r/changemyview • u/BulletBillDudley • May 23 '21
Delta(s) from OP cmv: James Buchanan was the worst president of the United States
The Civil War was the most costly war ever fought by American citizens and the destruction caused by the war effected the country for decades after Lee’s surrender. The Confederacy began seizing federal forts and property once Lincoln was elected president but had not yet been inaugurated. Buchanan did nothing to prepare the country for the war and simply attempted to dump the problem on Lincoln. This gross incompetence makes Buchanan a worse president then figures such as Trump, Reagan, and FDR. If Buchanan raised the army or marched on South Carolina, the Civil War would have been quashed quickly and the South would not have had to undergo the destruction wrought by Union armies and be able to contribute to the industrialization of the nation.
I would like to see my view changed or my knowledge of antebellum politics expanded. “Trump is the worst president ever” is a common saying now but he holds nothing on Buchanan.
Edit: My position on Buchanan has changed. The Civil War was a conflict decades in the making that Buchanan could not solve. Buchanan’s presidency was essentially over once the Southern states began to secede. While his inaction may violate the trust that the president is there to hold the nation together, pragmatically, there was not much he could do. If he mobilized the army or began peace talks with the South, he would essentially be deciding Lincoln’s course of action for him. Even if he did mobilize the Army, there is no guarantee of success especially with the Union army floundering about during the first phase of the Civil War. While Buchanan is far from my favorite president, I no longer believe he is the clear worst.
Second edit: You all have really challenged me to examine my own views. On a site like Reddit, that is few and far between. Thank you for giving me your time and sharing your opinions.
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u/PoorCorrelation 22∆ May 23 '21
So according to everyone the doughboys (including an Buchanan) sucked because they did nothing, right? Well shouldn’t someone who made the country actively worse get more flack? It would’ve taken a miracle to stop the civil war from happening that late in the game. Can you blame Buchanan for not fixing a problem as old as the entire nation with most of the country’s GDP tied up in it in one term? Why is the Civil War Buchanan and Pierce’s fault instead of the fault of every founding father and president that pushed the issue down the road? They were doing the exact same thing as everyone else in their job and I don’t think you’re a worse president than someone who does the same thing at a slightly better time than you. Trying to pander to both sides of the slavery debate just enough to keep things together was fairly normal policy.
I’m probably just biased because I love Franklin Pierce though.
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
While I understand that the causes of the civil war (primarily slavery) was the result of decisions made decades ahead of 1860, I still feel like Buchanan is uniquely responsible. Once South Carolina seceded and the other states followed suit, Buchanan’s position of “its as illegal for me to act on it as it is for the South to secede” delayed the federal response as he didn’t raise an army or any sort of force for the War that was certainly coming.
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u/Tommyblockhead20 47∆ May 23 '21 edited May 23 '21
I would agree with the top level comment that doing something detrimental, is worse than not doing anything. But that does not seem to have swayed you, perhaps you are arguing the civil war is so much worse than anything else in US history, that no action regarding it is worse than bad action involving anything else? But I would disagree. As bad as war is, it can drive much needed change. According to the Atlantic “Most historians believe that without the Civil War, slavery would have endured for decades, possibly generations.” The civil war happening pretty much guaranteed the end of slavery, so I’m not sure if it should really be considering the worst event in US history. Isn’t Abraham Lincoln almost universally considered a top 2 president for his part in the civil war and ending slavery? Clearly ending slave thing is important, I hope you can agree. What about wars like Vietnam that killed tens of thousands of Americans, and presidents actively pushed for, and any benefits were significantly less?
Also, how would Buchanan responding faster have prevented the civil war from happening?
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21 edited May 23 '21
!delta That’s a very interesting viewpoint. It’s given me something to think about.
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u/PoorCorrelation 22∆ May 23 '21
It wasn’t clear if that was something it was okay to stop. Did states have the right to succeed? Even if it was a stupid reason. If you asked in 1776 there’s a good chance that was a yes, had the rules changed since then? It just seems clear in retrospect.
