Scholars rate the top 10 worst presidential mistakes

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- U.S. presidents have been blamed for some egregious errors.

But who has the worst blunder? President James Buchanan, for failing to avert the Civil War, according to a survey of presidential historians organized by the University of Louisville's McConnell Center.

Scholars who participated said Buchanan didn't do enough to oppose efforts by Southern states to secede from the Union before the Civil War.

The second worst mistake was Andrew Johnson's decision just after the Civil War to side with Southern whites and oppose improvements in justice for Southern blacks beyond abolishing slavery.

"We continue to pay" for Johnson's errors, wrote Michael Les Benedict, an Ohio State University history professor emeritus.

The rest of the top 10 blunders:

* 3: Lyndon Johnson earned the No. 3 spot by allowing the Vietnam War to intensify.

* 4: Woodrow Wilson's refusal to compromise on the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.

* 5: Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate cover-up.

* 6: James Madison's failure to keep the United States out of the War of 1812 with Britain.

* 7: Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807, a self-imposed prohibition on trade with Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.

* 8: John F. Kennedy allowing the Bay of Pigs Invasion that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

* 9: Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair, the effort to sell arms to Iran and use the money to finance an armed anti-communist group in Nicaragua.

* 10: Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky scandal.