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Worst. President. Ever: James Buchanan, The POTUS Rating Game, And The Legacy Of The Least Of The Lesser Presidents by Robert Strauss is a biography of the 15th President, examining his legacy, and other Presidents who might be worthy of this dubious title. Mr. Strauss is an educator, and was a reporter for Sports Illustrated, a writer, producers, and has over 1,000 published stories in prominent publications.

I was introduced to the book Worst. President. Ever by Robert Strauss while visiting James Buchanan’s home, Wheatland, in Lancaster, PA. Much like the author, I enjoy visiting presidential homes (and obviously The Simpsons) and this one was a short driving distance for us.

It took me awhile to pick up the book, but I’m glad I did. This is not your usual history book, it’s full of wit and charm, where the author attempts to rate other presidents, and gives his reasoning at to their placements. The light tone, however, does not replace substance.

I didn’t realize the how qualified James Buchanan was to be president before he took office. His career included being a congressman of both houses to his home state of PA, a minister to Russia under Andrew Jackson’s administration (whom the author compares to a mob boss), ambassador to the Court of St. James, and other accomplishments, not the least being electable.

One of the main reasons Buchanan is considered the “worst president ever” is his support, and manipulation behind the scenes to the Dred Scott Decisions (1857), where it was decided that African Americans must obey the law but are not protected by it. The case is also made, that Buchanan was a consequential actor in getting Abraham Lincoln elected, since he didn’t support Stephen A. Douglas and fractured the Democrat Party, giving Lincoln a path to victory.

The author goes on many tangents and breaks the timeline often. Nevertheless, its an interesting book which quotes liberally from other biographies.

James Buchanan is not portrayed as a monster in this book, nor even as a bad administrator. He was arrogant indecisive and unwilling to listen to advice. He was a very capable, a civil gentleman, excellent lawyer, people person, and active in his community. He wasn’t gay as many say but was heartbroken when, Ann Coleman, the love of his life committed suicide. With all his bureaucratic experience, however, he had no idea how to lead and blew it when it came to saving the union.

Which is why he is known as the Worst. President. Ever! ( )

Enjoyable history of the "least of our lesser presidents" - complete with modern-day commentary detours that help address Buchanan's legacy and the obsession to rank our presidents.

Recommended for presidential history lovers, those interested in the run-up to the Civil War, and any dyed-in-the-wool-but-still-realistic Buchananites from Lancaster interested in their native son. ( )

"Worst President Ever" is an intriguing title, but I have a hunch that the same title will be used by other authors over the next few decades, but in reference to one of our more recent Presidents instead of James Buchanan. The point is, determining the rank of Presidents is quite a subjective task. In recent times, many have felt that the title of "worst President ever" could be attributed to Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Bush, Obama, and I think it's safe to say, our current President will eventually garner quite a few votes too.
Over time, judgement regarding a President's success or failure tends to change, but more than enough time has passed for historians to have settled on Buchanan's ranking. And even if some believe he wasn't the worst, he generally does rank among the lowest. Robert Strauss makes his case as to why he believes that Buchanan was the "worst ever", although the strength of some of his arguments weren't overwhelmingly convincing to me.
Nonetheless, the book does identify a number of Buchanan's shortcomings, and gives a good biographical description of our 15th President, and a brief history of other significant politicians of the era. And credit Strauss for choosing a catchy title for the book. I'm sure others, like myself, probably wouldn't have picked up this book if it was simply titled as a biography of our 15th President. ( )

The United States fell apart under James Buchanan, the president before Abe Lincoln. It would be hard for a president to do worse than to start a Civil War. Yet his effort to heal the nation's blue-gray divide involved some Supreme Court log-rolling in the Dred Scott case. What could possibly go wrong?

There's not much here on the antebellum South, John Brown's slave revolt, the Panic of 1857 or most other events that did not go Buchanan's way. Still, young adults or casual history readers should appreciate this thumbnail sketch of Buchanan's resume (Senator, Secretary of State--more Clinton than Trump) and musings about how a feckless leader can make things go South. We may pass this way again.

Was James Buchanan the worst president ever? (I'm sorry – I refuse to copy the title's punctuation.) Maybe he was. Maybe not. I'm not sure this author is persuasive enough to make me agree with him.

Part of it is that he takes large chunks of a not-very-long book into discussion of topics that have nothing whatever to do with Buchanan or his fitness, such as a long chunk about a quarter of the way in about how he became interested in presidents in general and Buchanan in particular. Because Strauss loved sports statistics, you see, his father gave him a book about presidential trivia. Wait, what - ? (Also, if I were his daughter Sylvia, I am not sure I'd speak to him for quite a while after reading this. Sylvia does not come off as a very appealing person. Who knows – maybe Strauss used the same gimmick as William Goldman did in The Princess Bride and the daughter was fictional.) The beginning of the presidency in question doesn't come until the sixty percent mark; the first 60% of the book is spent on the history of slavery and the country and the previous fourteen presidents. Oh, and the first sixty-odd years of Buchanan's life. It seems to be a symptom of the fact that there just isn't that much info about the man; in order to flesh out an entire book it had to cover him from birth, however irrelevant his childhood might be to how good or bad his presidency was.) There's a lot of what really feels like padding; without much effort, this book could have been trimmed of 100 pages. Or cut in half.

Also padding-like is the relentless repetition. Treating chronology with blithe disregard, the author loops back around and around to the Dred Scott Decision, or the death of Ann Coleman (the beloved of the young Buchanan), or the death of Pierce's son, or that revenue cutter named after Harriet Lane, or Harper's Ferry…

Another problem I had with the book is that he leans, very heavily, on the few previous biographers there are out there, quoting from them liberally. It's to be expected, I suppose, given how little there is about Buchanan out there, but it happens often enough that it begins to feel like simple regurgitation. It's pretty funny when he disparages one biographer's ability to "present an engaging story".

And really, I don't think the popularity of a president's first name is exactly relevant when trying to determine the best or worst. It's not like "Abraham" has been one of the top hundred baby names over the past hundred years (I checked).

The writing … This might sound hypocritical, given that I have a decent vocabulary and like to use it when I perhaps don't really need to, but I think I know when to stop. I truly, sincerely hope I've never been guilty of a pompous sentence like "My contrarian antennae had been raised to their acme." Things like "Litchfield, a town nearby Yale" are not only awkward but inaccurate; New Haven is over an hour from Litchfield. The Masons are referred to as "a somewhat secretive organization", which is like saying Pulp Fiction is somewhat profane. I've never understood "horse riders". And it seemed like a whole lot of sentences featured a minimum of three or four commas. (I'm sorry, I have to use one more quote, which is both a great example of this and also of yet another thing that was reiterated over and over: "When it became clear, though, that eventually, with all the westward expansion, the South would turn from an equal section to a minority one, abolitionists, who had just been a nuisance, started really bothering Southerners." Seven commas.) Sometimes there are dashes. I'm not supposed to use quotes from the advance copy, so I'll stop there, but I've gotten in the habit of putting one note on particularly odd or off passages when I highlight them on the Kindle: "wut?" There were a lot of "wuts" in this book.

One more thing that left me a bit gobsmacked was a quote from a former university history professor that "They certainly didn’t have the word ‘gay’ back then" … Um. They kinda did. It had a different primary definition "back then". The author ponders how, although there is conjecture that Buchanan was homosexual, he was never rumored in his own time to be dating another man. How surprising.

He compares Thomas Hart Benton's daughter to Kris Kardashian. I … *sigh*

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. ( )