July 27, 2018 • 34 mins
Stand back far enough, and most American presidents look smart, polished and the picture of decorum... but not these gents! From a rabble-rousing arsonist to a fancy pants gossip, to a card-playing Do Nothing, Will and Mango look back at some of the greatest men to squander their time in the Oval Office.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what, mango? What's that? Well? All right, so, I
know there's a lot of debate over whether to keep
Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill, But one thing
there isn't much debate about is what kind of person
Jackson was. Yeah, I think you can sum it up
with one word terrible. I think you're probably accurate on that.
And he was obviously popular, but he was also terrible,
and especially in his younger day. So let me just
(00:22):
read you this little passage from Cormac McCarthy's Wonderful Secret
Lives of Presidents. I know it's always been one of
our favorites to turn to when reading about the presidents,
But here's how he puts it. Stories of Jackson's hooliganism abound.
When asked to organize the local dancing school's Christmas ball,
he secretly invited two of the town's most experienced prostitutes,
(00:42):
causing a scandal. On another occasion, he and his fellow
miscreants demolished a local tavern, beginning with the glassware, advancing
to the furniture, and concluding their sware by setting the
buildings ablaze. Bloys will be boys, as Cormack so he
then continues jack and was also known to complete many
of his wild nights with a practical joke or two.
(01:04):
His favorite moving out houses, the places they couldn't be found.
I mean those are a mix of really awful things
and like kind of funny thing. They are kind of funny, Yeah,
I mean burning and building down isn't that funny? Right?
It is kind of weird that that's who ended up
on our twenty dollar bill, right it is. I mean,
you know, we tend to respect and revere our American presidents,
(01:26):
and when people talk about Andrew Jackson, we talked about
how he was a man of the people, or I
don't know how devoted he was to his wife, or
you know, maybe counter the trail of tears stuff with
how he adopted a Native American son. But it did
make us wonder in some of these conversations, like who
are some of America's worst presidents? Who are the politicians
(01:46):
who really squandered their opportunities in the Oval office? And
why aren't they getting any elementary schools named after them?
I think that's the goal, after all. So that's what
today's episode is all about. Let's dive in, y Hey,
(02:19):
their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
man Guesshot Ticketer and sitting on the other side of
the soundproof glass pasting tiny portraits, these tiny little portraits.
I had to go over and look to see who
it was. It's President Taft Mango and he's putting them
onto all of these pennies. That's our friend and producer
Tristan McNeil. Now, of course, this is all part of
(02:39):
Tristan's bigger effort, this ongoing effort to win a little
bit more praise for Taft. I don't know exactly why
he wants to do this or why he's using pennies
as kind of a mystery at this point. Yeah. I
mean he explained, if anything, to me earlier, and apparently
he just always thought it was unfair that Lincoln gets
the penny and the five dollar bill and while you know,
Taft seems sort of mediocre to me, and he just
(03:01):
has that story about the bathtub. Tristan is really in
awe of him. It is the best presidential bathtub story.
All right. Well, so today's show is all about trying
to figure out who was America's worst president. And even
though the presidency requires all kinds of different skills and
abilities that are difficult to rank across the board, it's
easy to spot the ones who led us into like
(03:21):
economic disaster or maybe fan the flames of civil war. So,
in honor of President taffs aggressively mediocre legacy, what do
you say we sling some mud on his behalf and
and then let's actually talk about some of the real
worst presidents in American history. Well, I do think we
should mention at the outset that we're sticking to the
past year for today's show and focusing only on historical presidents.
(03:44):
So this is more of a ridiculous armchair exercise rather
than anything super political. Nobody recently, nobody. We didn't want
to get any who has been president in the past
thirty years. We have no idea, so we're only talking
about the past. Of course, we will be using some
surveys conducted by his story ends and other presidential authorities
to guide this, and one we did look at was
(04:04):
the two thousand eighteen Presidents and Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey.
It was conducted by the American Political Science Association and
It compiles the rankings of a hundred seventy different social
science experts and presidential politics. You know, the thing I
like about these surveys is just how consistent the results
tend to be, you know, over over previous years when
you look at them, like if you look at the
one from I guess it was four years ago. Those
(04:27):
bottom ten presidents, I mean, they're pretty much the same names.
They tend to move around a little bit, you know,
So we can't claim to know the definitive ranking of
all US presidents. We we can say with at least
some level of certainty that none of these guys are
going to be appearing on new currency anytime soon. Yeah,
and like you said earlier, they're not gonna get elementary
schools or airports. Are probably not too many bubbleheads, uh,
(04:50):
you know in honor of the mind that you could
find a tap bobble out there. I mean I did
find William Henry Harrison trucker hat that everyone I know
now is actually gonna get for Christmas. Pretty awesome. It's
weird that you don't see William Henry Harrison's face on
more like dorm room posters. That seems like something like
we we might try to change that. We'll see, But
I guess he does belong on this list since he
(05:12):
died a pneumonia like thirty days after his inauguration. So
of course he wasn't a great president at the very last. Yeah,
he didn't get a chance. But I do want to
disagree with you on not one, but two of the
points you just say. So for starters, we are sure
it was pneumonia that did in the ninth president. So,
I mean, the story does kind of fit. As we've
talked before. You know, Harrison insisted on giving this ninety
(05:34):
minute undred word inauguration speech on what was this very cold,
very wet winter day. He didn't wear a hat, so
I mean it tracts that he caught a cold and
and it eventually worsened into pneumonia. But you know, actually
this is the side. But the doctor treated him for pneumonia,
and the treatment at the time was around the clock
enemas and doses of opium. Oh good god, so awful.
(05:56):
Sounds horrible. But so if it wasn't pneumonia, what what
what killed? Yeah? So some modern scholars actually think that
the real culprit was this deadly bacteria strain, which, uh,
which probably came from all the night soil that had
been dumped just a few blocks away from the White House.
Did you say night soil? Yeah? So, remember we were
talking about the eighteen forties here, so Washington d C.
(06:17):
Didn't have a sewer system yet, and instead the city's
daily dose of experment was hauled the way to this
nearby marsh every single evening, hence the term night soil. Ah,
so you're saying this marsh was just down the street
from the White House. So so maybe it was this
bacteria from what like all the fecal matter that was
in the water supply exactly, And the kind of gastro
intestinal sickness that Harrison went through is commonly linked at
(06:40):
least two different bacteria that would have been found there,
And the theory really starts to look convincing once you
consider that both James Polke and Zachary Taylor also dealt
with gastro and tritus while living in the White House,
with Taylor even dying in off as just like Harrison did.
All right, so I'll stand corrected on that, or at
least potentially corrected, But I'm curious that what didn't you
say there was one more thing you to correct me on. Yeah,
(07:01):
I mean the other thing is that Harrison didn't influence
politics because he died so soon after taking office. Because
when you think about it, he actually did some lasting
damage to American politics. And what makes you say that? So,
William Henry Harrison's campaign was really the first to use
food as a way to appeal to social and class
differences in America. So for background, Harrison tried to portray
himself as this like frontiersman who was tough as nails.
(07:23):
And this was despite the fact that he was well educated,
came from this wealthy, distinguished Virginia family. But you know,
his campaign took out ads smartly that showed him in
front of a log cabin. I mean it was supposedly
his log cabin, and uh he also had this big
barrel of hard cider right out front. And the plan
was to convince voters that Harrison was this man of
the people. You know, he was trying to separate himself
(07:46):
from the fat catalytist that Martin Van Buren could be
seen as or Vanny Bee is. So his campaign took
to calling him the log cabin and hard cider candidate,
and he was this man who lived and drank just
like I guess the real Pete. Well, the plan worked,
I guess right, I mean he got elected. Yeah, it
wasn't much of a contest. Presidential candidates didn't even campaign
(08:06):
for themselves prior to Harrison, and Van Buren was no exception,
so you couldn't really push back on these elitist rumors.
