Going DOWN In History
You
used to have to
be one of the cool kids to get your picture on the cover of Rolling Stone. Sean Wilentz, in declaring and explaining why our Pres-Nit-Wit is simply the worst of all time cites polling data from historians who judge the Bush Administration as a "failed presidency" by an 81% margin -- and that was before Katrina, before Libby's indictment, before we knew the "Decider" was a one-man declassifying machine, before Harriet Meiers, before Iraq fell apart despite three elections, before the Mutiny of the Generals.
Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.Reading history, you cannot fail to come across something you didn't know, often poignantly applicable to current affairs. For instance, I would love to see a young Republican Congressman say the President is, "a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man" and denounced the war as "from beginning to end, the sheerest deception," right from the floor of the House of Representatives.
The Congressman? Abraham Lincoln.
(Hat Tip Atrios. There's more after the break.)
There's plenty of food for thought in the piece, and even chuckles; like this aside that not only will personnel changes in the White House probably do nothing to reverse Bush's fortunes, but that a major overhaul is unlikely "short of indictments."
It truly is a remarkable piece, covering quagmires and democrat demonization, indifference to science and domestic affairs, disastrous economic policies, faith-based partisanship, scandals, and most notable how history will certainly condemn the president for standing the Constitution on it's head.
Bush seems to think that, since 9/11, he has been placed, by the grace of God, in the same kind of situation Lincoln faced. But Lincoln, under pressure of daily combat on American soil against fellow Americans, did not operate in secret, as Bush has. He did not claim, as Bush has, that his emergency actions were wholly regular and constitutional as well as necessary; Lincoln sought and received Congressional authorization for his suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. Nor did Lincoln act under the amorphous cover of a "war on terror" -- a war against a tactic, not a specific nation or political entity, which could last as long as any president deems the tactic a threat to national security. Lincoln's exceptional measures were intended to survive only as long as the Confederacy was in rebellion. Bush's could be extended indefinitely, as the president sees fit, permanently endangering rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution to the citizenry.Naturally, this is where I start mumbling that this all should come to no surprise since the draft dodger in the Oval Office had less government experience or education than any non-war-hero who ever was elected to the job. But seriously, I really didn't expect him to be an completely unmitigated disaster.
The only thing that gives me solace about the fact that Bush still has over a thousand days left to screw us over is that the irony of his ineptness will certainly discredit his "alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution" for all time.
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Categories: George W. Bush
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Interesting that this week the cover of Maclean's (Canada's news magazine) was a photo of Bush with the caption "The Worst President in 100 Years?"
I bought a copy.
Posted by: double-plus-ungood![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.rubyan.com/politics/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 20, 2006 12:47 PM
Without question. It's only when you start comparisons to Buchanan, A.Johnson, and Grant does this guy's failures seem remotely debatable.
For 20th century POTUS's, Harding, Nixon and Reagan had serious corruption at the top. And of course there was the Clinon witch-hunt.
They all had policies that seemed wrong-headed to their opposition, but never was such corruption married to absolute incompetence on the level we see today.
Harding's insider scandals only came to light after his death, and much of them did not implicate him directly except for his hands-off approach to managing the country. Unlike today's POTUS, he had a deep respect for separation of powers and the respective roles set out for the three branches of government.
Harding's sex scandal rivaled Clinton's, the pocket lining by his associates are legendary, his speaking style as bad as Shrub's, and allegations of racism permeate the history of his tenure.
Reagan had 29 people from his administration indicted but you'd get into a serious debate whether he was worse than Clinton who gave us surplus budgets, peace and a rolling economy with no indictments, just a blow-job. Go figure.
But as a Cold-Warrior, Reagan could at least give us the illusion that he not only believed his rhetoric, but he had people in place that could get the job done. Not so today.
Nixon was a true crook, but he did stop the war, went to China, and got the Soviets to sit down at the table.
Bush is a president with absolutely no redeeming qualities unless you're a rich Christian fundamentalists and your only concern are tax cuts for corporations and a return to Cromwell's puritan ethic.
It's a close call against Harding, but I think the body count attributable to Bush tips the balance as worse than Harding, who was certainly worse than all that came after. Only Buchanan, who most blame for the Civil War, gets as close, but didn't combine the corruption.
If Bush were involved in an extra-marital affair, he would be the hands-down winner with the hat-trick, but that is the most trivial of criteria for judging failure.
Posted by: Mark Adams![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.rubyan.com/politics/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 20, 2006 02:15 PM