James Buchanan: The Last of … The Only …

Mentioning Buchanan in the previous post led me to do a little reading about him.

Buchanan is distinguished (if that is the word) by being the last president or the only president who had several characteristics. It is rather surprising, for example that Pennsylvania, which has been one of the most populous states throughout our history, is the birthplace of only one president. Has the Keystone State been cursed forever by his incompetence?

Buchanan was, in addition, (apparently) the only gay president. His very close friend for many years was William Rufus King, who has the distinction of being (apparently) the only gay vice-president (King was VP for Franklin Pierce, Buchanan’s predecessor). Andrew Jackson, who never felt a need to be PC, referred to the couple as Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy.

Buchanan is the last Democrat to succeed (on his own) another Democrat as president, according to Wikipedia (Truman and LBJ both succeeded on the death of their predecessors). Let’s hope he retains that title for a while. I was more surprised by the statement that he was one of only two such cases, Van Buren being the other. That is true, I guess, if we insist on the specific label ‘Democrat’ – during the Jefferson-Madison-Monroe years, the party used the name Republican or Democratic-Republican. Republicans (as now defined) have had more successors – Grant was succeeded by Hayes (though only after a bunch of chicanery* on both sides) and Hayes by Garfield; TR was succeeded by Taft, Coolidge by Hoover, and Reagan by Bush.

* (Had Hayes not won the disputed election, Buchanan might not have been the last gay president. Hayes’s opponent, Samuel Tilden, is often said to have been gay, though there seems to less evidence than in Buchanan’s case).

Another ‘last of’ title that I hope Buchanan retains at least through 2017 is that he is the last former Secretary of State to become president. It is interesting that this office, which was definitely the stepping-stone to the White House in the country’s early days (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, and Van Buren, in addition to Buchanan, all had served as SoS) fell so completely out of fashion after Buchanan.