By Michael Medved
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
As President Obama prepares his State of the Union
Address and the nation looks forward to a Presidents Day holiday, Americans
should consider the warning examples of our worst chief executives.
While few of Washington and Lincoln's successors could
hope to replicate their epic achievements, every president can — and must —
focus on avoiding the appalling ineptitude of John Tyler, Franklin Pierce,
James Buchanan and their feckless fellow travelers on the road to presidential
perdition. The common elements that link our least successful leaders teach
historical lessons at least as important as the shared traits of the Rushmore
Four: Broken promises and gloomy temperaments lead inevitably to an alienated
public.
All the chief executives unmistakably identified as
failures displayed a self-destructive tendency to violate the core promises of
their campaigns. Take Tyler, the unbending Virginia aristocrat who won election
to the vice presidency in 1840 and assumed the highest office when his
predecessor died just a month after inauguration. The new chief executive,
dubbed "His Accidency" by critics, used 10 unpopular vetoes to block
implementation of his own party's longstanding ledges. Most of his Cabinet
resigned in protest, and eventually they all quit while the hostile Senate
voted down four new Cabinet appointments — a record that stands to this day.
Between 1853 and 1861, Pierce and Buchanan completed
back-to-back disastrous terms in which personal weakness and pro-Southern
sympathies shattered confident promises of unifying leadership. Buchanan
pledged to stop "agitation of the slavery question" and to
"destroy sectional parties." By the end of his term, seven Southern
states seceded from the union and the nation lunged toward the Civil War.
After that war and Lincoln's assassination, Andrew
Johnson (Lincoln's vice president) defied members of the martyred president's
Cabinet and congressional leaders, ignoring commitments to lead former slaves
to dignity and full civil rights.
In the 20th century, Herbert Hoover's slogan promised
"a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage," but he presided
over the beginning of the Great Depression. Similarly, Jimmy Carter's 1976
platform pledged to reduce unemployment to 3%, but Carter ran for re-election
with more than twice that rate.
No wonder that Hoover and Carter, like other unsuccessful
presidents, came across as gloomy, self-righteous sufferers. Hoover's secretary
of State said that a meeting with him was "like sitting in a bath of
ink." Carter staked his presidency on a notoriously sour televised address
that became known as "The Malaise Speech," warning the appalled
public of a "crisis of the American spirit."
None of our least successful presidents displayed the
self-deprecatory humor of Lincoln or the sunny dispositions that powered the
Roosevelts (Theodore and Franklin) and Ronald Reagan. A visitor described the
Pierce White House as a "cold and cheerless place," noting the
isolation of the invalid first lady, in deep mourning for three dead sons.
When Buchanan welcomed successor Lincoln, he plaintively
declared: "My dear, sir, if you are as happy on entering the White House
as I on leaving, you are a very happy man indeed."
The result of the depressing and erratic leadership of
our six most conspicuous presidential failures is that all managed to estrange
a once-admiring electorate within the space of a single term. Tyler,Pierce,
Andrew Johnson and Buchanan all earned rejection by their own party, failed to
win their own party's nominations, entering retirement as discredited figures.
Hoover and Carter appeared on national tickets and campaigned vigorously but
got wiped out in historic landslides, with each incumbent carrying a mere six
states.
Democrats, who denounce George W. Bush as the worst
president ever, along with Republicans who apply the same ugly title to Barack
Obama, can't explain away the inconvenient fact that both of our most recent
incumbents won re-election with 51% of the vote. Regardless of controversies
blighting Bush's second term, or setbacks that might afflict Obama's, their
legislative and electoral successes place them in a different category from the
White House worst.
This baleful history should warn the current occupant and
all successors against visibly disregarding commitments while encouraging
voters to steer clear of presidential candidates with dour, inflexible
temperaments. By selecting aspirants with clear, consistent agendas and
cheerful, persuasive personalities, we'll face fewer shattered presidencies
that leave reviled incumbents and a disillusioned electorate.
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