Worst President ... Again

The polling of historians to name "the worst president" has become a bi-weekly event, since it's become clear they'll pick George W. Bush every time. This one is even more dishonest than most, since it's not even a poll, though it calls itself one. The historian posted up the question on his blog, which showcases his contempt of Bush, and asked people who read his site -- who presumably find it worth reading -- to answer. Presto! "61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst."

Read the quotes snipped from some of the votes, and you'll see MyDD and DKos without the cussing.

While he acknowledges some could take exception to his "poll" because "[t]he participants are self-selected," he touts the fact that "Among those who responded are several of the nation’s most respected historians, including Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winners."

And we morlocks down here should just shut up and be told, because "Historians are in a better position than others to make judgments about how a current president’s policies and actions compare with those of his predecessors."

Christ, do they let anyone be a historian these days?

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

My first question is, how do these people define "worst" or "failure?" They are not, after all, the same thing. The questioner doesn't attempt a definition, and none of the respondents he quotes seem to consider it worth trying. That strikes me as a likely sign this is just a call-and-response exercise among people who call themselves thinkers.

Historians, for instance, routinely rate James Buchanan the "worst" president. Which I can understand, if you look at the country a certain way. But was he a "failure?" That is, did he fail to do what he had sworn to do on his oath ("preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Republic") and did he accomplish the policies he applied to governance?

On that basis, you'd have to rate him a success. Buchanan defended the federal government's property where he was able to do so, principally at Fort Sumter. He made clear that he considered it his duty to collect revenues in Southern ports. He stared down the South Carolinans time after time when they demanded its surrender. At one point, Buchanan wrote to Gov. Francis W. Pickens of South Carolina, "If South Carolina should attack any of these forts, she will then become the assailant in a war against the United States. It will not then be a question of coercing a State to remain in the Union, to which I am utterly opposed, ... but it will be a question of voluntarily precipitating a conflict of arms on her part ...."

He hardly had the resources to do more than hold the line: The entire U.S. Army numbered barely 16,000 men, mired in red tape, scattered across the Indian frontier. The Constitution did not allow the president to call out a huge American army and impose his will on any place that displeased him. That is a modern view. It was invented, in part, by Lincoln.

To dismiss Buchanan's adherence to the Constitution as a cover to allow treason, as some historians do, is to write off the foundation of the American republic and the genius of the Founders. It overlooks the seriousness with which Americans once regarded their balanced government and its institutions.

Any active step Buchanan might have taken would involve the incoming administration in inextricable complexities. Declare war on the Confederate States of America? Then that would acknowledge them as a sovereign power, and invoke international laws. Declare martial law? And throw Maryland and Virginia into turmoil, which would have made Lincoln's inauguration difficult, if not impossible? He had to sneak through Maryland after dark, as it was.

When Buchanan turned the government over to Lincoln, on March 4, 1861, only seven states had seceded. Virginia and Tennessee had confronted secession and rejected it at that time. Buchanan's policies let that happen. Together, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas represented half the future CSA's population and resources and held key military installations and armories. Thanks to Buchanan's touch, Lincoln still had a chance to hold them.

Even more important, Maryland, without which the North would have had to abandon Washington, D.C., remained in the Union. Secession sentiment ran strong there. Lincoln in his turn only managed to hold the state's loyalty by martial law.

By contrast, I'd classify John Quincy Adams as one of the best presidents ever. His vision of America was rooted in the Founders' vision, but reached for a truly great national future that carried all our virtues into the modern world. It was a tremendous plan for national self-improvement.

And it was a total failure. Because Adams was a compromise president chosen by political deal-making after a vicious knotted election, and all his chief rivals (and their lackeys) held important and powerful positions in the federal government, and they made it their business to ensure that his proposals were buried deeper than the score in a New York Times sports story. They wanted to make sure he was a one-and-done chief executive, so they could get their next shot in four years, not eight. Great president, failed president. It would be hard to discover a more complete failure in the record of U.S. administrations.

Sometimes "worst" and "failure" do go together. I'd combine them to describe John Tyler, who spent his entire administration trying to surmount his accidental presidency, and bribe various voter factions into a party built around himself that could elect him to a real term in the White House. The consequences for American history in the succeeding 20 years were dreadful. For some reason, however, historians routinely skip past him in their rush to dogpile on Bush and Buchanan.

