Bush vs. Worst, Part IX

Welcome to the ninth installment of our series comparing George W. Bush to the worst U.S. Presidents in human history. This week, we take a look at a man whose shockingly proactive incompetence may surprise you: James Madison.

Madison arguably had one of the best pre-Presidencies. He wrote the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, came up with the Bill of Rights, did some solid work in Congress and, as Secretary of State under Jefferson, oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. Unfortunately, none of that stuff counts.

Foreign Policy: The main thing Madison did was the War of 1812, a comically poorly-handled fiasco. It started off as bad blood between the British and Americans. We felt that we should be able to trade with the French even if the British were desperately trying to ward off Napoleon, and the Brits felt that they should be able to pull people off our ships and conscript them into the Royal Navy. Madison decided the answer was to go to war against the most powerful nation on Earth. Naturally, pretty much everyone in America disagreed with him, noting that we didn't exactly have a "good military". According to this great Wikipedia sentence: "Madison carefully prepared public opinion for what everyone at the time called "Mr. Madison's War", but much less time and money was spent building up the army, navy, forts, and state militias."
Almost everything that followed was ludicrously terrible:

• Madison decided to get things started by invading Canada, which for some reason everyone thought would be easy. Jefferson called it "a matter of marching", and Madison tried to do it with a few small state militias. It turned out to be a matter of gross failure.
• The highlight of the war came when the British effortlessly marched into Washington D.C., ate the dinner that Madison had left when he fled the White House, burned down the White House, destroyed the Treasury, and scared the U.S. into setting our own naval yards on fire.
  
• Britain easily held us at bay even though they were also fighting the Napoleonic wars, one of the greatest military campaigns in world history.
  
• We started out with 12,000 troops. We tried to get more, but no one was interested. By contrast, Britain sent over 15,000 troops as a supplement, over a year into the war, after they had defeated Napoleon.
• Britain immediately set up a Naval blockade of the entire American coastline, destroying our economy. Total exports fell from $130 million in 1807 to $7 million in 1814.
• New England openly hated the war, smuggled goods to the enemy, and considered secession.
• We surrendered Detroit without even fighting, even though we probably had enough guys to win.
• One of our few victories came when we burned down a town near Niagra, causing all the inhabitants to freeze to death in the snow.
  
• We lost 40% more troops than the British.

Eventually everyone got tired of the war and quit. Under the terms of the peace, Britain made none of the concessions that we had demanded at the war's outset, and each country got exactly the same territory it had had before the war started. Our one gain was Mobile, AL, which had been owned by the Spanish. In Britain, according to another great Wikipedia sentence: "The war was scarcely noticed at the time and is scarcely remembered in Britain because it was overshadowed by the far larger conflict against Napoleon Bonaparte."
Did Bush Do Something Worse? No.

Domestic Policy: Technically a lot of the War of 1812 was domestic, since Madison elected to hold it on U.S. soil. But we only want to count it once. Even so, he is remarkably bad. For one thing, he let the charter for the National Bank expire and opposed renewing it for the next two years, until he realized he couldn't finance his war at all. The economy sucked when the British ended our trade with everyone (except for the illegal smuggling with the British), but that's foreign policy. He had dumb governing principles, refusing to fund roads, bridges and canals, which are the classic example of things that everyone agrees the government should fund.
DBDSW? Yeah, if we separate the War of 1812 from this, and consider Bush's own economic disasters on top of his wiretapping experiments, he takes this one.

Civil Rights: The British easily convinced tens of thousands of Native Americans and slaves to fight on their side. Also, Andrew Jackson killed a bunch of Creek.
DBDSW? No.

Corruption: Don't see much reported on Madison for this, though it's probably overshadowed by the War of 1812.
DBDSW? Easily yes.

Value of Replacement Player: For the first time, this is quite close. Jefferson and Clinton are similar tier Presidents, although Clinton is probably better. But I'd say the dropoff from the end of Clinton to now is greater than that from the end of Jefferson to the end of Madison. Madison had deeper lows, but ended better. So this goes to Bush in the closest contest yet.

Verdict: This is a really tough one. It is difficult to overstate the failure of the War of 1812. It's like the peewee football team of lovable misfits in the movie "Little Giants" took on the actual New York Giants, during the Super Bowl, and had all their parents' houses burned down. It is as though the Iraq War had been relentlessly campaigned for by Saddam Hussein. But I think there are three mitigating factors here:

1. The scope of possible failure was greater for Madison. As a young country with a shakier economy and smaller military relative to a very powerful Europe, we could easily have collapsed entirely. I'd say Madison's failure was well within the realm of the conceivable for his era, whereas someone sitting in 2000 would never have envisioned America as it is today under Bush.
2. We were doing OK by the end of Madison's run. He oversaw a recovery and general swell in morale (so great that they call it the Era of Good Feelings) that you can't really imagine under Bush.
3. Bush has a greater breadth of failure. No one thing he did is worse than 1812, but when you add up our current recession, the wiretapping, Iran mishandling, Afghanistan mishandling, North Korea mishandling, egregious torture of prisoners and associated war crimes, PATRIOT act, Dept.of Justice scandal, Valerie Plame scandal, No Child Left Behind failures, provocation of Russia, general anti-environmentalism including abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, historically enormous budget and trade deficits, anti-stem cell research positions, support of the Federal Marriage Act, Katrina fiasco, undermining of the Constitution especially with signing statements, illegal victory against Gore and swift-boating of John Kerry and ruination of the Supreme Court, you get something in the same ballpark as 1812.

Yikes, after writing that list, it seems pretty clear that Bush gets this one.
Coming up next: Presidents who are even worse.