Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Repost that giant effort post you made!

Lightning Knight posted:

Lol gently caress no.

Jackson, Buchanan, Johnson, Harding, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II are all easily worse and you could argue for more.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Repost that giant effort post you made!

axeil posted:

This is James Buchanan. He was President from March 1857- March 1861. I am going to explain to you why he is, without debate, the worst president of the United States to have ever existed.

Let's start with his cabinet.

The lovely, lovely Cabinet of James Buchanan



This guy was his Vice-President. His name is John C. Breckinridge. He is of course, most famous for being the god damned Secretary of War for the South. Yikes. Not a good start. Who else ya got?



This is Howell Cobb. He was Buchanan's Secretary of the Treasury. Of course he was more famously the President of the loving CSA before Jefferson Davis.

Jesus Christ Buchanan. Maybe your Secretary of War was better?



Nope. John B. Floyd was a Confederate General.

How about the Secretary of the Interior? Surely that guy has to be-



No. Jacob Thompson was Inspector General of the Confederacy States Army. Met with John Wilkes Booth prior to his assassination of Lincoln and instigated a number of anti-Union riots.

Okay. Secretary of State has to be good right? I mean, he wasn't even concerned with domestic issues?



Secretary of State Lewis Cass invented the idea of popular sovereignty which was the direct cause of Bleeding Kansas (although to his credit he resigned after it was clear Buchanan had no idea what he was doing)


On a Cabinet of 8 people half of them would go on to fight for the Confederacy, 1 would die in office (Postmaster General), 1 argued that secession was legal (Attorney General), 1 invented popular sovereignty and 1 was the Secretary of the Navy.


Not the best start.

Dred Scott



2 days after Buchanan was inaugurated, the Dred Scott decision came out. You know, the famous one that said black people aren't actually people therefore you can't do anything to restrict slavery. Taney's decision is bar none, the worst SCOTUS decision in history. While the Court had already decided to rule against Dred Scott, the court's majority was only planning on writing a very narrow opinion. Until Buchanan got involved.

Buchanan wrote Pennsylvanian Robert Cooper Grier and arm-twisted him into supporting a broad decision that would render the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, declare black human beings as non-citizens and prevent Congress from making any more policies about slavery in the US Territories other than "anything goes".

Buchanan was delighted by the decision and hoped that now with the slavery question decided and the Republicans' platform of restricting slavery in the territories destroyed the country could move on to other more important things

The Panic of 1857



So, what is a President to do after forcing the Supreme Court to make a decision declaring that black people weren't citizens? Why cause an economic recession of course! 1,400 state banks and 5,000 businesses were shuttered in the summer of 1857. Buchanan's decisive fix for this was...do nothing and restrict the money supply (aka the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do in this situation).

Utah and the Mormons





The Mormons had settled Utah a few decades earlier and were a constant annoyance in the pre-Civil War era. Brigham Young and federal officials had quarreled mightily and a Utah militia massacred a group of Arkansas settlers headed for California. Clearly a crisis was brewing. So what did Buchanan do?

Well, Buchanan listened to rumor-mongers in DC that the Mormons were already in revolt against the US Government. He decided to replace Brigham Young as Utah governor with the non-Mormon Alfred Cumming. Unfortunately he forgot to, ya know, tell anyone else about this which resulted in Brigham Young and Alfred Cumming both asserting they were the Governor of Utah. He then called in the Army, Brigham Young started a guerilla operation and thus, that's how Utah went to war with the United States.

Buchanan started a domestic insurrection because he forgot to send a letter.

Bleeding Kansas



Another domestic crisis where Buchanan got to put his master-level intelligence and political skills to the test.

Earlier I talked about popular sovereignty. The idea was, rather than have Congress decide whether a state was admitted slave or free, the citizens of that state would decide. Sounds like an okay idea right? Well, except when you don't have very good record keeping and thus don't actually know who live in the state. And making matters worse, if the pro-slavery side just happens to murder all the anti-slavery supporters, well, I guess that's the popular will right?

