I'm Mr. Beat
The United States has 100 senators. Two for every state.
and they each serve a term of six years.
The Senate collectively makes up half of Congress, the folks who make laws that apply to the whole country.
They represent the states, not the people.
The year I was born, the average age of a U.S. Senator was 53.
Today, while the average age of all Americans is my age, the average age of a Senator is 61.
They're getting older, man.
This dude here, is Bernie Sanders, a Senator representing Vermont, and polls say he is the most popular Senator in the country.
Polls say that this dude
Mitch McConnell, a Senator representing Kentucky, is the least popular Senator in the country.
Does that mean Bernie is the best Senator in the country and Mitch is the worst?
Absolutely not. I think?
But anyway, this got me thinking
What about all of American history? Who were the best Senators? Who were the worst Senators?
Let’s be negative first, shall we? Based on my research, here are the 10 worst Senators in American history.
And remember, of course, that this is just my measly opinion.
Also, before we get into this list, I didn’t include the senators like Bernie or Mitch who are currently in office or recently got out of office
because of our bias to automatically
hate politicians currently in office or who recently got out of office.
So, let's get right into it. How about a little corruption to start things off?
#10 James Simmons
Senator from Rhode Island from 1841 to 1847 and again from 1857 to 1862, Simmons got caught getting a contract for two Rhode Island rifle manufacturers in return for $20,000 in promissory notes.
So basically, he was bribed to help these two companies make lots of money from the U.S. government, which needed lots of rifles as it turns out since it was fighting the Confederate forces in the Civil War.
The reason why Simmons isn’t higher up on this list is because technically there wasn’t a law saying you couldn’t do this, although Congress promptly passed a law saying "you can't do that!"
#9 William Blount
Yeah that's how you pronounce his name.
Senator from Tennessee from 1796 to 1797, Blount was a Founding Father, and the only Senator on this list to actually sign the U.S. Constitution.
Originally from North Carolina, Blount was instrumental in opening up lands west of the Appalachians to settlement.
He bought up millions of acres out there himself, but his risky land investments caused him to get a lot of debt.
Due to this debt, he conspired with Britain to take over the Spanish-controlled Louisiana to try to raise the prices of his land.
Well, he didn’t get away with it. When Congress found out in 1797, he became the first Senator kicked out of the Senate and also the first federal official to get impeached.
Blount was arrested, but posted bail and went to Tennessee and never came back.
He never showed up to trial, and the feds eventually gave up trying to arrest him again.
#8 Joseph Burton
Aw man, this dude’s from my home state.
Senator from Kansas from 1901 to 1906, uh Burton had a little conflict of interest you could say.
He was getting paid for defending a company successfully against the United States government while he was Senator.
Eventually, he was found guilty of public corruption, which means he was misusing the power he had as Senator for private gain.
Burton became the first member of the Senate to actually be convicted of a crime.
Now, does that mean other Senators weren’t doing crap like this before this?
Of course not, but he was the first one to get caught.
#7 John Mitchell
Weird coincidence, Mitchell was Senator the same time as Burton.
He represented the state of Oregon from 1901 to 1905 and was all about Big Business and against most of the political reforms of the Populists.
The biggest reason why he’s on this list is because of his involvement in the Oregon land fraud scandal.
Yep, this was more public corruption. Mitchell abused his power, helping a client get patents to fraudulent land claims.
After being found guilty, he was sentenced to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine,
but he died soon after getting a tooth pulled. True story, bro.
#6 Harrison Williams
Senator from New Jersey from 1959 to 1982, Williams was a career politician who actually had quite a few accomplishments in his career.
Many of the social programs and public urban transit Americans take for granted today is because of him.
However, beginning in the 1980s, things went downhill fast for Williams.
He was convicted of bribery and conspiracy after the Abscam scandal, (that is hard to say. say that three times) a FBI-led sting operation that also took out several other politicians.
He resigned after the Senate was going to kick him out anyway, and was sentenced to 3 years in prison,
the first time in more than 80 years that a U.S. Senator had spent time in prison by the way.
#5 Bob Packwood
Sorry Oregon, here’s another one from your state. He represented it from 1969 to 1995.