But Harrison did an incredible job. Like he held these
massive rallies town after town. Sometimes they had sixty people
out on them, and he was just like a ridiculous party.
His supporters were rolling logs all over the place and
handing out hard cider, and he even had these custom
(08:29):
log cabin shaped bottles made for the events. Like it
really marked the first time that a politician used food
as a shorthand for social class. Well, it makes me
think about that phrase that sometimes people use that we
often shut her at when somebody just talks about how
they would vote based on who they'd rather have a
beer with. Ins Yeah, exactly, And I guess you can
blame William Henry Harrison for that. We think about it,
(08:52):
so yes, I will give him a mark against them
for that and all let's stick to the time like
for a minute and talk about Harrison's success or, who is,
of course John Tiler and another less than stellar president.
And Tyler is an interesting case because he was actually
the first person to ascend to the presidency from the
vice presidency. Yeah, and there weren't even rules in place
for that kind of succession, right, Like the whole vice
(09:13):
president rule wasn't in place until the nineteen sixties when
we added the twenty fifth Amendment. Yeah, that's right. So
Tyler was really in unchartered territory. And this is where
his questionable legacy starts to crop up, because rather than
continuing to act as vice president until Congress and the
Supreme Court could figure out a solution, Tyler said went
out and quickly found a district judge, just some district
(09:36):
judge to swear him in. So effectively, John Tyler made
himself president. Though I mean, I guess you could argue
that the twenty five Amendment would later vindicate his actions,
even if that was what a hundred and twenty years
after the but you know, think about this, putting him
aside for just a second. I try not to speak
ill of any first lady, just on principle. But I've
got to say that Julia Tyler really didn't do her
(09:58):
husband any favors. Apparently she would hold these receptions at
the White House where she would sit on a dais
with a wreath of flowers on her head, and she
would ask everyone in attendance to call her Mrs presidentists.
I mean, I don't know anything about being a first lady,
but if the president's legitimacy is in question, maybe don't
you that? You know, even Tyler's own party didn't give
(10:21):
him a pass on all his succession stuff Like I
remember reading how they started calling Tyler his accidency and
apparently every member of the Harrison appointed cabinet resigned in protest.
That's impressive. Well, and Tyler really threw the Whig Party
under the bus when he became president. In fact, he
pretty much took the opposing position on every issue the
party had been backing, including the need for a national
(10:43):
bank and whether or not state should be allowed to
seceed on account of slavery. Tyler did manage to fight
off early attempts to impeach him and made it through
his single term, but by the time he died less
than two decades later, he was considered a trader by
most people in Washington. And you know, at that point
it wasn't even an exaggeration, Like he had helped advocate
(11:03):
for Virginia's secession and he was all set to join
the Confederate House of Representatives before his death kind of
mixed those plans. I mean, you don't want to heat
more dirt on this guy's legacy. But I was reading
about Tyler in the Secret Lives of the U S Presidents,
which you know, I've got to say, I love Cormack O'Brien.
He was on the show Nicest Guy, and this book
(11:24):
is so great, but he makes it sound like Tyler
was kind of cowardly as well on top of everything else.
Like just listen to this quote. Tyler's estrangement from the
Whig Party was no joke. Angry mobs made a habit
of showing up at the White House. Some even burned
him in effigy. There were also plenty of bomb threats. Once,
when an unmarked package arrived at the White House, a
staff member was called to look at it, but Tyler
(11:45):
hid behind a marble column. The servant proceeded to hack
the parcel to pieces with a meat cleaver, only to
reveal a dilapidated toy. In a unique act of pity,
Congress past Tyler's bill, which provided the first federally funded
White House security. All right, well, let's leave Tyler over there,
just kind of cowering behind his favorite marble column and
(12:05):
and talk about another pair of bad presidents who also
followed right on each other's heels, And that's Zachary Taylor
and Millard Fillmore. Absolutely, But before we dive in, let's
take a quick break. You're listening to part time genius.
(12:31):
So we're talking about the most terrible, horrible, no good,
very bad presidents in US history, or at least the
ones historians like the least I'm speaking of, which the
next guy on our list is the country's twelfth president.
And then that was Zachary Taylor. And he's an interesting
case because, unlike John Tyler and other presidents who were
disliked both in their own time and today, Zachary Taylor
(12:52):
was actually pretty popular in his day. Yeah, I mean,
it kind of helps that he was only in office
for what like a year, and people didn't have that
much to form bad opinions about him. I guess it's
true he died pretty quickly. But but you know, it
wasn't just his brief time in office that gave people
this rosy view of him. I mean, before becoming president
in eighteen forty nine, Taylor had already spent some forty
odd years fighting no less than four different wars for
(13:14):
the U. S. Army. I mean, the guy was a
war hero, had this career that stretched from the War
of eighteen twelve to the Mexican War, had that nickname
all rough and ready tried to get people to call
me that, but nobody's nobody's sticking to it, and it
seems to have been one of those nicknames that was
actually pretty well earned in his case. So I'm guessing, then, like,
how does he wind up on this worst President's list?
(13:37):
It's partly because he spent such a brief time in
office that he just didn't get much done, much like
William Henry Harrison before him. But it really makes Taylor
unpopular now. Is actually all the stuff that made him
popular in his day. For instance, that that long military
career of his, the one that helped him get elected,
it actually includes some really brutal campaigns. When you think
(13:57):
about the seminoles and the Chippewa tribes effectively got were
driven from their land. And you know, then there's Taylor's
muddle stance on slavery. You know, on the one hand,
Taylor opposed the creation of new slave states and fought
hard for the western territories to only be admitted as
free states. But on the other hand, he was a
slaveholder himself, had multiple plantations and over aden slave persons
(14:21):
to his name, So I'm curious if you're a slave owner, like,
why would you engage in all this like anti slavery rhetoric. Well,
I mean, it turns out Taylor wasn't morally opposed to slavery,
and I guess that's pretty obvious given his track record there.
But he just recognized that there was growing opposition to
the practice. And you know, they used people needed to
be catered to in order to avoid civil war, and
(14:44):
Taylor was determined to preserve the Union and this was
by force if necessary. Like there was one time in
eighteen fifty when a few Southern leaders started threatening secession
and Taylor was so angry about this he swore he
would personally lead the army against them if they went
through it. Again, this was probably more out of his,
you know, four decades of military service and wanting to
(15:06):
be involved in those sorts of conflicts than it was
any sort of personal conviction against slavery. So I mean,
I guess he wound up doing the right thing, but
maybe for the wrong reasons, or at least not for
all the right reasons. And it's easy to see how
that kind of a moral thinking would diminish his standing
in hindsight. Plus, you know, he didn't have a very
dignified death. All right, Well, we've kind of beaten around
(15:27):
the bush on this one, so I feel like you
should go ahead and tell the story. Yeah, I think
we've probably talked about it a little before, but I
love the details of this. So it was July four
and Taylor has been in office for a little over
a year now, and he's due to appear at this
big Independence Day party at the side of the future
Washington Monument. And the problem is DC's in the middle
of this blistering heat wave. And if that wasn't bad enough,
(15:51):
there's also a bad outbreak of cholera, and nobody's supposed
to drink water or eat rough rout without knowing exactly
where it came from. But you know, this is old
rough and Ready we're talking about, and he's still going
to go to the event. So he sits through the speeches,
he makes one of his own, and meanwhile, the whole time,
he and everyone else are just getting baked in the sun. Right,
And so once it's over, he stumbles back to the
(16:12):
White House, and he is thirsty. He immediately drinks all
the water in sight. Then he proceeds to drink all
the iced milk on hand, and then he wolves down
a whole bowl of cherries that someone left on the kitchen.