But if you read the comments the historians sent in in response to the "poll" above, clearly they believe George W. Bush intended all along to overthrow Saddam, turn the country over to his corporate cronies, sweep aside troublesome constitutional rights, pack the Supreme Court with troglodytes, etc., etc. So ... shouldn't he be a "success" in their lights?

I think Ross Douthat puts it strongly, if essentially correctly:

All of which is to say that sixty-one percent of the historians' sample are ax-grinding fools whose nitwittery dishonors their profession. Judge Bush a failure by all means, but the fact that his legacy is only beginning its long unspooling ought to give anyone with even a glancing knowledge of history's cunning passages - let alone a so-called "professional" - pause before pronouncing his administration the worst in American history.

Names

Jackson.

Lincoln.

Wilson.

Roosevelt.

Nixon*.

Bush.

Each name like the thud of a wrecking ball against the edifice of the constitutional government of 1787. The walls are strong. Some names shock harder than others. The damage accumulates. The last is not the strongest. But the edifice is weaker.

*Watergate, historically, will be the short final chapter. The longer ones will be on meddling in the economy and the currency, the impudent expansion of executive powers.

Carrots, Sticks, Poisoned Apples

[posted by Callimachus]

If you read the left-side blogs, the steady screech is that Bush and Company are marching America headlong into police-state fascism.

If I could lay a bet with any chance of collecting on it, I would wager the Bush II administration will be remembered as a temporary step back from that poisoned apple in America's garden of temptations. Because it tried to advance that game so recklessly, and managed every aspect of governance so poorly, it exposed the trick.

The goal is to advance the authority and control of the federal government and especially the executive branch. The game is to concentrate power there. The trick is to do it in such a way that it seems to be the only way to solve urgent problems, or to do it with such concessions to individual liberties and the popular sort of freedoms that it masks the power creep.

As some of the more awake left-siders note, the drift is much older than George W. Bush. Some pick one 20th century date, some another, for when it began. This is the fallacy of the Golden Age. There never was one; the danger is original. The warnings are woven into the fabric of everything the Founders wrote that was meant for us to still read. But we've stopped reading.

And the Founders were the first to succumb. The first crisis came in John Adams' reign, when America was not sure yet what it was, when it might have bloomed at once into an authoritarian, centralized state. The Federalist clamp-down on the brink of an undeclared war looks clumsy only in retrospect. And it is a false model of how authoritarianism comes to America. The right people learned the lesson at once -- Monroe, for instance -- and rarely has anything so naive and naked ever been attempted again.

Thomas Jefferson did it in spite of himself when tempted by sweet Louisiana and adventures in the Mediterranean. He turned back the Alien and Sedition Acts of the previous administration (but one of them remains on the books today) and pardoned those prosecuted under them, and thus the people felt more secure in their liberties because they felt they could say any bad thing they liked about the government. But Jefferson's use of executive power left footprints that presidents after him followed. It left the federal executive that much stronger.

He had luck. The acquisition of the Great Plains for American settlement turned out to be undeniably a good thing to the people. No one today would wish it otherwise. But only Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans in 1815 cemented the ownership in the eyes of the world and spared the United States the agony of having to fight to keep what it purchased so, seemingly, cheaply.

Every president felt the temptation; most surrendered to it at some time. Jackson understood the game intuitively and was a master at it: Expand democracy at the same time you ramp up executive potency. Polk in forty-six figured out a key strategy: how a president personally can steer America into a war in spite of checks and balances. Lincoln, then in Congress, scorned him for it. Fifteen years later, President Lincoln did exactly the same.

The Civil War that followed burst the dam. In the name of saving a union still alive and flourishing, the federal government took on enormous unintended authority. Under the silken purr of Lincoln's rhetoric and trembling with rally-round-the-flag patriotism, the people handed over every right they held. After the war, the courts handed back most of the visible personal ones -- habeas corpus, press autonomy -- but the federal government now controlled the banks and had the power to tax every income and draft men directly into military service.

Those who saw it coming and warned of it were tangled in the partisan issues and personalities of their time. They also too often believed the social and economic relations between the races in the United States ought to be ordered and ordained. (Many people today still think so, in a different sense.) They did not foresee that within a few generations this unobjectionable -- at the time -- view would taint all their opinions and make them untouchable. Their vicious partisan obsession with Lincoln and the Black Republicans was a great gift to their enemies, over time.

