Day: December 3, 2006

WaPo Editorial: ‘He’s the Worst Ever’

Jon Ponder

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.

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.
— Eric Foner

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?“

Pahrump, Nev.: El Lugar Bueno ser Detenido

Trish

The town of Pahrump, Nev. is bracing for a crime wave after passing ordinances meant to show foreigners who’s boss.

Although Pahrump experienced a 32 percent drop in criminal activity in recent years (more about this in a minute), that was before so much stuff became illegal.

The ACLU will probably take legal action against the town. “People are nuts out there, totally nuts.”

First, there’s flying flags. Anyone who flies another country’s flag — say, just as a random example, Mexico’s — above an American flag, or worse yet, all by itself without an American flag, will get a $50 fine and 30 hours of community service.

Then there’s English. It’s now the official language of Pahrump, so don’t even think about speaking something else like — oh, off the top of my head — Spanish.

Finally, illegal immigrants will henceforth be denied benefits from the town. Which is kind of a hypothetical denial anyway.

“We don’t have any” benefits, town manager David Richards says. “If we ever have any, they’ll be denied to illegal immigrants.”

Pahrump is having a kind of time-delayed reaction to those uppity immigrants who made their presence known last spring.

The ordinance’s sponsor, Michael Miraglia, a retired Illinois state worker, said the flag restriction was a reaction to nationwide demonstrations in May against a crackdown on illegal immigration. He said he didn’t like seeing protesters waving Mexican flags and demanding immigrants not go to work that day.

“In Pahrump, we had Mexican restaurants closed that day,” he complained. “Only one restaurant stayed open.”

Well then, you can understand the outrage. It was probably a chain restaurant like Chili’s or Taco Bell. I’d pass a law too, I guess, but the American Civil Liberties Union is being a party pooper.

[Nevada board member Lisa] Rasmussen said the ACLU would probably take legal action against the town.

“People are nuts out there,” she says. “Totally nuts.”

Maybe so, but we at Pensito Review have a soft spot in our hearts for Pahrump. The town, about 60 miles closer to L.A. than Las Vegas is, arrested one Jon Ponder last year for robbing the Bank of America. Don’t worry, Buck and I made sure our Jon Ponder had an airtight alibi. Still, we’re keeping an eye on the town, just in case.

On This Date – December 3

Jon Ponder
  • 2002 – Thousands of personnel files released under a court order showed that the Archdiocese of Boston went to great lengths to hide priests accused of abuse, including clergy who allegedly snorted cocaine and had sex with girls aspiring to be nuns. [NYT]
  • 1964 – Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students stormed the administration building and staged a massive sit-in. [NYT]
  • 1948 – The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm. [NYT]
  • 1828 – Andrew Jackson was elected the seventh president of the United States. [NYT]