Is George W. Bush the Worst President in American History?
A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine - formerly home of the party reptile neo-con P.J. O'Rourke - asks the question whether George W. Bush is the worse president in the history of the United States. The article purports to poll historians of the United States on the subject and it appears that a surprising number of them believe this may be the case.
This poses an intellectual problem to me. The closer events are temporally to the present, the more difficult it is for historians to maintain their objectivity. I can remember high school history teachers who railed against Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and university history professors who railed against Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush. The problem was - and many of them would have acknowledged this - they were not speaking as historians so much as political commentators.
Is George W. Bush the worst president in American history? Is he as bad as Nixon? Condoleeza Rice gives me the same intellectual chill that Henry Kissinger used to give my father. I have the feeling that I would enter a debating contest against either of them essentially unarmed. However, they are the exceptions and both Nixon and Bush have surrounded themselves with a generous number of dim bulb advisors (viz Pat Robertson for the former and Donald Rumsfeld for the latter).
Surely the more pertinent question is whether George W. Bush is a bad president. We cannot summon Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln back from the grave to assume the reigns of the administration, so comparing Bush to them is moot. I used to wonder if Bush is really just a good actor, like Reagan was (alright, not so much a good actor as an actor who played the President quite well). Perhaps his dumb, Texas-cousin routine was intended to conceal a finely-tuned and calculating mind from his political adversaries and foreign opponents.
If that was the case, he is trapped in the role of idiot now. I would have thought the best way to wear down European opposition to the war in Iraq would be to overawe the French and Germans with the wisdom of one's strategic vision. That, in turn, would build multilateral support to pressure Iran and North Korea into behaving themselves. This is not what has happened, and America has gone from owning the sympathy of the world on 12 September, 2001 to today being despised internationally like it was in 1973 at the height of the Vietnam debacle. Perhaps it is time to hang up the cowboy hat and start talking like a President.
Or perhaps that is beyond the capacity of the man who may well be the worst President in the history of the United States.
This poses an intellectual problem to me. The closer events are temporally to the present, the more difficult it is for historians to maintain their objectivity. I can remember high school history teachers who railed against Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and university history professors who railed against Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush. The problem was - and many of them would have acknowledged this - they were not speaking as historians so much as political commentators.
Is George W. Bush the worst president in American history? Is he as bad as Nixon? Condoleeza Rice gives me the same intellectual chill that Henry Kissinger used to give my father. I have the feeling that I would enter a debating contest against either of them essentially unarmed. However, they are the exceptions and both Nixon and Bush have surrounded themselves with a generous number of dim bulb advisors (viz Pat Robertson for the former and Donald Rumsfeld for the latter).
Surely the more pertinent question is whether George W. Bush is a bad president. We cannot summon Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln back from the grave to assume the reigns of the administration, so comparing Bush to them is moot. I used to wonder if Bush is really just a good actor, like Reagan was (alright, not so much a good actor as an actor who played the President quite well). Perhaps his dumb, Texas-cousin routine was intended to conceal a finely-tuned and calculating mind from his political adversaries and foreign opponents.
If that was the case, he is trapped in the role of idiot now. I would have thought the best way to wear down European opposition to the war in Iraq would be to overawe the French and Germans with the wisdom of one's strategic vision. That, in turn, would build multilateral support to pressure Iran and North Korea into behaving themselves. This is not what has happened, and America has gone from owning the sympathy of the world on 12 September, 2001 to today being despised internationally like it was in 1973 at the height of the Vietnam debacle. Perhaps it is time to hang up the cowboy hat and start talking like a President.
Or perhaps that is beyond the capacity of the man who may well be the worst President in the history of the United States.
posted by Rob Stewart | 3:20 PM
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