And so on through the 20th century -- Wilson, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, abetted in most cases by pliant or partisan Congresses.

Every now and then a clumsy player takes the White House and overplays the game -- Andy Johnson; Nixon; the late, leaderless, stroke-crippled Wilson Administration. Then the alarm sounds for certain individual rights, and the courts or the Congress advance them. In some cases it's a genuine advance: Americans on the whole now are more free to say and do as they wish on a day-to-day basis than at any time in history. But in the matter of reigning in federal and executive authority, what's restored is often a fraction of what was taken.

George W. Bush is shaped in the Andy Johnson mold. The Congressional Republicans today are the Federalists of ninety-nine. Bill Clinton at the height of his persuasive skills and with a more capable team than he actually had (thanks to too many years of Democratic wandering in the wilderness) could have gotten away with all this and more, and made you want to thank him for it.

Americans still yearn for legal pleasures, favors for their own sects, tax structures that lean harder on someone else, and savvy politicians know the use of the carrot as well as the stick when they drive the mass of voters enfranchised in Andy Jackson's day. More of us can vote than ever before -- some even clamor to allow illegal immigrants into the polls. More can vote, but the votes matter less and less.

What Did I Miss?

[posted by Callimachus]

Whenever I get a week off work, unless I know I'm going to travel, I intend to keep posting here. That's because until it starts I forget how I need to unplug myself from the media/information machine.

I forget how much I hate this. Hate current events, hate keeping up, hate arguing about it, hate spilling thousands of words a week on topic that will be irrelevant next week. Hate beating my head against the same unchanging heads, in a midfield scrum in a game where only the final score will be noted.

I'd much rather spend my days lost in the labyrinths of research, or reading poetry, than doing this. And some of you would invite me to do that. But reality intrudes. It chases the scholar from his carrel and rousts the quiet man from his armchair and drags them to the filthy barricades. Reality is interested in you.

But still I loathe the daily word-battle. Some people love it. Our friend Kat loves it. But she also loves to swordfight in tournaments. Mark Twain in "Innocents Abroad" wrote about some character he met on the ship who so loved arguing that he'd take up a debate at the drop of a hat, and if the interval between them grew irksomely long, he'd drop the hat himself. I'd rather lie under the autumn sun on a clear blue day and dream of perfections. But beautiful September skies, however seamless to the eye, always bare a scar now. An old white slash across a lover's breast.

I literally read nothing for a week. Since I'm dropped back into the stream, here are a few things I see that look good to me. Perhaps you've already seen them:

The global warming debate really is three debates: Whether it is happening (probably); whether human agency is a significant cause (perhaps); whether the solutions proposed by the people who first latched on to absolute "yes" answers to 1. and 2. are good solutions, if those people turn out to be right about their guesses. This is by no means certain. Cassandra is not Nestor.

“We could spend all that money to cut emissions and end up with more land flooded next century because people would be poorer,” Dr. Lomborg said as we surveyed Manhattan’s expanded shoreline. “Wealth is a more important factor than sea-level rise in protecting you from the sea. You can draw maps showing 100 million people flooded out of their homes from global warming, but look at what’s happened here in New York. It’s the same story in Denmark and Holland — we’ve been gaining land as the sea rises.”

Dr. Lomborg, who’s best known (and most reviled in some circles) for an earlier book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” runs the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which gathers economists to set priorities in tackling global problems. In his new book, he dismisses the Kyoto emissions cuts as a “feel-good” strategy because it sounds virtuous and lets politicians make promises they don’t have to keep. He outlines an alternative “do-good” strategy that would cost less but accomplish more in dealing with climate change as well as more pressing threats like malaria, AIDS, polluted drinking water and malnutrition.

If you’re worried about stronger hurricanes flooding coasts, he says, concentrate on limiting coastal development and expanding wetlands right now rather than trying to slightly delay warming decades from now. To give urbanites a break from hotter summers, concentrate on reducing the urban-heat-island effect. If cities planted more greenery and painted roofs and streets white, he says, they could more than offset the impact of global warming.

Except the chemicals released by the paint would be ... oh well. White asphalt and fewer seaside McMansions sounds a lot more coherent than dismantling the global economy.