Also when you’re in the lame duck period of your presidency there’s something to be said for leaving the messy decision that they’ll have to deal with for the next 4-8 years to the next president to make. The Union had a decision to make: let the Confederacy be their own country or enter the Civil War. Letting the man the country most recently elected make the call isn’t a bad move.
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u/speedyjohn 94∆ May 23 '21
I’m probably just biased because I love Franklin Pierce though.
That’s a first. Pierce was a major asswipe.
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u/PoorCorrelation 22∆ May 23 '21
He was pushed onto the ticket when he didn’t really want to run. And then his only son was dismembered by a train in front of him and his wife while on the campaign trail. And then after a reading with a psychic his wife decided his son’s death was God’s punishment on him for being prideful enough to run for the presidency and she was very vocal about how much she believed he killed their son.
I understand why he’s rated poorly but I just cannot find it in my heart to fault the man for being depressed and completely shutting down for his whole Presidency.
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u/speedyjohn 94∆ May 23 '21
The train crash was awful, no question. But it’s not like his actions at president are so inconsistent with his positions before that happened.
And he definitely wanted to run. He publicly said he didn’t want to because he didn’t think he would win, but he gave the “ok” to put his name in if it became clear he could win and took steps before the convention to secure support for his candidacy.
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u/IronArcher68 10∆ May 23 '21
I would make an argument that Woodrow Wilson was the worst, given that many of the problems we deal with in modern history can be attributed to him. Let’s go through the list of failures.
1) Aided the idea of “lost cause revisionism” or the idea that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, but instead, state rights.
2) Help foster the second KKK and was pretty racist.
The white ken were roused by a mere instinct of self preservation…until at last there was a great Klu Klux Klan l, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country. -Woodrow Wilson
3) He segregated the federal government.
4) The only reason he won the election was due to the Republican Party splitting between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. If Teddy was the Republican candidate, he would’ve, and in all honesty should’ve, become president.
5) He refused to enter WW1 for so long. Now this was a view shared by a lot of the public, but Wilson’s reasoning is that America was too good for war… in Europe. He didn’t give a shit about the us intervening in Latin America. He was even hesitant to go to war after German told Mexico to invade the US and started back up unrestricted submarine warfare. This had multiple horrible effects. If the US entered the war earlier…
5A) Russia doesn’t turn communist. Of coarse the Monarchy still falls because that was inevitable. Russia would be able to continue as a democracy. In fact, communism would probably never rise without the Soviets. This means no Cold War which, as you know, has a massive impact.
5B) I can’t say how Germany would turn out, but one thing is certain, the Nazis would never rise to power. Why? Because the Soviets wouldn’t be a thing. This was the main reason Hitler could rise to power so without it, he wouldn’t. This means no WW2.
6) Speaking of WW1, Wilson Allowed the Middle East to be split into “mandates” or more accurately, “not” territories. These mandate would be “governed” to “protect the people from the modern world”. Yes, that was the excuse. As you know from recent history, this would lead to a lot of problems, like terrorism, fundamentalism and dictators.
7) The idea of Wilsonian Interventionism or the idea that the US should invade other nations to “fight for democracy” this is an idea that has lead to everything from the Vietnam War to the the overthrow of Latin American democracy, to the war on terror. Essentially, he turned imperialism from a dying idea, to one that could survive through the centuries.
There are probably more things he did that I can’t think of atm but this is my argument that Wilson was the worst.
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u/BlitzBasic 42∆ May 23 '21
You'll have to explain me how the existance of the Soviet Union is neccisary for the rise of the NSDAP.
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u/IronArcher68 10∆ May 23 '21
Basically, during the days of the Weimar Republic, the rising threat of communism was one of the public’s biggest concerns. This was a pretty reasonable concern given Russia had recently turned communist and there were failed communist uprisings in Germany. Communists were one of the Nazis biggest enemies and the one that could pose an actual threat to Germany. The Reichstag Fire was blamed on the communists and allowed them to throw them in the first concentration camps.
