Robert Strauss - Worst. President. Ever.: James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents

Advance Praise for

Worst. President. Ever.

One might put forth other candidates for the crown Mr. Strauss has bestowed on Mr. Buchanan, but one cannot dispute the lan with which he makes his case. This is history writing at it should be, but too often isnt: authoritative, yet lively and fun to read.

David M. Friedman, author of Wilde in America , The Immortalists, and A Mind of Its Own

Authors who want to teach us the secrets of the best are a dime a dozen. Only Robert Strauss could show us what we have to learn from the worst. Worst. President. Ever. is a tour de forceentertaining and edifying in equal measure.

Kermit Roosevelt, author, legal scholar, and professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania

If you despised W., if Obama fills you with loathing, if you fear apocalyptic consequences with the election of Hillary or Trump... then Robert Strauss is here with historical reassurance. A century and a half ago, America survived (just barely) a truly terrible president: a bungler of a politician who did next to nothing as the Union broke apart over slavery.

David Kinney, author of The Devils Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich

Was James Buchanan really the W.P.E.? And if so, what did he do (or not do) to deserve the designation? How does the peculiar business of presidential rankings work, anyway? To find out the answers to those and other questions, youll need to read Robert Strausss smart and very entertaining Worst. President. Ever.

Ben Yagoda, author of Will Rogers: A Biography and The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song

President Buchanan had a great rsum, but in war, peace, race, religion, leadership, friendship, love, and honor he left much to be desired. Strauss weaves the history of this failed president with countless facts and observations about American presidents and his own lifelong fascination with the successes, failures, and foibles of our elected leaders.

Rush D. Holt, former congressman, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

A daguerreotype of James Buchanan by Mathew Brady, probably done during Old Bucks presidency. He was still wearing high collars, a fashion of another age, when most men were seen in neckties. Library of Congress

Worst. President. Ever.

James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents

Robert Strauss

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2016 by Robert Strauss

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Strauss, Robert, 1951- author.

Title: Worst. President. Ever. : James Buchanan, the POTUS rating game, and the legacy of the least of the lesser presidents / Robert Strauss.

Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016023819 (print) | LCCN 2016024264 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493024834 (hardcopy) | ISBN 9781493024841 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Buchanan, James, 1791-1868. | PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. | United StatesPolitics and government1857-1861.

Classification: LCC E437 .S77 2016 (print) | LCC E437 (ebook) | DDC 973.6/8092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023819

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my father, Samuel Strauss, who made me read every historical marker we ever passed, thus assuring me of a lifetime of winning trivia contests, and my mother, Edna, for teaching me how to laugh, especially at myself.

Dont look back. Something might be gaining on you, attributed to Satchel Paige.

Contents

Preface

What bet did you lose?

The man at the other end of the phone worked in the Special Collections section of the Dickinson College library. I had just told him I had heard that Dickinson had digitized a lot of documents by or concerning James Buchanan, one of its early graduates, and I was wondering how to access them. I enthusiastically said I was doing a kind of biography of the fifteenth president.

A historian friend later said I should ask someone at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where Buchanans nephew had donated many of the originals of those papers, just to see how often anyone had looked at them.

Not very, was the reply.

Before I had put pen to paper for this book, but while I was thinking about doing so, I got an assignment from the New York Times for a special museums section on visiting sites concerning lesser-known presidents. Naturally, Wheatland, the home where Buchanan lived as a squire in his later years, was on the list. I called Patrick Clarke, the director of Wheatland, and while talking about the story, mentioned I was thinking of doing something larger on Buchanan. I asked him why there had not been much written about Buchanan, even after 150 years.

You see, presidential biographies did not really start in earnest until the mid-to-late 1950s, when historians started thinking about Franklin Roosevelt, and his long tenure became of interest to them, said Clarke. Naturally, authors gravitated toward the bigger namesWashington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, but most historians agreed that Buchanan was a failure. As a result, why write about the guy? Why write about any loser?

Around this time I also discovered that Buchanans birthplace, a log cabin, had been moved in one whole piece to the rural campus of a nearby prep school, Mercersburg Academy, in central Pennsylvania. I had a friend who went there as a kid, so I asked her about it.

Oh, yes, that is where people went to make trouble, she said. Not exactly Monticello, the cabin was a make-out and drinking spot. Not many people cared about Buchanan, I dont think.

Being a contrarian, this disinterest, and even disdain, by the closest keepers of Buchanans legacy made the subject ever more attractive to me. By the time I had done enough research, I could determine that he was clearly one of the worst presidents, with a good chance of being forty-third out of the forty-three (or forty-fourth out of the forty-four, depending on when youre reading this book). I would tell people I was going to do a book on Buchanan being that worst president, and I often got that kind of face where I knew people were hearkening back to high school to try to remember where Buchanan fit into the time line.

After hesitation many would come up with, The guy before Lincoln, right? Some of these folks knew every third-string catcher in the American League or all of the elements on the periodic table in order or the words to every Bruce Springsteen song. Buchanan, at most, was the answer to a $200 question on Jeopardy!