I doubt any American voter in the past wondered how Calvin Coolidge or Millard Filmore would handle a major international crisis that changed America's entire perception of its place in the world. I doubt they wondered that about Franklin Roosevelt, either. But he got one. And every president since him (except the lucky Eisenhower and Clinton) has had one. Some -- Kennedy, Reagan -- seemed to covet them. Others (Carter, Johnson) seemed utterly discomfited by them.

Now, though, we know it's coming. We don't know which one it will be, but it will happen.

What is so extraordinary about this political season is just how many storms are brewing around the world, any number of which could plausibly grow into Category 5 game changers. That's largely the price of a protracted war that is deeply unpopular both at home and abroad. Historically, wars are game changers in their own right, and Iraq has shown the pernicious tendency to exacerbate or ignite other crises, as evidenced by an increasingly unstable Middle East and an escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran. Similarly, the fate of the American intervention in Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda are closely tied to the deteriorating situation in neighboring Pakistan.

Which is why, I think, we are so interested in see our presidential contenders each, one by one, caught in a campaign crisis that threatens his or her viability. We'll endure months of namby-pamby speechification for the sale of that one "gotcha" question or dirty laundry episode. We want to see them tested, in the old style of Greek tragedy, before we commit to them.

Kurt Andersen also wants to shake the Christmas present to get a hint of what's inside before he opens it.

All that needs to happen for the partisan rebranding to complete itself is for the independent-minded middle third of the electorate to be convinced, once and for all, that they can really trust Democratic leaders to do whatever’s necessary to keep us safe. Bill Clinton did okay on foreign policy, but given the peaceful slough over which he presided — after the Cold War, before 9/11 — those eight years now seem like the Democrats’ national-security dress rehearsal. A majority may have come to see the old daddy party as half-assed and reckless, but in this jihadi era, they need to feel in their gut that the Democrats are Jodie Foster mommies, shrewd and steely and perfectly willing to kill bad guys.

In Hillary Clinton, an actual mommy, the metaphor and reality are finally united. Which is, of course, her particular Catch-22 as a candidate for president: It’s her unfeminine coldness that turns people off, even though heart-on-her-sleeve shows of (Bill Clintonian) emotion — or “apologizing” for her vote in 2002 to authorize the war — would make her seem too soft and girlie to be commander-in-chief.

When it comes to most candidates’ positions on Iraq, and certainly hers, it’s impossible to parse out precisely the mix of motivations — how much is a good-faith struggle to figure out a nuanced, least-bad policy and how much is a political calculation to maximize votes?

Meanwhile, it's always good to see Europeans write like this:

You can argue about the surge. The evidence is encouraging that the increased US military effort, together with a change in tactics, has reduced the violence in Iraq. On the other hand there are legitimate questions about the long-term viability of the strategy. But if America is to emerge from Iraq with a renewed sense of its global role, you shouldn’t really debase the motives of those who lead US forces there. Because in the end what they are doing is deeply honourable – fighting to destroy an enemy that delights in killing women and children; rebuilding a nation ruined by rapine and savagery; trying to bridge sectarian divides that have caused more misery in the world than the US could manage if it lasted a thousand years.

It is helpful to think about Iraq this way. Imagine if the US had never been there; and that this sectarian strife had broken out in any case – as, one day it surely would, given the hatreds engendered by a thousand years of Muslim history and the efforts of Saddam Hussein.

What would we in the West think about it? What would we think of as our responsibilities? There would be some who would want to wash their hands of it. There would be others who would think that UN resolutions and diplomatic initiatives would be enough to salve our consciences if not to stop the slaughter.

But many of us surely would think we should do something about it – as we did in the Balkans more than a decade ago – and as, infamously, we failed to do in Africa at the same time. And we would know that, for all our high ideals and our soaring rhetoric, there would be only one country with the historical commitment to make massive sacrifices in the defence of the lives and liberty of others, the leadership to mobilise efforts to relieve the suffering and, above all, the economic and military wherewithal to make it happen.

That’s the only really workable analogy between the US and Rome. When Rome fell, the world went dark for the best part of a millennium. America may not be an empire. But whatever it is, for the sake of humanity, pray it lasts at least as long as Rome.

And finally, breasts.

