The president who failed — and the cabinet that abetted him

James Buchanan surrounded himself with yes-men

President James Buchanan and his cabinet. Left to right, Jacob Thompson (Secretary of the Interior), Lewis Cass (State), John B. Floyd (War), President Buchanan, Howell Cobb (Treasury), Isaac Toucey (Navy), Joseph Holt (Postmaster-General) and Jeremiah S. Black (Attorney-General). (Photo by Matthew Benjamin Brady.)

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, he surprised his defeated rivals for the 1860 presidential nomination by giving them key positions in his cabinet.

“The powerful competitors who had originally disdained Lincoln,” wrote Doris Kearns Goodwin, “became colleagues who helped him steer the country through its darkest days.” The resulting “team of rivals,” to use Goodwin’s label, helped Lincoln earn the informal title of America’s greatest president.

It is striking that in the four years before Lincoln demonstrated how to be a supremely effective president, James Buchanan showed the nation the damage an incompetent one could wreak.

Buchanan began by choosing his cabinet unw…