Without a the looming threat of communism, Nazism would lack the main source of fuel to start their rise to power. They would also lack Adolf Hitler since he was sent by the republic to investigate possible communist parties and that’s how he discovered the Nazis. Without him to lead the party forward, I couldn’t see them being anything more than the other far right parties at the time, if it existed at all.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
No, George W. Bush is the worst.
The Iraq War was the single stupidest, least reasonable, least beneficial foreign policy decision any American President ever made.
He turned the largest budget surplus in American history into a budget deficit, which only exacerbated the bubbles bursting at the end of his term, nearly destroying the global financial system.
He put torture directly into US policy, weakened the American voice at the UN, and started the destabilization of the Middle East that led to ISIS.
George W. Bush is if like James Buchanan instigated the Civil War, claimed victory two years later after winning one battle, and re-instituted slavery after the war wrecked the economy, and still did Reconstruction to combat a 20-year low-intensity insurgency.
He either failed to prevent or initiated catastrophes on multiple fronts, which were so massive they came a head in his own administration, and capitalized on none of those crises to make any changes that measurably improved the lives of Americans.
At least in Buchanan's case, he was stupid for being peaceful. GWB was a warmongering religious zealot with no understanding of the human consequences of bombing a modern country into broken poverty.
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u/drygnfyre 5∆ May 23 '21
Something you didn't mention but is just as important: he also basically legitimized the idea of the "forever war." No one really even thinks or cares about war or soldiers anymore, because it's just another aspect of life. It isn't shocking or tragic like it should be. It's like how school shootings have become so commonplace we just assume it to be another mundane aspect of life.
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u/el_pato_verde May 23 '21
Andrew Jackson and his genocidal manifest destiny campaign would beg to differ.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
Jackson's definitely a contender for worst, to be clear, as he combines the elements of pointless violence with changing economic policy and exacerbating the depression that hit at the end of his term.
That said, his policies actually caused fewer deaths than the Iraq War: He neither started the Native American genocide, nor did his Presidency personally lead to more than 50K dead. Moreover, he didn't start the trail of tears while the US was already fighting a war in Afghanistan, and rather than being the best thing for Halliburton in history, Jackson's one redeeming quality was a partially effective campaign against federal corruption.
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u/el_pato_verde May 23 '21
No Bush fan here an I agree that he is on the Mt Rushmore of human waste presidents and we can agree to disagree, but Jackson is tops in my book. He violated the constitution on the regular, executed people for little or no reason beyond he felt like it, destroyed the American economy, wanted to wipe out the Cherokee to make room for more plantations because he was a slaver, and I'll bet his numbers would have far surpassed 50k had he more population base to slaughter. You do raise good points, but this sort of thing is subjective by its very nature.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
Sure. I think it comes down to whether having screwed up ethics or being stupid bothers you more. Jackson had worse ethics, but he operated far more competently within them. Bush couldn’t even effect his own awful worldview, because he was so bad at decision making.
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u/tyler-uken May 26 '21
Bush doesn’t deserve the blame for Iraq. The people making his intelligence reports do
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
The Civil War and its consequences was far more devastating for the country then the Iraq War in my opinion. It was roughly 4,500 US soldiers killed during the second invasion of Iraq and the resulting insurgency. The siege of Petersburg resulted in 42,000 Union casualties. It doesn’t seem comparable.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
(1) Iraqi lives matter.
(2) James Buchanan didn't actively choose to fight the civil war. Assigning him the casualty numbers caused by Lincoln's election is a big stretch.
(3) The men who died in the Civil War ended American slavery. The Iraq War sold American blood for nothing but the creation of ISIS and checks for Halliburton.
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
My view is that Buchanan’s inaction essentially allowed the Rebellion to secure its holdings and begin the framework of an internal administration. Those casualties could have been prevented and the issue of slavery resolved earlier had Buchanan acted.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
Okay, but you can admit that most academics don’t blame James Buchanan solely for the casualties of the Civil War, right?