The most recent breasts supposed to have inspired champagne coupes belong to the American model and photographer Lee Miller. As she cut a swathe through 1930s Paris as the lover of surrealist artist Man Ray, Miller was widely regarded to have the most beautiful breasts in the city – thus, it’s said, inspiring a French glass company to model a new coupe on her form. Miller’s lovely figure appeared in many Man Ray images, but was discreetly hidden when, as a war photographer in 1945, she posed naked in Hitler’s bathtub in liberated Munich.

Ranking Presidents

[posted by Callimachus]

Our friend XWL at "Immodest Proposals" has the kind of presidential ranking list I can live with.

First, he limits himself to the post-WWII crop of executives, which assures we're talking about men who held roughly the same level of authority in the same nation and faced a similar plate of challenges and opportunities.

Second, he grounds his targe not in the concrete of academic authority, but in the honest mud of a "Completely Subjective, Thoroughly Biased, Mostly Fact Free and Easily Dismissed Ranking." Which is how such things always ought to be presented, no matter who makes them.

So in the spirit of his ranking, here's mine. I didn't take his post into account; in fact, as soon as I read what he was doing, my mind automatically stacked up the names in this order, before I'd even seen how he ranked them.

1. Reagan I never fully appreciated him while he was in office. But I was a young punk at the time. What he set out to accomplish, he brought to pass. He dreamed victory and said, "why not?"

His administration made some bloody missteps, notably in Latin America, but they were characteristic American Cold War blunders, and considering the effort we were putting forth to oppose Soviet expansionism, the crimes pale before the unforced blunders of the Kennedy or Ford Administrations.

And in the end, he, along with Thatcher, John Paul II, Walesa, Gorbachev, and about 10 million Germans and Eastern Europeans, finally brought to an end the miserable Cold War and the Soviet Union, and we all got to witness something perhaps unique in human history and still unappreciated: A mighty empire, armed to the teeth and paranoid, dying without a spasm of violence and war.

Domestically ... well, if you're old enough, compare 1980 to 1990.

2. Eisenhower Don't be fooled by the fact you can't think of anything important that he initiated during his administration. It took tremendous skill to maintain equilibrium during the feverish early game of the Cold War.

Ike knew the ways of the U.S. military, at all levels, and so was able to call bullshit on the more absurd requests and proposals of the Pentagon. One of the main Democratic lines of attack against him was that he wasn't spending enough on defense.

And he had an innate sense of what the Russian enemy was really capable of fielding, as opposed to what the enemy was threatening to do. He knew the sound of a plastic sabre rattling. And he resisted the temptation to use the Soviet threat to advance some unrelated agenda.

Just compare him to Kennedy, who followed him in the White House, and who was easily panicked, an alarmist (perhaps an adult ADHD case who craved crisis), and prone to accepting the most absurd schemes.

Domestically, again, Eisenhower oversaw a great economic expansion that touched almost all Americans, and he abetted (reluctantly at first) the civil rights movement in its nascent years.

3. Truman Grew in the job. Endured. Saved the nation from MacArthur. Kick-started national desegregation via the armed forces.

4. Clinton Probably handled a divided government as well as it could be handled. Didn't interfere with a booming economy. Addressed some much-neglected domestic issues. Damaged by his personality, but I think the qualities that tripped him up are so intertwined with those that made him at times a great president, you can't imagine him without both.

5. Bush I Oversaw the end-of-Cold War transitions adequately. Didn't make things better, but didn't make them much worse. Gulf War I was at least a chance for us to measure the cost of doing things in the world via multinational coalitions, rather than with a few well-chosen friends.

6. Johnson Domestically, his heart was in the right place, but he was hamstrung by Vietnam, where his mistake was -- perversely -- a lack of confidence in himself. Haunted by JFK and a sense that the polish and fraud of the Kennedies was a genuine character that he lacked, he never cleared out the "best and brightest" mis-managers in Kennedy's team and thought for himself, using his Southern instincts.

7. Ford Could have been much worse. Could have been a lot better. Killed by a surfeit of Kissinger. Domestically? "Our long national nightmare is over." Nope, it was just beginning. And anyone who presided over the opening scenes of it was going to be helpless. At least he made good fodder for "Saturday Night Live."

8. Kennedy Joe McCarthy with better hair and smoother delivery. He squeaks into the middle third of the list more for the awakened spirit he inspired in American people than for actual accomplishments. Peace Corps, space program -- imagine how much they would have amounted to without the accompanying foolishness.

9. Bush II At least so far. Probably was doomed by the nature of his election and could only hope to ride out a relatively calm period in world history. He didn't get it. We overthrew Saddam for all the right reasons, but the rest of the world, including the Muslim world, and half of America think we went there to kill Arabs, steal oil, and do the bidding of our Jewish overlords. I blame the media first for that, but Bush and friend come in second.

10. Carter At least he issued a tacit "mea culpa" with his 1980 defense budget. I don't factor in what they did before or after they occupied the White House. Carter only could do so much with the bitter and resentful nation Nixon left behind. He didn't even manage that "so much."

11. Nixon Someone mixed up the invoice: Humphrey for president, Nixon for Secretary of State.

For what it's worth, XWL's listing looks like this:

1. Reagan
2. Truman
3. Bush II
4. Clinton
5. Eisenhower
6. Bush I
7. Johnson
8. Kennedy
9. Ford
10. Nixon
11. Carter

And yes, I'm officially declaring "Ranking Presidents" to be the Band Name of the Day.

That List

[posted by Callimachus]

Alright, I'm going to take up Reader_iam's implicit challenge and address just a little bit the silliness about "worst presidents ever," which, whether it's debated among historians or plumbers is about like debating "who would win, Batman or Superman?"

I'm just going to key in on one bit from the WaPo column:

Take the worst president of all time, Buchanan. In office when Lincoln's election in 1860 triggered the secession of one Southern state after another, Buchanan sat by as the country crumbled. In his December 1860 message to Congress, three months before Lincoln was inaugurated, he declared that the states had no right to secede, but that the federal government had no right to stop them. By the time he left office, seven states had left the Union, and the Confederates had looted the arsenals in the South. If Buchanan had exercised his powers as commander in chief, the rebels might have been stopped at far less than the eventual cost of the Civil War -- more than half a million American dead and the ruin of the South for generations.

This stock answer -- "Buchanan was worst" -- absolves the columnist from any suspicion of really having thought about it. I once wrote a defense of Buchanan, but the only publication I could find to run it was "Southern Partisan." Never mind; they paid nicely. Short version follows:

Yes, let's face the unpleasant facts. Buchanan was not Lincoln. If he had been Lincoln, he would have provoked the South, bypassed the constitution, suspended civil liberties, jailed thousands without charges, offered to guarantee slavery if the South returned, then turned around and abolished it -- but only in the places where he had no power over it.

Buchanan, arguably, could have done this, but I doubt it would have improved his historical reputation.

The Constitution, not Buchanan, kept Buchanan in the White House between Lincoln's victory and the new president's inauguration. And it was Lincoln's election victory, not Buchanan, that brought on the crisis of 1860. Buchanan was a lame-duck president from a broken political party, without a smidgen of popular backing, North or South. He lived amid swirling talk of coups. A GOP senator prayed that "some Brutus ... would arise and remove him from the scene of his earthly labors." A Chicago editor wrote that if Buchanan showed his face there, "he would be hung so quick that Satan would not know where to look for his tratorious soul."

So far from supporting the South, Buchanan denied its right to secede, especially if the pretext was nothing more than the election of a president who was likely to violate Southern rights. Yet Buchanan -- and his attorney general, a competent Pennsylvanian named Jeremiah Black -- did not find in the Constitution as it was then written the power of the federal government to attack a state. And Congress, not the president, had the authority to levy troops, alter the Constitution, and revamp the relationship between the federal government and the states.

As it was, Buchanan defended the federal government's property where he was able to do so, principally at Fort Sumter. He made clear that he considered it his duty to collect revenues in Southern ports. He stared down the South Carolinans time after time when they demanded its surrender. At one point, Buchanan wrote to Gov. Francis W. Pickens of South Carolina, "If South Carolina should attack any of these forts, she will then become the assailant in a war against the United States. It will not then be a question of coercing a State to remain in the Union, to which I am utterly opposed, ... but it will be a question of voluntarily precipitating a conflict of arms on her part ...."

He hardly had the resources to do more than hold the line: The entire U.S. Army numbered barely 16,000 men, mired in red tape, scattered across the Indian frontier and led by aged and infirm Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, who even before the election had published his opinion that the country ought to be divided into four separate confederacies.

