Best and Worst US Senators in History

Current office-holders excluded.

As an amateur student of the United States Senate, I wonder who the greatest senators and worst senators in history are likely to be?

It’s a little easier to determine the greatest senators if they have been out of power a long time. Back in 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy headed a committee that selected these “famous five” senators as the nation’s greatest:

• Henry Clay of Kentucky: Served in the Senate from 1831 until his death in 1852. A member of the Whig Party, he was “the Great Compromiser” who had a great ability to balance regional and national interests. He was largely credited with keeping the North and South together without civil war for many years despite their differences over slavery.

• John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, leading proponent of “states’ rights.” In 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy described him as a “forceful logician of state sovereignty” and a “masterful defender of the rights of a political minority against the dangers of an unchecked majority.”

• Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, who served in the Senate from 1827 to 1850, except for a two-year stint as Secretary of State. He championed the concept of a strong national government, and was a great orator.

• Robert Marion La Follette, a Republican from Wisconsin, was a leading progressive. He served in the Senate from 1906 until his death in 1925. He championed the regulatory reforms of Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson, and also more direct democracy, pushing the Seventeenth Amendment (1913), which provided for direct election of senators.

• Robert A. Taft, Republican of Ohio, served in the Senate from 1938 to 1947. He helped write the Labor Management Relations Act, which placed controls on labor unions and prohibited “closed shops,” meaning that all employees must be a member of a specified union as a precondition of employment.

In 1989, the Senate added to its list of greatest senators

• Robert Wagner, Democrat of New York, architect of the labor relations act, and

• Arthur Vandenburg, Republican of Michigan, who switched dramatically from isolationist to internationalist in early 1945.

Not surprisingly, these selections were themselves political, as they attempt to honor enduring political principles in American history. They pair a champion of states rights with a champion of a strong national government; a champion of the labor movement with a champion of freedom not to join a union. History, as the Senate would write it, honored a progressive champion of regulation, but not a libertarian believer in laissez faire, and an internationalist but not an isolationist.

A future list might honor: