Vol.115: America’s worst president?

And the winner is….

At the end of a hectic recent weekday spent issuing executive orders, imposing tariffs, retracting tariffs, and promoting sycophants, President Trump pronounced his predecessor, Joe Biden, “the worst president in American history.”

This is encouraging news, for three reasons.

First, any objective investigation into the relative shortcomings of, say, Warren Harding and Ulysses S. Grant compared to 43 other U.S. presidents is a complex and time-consuming exercise. Some historians have devoted their entire careers to this subject. Trump’s willingness to take time out of his busy day to ponder this topic suggests that he may possess more substantial intellectual chops than many of us previously realized.

Second, spotlighting an obscure former president from the opposition party whom many Americans have already forgotten was a singularly gracious gesture of the sort many of us had assumed Trump was incapable.

Third, it required tremendous courage for Trump to say what he said. Especially when you consider the huge numbers of Americans who remain passionately and often fanatically devoted to other candidates vying for “worst president” honors.

James Buchanan trashed

Consider, for example, my former journalistic colleague Robert Strauss, who in 2016 wrote a satirical biography of James Buchanan titled Worst. President. Ever. This scathing lampoon was headed for best-seller status when Trump entered the White House and promptly destroyed the book’s thesis, not to mention its entire marketing strategy. Less than a year into Trump’s first term, Strauss’s mock paean to Buchanan fell off the best-seller lists and into the remainder bins. It enjoyed a brief revival during Biden’s presidency, only to tumble back into ignominy with Trump’s re-election in 2024. (I urged Strauss to cut his losses by renaming his book Worst. Timing. Ever.) And now Trump has poured salt into Strauss’s wounds by declaring that Biden, not Buchanan, was America’s worst president.

What consequences will Trump suffer for his egregious neglect of James Buchanan? Knowing Strauss as I do, let me put it this way: If you get Strauss mad, better stay out of harm’s way.

Harrison’s 30 days

Even more dangerous, from Trump’s perspective, are the devotees of John Tyler. The Hatfields and the McCoys may have patched up their feud after two generations, but Tyler’s fans have carried their torch for nearly 200 years. And next to this deranged crew, the Proud Boys look like Girl Scouts.

John Tyler (1790-1862) was probably the only U.S. president whom nobody wanted to elect. You might say he was the 19^th Century’s answer to J.D. Vance. Tyler got into the White House only because he ran for vice-president alongside a military hero, William Henry Harrison, who in many respects (aside from his military career) was the 19^thCentury’s equivalent of Donald Trump.

Like Trump, Harrison was an egomaniac given to long, rambling speeches. Like Trump, he attended a college in Philadelphia whose name escapes me for the moment. And like Trump, he was already over the hill when he was elected president.

At his inauguration in 1841, Harrison vaingloriously chose to ride to the ceremony on horseback in cold and wet March weather, rather than in a closed carriage. Then he delivered an outdoor oration lasting an hour and 45 minutes, without wearing a coat or hat or bothering to ascertain whether anyone had yet discovered antibiotics. A month later he was dead of pneumonia, leaving Tyler to succeed him.

Tyler’s claim to fame

Once in the White House, Tyler opposed his own Whig Party’s platform, vetoed several Whig proposals, and consequently was expelled from the Whig Party. After leaving office, unlike ex-presidents such as John Quincy Adams, William Howard Taft, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter— who tried to burnish their presidential résumés by performing good works as ex-presidents— Tyler did the opposite: He finished his public service career as a Confederate Congressman.

Tyler is forgotten today except for a remarkable factoid: His father was born in 1747, and he had a daughter who lived until 1947. Tyler also had a grandson who was still alive last year at age 96. Look it up.

But the question persists: If Harrison, Tyler, Buchanan, Grant, Harding, Nixon, George W. Bush, Biden, or Trump wasn’t the worst president in American history, who was?

In my customary contrarian role, let me suggest a candidate who’s ordinarily overlooked in these discussions: Abraham Lincoln.

When Blacks were happy

If you disagree, let me remind you of a few salient facts. In the 1850s, before Lincoln became president, America was at peace. Its territory had expanded by one-third, all the way to the Pacific Coast. Adventurous pioneers were transforming regions previously dismissed as “the Great American Desert” (like present-day Kansas and Nebraska) into productive farmland. Railroads and the telegraph were connecting provincial Americans to the distant world. At night, instead of watching cable TV or surfing the Internet, Americans of the 1850s curled up by candlelight with the latest volume of Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, or Whitman. And thanks to the discovery of gold in California, the dreary old American Dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard, of Thomas Jefferson’s yeoman farmer— the boring delusion of prosperity accumulated through hard work and patience— was being replaced virtually overnight by the thrilling Spanish conquistador dream of instant wealth acquired by sheer audacity and luck.

Best of all, Black Americans in the 1850s were probably as happy as they’ve ever been. They had a sweet deal back then: guaranteed lifetime employment, abundant fresh air and sunshine, rent-free furnished lodgings, three square meals a day, free medical care, no burdensome government taxes or regulations, and, at work, a total absence of repressive dress codes. (For Blacks in the Old South, every day was Casual Friday.)

And you wonder why Blacks in those days couldn’t stop singing “Zip a Dee Do-Dah.”

This wholesome environment spawned the beloved Negro spirituals that have permanently woven themselves into the tapestry of American culture— unforgettable songs like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “I Got Plenty of Nothin’,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” and “When They Begin the Beguine.”

Also, as Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has reminded us, Blacks in the Old South learned valuable skills they might use in the future, if God forbid those good old antebellum days ever ended. You and naysayers like Lincoln called this system slavery. Only in retrospect, with the help of farsighted conservative politicians, do we see that it was more like an unpaid internship.

Lincoln’s record on Zionism

Yet once Lincoln took charge, that whole idyllic 250-year-old Southern civilization collapsed, just like that. You might say it was gone with the clouds. Not clouds, exactly. How about gone with the strawberries? I’m having a little trouble finding an appropriate metaphor here. Can somebody help me out?

Suddenly, American Blacks found themselves struggling to work at high-pressure indoor jobs as ballet dancers, cardiovascular surgeons, and college presidents. Black music, once so carefree and uplifting, now took on a decidedly desperate tone, reflected in songs like “Get A Job,” “Wake Me! Shake Me!”,

“Chain Gang,” and “99 Years in the Penitentiary.” And they owe it all to Lincoln.

One other thing. Lincoln was president for more than four years. During all that time, what did he do for women, Latinos, Zionists, or the LGBTQ+ community? To ask the question is to answer it.

I rest my case.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s newest book, The Price We Paid: An Oral History of Penn’s Struggle to Join the Ivy League, 1950-55. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com