The Constitution did not allow the president to call out a huge American army and impose his will on any place that displeased him. That is a modern view. It was invented, in part, by Lincoln.

To dismiss Buchanan's adherence to the Constitution as incompetence is to write off the foundation of the American republic and the genius of the Founders. It overlooks the seriousness with which Americans once regarded their balanced government and its institutions.

During the crisis, Lincoln sat in Springfield and said nothing, baffling even his friends. The other Republican leaders, behind Seward, pursued a policy of "masterly inactivity," in a misplaced belief that Southern unionist could rein in the secessionists. The session of the 36th Congress that met in December merely made long speeches that nobody read. It voted no emergency measures, it raised no new troops.

In short, nobody with the opportunity did differently than Buchanan was doing. Any active step Buchanan might have taken would involve the incoming administration in inextricable complexities. Declare war on the Confederate States of America? Then that would acknowledge them as a sovereign power, and invoke international laws. Declare martial law? And throw Maryland and Virginia into turmoil, which would have made Lincoln's inauguration difficult, if not impossible? He had to sneak through Maryland after dark, as it was.

In fact, when Buchanan turned the government over to Lincoln, on March 4, 1861, only seven states had seceded. Virginia and Tennessee had confronted secession and rejected it at that time. Buchanan's policies let that happen. Together, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas represented half the future CSA's population and resources and held key military installations and armories. Thanks to Buchanan's touch, Lincoln still had a chance to hold them.

Even more important, Maryland, without which the North would have had to abandon Washington, D.C., remained in the Union. Secession sentiment ran strong there. Lincoln in his turn only managed to hold the state's loyalty by martial law.

But that was Lincoln's work, for which he earned his place on the national calendar and the national currency. Buchanan has his virtues, even if they are unfamiliar ones today.

P.S.: As everyone knows, the answer to "who would win, Batman or Superman?" is "Chuck Norris."

Worst President

A group of historians voted on the 10 worst presidential blunders of all time. I generally agree with numbers 2 through 10.

So who had the worst blunder? President James Buchanan, for failing to avert the Civil War, said a survey of presidential historians organized by the University of Louisville's McConnell Center. ... Scholars who participated said Buchanan did not do enough to oppose efforts by Southern states to secede from the Union before the Civil War.

Sigh.

When South Carolina seceded in 1860, James Buchanan asked his attorney general, Jeremiah Black (an honest Pennsylvanian who later served Lincoln, too), to outline the constitutional position on the matter. Black concluded that, in effect, the secession was illegal, but the executive branch had been given no power to do anything about it.

Buchanan acted accordingly, scrupulously constitutional to the end. Lincoln followed him and in essence ignored the Constitution, forced the union to hold together, and let Congress write the necessary changes after the fact. No bonus points for guessing which leader is revered in history and which routinely makes "worst presidents" lists, including this one.

It was Lincoln's election victory, not Buchanan, that brought on the crisis of 1860. Buchanan was a lame-duck president from a broken political party, without a smidgen of popular backing, North or South. In the months between Lincoln's election and his inauguration, Buchanan lived amid swirling talk of coup. A GOP senator prayed that "some Brutus ... would arise and remove him from the scene of his earthly labors." A Chicago editor wrote that if Buchanan showed his face there, "he would be hung so quick that Satan would not know where to look for his tratorious soul."

So far from supporting the South, Buchanan denied its right to secede, especially if the pretext was nothing more than the election of a president who was likely to violate Southern rights. Yet Buchanan, and many other capable observers, did not find in the Constitution as it was then written the power of the federal government to attack a state. And Congress, not the president, had the authority to levy troops, alter the Constitution, and revamp the relationship between the federal government and the states.

As it was, Buchanan defended the federal government's property where he was able to do so, principally at Fort Sumter. He made clear that he considered it his duty to collect revenues in Southern ports. He stared down the South Carolinans time after time when they demanded its surrender. At one point, Buchanan wrote to Gov. Francis W. Pickens of South Carolina, "If South Carolina should attack any of these forts, she will then become the assailant in a war against the United States. It will not then be a question of coercing a State to remain in the Union, to which I am utterly opposed, ... but it will be a question of voluntarily precipitating a conflict of arms on her part ...."

