Tag: Worst President Ever

Historian Eric Foner’s op-ed in the Washington Post today, “He’s the Worst Ever,” may be historic in its own right. It appears to be the first time a major daily newspaper, especially one so august as the Post, has pick up the “worst president ever” theme.

Never mind that Bush’s last place among presidents has been a topic of discussion in political websites like ours for months. (We launched our “Worst President Ever” topic in November 2005. Today it includes 274 articles.) And never mind that the Washington Post, with its proximity to the White House, should have spotted this historically bad presidency well before we mere citizen pundits did.

According to Foner, until recently, Nixon was every historian’s favorite bad president because of his compulsive shredding of the Constitution. But Foner says George W. Bush has outdone Tricky Dick:

Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court’s unprecedented rebukes of Bush’s policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.

One other president bears comparison to Bush: James K. Polk. Some historians admire him, in part because he made their job easier by keeping a detailed diary during his administration, which spanned the years of the Mexican-American War. But Polk should be remembered primarily for launching that unprovoked attack on Mexico and seizing one-third of its territory for the United States.

Lincoln, then a member of Congress from Illinois, condemned Polk for misleading Congress and the public about the cause of the war — an alleged Mexican incursion into the United States. Accepting the president’s right to attack another country “whenever he shall deem it necessary,” Lincoln observed, would make it impossible to “fix any limit” to his power to make war. Today, one wishes that the country had heeded Lincoln’s warning.

Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history.

Foner says historians also consider Franklin Pierce to be one of the worst presidents. Ironically, George W. Bush is a descendant of Pres. Pierce; the president’s mother is named Barbara Pierce Bush.

Related Reading: Rolling Stone had a front page story earlier this year titled, “The Worst President in History?“

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has learned that for the past four years the Bush Administration has been secretly tracking the personal data of millions of Americans who have traveled abroad.

Leahy also learned that the government has been sharing its citizens’ personal data with just about everyone but the citizens:

“It is simply incredible that the Bush administration is willing to share this sensitive information with foreign governments and even private employers, while refusing to allow U.S. citizens to see or challenge their own terror scores,” Leahy said. This system “highlights the danger of government use of technology to conduct widespread surveillance of our daily lives without proper safeguards for privacy.”

As Olbermann pointed out last night, it is outrageous that the program was kept secret from Democrats. The authoritarians have been unsurpervised for six years. Imagine what else they’re hiding.

A researcher in Connecticut has produced evidence that there is a link between strong support for Pres. Bush and psychosis. The study is not a joke, and the researcher, Christopher Lohse, describes himself as a “Reagan revolution fanatic.”

The study was produced as part of Lohse’s master’s degree research at Southern Connecticut State University:

The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study … found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush…

“Our study shows that psychotic patients prefer an authoritative leader,” Lohse says. “If your world is very mixed up, there’s something very comforting about someone telling you, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

And:

“Bush supporters had significantly less knowledge about current issues, government and politics than those who supported Kerry,” the study says.

Lohse says the trend isn’t unique to Bush: A 1977 study by Frumkin & Ibrahim found psychiatric patients preferred Nixon over McGovern in the 1972 election.

My personal experience listening to callers to C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” every morning on the “support Bush” line strongly confirms these findings.

Apples don’t fall far from the tree:

Amid a growing barrage of front-page headlines, U.S. embassy officials “strongly suggested” President Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, cut short their trip to Buenos Aires because of security issues, U.S. diplomatic and security sources tell ABC News.

But the girls have stayed on, celebrating their 25th birthday over the weekend and producing even more headlines about their activities…

Stories of the twins’ visit took on wild proportions in the Argentinean press. One tabloid headline had the young women running nude in the hallway of their hotel, a report the hotel staff denied to ABC News.

According to sources, the U.S. embassy encouraged the two girls to cut their stay short because the added attention was making their security very difficult.

But to the dismay and anger of some U.S. embassy and security staff, the girls stayed on.

Now we know the real reason Cheney is visiting the Saudis. He’s begging for millions for Bush’s presidential library.

The Worst President Ever will spend the rest of his time in office raising $500 million to build the most expensive presidential library ever constructed:

Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential “mega” donors … The rest of the cash will come from donors willing to pony up $25,000 to $5 million.

The library and think tank will be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

I couldn’t stifle a guffaw when I read that Dubya’s library will also include a “think tank.” Why would a president whose signature accomplishment has been suppressing dissent need a think tank? And does he know that “library” is not pronounced “lie-berry?”

The number of books this man has read could probably fit in a small sized storage bin, leaving one to wonder why on earth he needs a $500 million library.

The answer, of course, is that Bush and his team are out to create a false legacy of his presidency, and rewriting reality costs money. The exaggerated scale of this project smacks of historical revisionism on a level that would make Stalin blush — a gigantic Potemkin memorial (to mix Russian political analogies) to a 43rd U.S. presidency that never happened.

How will this presidential library deal with Pres. Bush’s extraordinary record of incompetence — including dividing the country before taking it to war, the losses in this unnecessary war of hundreds of thousands of lies and billions of taxpayer dollars, his apathy and incompetence in the face of the Katrina disaster, skyrocketing deficits and foreign debt, enabling polluters, flagrantly breaking laws on eavesdropping and turning the United States into a global pariah – -just for starters?

It won’t deal with them, of course. They’ll be swept under the rug.

This final project of his term in office is emblematic of the life and career of George W. Bush. He gained the presidency with little or no experience, preparation or even aptitude for governing. Six years later, he has made a colossal mess of things. So now — just as he did with his business failures along the way — he is calling on his wealthy friends and his father’s supporters to bail him out, this time to the tune of a half a billion dollars, which is an obscene amount of money to build a monument for a man with such meager talents and so few accomplishments.