12 Presidents Who Are Not On Mount Rushmore
Part one of a three part series
BY MARTIN H. LEVINSON

Presidents Harding, Hoover and Taylor.

We all know the basic facts concerning famous presidents like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. What about the lives of our lesserknown presidents? Among this group are the most dissolute president, the most maligned president, the president who might have stopped the Civil War and the one considered the worst president.

We present a dozen brief vignettes highlighting some curious facts about 12 of our nation's less exalted chief executives.

The Most Dissolute President: Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)

Warren G. Harding wasn't particularly interested in the presidency. He only enjoyed the office because it allowed him to pursue his true loves in life: gambling, drinking, and women.

Harding's first priority as president was to organize a weekly poker game that his whole cabinet was required to attend. At these games liquor was provided, even though Harding was a supporter of Prohibition. He also arranged to have his lover, Nan Britton, secretly meet him in the White House at night where the two would make love in a small closet next to the president's office. Harding's wife, who slept in a bedroom above the Oval Office, was not aware of the trysts.

Harding's presidency was marked by numerous scandals, caused mainly by friends who he appointed to highlevel government positions. By 1923, Harding was in despair. He decided to tour Alaska and suddenly became sick on his trip home. Stopping in San Francisco to rest, he died there on August 2, 1923 of a possible stroke. Mrs. Harding didn't allow an autopsy so nobody really knows what Harding died of. Some suspect she poisoned her husband after finding out about all the affairs that he had.

The Most Maligned President: Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)

Herbert Hoover is the most maligned president in U.S. history. Many blame him for the Great Depression, which is quite unfair as he actually set the foundations for President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies. However, Hoover wasn't a politician, he never ran for office before becoming president, and he didn't know how to reach out to the public to explain his policies. The average American just figured Hoover didn't care about people, so he was voted out of office.

But Herbert Hoover did care about people. He was a great humanitarian who not only organized relief efforts to Europe during and after World War I, he also became active following World War II when President Harry Truman called him back into service. Hoover was responsible for saving millions of Europeans from starvation.

Hoover, a self-made millionaire, did not take a salary when he became president and instead donated the money to charities. When the Great Depression hit in 1929 he implemented a number of programs to deal with it. Unfortunately, despite Hoover's efforts, the Great Depression got worse and his refusal to implement unemployment benefits because he believed that local governments could take care of unemployed citizens and the army's assault on a group of veterans who were demanding economic relief led to Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election.

Hoover stayed active with government and charitable organizations in retirement. In 1955 he gave up government work and in 1964 died at the age of 90. One of Hoover's last statements concerned the people who blamed him for the Great Depression. He said of them: "I outlived the bastards."

President Buchanan.

The President who Might Have Stopped the Civil War: Zachary

Taylor (1849-1850)

Zachary Taylor was a military leader of great renown. During his long army career, he fought Native Americans, the British and the Mexicans and was never defeated in battle, even though his enemies usually outnumbered him. By the end of the Mexican-American war in 1848, Taylor had become a national hero and the Whigs nominated him for the presidency.

President Taylor did his best to preserve the Union. He supported slavery in existing slave states, while at the same time he opposed expanding slavery into new states. This position led some Southern congressmen to threaten the president with secession if he didn't change his stance. Taylor would not be intimidated. He told the Southern leadership that if they seceded, he would personally lead the U.S. Army against them. That put an end to such bullying.

Taylor wanted to be president of all the people, and had he lived long enough to finish his term in office, the Civil War might have been avoided. (The presidents following Taylor- Millard Fillmore, a dedicated racist, Franklin Pierce, an alcoholic, and James Buchanan, who stood by while the Union was falling apart- were woefully inadequate to the task of stopping the conflict.) Unfortunately, on July 4, 1850 Taylor consumed some tainted cherries and frozen milk during Fourth of July festivities in the capital and died five days later. Vice President Fillmore became president and headed the country down the road to a civil war.

The Worst President: James Buchanan (1857-1861)

One of the best evaluations of U.S. Presidents was a 1999 CSPAN survey of 58 historians and other experts on American presidents who were asked to rank our nation's chief executives. The network also asked its viewers to rank the presidents. James Buchanan, our country's 15th president, came out at the bottom of both sets of rankings.

James Buchanan, the only unmarried president in U.S. history, served his country loyally and faithfully until he became America's chief executive. As a Northern Democrat, he personally opposed slavery (Buchanan disliked the institution of slavery so much that he bought slaves in Washington, D.C. and took them back to Pennsylvania to set them free), but he believed the Constitution allowed it, so he refused to do anything about the issue. Instead he supported the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which declared that slaves were property, not people.

When most Southern states seceded after Lincoln's victory in 1860, Buchanan stood by and did nothing, just waited for his term to end. He didn't believe that he had the Constitutional authority to prevent a state from leaving the Union. When Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House on March 4, 1861, Buchanan told him "Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland [Buchanan's home], you are a happy man indeed." Then he quickly bolted and left Lincoln with the problem of holding the country together.

For second installment see next week's edition of the Gazette.