He hardly had the resources to do more than hold the line: The entire U.S. Army numbered barely 16,000 men, mired in red tape, scattered across the Indian frontier and led by aged and infirm Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, who even before the election had published his opinion that the country ought to be divided into four separate confederacies.

The Constitution did not allow the president to call out a huge American army and impose his will on any place that displeased him. That is a modern view. It was invented, in part, by Lincoln.

To dismiss Buchanan's adherence to the Constitution as a cover to allow treason, as some historians do, is to write off the foundation of the American republic and the genius of the Founders. It overlooks the seriousness with which Americans once regarded their balanced government and its institutions.

During the crisis, Lincoln sat in Springfield and said nothing, baffling even his friends. The other Republican leaders, behind Seward, pursued a policy of "masterly inactivity," in a misplaced belief that Southern unionist could reign in the secessionists. The session of the 36th Congress that met in December merely made long speeches that nobody read. It voted no emergency measures, it raised no new troops. In short, nobody with the opportunity did differently than Buchanan was doing.

Any active step Buchanan might have taken would involve the incoming administration in inextricable complexities. Declare war on the Confederate States of America? Then that would acknowledge them as a sovereign power, and invoke international laws. Declare martial law? And throw Maryland and Virginia into turmoil, which would have made Lincoln's inauguration difficult, if not impossible? He had to sneak through Maryland after dark, as it was.

When Buchanan turned the government over to Lincoln, on March 4, 1861, only seven states had seceded. Virginia and Tennessee had confronted secession and rejected it at that time. Buchanan's policies let that happen. Together, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas represented half the future CSA's population and resources and held key military installations and armories. Thanks to Buchanan's touch, Lincoln still had a chance to hold them.

Even more important, Maryland, without which the North would have had to abandon Washington, D.C., remained in the Union. Secession sentiment ran strong there. Lincoln in his turn only managed to hold the state's loyalty by martial law.

To blame Buchanan because he "did not do enough to oppose efforts by Southern states to secede" is to blame Buchanan for not being Lincoln. Yes, let's face the unpleasant facts. Buchanan was not Lincoln. If he had been Lincoln, he would have provoked the South, bypassed the Constitution, suspended civil liberties, jailed thousands without charges, thrown an untried army into meat-grinder battles under incompetent generals, offered to guarantee slavery if the South returned, then turned around and abolished it -- but only in the places where he had no power over it.

Buchanan, arguably, could have done this, but I doubt it would have improved his historical reputation.

Reagan and Carter

A review of a new book on Ronald Reagan shows just how far we've come from the Ramones' "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" (but I still play it!):

In Morning in America, Gil Troy makes an excellent case for Reagan's capacity as a leader, and for the real achievements of his administration. We live in a "Reaganized America." Fortunately, the more of Reagan's notes and speeches that have appeared in print, the less time a historian need waste in confronting the canard about the president as an amiable dunce. Reagan had a sharp mind and a clearly defined sense of historical mission, grounded in fundamental moral and political principles. He was also blessed with the ability to convey his confidence, his evident belief both in himself and in American values. Troy rightly identifies the turning point in the presidency in 1983-84, when the Grenada invasion and the Los Angeles Olympics provided dual foci for renewed patriotism, ably exploited by the White House. In retrospect, even Reagan's cockiest and most implausible visions have been vindicated by history. In all honesty, how many informed analysts in the early 1980s believed that Soviet Communism would evaporate within a decade, or that Reagan's confrontational nuclear policies would really lead to a massive reduction of global tensions? Yet Reagan believed these ridiculous things, and on both points, he was ridiculously right.

But the reviewer, Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, says the contrast between Reagan and Carter is over-drawn:

Carter was more conservative than is often recalled, and Reagan more liberal. On issues of gender and morality, Reagan had a distinctly moderate record, having endorsed the ERA and opposed California's anti-gay Briggs initiative. His two terms as governor included liberal measures on abortion rights and no-fault divorce, not to mention a fairly progressive tax policy and a respectable environmental record. At times, he looked like the kind of politician the Reaganites were warning about. The two men also shared much in their idealistic moral vision and their religious sense of national purpose. Both saw national problems in moral terms, as issues of the human heart. Neither was reluctant to invoke moral justifications for policy or to see a divine hand in political destiny, and both were attacked for religious sentiments that the secular-minded regarded as naïve or hypocritical.