So you know, he is not afraid of anything, and
this does the trick. He feels satisfied, except that, you know,
the next day he's doubled over with the stomach cramps
(16:32):
and then he starts displaying these symptoms of gastro and tritus,
and four unpleasant days later, Taylor becomes the second president
to die in office. I mean, it does make you
feel for the guy a little bit to think about
the fact that he lived through four separate wars only
to be taken out by what you said, ice milk
and a bowl of cherries. Yeah, I mean I honestly
think about this every summer when I'm looking at like
(16:52):
a big bowl of cherries in the kitchen, and I'm
always like, you know, a president died for him drinking
ice milk and too many cherries. And of course I
just scarf from down anyway, because Jerry's are so delicious,
such a risk taker. I mean, it does feel like
a cruel twist to fight even for this irredeemable racist.
But because nobody is all bad, I do want to
mention that President Taylor had a beloved pet. It was
(17:14):
this old white horse named Old Whitey, creative name, and
he kept Old Whitey on the White House lawn. And
when Taylor died, the horse was actually part of the
funeral procession, marching right there behind his master's coffin. I
like that. The nicest thing you can say is that
he had a horse that participated in his future, right
right willingly. So you know, it's still probably more than
(17:36):
you could say for his successor, Millard Fillmore, who took
over after Taylor died, and he became another president who
no one really wanted. You know, Fillmore did have one
thing going for him over his predecessor. While Taylor had
the looks you'd expect from someone who had spent forty
years in combat. Fillmore was actually the super sharp dressor.
He was good looking. In fact, Queen Victoria thought so.
(17:56):
After meeting him at court. She supposedly called him the
handsomest man she'd ever met. So it sounds like he
was sort of the opposite of Taylor, at least in
terms of looks. But but what about his policy where
the opposites in that regard to Yeah, they kind of were.
So remember how Taylor had been politically opposed to slavery
but personally for it. Well, Fillmore was the reverse of that.
He claimed to be personally against the practice. And this
(18:18):
actually might have come because his family was so poor
when he was growing up that he was sold into
indentured servitude as a kid. I think he learned to
read by stealing books, and uh, eventually he did buy
his way out. But it's strange because the main highlight
of his whole tenure is getting the Compromise of eighteen
fifty past, and this was something Taylor had opposed because
he thought it was too big a win for southern
(18:39):
slavers alright, So so why did fill More than support
the bills. Well, Taylor had prevented secession during his brief term,
but the South wasn't happy about his plan to admit
only free states from then on, and this growing anger
made feel more nervous that Southerners might move forward with
secession or even the outright war might break out, so
filmore back the compromise out fear more than anything else.
(19:01):
And while the bills did do some good for the nation,
like adding California to the Union as this free state
and banged the slave trade in d C, the negative
outcomes sort of outweighed that. And this was partially through
the addition of the Fugitive Slave Act, which obligated the
federal government to return fugitive slaves to their masters. This
was regardless of whether the states they were found and
were free or not. And this was a massive, massive
(19:23):
setback for abolitionists and it actually further the political divide
that was growing in the country. So it sounds like
he basically sold out his principles to try and keep
the peace, which I mean that's a hard line to keep. Yeah,
he's another president whose reputation is only worse than as
the years go by, and the cost of his decisions,
you know, they start to look more and more unconscionable
with time, and that shifting view on Filmore is actually
(19:45):
something that started as early as two decades after the compromise.
So in eighteen seventy, in an addition to the New
York Times, the paper wrote, quote, it was Fillmore's misfortune
to see in slavery a political and not a moral question. Well,
there's one part of Filmore's hanted legacy that I do
find pretty funny with all of the kind of more
sad stuff that you just mentioned, and that's the tongue
(20:05):
in cheek club that was set to lampoon his ineffectiveness
as president. You may have heard of this before, but
it's called the Millard Fillmore Society, and it actually wasn't
formed until nineteen eighty. This, of course, is over a
century after Fillmore died. So I'm curious what kind of
stuff did the society to do, I mean, really important stuff.
But probably what they were most known for was the
(20:26):
annual award they would give out called the Medal of Mediocrity,
and it was ended out each January around the time
of Fillmore's birthday, and it was as a way of
honoring quote mediocrity to combat the rising tide of overachievers.
I was laughing at the list of of winners here.
So notable winners include Ed McMahon, Prince Charles, Princess Diana,
(20:47):
and boy George. For some reason, Uh, boy George is
a strange choice. It actually does remind me of that
time one of our friends brought a boy George c
d into our room in college and just started lasting
it and I felt like he's sang it, danced through
like Karma Chamillion, I'll Tumble for You, and then some
other song, and eventually he had to tap out because
(21:08):
he had to technology he couldn't keep up the enthusiasm
for boyd George song. Do I need to acknowledge that
that friend was me? I wasn't gonna say it, but
I did have. But you know, in this meirit of
that club, I want to dominate another president for the
Medal of Mediocrity, and that's our fifteenth president, Mr James Buchanan.
And believe me, this one's a long time coming. Oh yeah,
(21:29):
that's definitely a good pick. I mean, he was notoriously awful.
But before we get into the reasons why, let's take
one more quick break. Okay, mago, So we have two
(21:51):
bad presidents left to talk about. We've got James Buchanan
and Andrew Johnson. And oddly enough, these are two that
came immediately before and after President Lincoln, who, by the way,
consistently tops the list of presidential rankings, which is no
surprise there. They essentially have the best president in US
history book ended by two of the all time worth
(22:13):
And you know, Buchanan in particular is widely considered the
worst of the worst. So in fact, according to the
Constitution Center, Buchanan has been in the bottom three of
every major poll ranking US presidents since impressive. I mean,
he seems to be universally load, which is almost an
achievement in itself, I guess feel like it. Yeah, I mean,
not a very good one, but yeah, it's an achievement.
(22:34):
And in some ways that level of hate is kind
of surprising. I mean, just looking at Buchanan's pre presidents
he resume he was a successful lawyer, he served in
both houses of Congress, he even served as Secretary of
State for a time. And on the one hand, he
had this reputation for being really exacting and a fuzzy
kind of guy, and I might explain why he was
also a lifelong bachelor and then the only one to
(22:56):
serve as president. President pol once said Buchanan acted like quote,
an old maid, and even his own campaign manager described
him as a sort of masculine miss fibble. And I
don't really know exactly what that means, but it doesn't
sound good. I don't think I have no idea what
a missfibble is, but uh, I mean that there were
rumors that he was gay, and I know he and
(23:17):
his vice president share of the house, and people called
them Aunt Nancy and Miss Fancy, so there might have
been some prejudices there, especially during that time period. But
it's also pretty clear how much of a pain he
could be. Like apparently, Buchanan once rejected a payment for
more than fifteen thousand dollars because it was off by
ten cents. And you know, if that wasn't annoying enough,
he was also this giant snoop um. He made his
(23:40):
niece act as his first lady and lived with him
in the White House. But then he'd open all her
mail and send it along to her, written like opened
by mistake, just scrawled across the envelope, and I mean,
maybe you buy that once or twice, but every single
letter is a lot. I'm guessing at some point his
knees caught onto us. Yeah, she actually started hiding all
her corresponding and Cindy's empty butter jugs that our friends
(24:02):
would carry in and out of the White House kitchen,
which just sounds so obvious, you know, But amazingly, Buchanan
never caught onto the scheme because, I mean, he was
too busy pulling off his own schemes. I mean, his
administration was one of the most corrupt in history. Just
as an example, Buchanan pushed hard for the adoption of
Lacompton Constitution, which was a proposed constitution for Kansas that
(24:23):
would have allowed only male citizens to vote, well at
the same time forbidding free blacks from living in the
state at all. And to try to get this pass,
Buchanan and his supporters offered cash incentives to anyone willing
to vote their way. All told, the price of these
payoffs has estimated it more than thirty thousand dollars, which
is more like a million dollars when you adjust for inflation.
(24:44):
That's crazy. And meanwhile, the country was falling apart around
him while he and his buddies were cashing in the
Southern threat of secession was growing, and rather than do
anything to counter it, you can't, just stood by and watched.