I’ll try not to be too mean because he is still alive, however, he was mean, man.
Packwood was another career politician who did accomplish a lot while in Congress.
But that whole freaking time, he was consistently abusing his power by committing sexual misconduct.
The Senate Ethics Committee, which recommended his expulsion in 1995, reported that he made at least 18 “separate and unwanted and unwelcome sexual advances between 1969 and 1990.”
And he even wrote about it in his diary.
Packwood resigned before the Senate could kick him out. And of course, after he resigned he promptly became a lobbyist.
#4 Pat McCarran
Senator from Nevada from 1933 to 1954, McCarran is known as one of the few Democrats who was against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives.
Of course he was racist and xenophobic, but he also had anti-Semitic beliefs.
Oh, and he was a fan of fascists. He openly admired the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
He also was in bed with the oil industry.
Most infamously, he was a big reason the Second Red Scare happened.
He hated communism so much that he didn’t even care if he trampled right over civil liberties, sponsoring the paranoia-based Internal Security Act and establishing the Subversive Activities Control Board to start witch hunts targeting communists.
He was so bad, that Nevada representatives recently even called for the removal his statue that’s sitting in the National Statuary Hall Collection.
Yep, here’s one you have probably heard of... #3 Joseph McCarthy
Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 to 1957, McCarthy became the face of the Second Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
After three years of not doing much in the Senate, McCarthy all of a sudden became a household name in February 1950 when he claimed he had a list of members of communist spies and members of the Communist Party employed within the State Department.
Did he ever reveal that list to the public? No. Did he continue to throw out baseless allegations? Absolutely.
He stirred up so much communist hatred and paranoia in the United States that today we name it after him. It’s called McCarthyism.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget the Lavender Scare he also stirred up, which was another witch hunt that targeted homosexuals, causing them to lose their government jobs throughout the 1950s.
And later he helped turn socialism into a dirty word, too.
McCarthy is not known for policy or getting sweeping legislation passed. He’s known today for just causing mass hysteria.
Even the Senate had had enough of him so much that they censured him in 1954.
“Censured” just means they officially said “you did bad, stop it, we disapprove.”
And here’s one you probably HAVEN’T heard of. #2 Theodore Bilbo
Senator from Mississippi from 1935 to 1947 and poster boy for white supremacy and segregation in the South.
While most Senators throughout American history have been at least somewhat racist, Bilbo was a special kind of racist.
First of all, he was a member of the KKK, so there’s that.
He didn’t just hate African Americans. He hated communists, Jews, unions, and of course immigrants.
As governor of Mississippi, he did nothing as mobs lynched African Americans in the streets.
Also as governor, he tried to get a bunch of teachers fired and caused his state to almost go bankrupt.
Wait a second, why didn’t this dude make my Worst Governors video? Anyway, his ego was ridiculously big
and he always liked to be the center of attention, wearing bright, flashy suits and...no joke...always referring to himself in the third person.
And finally, after his re-election to the Senate in 1946, a group of African American World War II vets said they and several other blacks were not allowed to vote in the election.
But before the Senate could act on the charges, Bilbo died in his mansion.
And #1. It's a tie.
and if you saw my Worst Governors video, this one may not be much of a surprise.
These are all of the Senators who left the Union to join the Confederacy during the Civil War.
All of them declared allegiance to the Confederacy in the name of preserving the institution of slavery.
Maybe you CAN call them traitors. Regardless, they should have stuck with the Union.
So that’s it. The ten worst senators in American history.
I know I left a lot of bad senators off this list.
And maybe you disagree with this list.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead and tell me how wrong I am.
Also, I want to get a list going of (dis)honorable mentions. Get it? (Dis)honorable?
And I want to gather those and put them in the description of this video
and maybe pin a comment.
A special shout out to Ian for suggesting the topic of this video.
Ian and his mother are long time Patreon supporters.
Thank you so much guys.
It means the world.
Next week, I have another Patreon-requested video coming.
Get excited!
Thanks for watching.
Now how do I get out of here?
How did I even get here?
Why is it so warm outside?
Is this real?