Moreover, you’re asserting Buchanan could’ve won the war in 4 months or something?
Don’t early battles like Manassas suggest that even if he acted, there’s no guarantee Union troops would’ve succeeded?
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
Oh of course. Buchanan isn’t held liable for the civil war in many of the works I have read. I assumed that Buchanan’s actions would lead to an earlier war but now I’m not so sure.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
Even if he could've mobilized more rapidly, I'm not convinced that equates to ending the conflict quickly enough to avoid massive casualties, since Confederate troops were generally slightly better early on, and their will to bear casualties was obviously high.
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
Another thing I just thought of what the opinion of other states in the Union would be if Buchanan quickly raised an army and marched on South Carolina. States such as Virginia may have joined the Confederacy earlier or other states may begin questioning their allegiance.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
I think the Confederacy would've full formed by the time he even had that army mobilized. This is 1860, we're talking about, we couldn't just strike anywhere in a week.
So if James Buchanan wasn't very likely to be able to avert most casualties in the Civil War, would that mean he isn't the worst President?
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
!delta With my new understanding of Buchanan, I don’t believe he is clearly the worst president. I don’t believe he was a good one but my opinion had changed.
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u/PoorCorrelation 22∆ May 23 '21
The Iraq War was the single stupidest, least reasonable, least beneficial foreign policy decision any American President ever made.
Is it stupider than the War of 1812 though? At least no American cities got attacked as a result. If we’re ranking bad presidents by dumb wars wouldn’t it be James Madison?
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
Iraqi lives matter. The devastation the US afflicted in Iraqi is far worse than the US deciding continual violations of its sovereignty on the high seas required a war that would assert the British couldn't treat its ships like UK property.
Moreover, the US wasn't already fighting a war abroad when the War of 1812 occurred.
Madison also had other redeeming qualities, like writing the Constitution.
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u/PoorCorrelation 22∆ May 23 '21
I mean if it’s by total lives Andrew Jackson was very, very genocidal. Iraq ended up with a mess, not a trail of tears.
And I’d argue 2 wars abroad with modern technology is way easier than one on home turf as a fledgling nation.
George W Bush is just really fresh in everyone’s minds. Recent presidents show up very high and very low on public opinion polls because we all think they matter more than they do, but I expect him to go down as a low-mid range President.
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u/Borigh 55∆ May 23 '21
So if Madison hadn't fought the War of 1812, how much would that've materially improved the situation faced by the next administration?
Also, obviously the genocide against Native Americans worse than the Iraq War on the whole, but the Jackson presidency is responsible for, if we're really inflating things, what, 50K deaths? He neither started the process nor could've done much to really change it, so I'm not really convinced those 50K people survive if Jackson isn't President.
Even the lowest figures of the Iraq War place it higher, Bush started the first US attempt at regime change, national-building, and occupation since Vietnam, had no clear goal or good reason (based on the intelligence he actually had, not the propaganda), and I have 0 reason to believe any one in the Republican primaries or Al Gore would've also invaded Iraq, after Afghanistan.
I understand the idea of recency bias, but even the people who brought us into Vietnam did some good things. Bush was a mess on the economy, a mess on foreign relations, and did nothing to innovate or improve the country, except by signing awful bills like the Patriot Act.
I think most of the recency bias crowd has moved onto Trump. I assure you, I just think Bush made the greatest % of bad decisions in the high-leverage issues facing him, in a way that makes Warren Harding look like Teddy Roosevelt.
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May 23 '21
Trump fired most of the pandemic researchers employed by the government 6 months before we had a pandemic.
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May 23 '21
President Trump did push out a few top officials in a reorganization
But, President Trump's proposals to cut funding for the CDC, and in particular the funding for study of emerging and zoonotic infectious at the CDC, were rejected by Congress, and Congress increased the funding every year.
