Finding good in the worst president ever

Finding good in the worst president ever

Leading historians, professors, Nobel Prize laureates and even President Carter (who rarely denounces anyone) have all granted George W. Bush the title “worst president ever.” Even the Republican candidates who hope to succeed Bush are trying to distance and differentiate themselves from this president.

Surely GWB can’t be all bad. How could he be a worse president than Nixon, whose behind-the-scenes actions caused him to bail out prior to impeachment? Come to think of it, Nixon’s sins were in the arena of illegal surveillance – an activity in which GWB has engaged with gusto. Some say GWB makes Nixon look like a civil libertarian. One professional historian, responding to a survey by George Mason University’s History News Network, put it like this, “Indeed, Bush puts Nixon into a more favorable light. He has trashed the image and reputation of the United States throughout the world; he has offended many of our previously close allies; he has burdened future generations with incredible debt; he has created an unnecessary war to further his domestic political objectives; he has suborned the civil rights of our citizens; he has destroyed previous environmental efforts by government in favor of his coterie of exploiters; he has surrounded himself with a cabal ideological adventurers . . . .”

However, there have been no student protestors shot during this war, as happened at Kent State on Nixon’s watch. That may be because so few are protesting. Some experts say a lot more protest is warranted.

George A. Akerlof, Nobel Prize laureate for Economics, is one of those people. According to Akerlof, GWB’s economic policy is as irresponsible as his foreign policy and his environmental policy. Akerlof, who says positive things about the older Bush, sums up GWB’s economic policy as “a form of looting.” Akerlof says civil disobedience is in order for a president who overshadows Herbert Hoover (and his resulting Great Depression) in terms of bad economic policy.

So maybe George W. Bush is the worst president in modern history or even, say, the worst since the Civil War era. He could not possibly be worse than Andrew Johnson, who campaigned against the 14th Amendment and vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 – though there are many who also see racism behind Bush’s Katrina debacle. And surely GWB is a better president than Buchanan, who allowed the discord between the states to simmer to the point of no return. Yet Buchanan did not launch ill-conceived wars on nations half-way across the world with no winning strategy.

Grant, another notoriously corrupt president, did at least serve in the military. By contrast, GWB went AWOL from the National Guard, opening himself to charges of “chickenhawk” as he deploys more and more young people into hostile territory with no personal concept of the dangers they face. Neither Grant nor any other US president attempted to invade other countries without declaring war. No other US president ever sought to normalize torture.

But enough people are writing terrible things (and terribly true things) about GWB. I decided to write some nice things about the current presidency. After a few days pondering, I was able to come up with three positives.

First of all, he cannot run again. After a terribly long six and a half years, the end is in sight. GWB is on the way out. The rest of the world may laugh (or curse) at America for giving this man a second term. Mercifully, we are saved from a third term by the 22nd Amendment.

Another good thing about GWB is that even if he could run again, he could not be elected again. With the national deficit now mushrooming at over a billion a day, thousands of American deaths in Iraq after “mission accomplished,” and an Iraq body count in the hundreds of thousands, even Republicans have had their fill. Maybe they’re tired of the scandals and cover-ups, the mishandled funds, the lying officials, the military abuses, the outings and the firings. For a myriad of reasons, polls show that Americans are more dissatisfied with the presidency of George W. Bush than with any man who preceded him.

The third good thing is that by his deplorable actions, GWB has opened wide the White House door to whomever wins the Democratic nomination. In fact, GWB has made such a mess of the American presidency, one wonders if any Republican has an honest shot at the White House in 2008. Maybe the Republicans are just throwing this election. Perhaps no candidate of quality dares to pick up the soiled mantle of George W. Bush. That could be why the Republican Party is putting forth such a strange crop of odd-ball candidates that no true Conservative could vote for any one of them.