Johnson took the helm after Lincoln was assassinated. Originally, a Democrat who switched sides to be on Lincoln’s ticket, Johnson fought with his own Republican Party about allowing secessionists back into the U.S. Government, favoring a leniency that was not popular after four of the bloodiest years in American history.

He released leading members of the Confederate cabinet from government custody, up to and including the former Confederate vice president, Alexander H. Stephens. He appointed governors in Southern states and allowed their legislatures to meet. Dominated by secessionists, these governments passed “black codes,” allowing slavery in all but name to continue in many areas. Although Johnson had supported an end to slavery in the 1860s, he was still very much a white supremacist, writing in 1866: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.”

In addition to vetoing renewal of the Freedman's Bureau and the first civil rights bill, he encouraged opposition to the 14th Amendment itself, earning him the fury of the entire Republican Party.

As if his ideological blindness wasn’t enough, he also had a grating personality. According to historian, David Priess, “He routinely called blacks inferior. He bluntly stated that no matter how much progress they made, they must remain so. He openly called critics disloyal, even treasonous. He liberally threw insults like candy during public speeches. He rudely ignored answers he didn’t like. He regularly put other people into positions they didn’t want to be in, then blamed them when things went sour. His own bodyguard later called him “destined to conflict,” a man who “found it impossible to conciliate or temporize.”

“Is there no way,” declared leading radical Senator Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania just months after Johnson’s inauguration, “to arrest the insane course of the president in Washington?”

Johnson vetoed bill after bill regarding reconstruction that came from the Republican dominated legislature. The legislature in turn, overrode those vetoes in an historic snub unequaled in U.S. History. Ultimately, they turned back the president’s rejections of bills a stunning 15 times—a record to this day. The overrides themselves even became popular: Priess noted that The Civil Rights Act’s veto override in the House prompted a spontaneous outburst of applause among both representatives and spectators; the speaker found it impossible to restore order for several minutes.”

The impeachment of Johnson probably came as no surprise, and his lack of a conviction at the Senate impeachment trial by a single vote probably had more to do with the fear of who might succeed him than any favor he might have drawn from the legislative body.

The one power left to him of any real consequence was the presidential pardon, which Andrew Johnson, like another contemporary president, used to great excess.

Andrew Johnson issued more pardons than all other presidents to that point combined. Overwhelmingly he pardoned Southern secessionists and those who had supported the rebellion against the Union. Johnson even pardoned a few of the men convicted in the conspiracy to kill President Lincoln. If Johnson thought the pardons would earn him favor with the Democrats, he was sorely mistaken. They passed him over as nominee for their party’s presidential candidate and went instead with a little known partisan named Horatio Seymour, “a man who didn’t even want the nomination.”

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In retrospect, all of the nominees for ‘worst’ president have similar character flaws and a singular blind spot: a lack of clear understanding about the nature of the nation and the presidential office. The U.S. presidency is meant to represent all of the nation, of course, not just those with whom you are in ideological agreement.  This rancorous partisan blind spot is likely what doomed the worst presidents, and no doubt, we’ll be adding to the bottom of this list shortly with the name of a president who is equally acrimonious and petty, who, like Johnson openly called critics liars or disloyal, and even treasonous. He is yet another single term president who deliberately sought to divide the country and who “found it impossible to conciliate or temporize.”  The only real question is how low will he go on the worst list? I suspect history will not be kind.

Graphic designed by Doug Dobey