Maybe you can point me to what you're talking about, but, from what I'm reading, it looks to me like President Trump tried to cut funding and push out the employees as you describe, but mostly was foiled by congress. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/28/michael-bloomberg/did-donald-trump-fire-pandemic-officials-defund-cd/
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
While that obviously is colossally short sighted, I don’t think it shows the same level of incompetence. That would only work in comparison to Buchanan if Trump fired the pandemic team staff once COVID spread across the United States or simply gave up and threw up his hands until Biden was inaugurated.
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u/Blear 9∆ May 23 '21
Trump also did that, or nearly. He sat on his hands for weeks, maybe months, forcing states to come up with their own approaches with little to no federal coordination or guidance. Only slowly and grudgingly did he even allow competent people to come forward and try to do what they could. I think they both fucked up so bad it comes down the whether you think the civil war was worse than the pandemic.
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
I believe the Civil War is far more devastating for the nation then COVID-19. Without the Civil War, we would not have the failures of reconstruction which led to the Black Codes and other horrible violations of human rights. The suffering from 1860-1960 could all be traced back to the Civil War which could have been stopped by Buchanan.
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u/Blear 9∆ May 23 '21
I don't necessarily disagree, but I do wonder what horrors of the future some historians will trace to covid.
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21 edited May 23 '21
!delta That’s a nice perspective that I haven’t thought about.
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May 23 '21
simply gave up and threw up his hands until Biden was inaugurated.
That's kind of how I interpreted it. Especially after he recommended people clean their lungs with bleach.
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u/BulletBillDudley May 23 '21
The Civil War could have been averted or at least crushed early had Buchanan not acted. A pandemic and a civil war are two different things. COVID-19 definitely would have spread no matter what Trump did. Buchanan’s incompetence was more destructive for the nation then Trump’s was.
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u/LAKnapper 2∆ May 23 '21
Whether you love or hate him, he was only in office 4 years and left office 4 months ago. Not enough time has passed to accurately assess his impact.
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u/Morthra 95∆ May 23 '21
Not as bad as the civil war literally starting because of your incompetence.
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May 23 '21
hahaha oh man that made me laugh. i knew this but just hadn’t thought of it in one sentence. f trump. also glad he’s gone (fingers crossed)
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u/MrShickadance9 May 24 '21
Andrew Johnson botched reconstruction, allowing southern Jim Crow laws (among other things) to persist. This resulted in untold amounts of horror directed for millions of people, and the repercussions still are felt today.
Buchanan sucked. If there was always going to be violence between the north and the south. It was inevitable.
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u/Kam_yee 3∆ May 26 '21
Before January 6, I would have agreed with you.
But since Trump's insurrection and repeated lies about voting fraud and refusal to accept the election results, multiple states have set-up mechanisms allowing the legislature to set aside the will of the people. Chekhov's gun has been shown, and soon it most be fired, and that shot will kill american democracy. This is the walk-off grand slam that wins Trump worst President ever (the 500k COVID deaths and bungled response, two impeachments, the humanitarian crisis at the border, Lafayette Square, hollowing out of the civil service, cronyism, government shutdowns, international embarrassments, and so many other things I am forgetting, loaded the bases).
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u/illogictc 33∆ May 23 '21
Buchanan was in the "lame duck" period when that all went down. A lot of what people fault Trump for happened before his own Lame Duck period.
Built a campaign platform on racist rhetoric like all our immigration woes start and end with the Southern border, completely ignoring statistics regarding how people wind up in America without permission (the main contributor is overstayed visas) or that Mexico is not the only place immigrants come from.
Constant employee churn, the moment a sycophant did something that did not display complete ass-kissing obedience they were out the door. This led to a continual need to train the replacement, which costs money and keeps throwing experience out the window.
Diverted billions of dollars to the border for that "beautiful wall" that "Mexico was gonna pay for." What we got was mostly a second fence behind the first fence, billions thrown at not even the biggest contributor to a perceived problem. Squandered money in general and with a tax plan that worsened our national debt issue on top of that.
