But the thing is. Buchannan didn’t actually START the civil war.
He failed to act, and that led to the civil war… but he didn’t actually commit sedition.
Trump made manifest the festering filth of unregulated bad faith speech.
Basically what we’re going to have to deal with in our society is how to deal with users of the 1st Amendment trying to destroy the 1st Amendment. If my right to lie every day to you is more valuable than the shared reality we build society on.
And those that say it is, imo, are already defeatists - they, like many conservatives, think the status quo is the best that can be, and if that leads to chaos, there’s nothing anyone can do. They’re wrong and they’re the enemy, in a sense, because they don’t want to do the hard philosophical labor of working this out.
That’s true, but it is not clear yet what long-term effect Trump’s sedition will have whereas we know the effects of Buchannan’s actions (or lack of). I expect it to be bad enough to make Trump the worst, but I do not know that yet. Now, if we are talking about the worst person to hold office, that’s a different discussion and one I would tilt toward Trump on.
This is one of the reasons why I lean toward Johnson as the worst over Buchanan, Tyler, et al., but at the same time I have no problem objecting to those presidents who lorded over a nation built and ran on the backs of slaves. That is something every president—and politician and statesperson—pre-Lincoln must answer for. That they did the best they could under the circumstance might be true for some, but it does not excuse it. Now, that does not make all those presidents horrible and among the worst ever, but it is a negative for me if I am to assess them. (An old professor of mine remarked during a supervisory meeting that presidential history is strictly the domain of hacks and charlatans, so I’ve always been a bit uneasy delving too much into it. Though he perhaps went a bit too far, it is at the very least representative of the long-outmoded ‘great man’ style of history.)
I do not expect everyone to share that perspective, but that is mine.
What is that supposed to mean? Surely he didn’t believe that anyone who wrote on the subject is somehow a “hack or charlatan”?
I think it was mostly a commentary on how out of step presidential historians are from general / mainstream history. For example, the common line on Andrew Jackson since at least the 2000s and likely earlier is that he’s a horrible president and a monster. Yet, if you look at those polls of presidential historians—that is, historians who write almost exclusively on presidents and the office, not a historian who does a one-off biography of one—that come up now and again, he’s usually in the top ten. Which is to say that it is a deeply conservative field that is slow to change.
The guy who always gets a free pass on bad presidents is Madison.
If you want someone to write a really great framework for the documents under which your new country governs itself, Madison is you man.
If you want someone to serve as that country’s chief executive…keep looking. He’s too timid to much of anything right…and then to prove he’s not timid and inept, he starts a completely stupid and unnecessary war that results in the US getting their ass kicked repeatedly.
He’s the worst ever, easily (and time will only make him look worse), but I suspect he won’t hold the title for all that long in the grand scheme of things. We’re still in the “Factors Leading To…” chapter of some future history book, I fear.
Trump is the worst Un-American President. Then I think he is a symptom of a deep American problem, so in many ways he is a very American president.
He is terrible, but we can’t assess him now, history has to do it for us many years in the future, and weigh in on the damage he caused and for how long it will remain.
He is a product of America, and we have been trending this way since the 80s or 90s. I think the explosion of social media made him possible. That and the way media has changed in the lat 20 years.
Each new Republican president has been the worst president of my life, except HW.
Amen
It’s worse than that - the war helped a brutal militaristic expansionist regime (Napoleon), and after the war Madison told a big lie of victory so successfully that it’s still taught in schools today. I do wonder how much the myth of the war of 1812 contributes to American militarism in general.
He was also the originator of the three fifths compromise. (Not that there were any obvious alternatives).
But if you measure in terms of policy relevant to the standards of the time, in terms of character, or in terms of honesty Trump is last on all counts.
Yeah, it sucks our invasion of Canada failed. We should really give it a second try.
You joke, but expansionist dreams that include Canada are very dangerous to the US. Much like before the war of 1812, where it would have potentially thrown off the balance between slave holding and free states, it’s pretty clear that adding 10 new states that would likely split 8 or 9 as consistently Democratic electing states, would not be a desired outcome by most conservative Americans. That plus the challenges of integrating the “distinct society” of Quebec that would almost certainly opt for independence! A Herculean task, indeed, even if some new war hawks in the US actually wanted this to ever happen.
I suspect we may revisit this question as global warming makes Canada’s water and land more and more valuable. Let’s talk again in 50 years 😊.
Looking back, if John McCain had beaten Obama, I think we all could have lived with it.
Ummm…VP Palin on deck
Indeed, the ‘normal moderate McCain’ choosing Palin to energize the base is the nearly perfect example of what’s wrong with every single GOP President in my lifetime. They’re all either batshit-crazy themselves, or willing to invite the batshit-crazies to power in order to win.
I wouldn’t have been horrified by a McCain presidency, but VP Palin was an idea not worth exploring.
My alt history fantasy is Clinton 2008-2016, followed by Obama.
I think that sometimes, too, but the frequency with which one party gets 12 or 16 years of the White House in a row is not great, and this would probably have meant no Obama. Indeed, part of the reason Obama ran at all was the sense that this was the right time and if he didn’t take it, it might never come around again.
Ugh, yes Palin was a hot mess. One out of two is good, right? Well, until she goes rogue.