At the end of the Pierce Administration two dueling Kansas administrations had been set up. A free one in Topeka and a slave one in Lecompton. The Topkea one had far more people following its rule-of-law by all accounts was the more legitimate government. But James Buchanan, master politician decided to ignore all that and accept the Lecompton government as legitimate.

He appointed Robert J. Walker, a staunch pro-slavery advocate from Mississippi, to be territorial governor. However, soon after Walker arrives even he agrees that slavery doesn't make sense in Kansas and started advocating Kansas be admitted as a free state. Again, Buchanan tried to railroad Kansas into becoming a slave state and even the guy he appointed to the railroading said it was bullshit.

Well, the pro-slave faction in Lecompton wasn't very pleased by all this, and so held an election in 1857 that was so fraught with fraud that Governor Walker threw out the results. All the admitted states had previously sent their constitutions out to voters to be approved. But given what just happened with the election, the Lecompton government was worried about the constitution being rejected. So they just sent it into Buchanan without actually asking its citizens if they agreed with it (spoiler: they did not). Even this was too much for Buchanan so he told Kansas they have to vote on something.

And vote they did. But not on the Constitution, but rather on whether Kansas would allow slavery. However, the Topeka government, not viewing the Lecompton government as legitimate, instructed everyone to instead vote a month later on the same question. Both elections, of course, gave different results. Hopefully by now it's becoming clear why popular sovereignty didn't work.

Walker writes to Buchanan telling him how hosed this whole situation is and begs him not to adopt the Lecompton Constitution. But Buchanan gives no fucks and approves it and call the Topeka government "revolutionary" and insinuates they're in cahoots with the Mormons. Buchanan then literally bribes Congressmen to approve the pro-slavery constitution but the House can see what a sham the whole thing is and doesn't approve it.

The main person who helped defeat the sham Constitution? Stephen Douglas

Buchanan, Stephen Douglas and the 1858 Midterm



Stephen Douglas is most famous for the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which happened during Buchanan's mid-term. Douglas was a moderate Democrat, but a northern Democrat and was sick of Buchanan's Southern appeasement.

Buchanan hated Stephen Douglas so much that he attempted to rig the Illinois state elections to deny Douglas the Illinois Senatorship. The only reason there was a close race between Lincoln and Douglas was because Buchanan was running a bunch of spoiler candidates and buying votes just to spite his rival.

Northern and Southern Democrats were beginning to split as a party, so as a result of shenanigans like what Buchanan pulled in Illinois, the Republicans got a plurality in the House and they subsequently were able to block most of Douglas's agenda.

Buchanan was a whiny baby and thus started spite vetoing bills including a bill that would have established land-grant colleges and a bill that would've given public lands to settlers who stayed on the land and farmed it.

The Covode Committee



Remember how I said that Buchanan had a penchant for trying to bribe people? Yeah, eventually other people figured that out too and the House started investigating him in 1860. The committee's setup was beset by scandal from the start as pro-Buchanan Democrats accused the chairman (John Covode) of acting on a personal grudge (which was true!), but the findings of the commission were so overwhelming they soon drowned out the critics. While the committee failed to find grounds for impeachment, they did issue a report showing corruption, abuse of power and surfaced the allegations about bribery around the Lecompton Constitution (but were unable to prove it).

Even the pro-Buchanan minority report agreed with the facts but argued that evidence was insufficient for any charges.

Secession



At this point, I think you could very easily argue Buchanan as a really bad President. But it is his actions after Lincoln's victory that move Buchanan into the worst of all time.

In October of 1860, the Commanding General of the United States Army, Winfield Scott warned Buchanan that the election of Lincoln would likely result in the secession of no less than 7 states. He recommended the Union take immediate action and station large amounts of federal troops in the South to head off any attempt at insurrection and protect federal property.

