Bush vs. Worst: Part VII

This is the sixth installment in our series comparing George W. Bush to the worst U.S. Presidents of all human history. This week, the fifth-worst: Franklin Pierce, the man who became responsible for the second-greatest Presidential quote of all time, when, upon leaving the White House, he said, “There’s nothing left to do but get drunk.”

The only President who ever sought reelection but got turned down by his own party, Pierce’s life is so pathetic that he almost deserves sympathy even in the face of his utter failure as a man. Consider the first four months of the year he took office: In January, his family was in a train wreck. He and his wife survived, but watched as their 11-year-old son was crushed to death (their two other kids died in 1836 and 1843). In March, Abigail Fillmore, the previous first lady, died, and in April, Pierce’s Vice President, William R. King completed the ruthless march of despair by dying of tuberculosis. Pierce never bothered to appoint another VP, pretty much summing up his legacy as a leader.

Foreign Policy: In Pierce’s era the U.S. didn’t really have much foreign policy, so his imperialism, though deplorable, didn’t result in much. Nonetheless, he still managed to have a hand in the Ostend Manifesto, which said that we would buy Cuba for $100 million, or, if that didn’t take with the Spanish, we’d probably have the right to take it over by force. The memo was supposed to be a secret but it leaked and was considered embarrassingly imperialist even though this was the mid-19^th century. Pierce manages to have a notably bad Cuba-policy for a U.S. President, which is also pretty impressive.
Did Bush Do Something Worse? The Iraq invasion alone is enough. Let’s just mention his botching of negotiations with Iran and North Korea to make this incontrovertible. For what it’s worth, his Cuba policy also sucks.

Domestic Policy: There are two main parts. First, Pierce worked closely with Jefferson Davis and Lincoln-opponent Stephen Douglas to replace the relatively-OK Compromise of 1850 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Basically it said those two territories could be states and the people would vote on whether they had slavery. Then people called the Border Ruffians snuck into Kansas from Missouri, terrorized voters and cast fraudulent votes. Pierce immediately recognized their government and openly detested the Free-Staters. Eventually this all led to Bleeding Kansas, open violent rebellion in an American State that left 56 dead.
Second, Pierce had a hand in the Gadsden Purchase, a $10 million deal with Mexico that bought us the southern parts of New Mexico and Arizona. Wikipedia calls this “the greatest success of the Pierce Presidency”. It is named for James Gadsden, a rabid pro-slavery asshole who called for South Carolina to secede in 1850. Many Mexican historians consider this deal the basis of Mexico-U.S. tension that still exists today. Otherwise, Pierce generically helped the country spiral into civil war.
DBDSW? I’d say it’s neck-and-neck, which is pathetic for Bush, since Pierce’s stuff led to the Civil War. But Bush has done a greater number of things (spying on U.S. citizens, the Patriot Act, Katrina, ruining the environment, etc.), and this economic catastrophe might put him over the top.

Civil Rights: Pierce was a staunch advocate of slavery. He was bad on civil rights even in the context of an era when owning humans was legal.
DBDSW? No.

Corruption: Pierce’s administration doesn’t seem to have had any scandals that stood the test of time.
DBDSW? The Justice Department thing alone is among the most deplorable Presidential scandals in history.

Value of Replacement Player: I don’t think anyone has beaten Bush in this category yet. Clinton was clearly a better President than Millard Fillmore, and Bush still arguably brought us lower than Pierce did.

Verdict: Pierce is definitely one of the ten worst Presidents, but Bush beats him so easily, and the Hoover and especially Tyler battles were so much worse than I expected, that I’ve decided to adjust the list a little: We’ll just switch Tyler and Pierce. So now it looks like this:
10. John Adams
9. Ronald Reagan
8. Franklin Pierce
7. Herbert Hoover
6. John Tyler
5. George W. Bush

Bonus Fun Fact: Harriet Beecher Stowe was none too happy about Pierce’s blatant pro-Southern leanings in the Civil War. She called him the arch-traitor. Her brother, famed abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, sent rifles to Kansas so Free-Staters could kill Border Ruffians. They were popularly known as Beecher’s Bibles.