Bush vs. Worst: Part IV

This is the fourth installment in our series comparing George W. Bush to the worst U.S. Presidents of all human history. Coming in at number seven: John Tyler

A horrible leader and weird-looking guy, John Tyler was also responsible for this great Wikipedia sentence: “Tyler's Presidency was rarely taken seriously in his time, as suggested by the nickname, His Accidency.” He became President when William Henry Harrison caught pneumonia and died because he refused to shut up at his bitterly cold outdoor inauguration.


Before we get to the usual categories of comparison, you have to have a little background. Tyler didn’t really have what you might ordinarily call “policy”, because everyone either hated or ignored him. His assumption of the Presidency wasn’t even technically legal until 1967. Harrison’s entire cabinet except for one guy resigned when Tyler took office (Daniel Webster stayed to finish some stuff, then quit), and a few months after that he was officially expelled from the Whig Party. Years later, the government wouldn’t even officially mourn his death, because he had exercised his usual good judgment and joined the Confederate House of Representatives shortly beforehand.

Foreign Policy: Wikipedia doesn’t even have this as a category for Tyler, as they do for most Presidents, and the first Google hit for “John Tyler foreign policy” only lists two things, which seems about right. First, Webster established a clear Maine-Canada border, an issue so tense that not a single person died in combat in the half-assed war that accompanied it. Second, Tyler set up the annexation of Texas, which was a foreign country at the time. This increased tension between slave and free states, but technically that was bad domestic policy.
Did Bush Do Something Worse? Clearly he did.

Domestic Policy: Here Tyler was more active about achieving little, in that he vetoed basically the entire Congressional agenda. Sometimes this worked well, as in the 1842 Dorr rebellion in Rhode Island, to which Tyler responded by hanging out until it ended on its own. Other times it was more like Tyler was doing nothing about the horrible economic Depression that existed for most of his term, and then sometimes he was increasing sectionalism, making him responsible for the nation’s continued slide toward the Civil War.
DBDSW? Both basically sat around while domestic affairs slowly sank into disrepair. I see both of them as ship captains just cold kicking back, propping their feet up on the big wheel thing, and not even looking around as the ship gradually drifts toward the Arctic. But Bush is also wiretapping his passengers, so he’s worse.

Civil Rights: Tyler’s Native American policy was pretty good, but, on the other hand, he was staunchly pro-slavery and owned slaves himself for his whole life.
DBDSW? No, this is not even close.

Value of Replacement Player: It’s looking like this will really hurt Bush in most of these contests. Tyler technically came after Harrison, who got elected, made a speech, and keeled over and died. But he really came after Van Buren, a low-grade failure more or less on the level of Carter. When he took office the country was in a depression and slowly headed towards civil war, and when he left it was out of the depression and on a slightly faster track to civil war. Call it a wash. Basically Bush had the misfortune to come after one of our few decent Presidents.

Verdict: Tyler was incompetent but passive, and fortunately America just kept chugging along without him, more or less. It’s pretty bad that he committed treason during the Civil War, but I guess that shouldn’t count against his Presidency. Bush is incompetent and active. His decision to ruin our foreign policy puts him out of reach for Tyler, even without the damning VRP factor. Bush is now at least the seventh-worst President.

Bonus anecdote about this amusing failure: Tyler’s Secretary of Navy and Secretary of State were on a battleship for a ceremonial cruise when a gun blew up and killed them both instantly. A young belle named Julia Gardiner was on board that day, and when her father exploded and died, she fainted into the arms of JOHN TYLER. Four months later they got married.