Who is the worst: James Buchanan vs. Andrew Johnson vs. Donald Trump

[Sir Mohamed]

Counter thread to Washington vs. Lincoln vs. Roosevelt. Which of these 3 presidents, who are often named as the 3 worst, do you consider the worst?

I believe it's Trump. While he was at the bottom even before he left office, his actions to overturn the 2020 election and January imho make him the worst prez ever. He actively and directly undermined the constitution which he promised to preserve, protect and defend.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Buchanan and it’s not even remotely close .

[Horus]

Obviously Buchanan. Anyone who says Trump is suffering from a massive case of recency bias.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Obviously Buchanan. Anyone who says Trump is suffering from a massive case of recency bias.

Buchanan was incompetent, but he never planned to install himself as a dictator.

[For Raza livin in La La/Like Gaza onto the dawn of Intifada]

I think the answer is Buchanan only because our institutions were much more primitive and the glue holding our country together back then was much weaker and thus his inaction did much more to speed up the dissolution of the union. Trump indirectly benefits because we now have a structure in place that makes it much harder for America to descend into authoritarianism or anarchy, though he has tried and will try again to break that structure.

Plus, you know, I'm oddly proud to say that the worst President in American history came from Lancaster.

[America needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Those of you saying Buchanan, I have news for you. More Americans died from Covid-19 than from the entirety of the Civil War.

[For Raza livin in La La/Like Gaza onto the dawn of Intifada]

Those of you saying Buchanan, I have news for you. More Americans died from Covid-19 than from the entirety of the Civil War.

The population of the United States during the Civil War was like 1/10th of what it is now

[🥥🌴]

Those of you saying Buchanan, I have news for you. More Americans died from Covid-19 than from the entirety of the Civil War.

To be fair, that's a bit disingenous for three reasons.

1. The number of Americans is far higher during Covid 19 than during the civil war, like in 1860 was 31 million, today it is 334 million, so that means if covid happened in 1860 ten times less americans would have been killed. You can't compare absolute numbers.

2. Not a single nation was not affected by covid 19, the only ones that were less affected were 1. island nations (because they geographically were at an advantage) and 2. authoritarian nations with a better cultural tradition of responding to a pandemic (like China & several other eastern Asian nations).

3. More people died from covid 19 in USA during the Biden term, compared to the Trump term.

[🥥🌴]

Those of you saying Buchanan, I have news for you. More Americans died from Covid-19 than from the entirety of the Civil War.

The population of the United States during the Civil War was like 1/10th of what it is now

I don't think Solid really is interested in the nuance.

[Goldwater]

Buchanan, although time period plays a huge part in that.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

Buchanan is the worst of the three. (And I'm saying this as someone who would have voted for him in 1856)

[Goldwater]

(And I'm saying this as someone who would have voted for him in 1856)

I am actually curious about your reasoning behind this.

[インターネット掲示板ユーザー Punxsutawney Phil]

(And I'm saying this as someone who would have voted for him in 1856)

I am actually curious about your reasoning behind this.

1) I would hate the Know Nothings and be anti Know Nothing above all else. I've always thought positively of immigration at least in the abstract and in particular with a lot of my family tree being Catholic and of groups the Know Nothings didn't think too highly of, it makes more sense for prioritize immigration over abolitionism. (Assuming 1856 me was even an abolitionist. Not even Abraham Lincoln was one at this stage) If you want to stop the Know Nothings, in the South you vote Buchanan. In the North you would be in most instances going to vote Buchanan if you were most driven by stopping Know Nothings...
2) I'm not an ethnic minority, merely a religious minority, which makes evangelical Christians not necessarily the group I would have stood in the same party as. Democrats absolutely were more religiously pluralistic. I'm in a different bucket from non-white minorities and I'd likely vote that way too.
3) On economics I would likely lean towards the Democrats slightly and on social class related issues I would see the opposition as elitist too. So Democratic arguments that they were the only party that stood for all white men would probably be persuasive to me.
4) Fremont does look like a destabilizer in context of 1856, even if I wouldn't have liked slave power either. But 1856 me wouldn't have really understood slavery in the same way my 1865 self would. Additionally, if you apply hindsight it still makes sense to vote for Buchanan; with hindsight, the country needed all the fracas if the Buchanan years to understand how unreasonable the South really was, and that extra four years of industrialization was important for making the Union's industry stronger. Ergo, Buchanan winning was still better than Fremont winning, despite all the wrong decisions he made. From an abolitionist POV you would want Fremont to do better but still lose. The risk of a South able to break away got more and more remote the more the North grew.
5) I am a fervent Unionist interested in stability. In 1856, with things like unrest in the North driven by anger at laws passed to placate the South, I wouldn't have taken the idea of the South seceding as anything other than abstract. If anyone was interested in seceding, I would have likelier guessed New England, which was the most abolitionist region in the country. After all, there was already an attempt (or something close enough, i.e. the Hartford Convention) to do so in the past fifty years, albeit on different grounds. I'd also hate fire eater tendencies in the South but I would have believed that most Southerners could be reasoned with in an absolute worst case scenario...as long as Fremont wasn't elected, in which case the South wouldn't have been completely to blame according to 1856 me. 1856 me wouldn't have foreseen Buchanan completely betraying my expectations. Fremont would have been written off as destabilizing the country or at least risking that too much.
6) On social mores in general (leaving aside slavery itself) I would have been closer to most Southerners than most Northerners. In fact IOTL Southerners were mocking Yankees for the Salem Witch Trials all the way till the late 1800s. Would neatly fit in with my likely relatively negative views towards New England religious culture, which would only further increase my relative sympathy for the South. (I could see myself making comparisons in my head of religious Yankees to the Taliban and the like) Compare to President Jefferson, who I would absolutely admire...
All in all , despite some idiosyncrasies as always, I'd fit in with lots of Buchanan-Lincoln voters who thought the system could work as long as we kept extremists out on both ends, only for Buchanan to completely drop the ball. I'd remain a Republican until probably the mid-1870s.

