WORST PRESIDENT EVER

WHILE GEORGE BUSH famously has said history will be the judge of his record and we will all be dead by the time judgment is made, bloggers a la izquierda, pundits of the cynical sort and the left leaning regularly call him the worst president ever.  Still it comes as some surprise to see that line in a Richard Reeves Yahoo headline with fifty socialists communists damn pinkos historians agreeing.  Or maybe not.

I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.
There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.
This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:
# He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
# He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
# He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
# He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
# He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (
Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
# He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
# He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
# He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.

PERHAPS BUSH’S BEST MOVE would be to be impeached.  On the one hand he would no longer be President, but Cheney who already is President could take the official title of Worst President Ever. 

TASTY TREATS NTodd has more

Comments

[blogenfreude]

If Bush goes, I would be you that Cheney could take the title even with only 2 years to fuck things up. Just sayin' ...

[Kelso]

Yeah. Kelso concurs. You'd need the 3-horse entry of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover to get close. They fucked up the economy way worse and law-enforcement and blue-noses had greater control (see Volstead Act for details) but Kelso dinnae think as many killed and maimed for no reason.

Most underrated presidents: Gerald Ford (look at those Supreme Court nominees and that policy of social justice -- no lie, Alexander Cockburn has proved this to a fare-the-well) and George Bush, the father. Panama was bad as was Iraq I, but he did the heavy lifting on the economy that set it up for Clinton to have such a successful presidency.

Other than Arthur, Buchanan, the Current Monkey, Hayes, A. Johnson, McKinley, and Taft, the US has been pretty good about picking presidents. Gee whiz, next to George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan was (1) bright (2) liberal (3) a dignified and qualified holder of the office and Nixon was crazy but very intelligent and creative.

Fair enough, Kelso will go along with The Heretik. For one administration, W's has been the worst by far. Jefferson and FDR probably the best.