Buchanan did nothing.

After Lincoln's victory, and consulting with his Attorney General, Buchanan stated that states did not have the legal right to secede but that the federal government could also do nothing to stop them...in effect giving the green light to the South to start breaking away from the Union. His proposed solution to the crisis was a Constitutional amendment that would affirm slavery in slave states, the Fugitive Slave Act and popular sovereignty forever. Real brave of him.

In typical Buchanan fashion, this just pissed off the North and South and the response was so limp dicked that Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb resigned. Yeah, it wasn't even pro-slavery enough for the guy who would become President of the CSA.

Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson (remember him) starts openly planning Mississippi's secession while still serving in Buchanan's cabinet and Secretary of War John B. Floyd gets caught sending guns to the South.

Buchanan did nothing.

Actually he did less than nothing, because he started having regular meetings with Jefferson Davis and telling him all his plans, who then went and leaked to all the Confederates what exactly the Federal Government was up to.

Buchanan's last real act as President was attempting to surrender Fort Sumter to South Carolina in January 1861. This act of appeasement was such a betrayal that Buchanan's entire cabinet threatened to resign so he instead decided to send a re-supply mission. But he strictly forbade the Union relief force from firing on the Confederates, which force the relief ship to abort its resupply mission.

Conclusion

Buchanan was a corrupt, pro-slavery, petty, coward whose actions turned the Civil War from a solvable insurrection issue into the deadliest war in US history. He's a piece of poo poo and I hate him and I hope you hate him now too.

twice burned ice posted:

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma exploring bankruptcy


These fuckers are going to get out of paying anything for their drug pushing.

axeil posted:

Being worse than James Buchanan takes a lot of work. The guy actively undermined the Union and arguably gave the CSA the arms and information they needed to get off the ground.

Trump sucks but he's not out there giving away guns to the Bundy militia.


The fascinating thing is, even looking at Trump now he's clearly in the worst decile and it's hard to see any scenario where he improves his standing. It takes some real effort to be as terrible as Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, etc. when there isn't even any long-term impact to judge him on.

WoodrowSkillson posted:

Trump is probably the most incompetent, and his idiocy will particularly impact the status of the US globally for years to come, and his administration''s utter negligence regarding govt programs will also have tremendous effects.

But he ain't started a war yet, he ain't even close to the worst.

Nail Rat posted:

He could be the worst president of all time in a certain sense, in that he's discredited us on the global stage like no other. At this point the world at large will have no confidence in us as a long term partner on anything because THIS can happen at any time.

Shifty Pony posted:

Additionally when it comes to the sheer shameless graft he's infected the Executive Branch with the only comparable presidency was Grant's nepotism-stuffed administration.

axeil posted:

Warren G. Harding looks on, laughs and then dies before he can be implicated in anything

Lightning Knight posted:

By this criteria every president since roughly Carter is going to take hits from this.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

id say trump is worse than Harding. Harding was corrupt and lovely but not actively evil.

Harding posted:

I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it.

twice burned ice posted:

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma exploring bankruptcy


These fuckers are going to get out of paying anything for their drug pushing.

Gatts posted:

If it were Hillary we’d probably be bombing 50 brown people states for her ambition...

HootTheOwl posted:

No lie: Donald Trump in the hall of presidents is amazing. Every other president is standing there dignified, occasionally scanning the crowd and here comes this guy, jacket open, twitching like a madman to deliver the most canned remarks ever. I was laughing the whole time.

WoodrowSkillson posted:

Trump is probably the most incompetent, and his idiocy will particularly impact the status of the US globally for years to come, and his administration''s utter negligence regarding govt programs will also have tremendous effects.

But he ain't started a war yet, he ain't even close to the worst.