[Alben Barkley]

Trump and it’s not even remotely close.

Buchanan was just a coward and a moron, Johnson was just a stubborn bigot. Both of course were racist.

Trump is all those things and much, much worse. I don’t think Buchanan or Johnson were rapists and they definitely didn’t incite a violent overthrow of the US government in an attenpt to install a fascist dictatorship.

Anyone who says otherwise is the one actually influenced by recency bias, as they clearly are making the flawed and logically fallacious assumption that “I can’t POSSIBLY be living through the worst times or presidency ever, therefore anyone calling out Trump for truly being as bad as he clearly is must be hysterical.”

Look at them objectively, in a vacuum. Trump would have managed to be even more malicious and worse in the same situation as the other two. It’s as simple as that, and it makes him by far, hands down, by orders of magnitude the worst president ever. It’s not even a subject for debate as far as I’m concerned. And frankly I hate it when people try to claim otherwise in some remote reaching academic sense. It always feels like gaslighting me, as if I don’t know this evil inhuman waste of life and limb lowest scum of the Earth has hijacked my country or shouldn’t care. F—k that.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Buchanan was just a coward and a moron,

This is false:

- he openly pushed the Supreme Court to issue Dred Scott that pushed the nation to disunion

- his secretary of army literally scattered much of our military and moves ammunition to the south to ensure the north could not respond to southern secession

[HisGrace]

1. Johnson
2. Trump
3. Buchanan (who is not even the third worst, never heard anyone articulate what he was supposed to do to stop the Civil War besides permanently enshrining slavery which I think is what it would have took at that point)

Johnson is ultimately the reason we got segregation which lasted the next hundred years and is a significantly worse historical legacy than anything Trump has done up to this point. As I've said before Trump will likely be a largely irrelevant president historically, just an incompetent buffoon, like a worse Warren Harding.

[Ferguson97]

I’ve thought about this for a while, but I just don’t think anything could really be worse than Trump trying to overturn the election and remain in power. Ending 250 years of a peaceful transition of power is evil.

[Sumner 1868]

Buchanan did everything he could to expand slavery as President and appeased the slavers when they reached the point of secession. This is no contest.

[Horus]

Buchanan was just a coward and a moron,

This is false:

- he openly pushed the Supreme Court to issue Dred Scott that pushed the nation to disunion

- his secretary of army literally scattered much of our military and moves ammunition to the south to ensure the north could not respond to southern secession

I'm reasonably sure Alben has said he would've voted for every single Dem nominee post civil war, so the fact that he's softly defending the last Dem pre civil war isn't super surprising. He also likes Jackson.

[ReallySuper]

Trump and it’s not even remotely close.

Buchanan was just a coward and a moron, Johnson was just a stubborn bigot. Both of course were racist.

Trump is all those things and much, much worse. I don’t think Buchanan or Johnson were rapists and they definitely didn’t incite a violent overthrow of the US government in an attenpt to install a fascist dictatorship.

well, actually:

The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed. . . . Here, then, a clear case is presented in which it will be the duty of the next President, as it has been my own, to act with vigor in executing this supreme law [the Fugitive Slave Act] against the conflicting enactments of State legislatures. Should he fail in the performance of this high duty, he will then have manifested a disregard of the Constitution and laws, to the great injury of the people of nearly one-half of the States of the Union. . . . The fugitive-slave law has been carried into execution in every contested case since the commencement of the present Administration, though Often, it is to be regretted, with great loss and inconvenience to the master and with considerable expense to the Government. Let us trust that the State legislatures will repeal their unconstitutional and obnoxious enactments. Unless this shall be done without unnecessary delay, it is impossible for any human power to save the Union.