And not only was he ineffective, but he was also
two faced. Like before the election, he'd spoken out against
slavery as this indefensible evil, but then in his inauguration
(25:05):
speech he dismissed the practice as quote happily a matter
of but little practical importance. And you know, once in office,
he actually further the spread of slavery by allowing it
in these western territories. He uh, he backed the dread
Scott decision, that's the one that denied citizenship to black residents,
and he practically paved the way for the Civil War. Yeah,
that's definitely true. And you know, it seems like most
(25:27):
of the country recognized the damage that he was doing,
because you know, you fast forward to the next election
and it went to a starkly different candidate, and that,
of course was Lincoln. But that transition wasn't a smooth
one at all. You know, got Lincoln's victory and November
of eighteen sixty that prompted seven southern states to secede
from the Union and formed the Confederacy. And this all
(25:49):
happened on Buchanan's watch. Now, you can't claim there was
nothing he could do to stop this. Here's how he
puts it. He says, is beyond the power of any president,
no matter what maybe his own political cool proclivities, to
restore peace and harmony among the states. Wisely limited and restrained,
as is his power under our constitution and laws, he
alone can accomplish, but little for good or for evil
(26:11):
on such a momentous question. I mean, that's really pathetic,
and it just sounds like such a cop out. I mean,
if the Union was falling apart, the president should be
doing something right. And and Zachary Taylor, if he was
on the case, he would have hopped on his horse
and fought off the Cecedars himselves, right, I mean, even
if you did own eighty something splace well. But Buchanan
just set on his hands until leaving office the next year,
(26:33):
and that left Lincoln to deal with the fallout of
Buchan's in action, And of course, less than a month later,
the Civil War had begun, which is you know clearly
why historians don't like Buchanan. Well, in the wildest part
is that Buchanan maintained until his dying day that he
was only performing his constitutional duty. He believed that history
would ultimately remember him fondly for what he had done.
(26:54):
But of course he was pretty wrong about that. Yeah,
I'll say, and while Lincoln's turn provided this all too
brief repre from week leadership, his assassination landed the country
right back in the hands of the morally bankrupt. And
I mean this is a bummer to say, because on paper,
Andrew Johnson sounds pretty impressive, Like more than any other president.
Johnson really came from nothing. His family didn't know named land.
(27:15):
His father died when he was only three. Most of
his childhood was spent doing hard labor as a tailor's apprentice.
In his teens, Johnson moved from North Carolina to Tennessee.
He opened his own tailor shop. And you know this
wasn't easy either, Apparently, um Johnson made the trip with
his family and everything they owned. It was all stuffed
into a two wheeled cart and was pulled through the
(27:35):
mountains by a blind pony. I mean, of course the
pony had to be blind because you've got this impoverished family,
two whield car like, none of that's enough in a
blind pop. But I do know what you mean though
about Johnson being a pretty endearing character at least prior
to taking office, and he was the only Southern Senator
(27:55):
to keep his seat in Congress after secession, and that
loyalty to the Union is ultimately why Lincoln chose him
as his running mate when he was up for re election. Yeah,
but sadly all that loyalty disappeared after Lincoln was shot
and Johnson assumed the presidency. As soon as he took office,
he gave amnesty to Confederates and allowed them to elect
new government officials who quickly passed these Black codes. It was,
(28:17):
you know, aimed at oppressing these newly freed slaves. He
also vetoed bills that sought to protect black Americans, including
the Freedman's Bureau Bill. You know, much the nation was
really shocked to see Johnson undermining and almost straight up
on doing so much of what Lincoln had fought and
died for. In fact, Johnson was often heckled at public
appearances during his presidency. And he's just the type of
(28:37):
guy who just could not resist. He just joined and
shouting back and and this one time things got so
heated that he actually claimed that God struck down Lincoln
on purpose so he could be president. I mean, that's insane.
And of course that went over about as well as
you'd imagine. All right, So let's see, just looking at
his resume here, Johnson mocked his dead predecessor, rolled back
racial progress in America, basically paved the way for a
(29:00):
gem Crow laws. So it's not a surprise really that
he was the first president to be impeached and nearly
convicted to In the end, the proceedings failed by just
one vote and Johnson was able to complete his term.
But you know, it was crystal clear by then that
he wouldn't be getting a second term. And of course,
the thing I always remember about Johnson was that he
was so ostracized at the end of his term that
(29:20):
he just sit in his bedroom where he'd befriended the
mice there, like he'd feed them and watched them like
they were, you know, his own reality TV program. But
I do think he was a little lonely. I mean,
it is nice to see that most of these bad
presidents we've talked about come from the first half of
America's history. I mean, there are a few obvious exceptions
from the last hundred years or so. Yeah, I mean,
(29:42):
there's bound to be a few hiccups here and there,
But examining the failings of past leaders should make us
more adept at choosing new ones, or you know, at
least that's the hope. Yeah, but I'm not ready to
let these guys off the hook just yet. So why
don't we dedicate today's fact off to the blunders of
a few more presidents from that worst of list? Yeah. So,
(30:06):
one of the things on William Henry Harrison's platform was
that if he was elected president, he'd only serve one term.
And it's the only campaign promise he actually carried out.
That's pretty bad. One of Andrew Jackson's favorite ways to
unwine was apparently dueling, which I guess makes sense for
someone who enjoyed drinking and brawl as much as he did.
(30:26):
He apparently fought in over one hundred duels in his life.
I think that's over one more duels than you've competed.
That's absolutely true. So, you know, Warren Harding loved poker
so much that he assembled a poker cabinet to drink
whiskey and play with him, you know, which, of course
is a little weird since he claimed to be tremendously
in supportive prohibition on the campaign trail. But you know,
(30:49):
he did have this cabinet, and and once he actually
bet this entire box of priceless white House China in
a poker game and he lost it. That's pretty rough.
And there are plenty of other reason to dislike Harding too.
I mean, he was anti immigrant, anti working with other nations.
And of course the knock on him was that his
administration was so corrupt that while he was playing poker,
(31:09):
all his friends were there plundering the U. S. Treasury. Yeah.
I feel like it's one of those things where they
couldn't trace it completely up to him, but they could
trace it right around him, you know, a teapot dome
and all that. I mean. He was also a ridiculous
and in blatant philanderer, So he had plenty of problems
and and he eventually declared, quote, I'm not fit for
this office and should never have been here. All right,
(31:31):
Well here's one that you might like then. So Nixon
was so enamored with making the White House this more
grand place, and he actually commissioned these pompous uniforms for
the White House Police force to wear. It was just
to make it, I guess a little bit more like
bucking and Palace. And the uniform included gold embroidery and
these ridiculously tall military caps. But it was so ridiculous
(31:53):
that he just got made fun of in the press.
What's funny about this is that instead of just like
burning or throwing away the uniforms, he so them. And
this was to a high school band in Iowa, so
you know who seemed like terrible people to work for.
The Hoovers like Herbert and his wife devised the system
so they never had to see the White House staff
when they rang a bell three times and met the
(32:13):
President or his wife were walking down the hall, and
the staff was just required to jump into the nearest
closet to be out of sight. And if the staff
was outside, they were actually supposed to hide behind a shrub,
like behind the shrub. I like that they were given
this instruct and I feel like my nix in fact,
might have been funnier, but having to jump in a
closet or over a hedge because your boss is coming
(32:35):
and that sounds pretty terrible, so I feel like maybe
you should win today's prize. That sounds great. All right, Well,
this has been a fun one. Now. I'm sure that
we forgot a lot of great facts and we always
love hearing facts from you. So if you have some
fun facts about some of history's worst presidents, or maybe
you need to even inform us who's been president in
the past thirty years, because we have no idea so
(32:55):
we've only been focusing on the past, but we love
hearing those from you. You can always email as Part
Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or hit
us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so much
for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is
(33:22):
a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible
without several brilliant people who do the important things we
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Gay blues Yer is our lead researcher, with support from
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(33:44):
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
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Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who
Guess what, mango? What's that? Well? All right, so, I
know there's a lot of debate over whether to keep
Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill, But one thing
there isn't much debate about is what kind of person
Jackson was. Yeah, I think you can sum it up
with one word terrible. I think you're probably accurate on that.