Feldegast42 posted:

People keep saying that but given he is trying to start one in Venezuela, his foreign policy establishment is eternally trying to start one in Iran, and the NK talks just fell through because he is a whiny bitch I wouldn't give even the benefit of the doubt on that

The one thing that is keeping us from going balls deep in Venezuela is the general fatigue from being in two decades of endless quagmires, and even then if Fox decided to flip the switch millions of howling chuds would try to boondock down latin america in order to take on godless socialism personally within a month

Lightning Knight posted:

Honestly straight up I don’t think he breaks the bottom ten.

axeil posted:

Warren G. Harding looks on, laughs and then dies before he can be implicated in anything

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I know some Presidents literally owned slaves but I can’t think of a President who was personally more morally repugnant than Trump.

skylined! posted:

Well yea. Trump is uniquely making it an issue that exists in two realities though, and coupled with literally going backward to pollute *more* puts him squarely in the ‘evil Captain Planet villain’ category and not just ‘make billionaires more rich’ category a la Reagan and the bushes.

The threat of climate change increasing exponentially alongside the certainty that it is caused by humans over his tenure as president is pretty damning as well.

Your Taint posted:

Really? You can think of TEN Presidents worse than Trump? And what criteria are you using to judge them? Because have there been 10 Presidents who actively worked to keep the populace so divided and attacked the Constitution every time he didn't like what was happening? Or actively colluded with our enemies to win elections?

I'm sure you can name one or two, but I think ten would be a stretch.

edit: if i came off like a dick I apologize, as that was not my intention.

Otherkinsey Scale posted:

Robot Hobo posted:

The argument of Trump being better or worse than someone like Bush 2 gives me a bit of a headache. I think Trump would love to do far worse things than Bush 2 would have ever considered, but his own incompetence, idiocy, and inability to select competent underlings means he fails at it so much. Saying Bush 2 is objectively worse than Trump, by the numbers of deaths and amount of suffering caused, is almost inarguable... but it still feels weird to be giving Trump bonus points in a morality contest entirely because he's too ineffective to accomplish the horrible things that he shouts about wanting to do on a daily basis.

Robot Hobo posted:

The argument of Trump being better or worse than someone like Bush 2 gives me a bit of a headache. I think Trump would love to do far worse things than Bush 2 would have ever considered, but his own incompetence, idiocy, and inability to select competent underlings means he fails at it so much. Saying Bush 2 is objectively worse than Trump, by the numbers of deaths and amount of suffering caused, is almost inarguable... but it still feels weird to be giving Trump bonus points in a morality contest entirely because he's too ineffective to accomplish the horrible things that he shouts about wanting to do on a daily basis.

Your Taint posted:

Really? You can think of TEN Presidents worse than Trump? And what criteria are you using to judge them? Because have there been 10 Presidents who actively worked to keep the populace so divided and attacked the Constitution every time he didn't like what was happening? Or actively colluded with our enemies to win elections?

I'm sure you can name one or two, but I think ten would be a stretch.

edit: if i came off like a dick I apologize, as that was not my intention.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

By definition anyone arguing that Trump is the worst President ever or is bottom 3ish is saying that he’s worse than those who owned slaves. They’re also arguing that he’s worse than Jackson who engaged in genocide.

The Super-Id posted:

It seems like a pretty safe assumption that Trump would own slaves if transported to the time period of any slave owning president.

Lightning Knight posted:

Honestly straight up I don’t think he breaks the bottom ten.

Terror Sweat posted:

Its still legal for trump to lease slaves you know. He's probablyis using em somewhere. And since the government effectively owns millions of slaves and he's the head of the government, I'm gonna call him a slave owner anyways

Lightning Knight posted:

Lol gently caress no.

Jackson, Buchanan, Johnson, Harding, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II are all easily worse and you could argue for more.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

By definition anyone arguing that Trump is the worst President ever or is bottom 3ish is saying that he’s worse than those who owned slaves. They’re also arguing that he’s worse than Jackson who engaged in genocide.

Grapplejack posted:

Oh come on, Jackson wasn't that bad.