Host welcome to the oah 2016 , and welcome to the plenary panel, worst president ever. I am claire potter, professor of history and director of the Digital Humanities Initiative at the new school and i want to let those in the audience, who are tweeting know that the tag for oah badpres and you might want to add the tag oah2016. The theme of the conference, as chosen by john butler is on leadership. As 2016 is a president ial election year, the Program Committee assembled a roundtable of scholars willing to talk about president ial leadership, what about its failures gather rather than about its excesses. This seems particularly timely juggernaut rolls forward. Just yesterday the clinton and Sanders Campaign engaged in a verbal sparring match about who is the most unqualified to be president. So things are getting interesting. The panel we have here today, all of these scholars have written about president s who were bad in their own special way. [laughter] did occur to me on the train coming up, that bad to whom may be in important qualifier for this panel. What did it mean to be a bad president . What counts as bad . How do we define a bad president . And specifically, who might have been the worst president ever . Our panelists are david greenberg, associate professor are you full professor now . Associate professor of history and journalism and media studies at rutgers university, new brunswick. He is the author about nixon, coolish and a wonderful book called the republic of spin, and inside history of the american presidency. Again, a timely moment. Good work, david. David is a longtime contributor to slate and now writes a history column for politico. To davids right, although not politically, is annette gordonreed. Charles wharton professor of american legal history at harvard law school, professor he of history in the History Department and carol hayes for professor of American History. She has published six books. A winner of numerous awards including the poor surprise in history and the National Book or for nonfiction. A leading and field, changing scholar, her most recent book is about Thomas Jefferson into the empire of imagination. They will be signing the book outside in the book exhibit after this theater. For those of you who got a program early, you may have would beean relents here, but he is somewhere else. Jacob weisberg has agreed to join us, which is really exciting. Jacob is a veteran journalist and Political Writer and currently chairman of the slate group. He is the author of a book about the bush tragedy, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2008. He cowrote in in uncertain world, which was published in 2003. His first book, in defense of , and his newest ronaldnd book about reagan, which is one of my candidates for worst president ever, was published in 2016. That is the order we will go in and we hope you all have your ideas for worst president ever. Lets begin with david. David thank you. It occurs to me that we all have written books for that american president series of calvin coolidge, Ronald Reagan and Andrew Johnson, so some of them can probably be in our mix today. It occurred to me as people are saying, right before, this whole panel could be rendered moot the next election. [laughter] we would be better to have this in 2017. As people saw my name on this and the question was, so, who is your choice . I should say, i really did not address the question that way. I mean, we can get to that and i can throw out a candidate, but i want to talk about is, what do we mean by worst . When do we mean by a bad president . Because i think when we think of great president s, the criteria are pretty clear, and we might quibble a little bit, but there is a very small number that probably all of us would put there at the very top, but you might call it the and a corona formulation. Anna karenina president , a lot of them are bad in many ways. But i want to look at what makes these the worst. There are, first of all the completely insignificant and forgettable president s, and as an historian of the 20th century, i am, like everyone else, i have trouble with all of the 19th century, which had the whiskers, which of the burnsides, which was which . Allmore could easily be candidate for the worse. I took the trouble to go to white house. Gov and this is what they said about Millard Fillmore there. Millard fillmore demonstrated that through methodical industry some confidence not a lot, some. He demonstrated that through methodical industry and some confidence, and uninspiring man could make the American Dream come true. This is on whitehouse. Gov, they should be building him up, i think. One kind of worst president is the ineffectual, the forgettable, the insignificant. There was a great been on the simpsons years ago, the forgotten president s. You will not see us on a dollars and cents. Millard fillmore. And William Henry harrison, i died in 40 days. Then we get to the president s who were bad in another way. Who faced crisis and did a terrible job. These are serious candidates for the worst that we should talk about. You know, herbert hoover, obviously comes to mind here, someone who, before his election, over, i have been talking about my book republic , and had this Great Campaign film in 1928 called master of emergency. He was seen as this wizard. During the mississippi flood of 1927, the worst Natural Disaster in American History until katrina, he was commerce secretary and was deputized in the film shows him pulling horses out of the river and feeding bedraggled children. But then he gets an emergency and doesnt do anything. He does a little bit with Reconstruction Finance Corporation toward the end, but largely seen on all accounts has, he could not rise to the challenge. It is interesting, having written about coolidge, he has a whole cult of conservative admirers, trickledown economics, Ronald Reagan put his portrait in the white house, but hoover in the conservatives also , so he has no fans at all. Another possibility and a comment