And he was obviously popular, but he was also terrible,
and especially in his younger day. So let me just
(00:22):
read you this little passage from Cormac McCarthy's Wonderful Secret
Lives of Presidents. I know it's always been one of
our favorites to turn to when reading about the presidents,
But here's how he puts it. Stories of Jackson's hooliganism abound.
When asked to organize the local dancing school's Christmas ball,
he secretly invited two of the town's most experienced prostitutes,
(00:42):
causing a scandal. On another occasion, he and his fellow
miscreants demolished a local tavern, beginning with the glassware, advancing
to the furniture, and concluding their sware by setting the
buildings ablaze. Bloys will be boys, as Cormack so he
then continues jack and was also known to complete many
of his wild nights with a practical joke or two.
(01:04):
His favorite moving out houses, the places they couldn't be found.
I mean those are a mix of really awful things
and like kind of funny thing. They are kind of funny, Yeah,
I mean burning and building down isn't that funny? Right?
It is kind of weird that that's who ended up
on our twenty dollar bill, right it is. I mean,
you know, we tend to respect and revere our American presidents,
(01:26):
and when people talk about Andrew Jackson, we talked about
how he was a man of the people, or I
don't know how devoted he was to his wife, or
you know, maybe counter the trail of tears stuff with
how he adopted a Native American son. But it did
make us wonder in some of these conversations, like who
are some of America's worst presidents? Who are the politicians
(01:46):
who really squandered their opportunities in the Oval office? And
why aren't they getting any elementary schools named after them?
I think that's the goal, after all. So that's what
today's episode is all about. Let's dive in, y Hey,
(02:19):
their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
man Guesshot Ticketer and sitting on the other side of
the soundproof glass pasting tiny portraits, these tiny little portraits.
I had to go over and look to see who
it was. It's President Taft Mango and he's putting them
onto all of these pennies. That's our friend and producer
Tristan McNeil. Now, of course, this is all part of
(02:39):
Tristan's bigger effort, this ongoing effort to win a little
bit more praise for Taft. I don't know exactly why
he wants to do this or why he's using pennies
as kind of a mystery at this point. Yeah. I
mean he explained, if anything, to me earlier, and apparently
he just always thought it was unfair that Lincoln gets
the penny and the five dollar bill and while you know,
Taft seems sort of mediocre to me, and he just
(03:01):
has that story about the bathtub. Tristan is really in
awe of him. It is the best presidential bathtub story.
All right. Well, so today's show is all about trying
to figure out who was America's worst president. And even
though the presidency requires all kinds of different skills and
abilities that are difficult to rank across the board, it's
easy to spot the ones who led us into like
(03:21):
economic disaster or maybe fan the flames of civil war. So,
in honor of President taffs aggressively mediocre legacy, what do
you say we sling some mud on his behalf and
and then let's actually talk about some of the real
worst presidents in American history. Well, I do think we
should mention at the outset that we're sticking to the
past year for today's show and focusing only on historical presidents.
(03:44):
So this is more of a ridiculous armchair exercise rather
than anything super political. Nobody recently, nobody. We didn't want
to get any who has been president in the past
thirty years. We have no idea, so we're only talking
about the past. Of course, we will be using some
surveys conducted by his story ends and other presidential authorities
to guide this, and one we did look at was
(04:04):
the two thousand eighteen Presidents and Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey.
It was conducted by the American Political Science Association and
It compiles the rankings of a hundred seventy different social
science experts and presidential politics. You know, the thing I
like about these surveys is just how consistent the results
tend to be, you know, over over previous years when
you look at them, like if you look at the
one from I guess it was four years ago. Those
(04:27):
bottom ten presidents, I mean, they're pretty much the same names.
They tend to move around a little bit, you know,
So we can't claim to know the definitive ranking of
all US presidents. We we can say with at least
some level of certainty that none of these guys are
going to be appearing on new currency anytime soon. Yeah,
and like you said earlier, they're not gonna get elementary
schools or airports. Are probably not too many bubbleheads, uh,
(04:50):
you know in honor of the mind that you could
find a tap bobble out there. I mean I did
find William Henry Harrison trucker hat that everyone I know
now is actually gonna get for Christmas. Pretty awesome. It's
weird that you don't see William Henry Harrison's face on
more like dorm room posters. That seems like something like
we we might try to change that. We'll see, But
I guess he does belong on this list since he
(05:12):
died a pneumonia like thirty days after his inauguration. So
of course he wasn't a great president at the very last. Yeah,
he didn't get a chance. But I do want to
disagree with you on not one, but two of the
points you just say. So for starters, we are sure
it was pneumonia that did in the ninth president. So,
I mean, the story does kind of fit. As we've
talked before. You know, Harrison insisted on giving this ninety
(05:34):
minute undred word inauguration speech on what was this very cold,
very wet winter day. He didn't wear a hat, so
I mean it tracts that he caught a cold and
and it eventually worsened into pneumonia. But you know, actually
this is the side. But the doctor treated him for pneumonia,
and the treatment at the time was around the clock
enemas and doses of opium. Oh good god, so awful.
(05:56):
Sounds horrible. But so if it wasn't pneumonia, what what
what killed? Yeah? So some modern scholars actually think that
the real culprit was this deadly bacteria strain, which, uh,
which probably came from all the night soil that had
been dumped just a few blocks away from the White House.
Did you say night soil? Yeah? So, remember we were
talking about the eighteen forties here, so Washington d C.
(06:17):
Didn't have a sewer system yet, and instead the city's
daily dose of experment was hauled the way to this
nearby marsh every single evening, hence the term night soil. Ah,
so you're saying this marsh was just down the street
from the White House. So so maybe it was this
bacteria from what like all the fecal matter that was
in the water supply exactly, And the kind of gastro
intestinal sickness that Harrison went through is commonly linked at
(06:40):
least two different bacteria that would have been found there,
And the theory really starts to look convincing once you
consider that both James Polke and Zachary Taylor also dealt
with gastro and tritus while living in the White House,
with Taylor even dying in off as just like Harrison did.
All right, so I'll stand corrected on that, or at
least potentially corrected, But I'm curious that what didn't you
say there was one more thing you to correct me on. Yeah,
(07:01):
I mean the other thing is that Harrison didn't influence
politics because he died so soon after taking office. Because
when you think about it, he actually did some lasting
damage to American politics. And what makes you say that? So,
William Henry Harrison's campaign was really the first to use
food as a way to appeal to social and class
differences in America. So for background, Harrison tried to portray
himself as this like frontiersman who was tough as nails.
(07:23):
And this was despite the fact that he was well educated,
came from this wealthy, distinguished Virginia family. But you know,
his campaign took out ads smartly that showed him in
front of a log cabin. I mean it was supposedly
his log cabin, and uh he also had this big
barrel of hard cider right out front. And the plan
was to convince voters that Harrison was this man of
the people. You know, he was trying to separate himself
(07:46):
from the fat catalytist that Martin Van Buren could be
seen as or Vanny Bee is. So his campaign took
to calling him the log cabin and hard cider candidate,
and he was this man who lived and drank just
like I guess the real Pete. Well, the plan worked,
I guess right, I mean he got elected. Yeah, it
wasn't much of a contest. Presidential candidates didn't even campaign
(08:06):
for themselves prior to Harrison, and Van Buren was no exception,
so you couldn't really push back on these elitist rumors.
But Harrison did an incredible job. Like he held these
massive rallies town after town. Sometimes they had sixty people
out on them, and he was just like a ridiculous party.
