LIFE

'Worst.President.Ever'? Haddonfield author knows

John Scanlon
For the Courier-Post
Robert Strauss reads from his book, 'Worst. President. Ever ' at Barnes & Noble in Cherry Hill earlier this fall.

Robert Strauss had time to kill before the lecture to plug his book, so he opened his wooden cigar box, a smile in his eyes, to share some presidential treasures that have been big in his life.

There’s a rumpled little trivia book, “Facts About the Presidents.” His pop gave it to him in the mid-1950s, when little Robert, almost 5, was flat on his back in a hospital, having parted ways with his tonsils.

QUIZ: Test your knowledge of the U.S. Constitution

He retrieves some inch-tall plastic statues of American presidents. The statues — Washington to Eisenhower — also came from his dad, a history buff eager to impart his passion to his baseball-crazy son.

Ah, but another gift had come to Strauss this very day, a token from a program coordinator at the Kelly Writers House on the University of Pennsylvania campus, where Strauss, now 65, had given a presentation just hours earlier.

“Look at this  . . . a James Buchanan Pez candy dispenser!” he says with delight.

The Haddonfield author isn’t a President Buchanan fan.

Remember J.B.? The guy left one heck of a Civil War mess for Abe Lincoln.

Strauss writes about him in his new book. The title isn’t flattering.

“Worst. President. Ever.”

'Worst.President.Ever' by Robert Strauss hits at time where presidential politics are an ever-present topic.

“There have really been just three books about Buchanan. That’s not many over 100-and-some years,” Strauss says. “I’m not a historian. I wanted to get into these other sidebars. Was he gay? How and why do we rate the presidents? There’s an interesting history to campaign songs. As for Buchanan, how does a competent man become such a lousy president?”

Strauss isn’t the first to diss Buchanan.

History has not been kind to J.B., the nation’s 15th president, a lifelong bachelor, a lawyer from Lancaster and Pennsylvania’s only chief executive, for he has been a common cellar-dweller over the decades — worse than Grant, Harding and Hoover, worse than Nixon and the father-and-son Bushes — in polls of historians who have rated presidents on achievements, failures and historical legacies.

It disappoints Strauss that Buchanan wasn’t better. The guy had a killer resume. A Pennsylvania lawmaker in the nation’s House and Senate. President James Polk’s secretary of state. President Andrew Jackson’s minister to Russia. A powerhouse politician.

“But he makes all these bad decisions. And yet he’s the most experienced of any president, even if we count Hillary Clinton,” Strauss says. “For Buchanan, it was how do you get things done in the most unobtrusive way? He was always waffling.”

That’s the historical rap on J.B. Wishy-washy and indifferent. Ambivalent. He was a party animal who could throw regal White House shindigs, and yet, behind his desk, he was a man of inaction, often leaving it to the states and their citizens to solve problems because of Buchanan’s belief that the Constitution defined presidents as administrators who should govern with restraint and respect state sovereignty.

Strauss has been talking up “Worst. President. Ever.” during a blitz of public lectures like the one that recently brought him to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. About 55 people in rows of folding chairs listened as Strauss, a slight man with wire-rimmed glasses and wispy hair, examined Buchanan in all his dithering glory — the Democrat’s defeat of John C. Fremont in the 1856 presidential election, his support of the Supreme Court’s nation-splitting Dred Scott decision that upheld slave ownership, his reluctance to thwart Southern secession in the waning weeks of his presidency.

James Buchanan served as president from 1857–1861, immediately prior to the Civil War.

Buchanan, of course, must take the criticism lying down. He has been in Lancaster’s Woodward Hill Cemetery since June 1, 1868, at age 77, respiratory failure, a dispirited fellow who’d left the White House six years earlier and gone home to death threats and angry people throwing rotten veggies at his door.

If you’re wondering, yes, this bothers Strauss. There was no need to throw rotten veggies.

“I feel sorry for all that,” he says during an interview. “But Buchanan certainly should have been better. He had so much experience. He knew so many people. He should have made more forthright and intelligent decisions.”

If time doesn’t heal all wounds, it certainly dulls our memories. We know the presidents of legend, but many others are hazy ghosts from our history books, the reason, perhaps, that some people leaving Strauss’ lecture were willing to go soft on Buchanan.