about reagan suggested, what about president s who did a lot but in a direction we do not like . A lot of people do still see reagan this way. I think if we were to have held this conference 20 years ago, 20 5 years ago, probably a lot of would be saying Ronald Reagan. Liberalsow, even among who do not generally approve of the direction he took the country, it is hard to say he was the worst. He was reelected, he did accomplish a lot of his goals, and i at least m uncomfortable simply the worst label as a matter of my own political opposed toas historical judgments, if we can make that distinction. They be that is a neater distinction that is tenable but one that i would like to put out there. Another interesting figure, i do not think too many would put is the worst but people are certainly, his reputation as come down recently, is Andrew Jackson for his indian removal policy. Certainly that is something we look back on with shame and again, jacksont was someone who accomplished a tremendous amount, who transformed the nature of the american democracy. You really think this makes him the worst . Probably not. The final category, president s who do damage to the country in ways that Transcend Party and politics. What they did was really not about having policies that were too liberal or too conservative or took us to far in this direction or that, but were just power, andusive of this is where i do come back to Richard Nixon. When i wrote nixons shadow, my first book, there was a kind of rehabilitation of nixon in the air. Saying, look at these liberal policies on the domestic front. Look at detente. I think since the time that book came out, and i argued against that by the way, but i think of the time that book came out, that has really dissipated. What is now talked about, what nixon is remembered by young people, what they know, i am not a crook. Watergate. That is his lasting legacy. Whichs abuses of power, were deemed as such by a bipartisan majority, so unlike the clinton impeachment when the injured johnson impeachment even, this was not a power struggle between two sides. It was very goldwater and really riker and other republicans from left to right as well as democrats who wanted nixon to go. So, i attempted to say Richard Nixon is the worst but we are open to discussion. Annette . Annette i did think a little bit about who was the worse. I was asked to do a biography of timeshnson for the book series and it was something i never thought i would be doing. That whole area is important, but it is something that in its own ways, more heartbreaking than slavery. To think of people that are hopeful and at the same time having their hopes dashed. I did think about what it meant to be the worst president because every year i am part of a survey, they ask us to list people, and the year that i did johnson, the year that the book came out, he made it all the way to the worst. Buchanan had usually been at the ,ery bottom, but that was beginning was usually there but andrew snakes past him to think to take the top or bottom rung. I was to get a high you make this determination, and in some ways, the way david was speaking, buchanan i would say would be the worst, if you are thinking about someone rising to a particular challenge. He was a set of circumstances that were extremely difficult, and to say, well, you should have done this or you should have done that in a situation that seems almost intractable, what do youstible do . People say he did not act. But that seems to be a really tough situation. Hand, hadn the other people that were confident, who are willing to go forward with whom he could afford to the to just not have the serious flaw that he hated black people. Because he hated black people, he was not really willing to go along with people. You had a congress, people who would have worked with them, people that have a plan for reconstruction, a plan to go who could havee stopped some of the violence that was going on in the south against africanamericans, so you have on one hand, buchanan who is facing a crazy situation doing some ofe things who is supposed to do, but it is hard to think of what was supposed to happen in that timeframe. People might have offered some suggestions on how he couldve gotten out of it, and then you have Something Like johnson who could have done better. Because of his stubbornness, it is not just liking not just disliking white people, he did not take that way. He sent the country back considerably. A lot of the problems we have had to do with over the past decade were problems that may be we could not have overcome, but started to overcome if he had been better able to manage himself, to be larger than himself. That is what you want in a president. The good president , that is a characteristic, people who can rise to the occasion, step out of their own petty prejudices and realize there is something bigger than themselves. He could never do that. We can understand why. He was someone who worked his almostfrom nothing, someone working his way up from nothing who was illiterate until he was a late teenager, whose wife taught him to read in his early 20s, and he occupied basically every office that anybody could have, all the way up to the presidency. Said, iike that, who am right and i know i am right. That was a quote from him, and that is a template for a president to be, inflexible, who thinks they know it all. He is a candidate for one of the worst president s. Gohanan and johnson backandforth. It depends on what you are looking for. Someone who is a difficult situation and cannot figure out how to get out of it, and in hindsight, we have the benefit of hindsight and we can say, well, if you done this or tried that, but still im not comfortable with that idea. It you have another person who had something in hand, talented men, people who were helping end were there and willing to help them but you just would not accept the help. We will talk about the absolute worst, but those are my two candidates for the worst. When i people, reagan, do