His supporters were rolling logs all over the place and
handing out hard cider, and he even had these custom
(08:29):
log cabin shaped bottles made for the events. Like it
really marked the first time that a politician used food
as a shorthand for social class. Well, it makes me
think about that phrase that sometimes people use that we
often shut her at when somebody just talks about how
they would vote based on who they'd rather have a
beer with. Ins Yeah, exactly, And I guess you can
blame William Henry Harrison for that. We think about it,
(08:52):
so yes, I will give him a mark against them
for that and all let's stick to the time like
for a minute and talk about Harrison's success or, who is,
of course John Tiler and another less than stellar president.
And Tyler is an interesting case because he was actually
the first person to ascend to the presidency from the
vice presidency. Yeah, and there weren't even rules in place
for that kind of succession, right, Like the whole vice
(09:13):
president rule wasn't in place until the nineteen sixties when
we added the twenty fifth Amendment. Yeah, that's right. So
Tyler was really in unchartered territory. And this is where
his questionable legacy starts to crop up, because rather than
continuing to act as vice president until Congress and the
Supreme Court could figure out a solution, Tyler said went
out and quickly found a district judge, just some district
(09:36):
judge to swear him in. So effectively, John Tyler made
himself president. Though I mean, I guess you could argue
that the twenty five Amendment would later vindicate his actions,
even if that was what a hundred and twenty years
after the but you know, think about this, putting him
aside for just a second. I try not to speak
ill of any first lady, just on principle. But I've
got to say that Julia Tyler really didn't do her
(09:58):
husband any favors. Apparently she would hold these receptions at
the White House where she would sit on a dais
with a wreath of flowers on her head, and she
would ask everyone in attendance to call her Mrs presidentists.
I mean, I don't know anything about being a first lady,
but if the president's legitimacy is in question, maybe don't
you that? You know, even Tyler's own party didn't give
(10:21):
him a pass on all his succession stuff Like I
remember reading how they started calling Tyler his accidency and
apparently every member of the Harrison appointed cabinet resigned in protest.
That's impressive. Well, and Tyler really threw the Whig Party
under the bus when he became president. In fact, he
pretty much took the opposing position on every issue the
party had been backing, including the need for a national
(10:43):
bank and whether or not state should be allowed to
seceed on account of slavery. Tyler did manage to fight
off early attempts to impeach him and made it through
his single term, but by the time he died less
than two decades later, he was considered a trader by
most people in Washington. And you know, at that point
it wasn't even an exaggeration, Like he had helped advocate
(11:03):
for Virginia's secession and he was all set to join
the Confederate House of Representatives before his death kind of
mixed those plans. I mean, you don't want to heat
more dirt on this guy's legacy. But I was reading
about Tyler in the Secret Lives of the U S Presidents,
which you know, I've got to say, I love Cormack O'Brien.
He was on the show Nicest Guy, and this book
(11:24):
is so great, but he makes it sound like Tyler
was kind of cowardly as well on top of everything else.
Like just listen to this quote. Tyler's estrangement from the
Whig Party was no joke. Angry mobs made a habit
of showing up at the White House. Some even burned
him in effigy. There were also plenty of bomb threats. Once,
when an unmarked package arrived at the White House, a
staff member was called to look at it, but Tyler
(11:45):
hid behind a marble column. The servant proceeded to hack
the parcel to pieces with a meat cleaver, only to
reveal a dilapidated toy. In a unique act of pity,
Congress past Tyler's bill, which provided the first federally funded
White House security. All right, well, let's leave Tyler over there,
just kind of cowering behind his favorite marble column and
(12:05):
and talk about another pair of bad presidents who also
followed right on each other's heels, And that's Zachary Taylor
and Millard Fillmore. Absolutely, But before we dive in, let's
take a quick break. You're listening to part time genius.
(12:31):
So we're talking about the most terrible, horrible, no good,
very bad presidents in US history, or at least the
ones historians like the least I'm speaking of, which the
next guy on our list is the country's twelfth president.
And then that was Zachary Taylor. And he's an interesting
case because, unlike John Tyler and other presidents who were
disliked both in their own time and today, Zachary Taylor
(12:52):
was actually pretty popular in his day. Yeah, I mean,
it kind of helps that he was only in office
for what like a year, and people didn't have that
much to form bad opinions about him. I guess it's
true he died pretty quickly. But but you know, it
wasn't just his brief time in office that gave people
this rosy view of him. I mean, before becoming president
in eighteen forty nine, Taylor had already spent some forty
odd years fighting no less than four different wars for
(13:14):
the U. S. Army. I mean, the guy was a
war hero, had this career that stretched from the War
of eighteen twelve to the Mexican War, had that nickname
all rough and ready tried to get people to call
me that, but nobody's nobody's sticking to it, and it
seems to have been one of those nicknames that was
actually pretty well earned in his case. So I'm guessing, then, like,
how does he wind up on this worst President's list?
(13:37):
It's partly because he spent such a brief time in
office that he just didn't get much done, much like
William Henry Harrison before him. But it really makes Taylor
unpopular now. Is actually all the stuff that made him
popular in his day. For instance, that that long military
career of his, the one that helped him get elected,
it actually includes some really brutal campaigns. When you think
(13:57):
about the seminoles and the Chippewa tribes effectively got were
driven from their land. And you know, then there's Taylor's
muddle stance on slavery. You know, on the one hand,
Taylor opposed the creation of new slave states and fought
hard for the western territories to only be admitted as
free states. But on the other hand, he was a
slaveholder himself, had multiple plantations and over aden slave persons
(14:21):
to his name, So I'm curious if you're a slave owner, like,
why would you engage in all this like anti slavery rhetoric. Well,
I mean, it turns out Taylor wasn't morally opposed to slavery,
and I guess that's pretty obvious given his track record there.
But he just recognized that there was growing opposition to
the practice. And you know, they used people needed to
be catered to in order to avoid civil war, and
(14:44):
Taylor was determined to preserve the Union and this was
by force if necessary. Like there was one time in
eighteen fifty when a few Southern leaders started threatening secession
and Taylor was so angry about this he swore he
would personally lead the army against them if they went
through it. Again, this was probably more out of his,
you know, four decades of military service and wanting to
(15:06):
be involved in those sorts of conflicts than it was
any sort of personal conviction against slavery. So I mean,
I guess he wound up doing the right thing, but
maybe for the wrong reasons, or at least not for
all the right reasons. And it's easy to see how
that kind of a moral thinking would diminish his standing
in hindsight. Plus, you know, he didn't have a very
dignified death. All right, Well, we've kind of beaten around
(15:27):
the bush on this one, so I feel like you
should go ahead and tell the story. Yeah, I think
we've probably talked about it a little before, but I
love the details of this. So it was July four
and Taylor has been in office for a little over
a year now, and he's due to appear at this
big Independence Day party at the side of the future
Washington Monument. And the problem is DC's in the middle
of this blistering heat wave. And if that wasn't bad enough,
(15:51):
there's also a bad outbreak of cholera, and nobody's supposed
to drink water or eat rough rout without knowing exactly
where it came from. But you know, this is old
rough and Ready we're talking about, and he's still going
to go to the event. So he sits through the speeches,
he makes one of his own, and meanwhile, the whole time,
he and everyone else are just getting baked in the sun. Right,
And so once it's over, he stumbles back to the
(16:12):
White House, and he is thirsty. He immediately drinks all
the water in sight. Then he proceeds to drink all
the iced milk on hand, and then he wolves down
a whole bowl of cherries that someone left on the kitchen.