“We can certainly assess the presidents we’ve lived with. Beyond that, all we know is what we’ve read or heard,” says Philly resident Thomas Fenerty. “Maybe you have to look at other factors why some presidents fared better. What were the big issues of the day? How good were the people around them? How bipartisan was Congress? Perhaps some of these guys could have been better under different circumstances.”

What Diane Abramson takes from it all is that malfeasance, corruption and hanky-panky shook the White House long before chief execs like JFK and Nixon came on the scene.

“It’s interesting that you can go back generations and realize that, yeah, a number of these gentlemen had character flaws,” the Mount Laurel resident says. “They have good intentions. But it seems power definitely can corrupt.”

In his book, Strauss takes a lighthearted look at our national pastime of ranking presidents — through polls, debate or historical analysis — among the good, the bad and the ugly. So why do we feel the need to rate a bunch of dead guys who, for the most part, have been out of the public consciousness for ages?

“It’s a human trait to rank things. It’s a point of discussion,” he says. “Unless you advance your own thesis, it’s just something we like to do. Like baseball, for example. Who’s the best shortstop ever? You can rate presidents, but then you have to tell us why. So it becomes an interesting discussion.”

Robert Strauss enjoys discussing why we rank our presidents. Here, he talks during his book presentation of 'Worst.President.Ever "   at the Barnes & Noble in Cherry Hill.

Strauss — a former journalist whose career stops included Sports Illustrated, the Philadelphia Daily News and the Asbury Park Press — wrote his first book five years ago. “Daddy’s Little Goalie” offered his sentimental reflections as the father of two school athletes — his daughters Ella, now 25, and Sylvia, who’s 21.

So why write about James Buchanan?

Two reasons. He thought it’d be interesting to explore a presidential flameout. Which, in turn, had been fanned by his intrigue to learn about 15 years ago that most of Buchanan’s presidential papers are archived at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, just a block from The Sporting Club at the Bellevue.

Strauss, a sports nut, digresses momentarily to explain that he plays basketball there with friends. He has done it for years, arriving before sunrise, and still does, maybe three times a week.

About seven years ago he played against Philly boy Kevin Hart, the comedian/actor. But he didn’t know it was Kevin Hart. Strauss will tell you that the comedian takes better shots on the stage.

“Someone brought along a friend — he was the friend. The new guy was short. I was short. So I’m the one guarding him,” Strauss says. “Later on, one guy said, ‘Do you know who that is? He’s Kevin Hart.’ I didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t that famous then.”

Strauss’ fascination with presidential lore has inspired family road trips over the years. But his best memories, it seems, weren’t forged by the usual presidential stuff. A quill pen. An ornately crafted desk and chair. Drafts of history-making documents.

He totally loved Rutherford B. Hayes’ harpsichord. Strauss persuaded his wife Susan to tolerate a detour off the interstate for a quick visit to the 19th president’s estate in Fremont, Ohio.

The writer saw the bellows-driven harpsichord in the mansion’s music room. It mesmerized him.

The tour guide noticed.

“How’d this woman even know if I played the piano? She looked at me,” Strauss recalls, “and said, ‘Do you want to play it?’”

Sure, why not, he thought. Then it dawned on him. A song. He needed a song.

“The only thing I could think of,” he says, “was ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’ ”

Robert Strauss talks during his book presentation 'Worst.President.Ever,'  at the Barnes & Noble in Cherry Hill.

The interesting thing about Strauss is that he doesn’t ooze the vitriol and rants about presidential ineptitude that he explores in his book. He is remarkably calm in the eye of the relentless Clinton-Trump storm that has the nation in a frenzy.

Strauss said he doubts that history will judge Donald Trump as an instigator of profound change to our presidential process, but will simply note him as an asterisk to a bizarre campaign season.

Craziest. Election. Ever.

“Trump’s an idiot who is probably going to lose. But I don’t know that he’s evil,” Strauss says. “He’ll probably need guards for the rest of his life. People are nutty. But all this will eventually calm down. A year from now, if I saw him on the street, I’d have my picture taken with Trump.”

Maybe he’ll even find a Trump Pez dispenser.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

“Worst. President. Ever.” Is published by Lyons Press and is available at Barnes & Noble stores or at amazon.com