these surveys very often i would put reagan, as i recall, i stop doing them, but reagan in the top, not because i thought that he did the right thing, but he did do what he set out to do, and he made if movement and there were a number of people that went along with them, so in that sense he was effective as a president , so i would not cast him. I told the task was to think about, for the less, who had been an effective president , not my favorite people. He was not one of my favorite people, and i think what he accomplishes was extremely problematic. The modern people, some people might suggest bush. I think if sean were here, he. Robably wouldve said w she wrote a whole article about that. We wouldve known his answer already. That is the candidate that it is soon to tell. We do not know wholl be given credit 100 years ago, 50 years from now, it depends on how things turn out, but i feel comfortable talking about people from the 19th century. I would like to go back that far. Nixon, maybe not. Vietnam,nation, the paris with the peace talks and so forth, just some really unconscionable stuff. He is a modern person im must throw in the mix as well. I might throw in the mix as well. I am pleased and flattered to be considered a scholar by implication of being on this panel. I am really a political journalist but i have written something on contemporary history. I did argue, sort of, the proposition that a disastrous event that being invited to participate in this discussion, at the end of the bush presidency, the w bush participatingwas in intelligence squared debate in new york and i argue the affirmative of the proposition to resolve george w. Bush was the worst president in the last hundred years, did not really know buchanan and johnson, and on the other side were karl rove and bill kristol. [laughter] jacob on my side was a very elegant british journalist named Simon Jenkins who told me he poor thingbe a very to criticize an american president in his own country, and i thought, ok, i am out here on my own, and karl rove, true to form, argued the proposition not just the george w. Bush was not the worst president in the past hundred years, but he was in fact the best president of all time. Bill kristol took an attack and said, george bush may not have been a good president , but come on, he was not the worst, hoover, carver, neck said, and they actually won the vote nixon, and they actually won the vote. Thinkk that, when we about this whole question, first of all, we have to make knowledge acknowledged the parlor game, but it is a fun parlor game, listing the best in the worst, and you can do the same thing about baseball players. Part of the reason it has to be a parlor game and does not go beyond that, as you are making comparisons that are not really, they are sort of absurd in a way. How do you compare harding and the mexican war. I do think when people play it, at whatever level of seriousness, including surveys that annette was talking about that she stopped participating in, they are really thinking about the same qualities, the same issues, so when you think about great president s you are asking, did they have big accomplishments, did they create the National Parks . Are they create the new deal . Do they play a role in into the cold war . The list, the top of but embedded in that is often a political argument about what accomplishments we think are admirable. , there is the slightly different question of whether they had a big impact, for good or bad, whether they were consequence of. Consequential. I did an interview with barack obama in 2007 when he was just thinking about running for president any sort of talked about it with me before he sort of talking about it with a lot of other people, and he described eating in the washington hilton or they have that white house Correspondents Dinner every year and looking down this long row of blackandwhite photographs may have a different president s, and he said the question about running for president was about whether he could be one of the important ones, one of the consequential ones. He didnt want to run for president just to be president. Sure. Exactly. Lo and behold, he ended up running, but i think that is the chief debate, did a president change politics, society in a meaningful way . \ then there is the character and leadership question. Do weadmire his people, think they embody something significant about the national character, and that gets down to alities. Were they great writers like lincoln . T were they eloquent . Did they have large negative accomplishments . Those can be active or passive failures. Lbjthey escalate a war like , did they get drawn into a war . Did they fail to act in an economic crisis like hoover . Did they drop an atom bomb . Did they drop to atom bombs . In the historical service, i was looking at it, and it is interesting, the block that is the worst, if you look over time, fillmore, pierce, beginning, janssen buchanan, work cast in ways of preventing the civil war and dealing with the aftermath in a better way. It is a predictor of being , proximity to link it the number one indicator. [laughter] jacob the other side of that, did they not have, where the not consequential, did they not have a big impact . You can talk about president s who did not get reelected, ford, carter and James Garfield and william mckinley. It does some make you a bad president to get assassinated after 40 days, but it does not make you a good one, either. Lastly, to the person have bad character like nixon or Andrew Johnson, but people sometimes describe him in ways that make the case. I think to be in the running of thingresident, one of the is you have to have all three of those things, big accomplishments, consequential and you have to have strong personal qualities. To be one of the worst, you cannot have all three because you cannot do important bad things and be inconsequential. We have to sort of choose. Dismiss the inconsequential president as a different category. You could have an argume