The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Constitution, have right to demand this act of justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder. In that event the injured States, after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union.

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/1860-state-of-the-union-address/

[OSR stands with Israel]

Buchanan was just a coward and a moron,

This is false:

- he openly pushed the Supreme Court to issue Dred Scott that pushed the nation to disunion

- his secretary of army literally scattered much of our military and moves ammunition to the south to ensure the north could not respond to southern secession

I'm reasonably sure Alben has said he would've voted for every single Dem nominee post civil war, so the fact that he's softly defending the last Dem pre civil war isn't super surprising. He also likes Jackson.

Oh I could absolutely see Alben without hindsight being a straight D voter from 1828 on but the key word is without hindsight. With hindsight though, there is really no need to even softly defend Buchanan and I’m sure he’d vote for Fremont with hindsight

As for Jackson , keep in mind he swiftly dealt with the nullification crises so I highly doubt he’d have acted the way Buchanan did towards the south . Jackson almost certainly would be very pro union even though he’d be a democrat just like Stephen Douglas was as keep in mind Douglas advised Lincoln to call up even more troops than Lincoln had believed was necessary

[Blue3]

My serious take:


I guess this depends on...
1. Are we pretending: Trump isn't still running for President, has a good chance to win, and that chapter might not be closed yet?
2. Personality versus Goals/Intentions versus Accomplishments/Impact?

Let's focus on the two in the past first, so we can ignore the first factor for now:



Accomplishments/Impact:
Buchanan is remembered as bad due to the Civil War.
Johnson is remembered as bad due to not following-up on Lincoln's mandate and the opportunity to even pre-empt Jim Crow.

Goals/Intentions:
In both cases, they didn't seem treasonous to the U.S. (unlike one former U.S. President at the time of the Civil War). They just seemed under-ambitious, over-cautious, more worried about not disturbing than fighting for/against a movement. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Personality:
Neither of them appear particularly saintly or immoral/corrupt. Just the usual politician.


Conclusion: it depends on if you think the Civil War, or Jim Crow and the lingering effects of the Civil War, are worse. In fact, those two are tied very closely together... if there weren't as many lingering effects and unfinished business from the Civil War, would the Civil War still be viewed as poorly as it is? My conclusion: yes, it would, for the sheet lack of unity and loss of life. And while Johnson could have done much more, it was beyond human capacity to totally undo racism and all the effects of slavery over the centuries. So Buchanan is worse, and it's only on the factor of accomplishments/impact.


Now to address Trump. I'll be brief.

Goal/Intentions: Trump is worse. Self-centered in policies and presidential actions. Anti-democratic tendencies, at home and abroad, and enabling treason, at the least. Much more I can say.

Personality: Trump is worse. Corrupt, an embodiment of the 7 deadly sins. Much more I can say.


So it comes down to if you think Accomplishments/Impact is most important or not. If you think it's most important, the answer is: To Be Determined. If you think Personality or Goals/Intentions are more important, then Trump is already worst (unless he becomes President again and then has some Ebenezer Scrooge / Paul in the desert moment... which is unlikely.) If you think all three are important: To Be Determined.  I think all three are important, how I'd split up how important each factor is in a pie chart would depend on the day. But since Accomplishments/Impact could be the most important by far... I will say TBD. But that it would be between Trump and Buchanan. I'll vote Buchanan for now, as at least Trump was defeated in 2020. As for 2024, and the impact on the GOP and frankly both parties and government infrastructure going forward... like I said, a very big TBD. It is very fair to consider that Trump may be the worst... but I at least don't think it's fair to make that call yet, without more time and information. .




My casual take (tl;dr) : depends on the day, but Buchanan or Trump.

(But I am weirdly glad Harding is out of the bottom 3... he was just corrupt, and unlucky enough that those probably just as corrupt were better able to hide it from being first in historians' mind by usually just living to the ends of their terms to 'tidy-up' and not have a Coolidge keep it all exposed. Not that that's good, obviously. But there's other 19th century Presidents much worse, due to the same issues around Buchanan and Johnson. I'm thinking especially of Tyler, and somewhat Pierce. I think you could make the case for Tyler to replace Johnson on this list, and perhaps Buchanan too.)