The other night, almost by accident, I happened to come upon a podcast by Billy O’Reilly. As many of you will recall, years ago the Bill O’Reilly Show used to be the front runner on Fox News. In O’Reilly’s Talking Points, he continually referenced Joe Biden as the ‘2nd worst President ever.’ I initially thought that he was implying that Jimmy Carter was the worst President ever despite the fact that in my own mind, Joe Biden is turning out to be much worse than Carter ever was. However, it turned out that O’Reilly thought that the 15th President, James Buchanan, was the worst President ever.
(FYI, from Wikipedia:
Buchanan’s presidency coincided with a period of escalating tensions over slavery and the looming Civil War. Historians often criticize him for failing to take a strong stance that could have prevented the war, instead relying on constitutional interpretations that favored the South.)
This ‘worst ever’ concept came to mind recently when I read about the ‘worst ever’ birth rate in the U.S.
From Daybreak Insider:
“Birth rates in the US have long been slipping, hitting a new low in 2023 with just under 3.6 million babies born that year. That’s about 76,000 less than 2022 and the lowest one-year tally since 1979 (New York Post).”
Could it be just more than coincidence that the lowest U.S birth rates have occurred during the tenure of two of the ‘worst ever’ Presidents? … with Carter in 1979, and Biden in 2023.
I wonder what the U.S. birth rate was during O’Reilly’s ‘worst ever’ President, James Buchanan?
Does the American public have an innate sense that having a baby might not be such a good idea when the sitting President is horrendous?
4/26/25