Worst President Ever: Bush Vs. Buchanan

Worst of the worst: Whether through gross negligence or malfeasance (or both, probably), President Bush has driven the country into a war that has caused the deaths and dismemberments of tens of thousands U.S. service personnel and innocent Iraqi babies, children and men and women – at a financial cost of $250 billion (that we know of). No other president has anything like this besmirchment on his record.

Now the assertion that Bush is the Worst President Ever has even started to trickle up into the mainstream media. Here is Richard Reeves on the subject:

The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record… 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:

WORST EVER
Tell us why you think President Bush is the worst – or nominate another president. Email us at News Desk.

• 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.

Reeves also compares the failed Bush presidency with the presidency of the man who, until now, was considered by many historians to be the worst president ever – James Buchanan:

Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have served in the highest office. A lawyer, a self-made man, Buchanan served with some distinction in the House, served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and secretary of state under President James K. Polk. He had a great deal to do with the United States becoming a continental nation — “Manifest Destiny,” war with Mexico, and all that. He was also ambassador to Great Britain and was offered a seat on the Supreme Court three separate times.

But he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.

Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. 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.

Here at Pensito Review, the assertion that President Bush is the worst ever has not been made without debate and discussion. PR editor Trish proposes that Andrew Jackson may have been an even worse president because, among other things, he ordered the genocide of thousands of Cherokee Indians.

Over the coming weeks, we will look at the record of Andrew Jackson, as well as those of other past presidents considered to be the worst ever – Rutherford Hayes and U.S. Grant, among others – to try to find a president worst than George W. Bush.

And we welcome your input. If you have a nominee for Worst President Ever, send the reasons why you think one of the other 42 presidents did a worse job than George W. Bush to newsdesk@pensitoreview.com.

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