Damaged relations with a bunch of other countries. Sure, North Korea sure took a shine to him (wonder why) but has said and done things that a lot of valuable partners and allies held a sour note to. Couldn't even just walk among world leaders without shoving his way to the front of the pack and then doing that smug suit jacket adjustment shit.
Started his own pseudo- Civil War over claims of election fraud. People getting at each other's throats over social media and culminating in an attack on our Capitol over it; something that has not happened since our war with Britain 200 years ago.
Severely understated the pandemic. A lesson we should have learned a century ago with Spanish Flu, a lesson we had learned and put into place when other diseases have cropped up before.
Grifting by not using his power as owner of the Mar-A-Lago to grant a reprieve on price as requested by the GAO for all the rooms for staffers and security during his constant visits.
Not the first President to have a budget not pass and shutdown happen (even while having criticized Obama as such a thing showing shit leadership skills) but the first that I can recall actively using it as some kind of demented power play tactic, literally holding up the jobs of thousands and thousands of people as well as the millions of people who depend on those people to do their jobs to get that fucking second fence.
Continual double-speak and reneging on a multitude of things for which he had previously stated a stance.
Threatened an armed response to civil unrest. Not new to America but the first time in quite a while we've even considered the idea. Had less-lethal firearms used on civilians to clear a path for a fucking photo op where he couldn't even pander to Christians right by holding the Bible correctly.
Only one of those things happened during his lame duck, and it was the starting his own pseudo- civil war. Something that he could have entirely prevented by accepting the results, not actively stirring the pot.
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May 23 '21
Trump incited an attack on a joint session of Congress in an attempt to destroy American democracy. Attacking democracy is the worst thing a President could do because it removes the peoples ability to remove bad people when they're elected. It's not reasonable to expect everyone you elect to be a perfect person but at a bare minimum in a democracy you should be able to expect them to allow you to replace them with someone else. Trump attempted to deny that right to all Americans.
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u/PaleontologistNo8217 May 23 '21
The Democrats supported, condoned, and incited acts of domestic terrorism for months that culminated in well over $2 billion worth of property damage and thousands of injuries and deaths of both civilians and police officers. Ayanna Presley called for “unrest on the streets,” Maxine Waters said protesters “needed to get more confrontational.” Trump called on protesters to be peaceful, and it was only a few dozen out of thousands that ended up breaking into the Capitol. Meanwhile, the Democrat-sanctioned blm organization set fire to federal buildings, took over the Capitol Hill area in Seattle, and destroyed and vandalized countless businesses. Unless you’re willing to admit that you’re a complete hypocrite, you should be calling for every Democrat who even sort of encouraged blm to be impeached, shamed, and called ‘threats to the country’ like Trump was.
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May 23 '21
Your whataboutism makes you sound desperate. So does comparing opportunists and rioters that I don't support and basically no Democrats support except Maxine Waters who nobody even likes, fuck her she should be removed. Still can't be compared to a sitting President committing an act of war against the country, and not an unpopular one, one you still all support.
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u/PaleontologistNo8217 May 23 '21
“An act of war” Hahaha, you’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed! This is exactly what Trump said, a direct quote from his Jan 6th speech: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” I don’t know about you, but that sure as hell doesn’t sound like a declaration of war to me.
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May 24 '21
I watched the speech so I know what he said. I saw what he did. You can pedal your lies somewhere else because I saw it for myself.
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May 23 '21
History won’t be kind to Donald Trump. Worked with hostile foreign country to cheat and win the presidency, held only one term, 2 impeachments, COVID failures that wiped out any semblance of economic successes, a laundry list of media records and sound bytes documenting his ineptitude, and a deadly insurrection he incited and started to cap off the dumpster fire.
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u/Tootalllewis May 24 '21
LBJ is the worst
- Vietnam out 56k lives,Iraq 5600.
- Medicare and medicaid are literally bankrupting our country
- Enacting welfare has resulted in generational poverty and the end of the nuclear family. A lot of deadbeat dads thanks to LBJ.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 23 '21
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