So you know, he is not afraid of anything, and
this does the trick. He feels satisfied, except that, you know,
the next day he's doubled over with the stomach cramps
(16:32):
and then he starts displaying these symptoms of gastro and tritus,
and four unpleasant days later, Taylor becomes the second president
to die in office. I mean, it does make you
feel for the guy a little bit to think about
the fact that he lived through four separate wars only
to be taken out by what you said, ice milk
and a bowl of cherries. Yeah, I mean I honestly
think about this every summer when I'm looking at like
(16:52):
a big bowl of cherries in the kitchen, and I'm
always like, you know, a president died for him drinking
ice milk and too many cherries. And of course I
just scarf from down anyway, because Jerry's are so delicious,
such a risk taker. I mean, it does feel like
a cruel twist to fight even for this irredeemable racist.
But because nobody is all bad, I do want to
mention that President Taylor had a beloved pet. It was
(17:14):
this old white horse named Old Whitey, creative name, and
he kept Old Whitey on the White House lawn. And
when Taylor died, the horse was actually part of the
funeral procession, marching right there behind his master's coffin. I
like that. The nicest thing you can say is that
he had a horse that participated in his future, right
right willingly. So you know, it's still probably more than
(17:36):
you could say for his successor, Millard Fillmore, who took
over after Taylor died, and he became another president who
no one really wanted. You know, Fillmore did have one
thing going for him over his predecessor. While Taylor had
the looks you'd expect from someone who had spent forty
years in combat. Fillmore was actually the super sharp dressor.
He was good looking. In fact, Queen Victoria thought so.
(17:56):
After meeting him at court. She supposedly called him the
handsomest man she'd ever met. So it sounds like he
was sort of the opposite of Taylor, at least in
terms of looks. But but what about his policy where
the opposites in that regard to Yeah, they kind of were.
So remember how Taylor had been politically opposed to slavery
but personally for it. Well, Fillmore was the reverse of that.
He claimed to be personally against the practice. And this
(18:18):
actually might have come because his family was so poor
when he was growing up that he was sold into
indentured servitude as a kid. I think he learned to
read by stealing books, and uh, eventually he did buy
his way out. But it's strange because the main highlight
of his whole tenure is getting the Compromise of eighteen
fifty past, and this was something Taylor had opposed because
he thought it was too big a win for southern
(18:39):
slavers alright, So so why did fill More than support
the bills. Well, Taylor had prevented secession during his brief term,
but the South wasn't happy about his plan to admit
only free states from then on, and this growing anger
made feel more nervous that Southerners might move forward with
secession or even the outright war might break out, so
filmore back the compromise out fear more than anything else.
(19:01):
And while the bills did do some good for the nation,
like adding California to the Union as this free state
and banged the slave trade in d C, the negative
outcomes sort of outweighed that. And this was partially through
the addition of the Fugitive Slave Act, which obligated the
federal government to return fugitive slaves to their masters. This
was regardless of whether the states they were found and
were free or not. And this was a massive, massive
(19:23):
setback for abolitionists and it actually further the political divide
that was growing in the country. So it sounds like
he basically sold out his principles to try and keep
the peace, which I mean that's a hard line to keep. Yeah,
he's another president whose reputation is only worse than as
the years go by, and the cost of his decisions,
you know, they start to look more and more unconscionable
with time, and that shifting view on Filmore is actually
(19:45):
something that started as early as two decades after the compromise.
So in eighteen seventy, in an addition to the New
York Times, the paper wrote, quote, it was Fillmore's misfortune
to see in slavery a political and not a moral question. Well,
there's one part of Filmore's hanted legacy that I do
find pretty funny with all of the kind of more
sad stuff that you just mentioned, and that's the tongue
(20:05):
in cheek club that was set to lampoon his ineffectiveness
as president. You may have heard of this before, but
it's called the Millard Fillmore Society, and it actually wasn't
formed until nineteen eighty. This, of course, is over a
century after Fillmore died. So I'm curious what kind of
stuff did the society to do, I mean, really important stuff.
But probably what they were most known for was the
(20:26):
annual award they would give out called the Medal of Mediocrity,
and it was ended out each January around the time
of Fillmore's birthday, and it was as a way of
honoring quote mediocrity to combat the rising tide of overachievers.
I was laughing at the list of of winners here.
So notable winners include Ed McMahon, Prince Charles, Princess Diana,
(20:47):
and boy George. For some reason, Uh, boy George is
a strange choice. It actually does remind me of that
time one of our friends brought a boy George c
d into our room in college and just started lasting
it and I felt like he's sang it, danced through
like Karma Chamillion, I'll Tumble for You, and then some
other song, and eventually he had to tap out because
(21:08):
he had to technology he couldn't keep up the enthusiasm
for boyd George song. Do I need to acknowledge that
that friend was me? I wasn't gonna say it, but
I did have. But you know, in this meirit of
that club, I want to dominate another president for the
Medal of Mediocrity, and that's our fifteenth president, Mr James Buchanan.
And believe me, this one's a long time coming. Oh yeah,
(21:29):
that's definitely a good pick. I mean, he was notoriously awful.
But before we get into the reasons why, let's take
one more quick break. Okay, mago, So we have two
(21:51):
bad presidents left to talk about. We've got James Buchanan
and Andrew Johnson. And oddly enough, these are two that
came immediately before and after President Lincoln, who, by the way,
consistently tops the list of presidential rankings, which is no
surprise there. They essentially have the best president in US
history book ended by two of the all time worth
(22:13):
And you know, Buchanan in particular is widely considered the
worst of the worst. So in fact, according to the
Constitution Center, Buchanan has been in the bottom three of
every major poll ranking US presidents since impressive. I mean,
he seems to be universally load, which is almost an
achievement in itself, I guess feel like it. Yeah, I mean,
not a very good one, but yeah, it's an achievement.
(22:34):
And in some ways that level of hate is kind
of surprising. I mean, just looking at Buchanan's pre presidents
he resume he was a successful lawyer, he served in
both houses of Congress, he even served as Secretary of
State for a time. And on the one hand, he
had this reputation for being really exacting and a fuzzy
kind of guy, and I might explain why he was
also a lifelong bachelor and then the only one to
(22:56):
serve as president. President pol once said Buchanan acted like quote,
an old maid, and even his own campaign manager described
him as a sort of masculine miss fibble. And I
don't really know exactly what that means, but it doesn't
sound good. I don't think I have no idea what
a missfibble is, but uh, I mean that there were
rumors that he was gay, and I know he and
(23:17):
his vice president share of the house, and people called
them Aunt Nancy and Miss Fancy, so there might have
been some prejudices there, especially during that time period. But
it's also pretty clear how much of a pain he
could be. Like apparently, Buchanan once rejected a payment for
more than fifteen thousand dollars because it was off by
ten cents. And you know, if that wasn't annoying enough,
he was also this giant snoop um. He made his
(23:40):
niece act as his first lady and lived with him
in the White House. But then he'd open all her
mail and send it along to her, written like opened
by mistake, just scrawled across the envelope, and I mean,
maybe you buy that once or twice, but every single
letter is a lot. I'm guessing at some point his
knees caught onto us. Yeah, she actually started hiding all
her corresponding and Cindy's empty butter jugs that our friends
(24:02):
would carry in and out of the White House kitchen,
which just sounds so obvious, you know, But amazingly, Buchanan
never caught onto the scheme because, I mean, he was
too busy pulling off his own schemes. I mean, his
administration was one of the most corrupt in history. Just
as an example, Buchanan pushed hard for the adoption of
Lacompton Constitution, which was a proposed constitution for Kansas that
(24:23):
would have allowed only male citizens to vote, well at
the same time forbidding free blacks from living in the
state at all. And to try to get this pass,
Buchanan and his supporters offered cash incentives to anyone willing
to vote their way. All told, the price of these
payoffs has estimated it more than thirty thousand dollars, which
is more like a million dollars when you adjust for inflation.
(24:44):
That's crazy. And meanwhile, the country was falling apart around
him while he and his buddies were cashing in the
Southern threat of secession was growing, and rather than do
anything to counter it, you can't, just stood by and watched.
