Elections between two bad candidates

[gorkay]

1924 was pretty bad if you exclude LaFollette. Other than that, 1852 and 1872 stand out. In 1852 you had Franklin Pierce, who turned out to be one of our worst Presidents, against Winfield Scott, who was a great general but absolutely unskilled as a politician, leading the last remnants of the Whig party. In 1872 you had Ulysses Grant, also a great general but perhaps our very worst President, against Horace Greeley, also totally unskilled in politics, a lifelong Republican nominated by the Democratic party because they couldn't find anyone better.

[gorkay]

There have been quite a few of them.

1812- Madison was a great man but a poor President, and Dewitt Clinton was no great shakes either.
1840- Van Buren was one of the most important people in the history of American politics, and one of the founders of the modern Democratic party, but not very good as a President. Harrison was so unqualified that his death after one month in office was probably just as well for the country (although it gave us Tyler as President, who may not have been much better).
1852- Franklin Pierce vs. Winfield Scott: two men with vastly different temperaments, yet each temperamentally unqualified for the Presidency.
1876- Perhaps the worst pair of major-party candidates in American history. Ulysses Grant, totally out of his element and blithely willing to be manipulated by the monied interests, versus Horace Greeley, running under the banner of the party he had spent a lifetime as a newspaper publisher reviling.
1920- Warren G. Harding, a fatuous nonentity advanced as Presidential candidate by a party cabal looking for a pliable puppet, versus James Cox, an honorable man but one woefully inexperienced in the rough and tumble of politics and painfully inept as a candidate. (The Vice-Presidential candidates were much better.)
1972- Richard Nixon, the prince of paranoia at his mendacious peak, against George McGovern, a walking caricature of bleeding-heart liberalism.
1980- Jimmy Carter, a great man but one who unwittingly found himself, as President, in the wrong job, vs. Ronald Reagan, perhaps the emptiest suit ever to be pumped full of ideological hot air and floated before the American public. Extra added attraction: John Anderson, a nondescript House careerist who allowed his ego to be inflated into the delusion that he was doing something noble by running as an independent.

[gorkay]

In my last post I erroneously gave the date of the Grant-Greeley election as 1876, when of course it was 1872. My apologies.