And not only was he ineffective, but he was also
two faced. Like before the election, he'd spoken out against
slavery as this indefensible evil, but then in his inauguration
(25:05):
speech he dismissed the practice as quote happily a matter
of but little practical importance. And you know, once in office,
he actually further the spread of slavery by allowing it
in these western territories. He uh, he backed the dread
Scott decision, that's the one that denied citizenship to black residents,
and he practically paved the way for the Civil War. Yeah,
that's definitely true. And you know, it seems like most
(25:27):
of the country recognized the damage that he was doing,
because you know, you fast forward to the next election
and it went to a starkly different candidate, and that,
of course was Lincoln. But that transition wasn't a smooth
one at all. You know, got Lincoln's victory and November
of eighteen sixty that prompted seven southern states to secede
from the Union and formed the Confederacy. And this all
(25:49):
happened on Buchanan's watch. Now, you can't claim there was
nothing he could do to stop this. Here's how he
puts it. He says, is beyond the power of any president,
no matter what maybe his own political cool proclivities, to
restore peace and harmony among the states. Wisely limited and restrained,
as is his power under our constitution and laws, he
alone can accomplish, but little for good or for evil
(26:11):
on such a momentous question. I mean, that's really pathetic,
and it just sounds like such a cop out. I mean,
if the Union was falling apart, the president should be
doing something right. And and Zachary Taylor, if he was
on the case, he would have hopped on his horse
and fought off the Cecedars himselves, right, I mean, even
if you did own eighty something splace well. But Buchanan
just set on his hands until leaving office the next year,
(26:33):
and that left Lincoln to deal with the fallout of
Buchan's in action, And of course, less than a month later,
the Civil War had begun, which is you know clearly
why historians don't like Buchanan. Well, in the wildest part
is that Buchanan maintained until his dying day that he
was only performing his constitutional duty. He believed that history
would ultimately remember him fondly for what he had done.
(26:54):
But of course he was pretty wrong about that. Yeah,
I'll say, and while Lincoln's turn provided this all too
brief repre from week leadership, his assassination landed the country
right back in the hands of the morally bankrupt. And
I mean this is a bummer to say, because on paper,
Andrew Johnson sounds pretty impressive, Like more than any other president.
Johnson really came from nothing. His family didn't know named land.
(27:15):
His father died when he was only three. Most of
his childhood was spent doing hard labor as a tailor's apprentice.
In his teens, Johnson moved from North Carolina to Tennessee.
He opened his own tailor shop. And you know this
wasn't easy either, Apparently, um Johnson made the trip with
his family and everything they owned. It was all stuffed
into a two wheeled cart and was pulled through the
(27:35):
mountains by a blind pony. I mean, of course the
pony had to be blind because you've got this impoverished family,
two whield car like, none of that's enough in a
blind pop. But I do know what you mean though
about Johnson being a pretty endearing character at least prior
to taking office, and he was the only Southern Senator
(27:55):
to keep his seat in Congress after secession, and that
loyalty to the Union is ultimately why Lincoln chose him
as his running mate when he was up for re election. Yeah,
but sadly all that loyalty disappeared after Lincoln was shot
and Johnson assumed the presidency. As soon as he took office,
he gave amnesty to Confederates and allowed them to elect
new government officials who quickly passed these Black codes. It was,
(28:17):
you know, aimed at oppressing these newly freed slaves. He
also vetoed bills that sought to protect black Americans, including
the Freedman's Bureau Bill. You know, much the nation was
really shocked to see Johnson undermining and almost straight up
on doing so much of what Lincoln had fought and
died for. In fact, Johnson was often heckled at public
appearances during his presidency. And he's just the type of
(28:37):
guy who just could not resist. He just joined and
shouting back and and this one time things got so
heated that he actually claimed that God struck down Lincoln
on purpose so he could be president. I mean, that's insane.
And of course that went over about as well as
you'd imagine. All right, So let's see, just looking at
his resume here, Johnson mocked his dead predecessor, rolled back
racial progress in America, basically paved the way for a
(29:00):
gem Crow laws. So it's not a surprise really that
he was the first president to be impeached and nearly
convicted to In the end, the proceedings failed by just
one vote and Johnson was able to complete his term.
But you know, it was crystal clear by then that
he wouldn't be getting a second term. And of course,
the thing I always remember about Johnson was that he
was so ostracized at the end of his term that
(29:20):
he just sit in his bedroom where he'd befriended the
mice there, like he'd feed them and watched them like
they were, you know, his own reality TV program. But
I do think he was a little lonely. I mean,
it is nice to see that most of these bad
presidents we've talked about come from the first half of
America's history. I mean, there are a few obvious exceptions
from the last hundred years or so. Yeah, I mean,
(29:42):
there's bound to be a few hiccups here and there,
But examining the failings of past leaders should make us
more adept at choosing new ones, or you know, at
least that's the hope. Yeah, but I'm not ready to
let these guys off the hook just yet. So why
don't we dedicate today's fact off to the blunders of
a few more presidents from that worst of list? Yeah. So,
(30:06):
one of the things on William Henry Harrison's platform was
that if he was elected president, he'd only serve one term.
And it's the only campaign promise he actually carried out.
That's pretty bad. One of Andrew Jackson's favorite ways to
unwine was apparently dueling, which I guess makes sense for
someone who enjoyed drinking and brawl as much as he did.
(30:26):
He apparently fought in over one hundred duels in his life.
I think that's over one more duels than you've competed.
That's absolutely true. So, you know, Warren Harding loved poker
so much that he assembled a poker cabinet to drink
whiskey and play with him, you know, which, of course
is a little weird since he claimed to be tremendously
in supportive prohibition on the campaign trail. But you know,
(30:49):
he did have this cabinet, and and once he actually
bet this entire box of priceless white House China in
a poker game and he lost it. That's pretty rough.
And there are plenty of other reason to dislike Harding too.
I mean, he was anti immigrant, anti working with other nations.
And of course the knock on him was that his
administration was so corrupt that while he was playing poker,
(31:09):
all his friends were there plundering the U. S. Treasury. Yeah.
I feel like it's one of those things where they
couldn't trace it completely up to him, but they could
trace it right around him, you know, a teapot dome
and all that. I mean. He was also a ridiculous
and in blatant philanderer, So he had plenty of problems
and and he eventually declared, quote, I'm not fit for
this office and should never have been here. All right,
(31:31):
Well here's one that you might like then. So Nixon
was so enamored with making the White House this more
grand place, and he actually commissioned these pompous uniforms for
the White House Police force to wear. It was just
to make it, I guess a little bit more like
bucking and Palace. And the uniform included gold embroidery and
these ridiculously tall military caps. But it was so ridiculous
(31:53):
that he just got made fun of in the press.
What's funny about this is that instead of just like
burning or throwing away the uniforms, he so them. And
this was to a high school band in Iowa, so
you know who seemed like terrible people to work for.
The Hoovers like Herbert and his wife devised the system
so they never had to see the White House staff
when they rang a bell three times and met the
(32:13):
President or his wife were walking down the hall, and
the staff was just required to jump into the nearest
closet to be out of sight. And if the staff
was outside, they were actually supposed to hide behind a shrub,
like behind the shrub. I like that they were given
this instruct and I feel like my nix in fact,
might have been funnier, but having to jump in a
closet or over a hedge because your boss is coming
(32:35):
and that sounds pretty terrible, so I feel like maybe
you should win today's prize. That sounds great. All right, Well,
this has been a fun one. Now. I'm sure that
we forgot a lot of great facts and we always
love hearing facts from you. So if you have some
fun facts about some of history's worst presidents, or maybe
you need to even inform us who's been president in
the past thirty years, because we have no idea so
(32:55):
we've only been focusing on the past, but we love
hearing those from you. You can always email as Part
Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or hit
us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so much
for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is
(33:22):
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without several brilliant people who do the important things we
couldn't even begin to understand. CHRISTA McNeil does the editing thing.
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Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
(33:44):
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