The question really began to be asked repeatedly two years ago. Having the question asked while still in office and half a term to go is damning enough. Certainly having so many scholars of the subject weighing in now implies there is no doubt history will find W. at the shallow end of the Presidential pool. But is he the worst? Yup, and I’m going to tell you why.
Point 1: Activism
We begin with what really has defined a ‘worst’ President up to this point according to U.S. News and World Report; activism, or lack there of to be more specific. Jay Tolson of USN&WR, commenting on the study he did into the worst Presidents in history, said “most of the failed presidencies were marked by a lack of activism.” Up to this point Harding was probably the prime culprit in doing nothing, but we’ll address him later. Two other less than active Presidents consistently voted to the bottom are James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. These two bums bookend the Civil War and arguably the most remarkable of all Presidents in Lincoln. Both had their fates sealed by the Civil War, Buchanan for using the Constitution as a shield and allowing the South to secede and Johnson for making a mess of Reconstruction and seemingly doing everything in his power to make sure former slaves received no rights. What makes Bush so uniquely terrible is that unlike Buchanan or Johnson, Bush was actually quite active, when he was around. Duhbya (as I will refer to him many, many more times) was handed a fervently unified nation via the 9/11 tragedy. He went on vacation, ignored a memo or two and came back to a country that was as pro-America as it had been since the Cold War. Bush, acting as best he could, declared a “War on Terror”. This was about as useful as declaring a “War on Anger”, or a “War on Drugs”(oops, we did that didn’t we). Nevertheless, with our fists in the air and “USA!” being chanted across the country Bush set out to get the "evil-doers"in Afghanistan, Iraq. Afghanistan is in Iraq right? Duhbya was so successful in his war activism that he was able to declare ‘Mission Accomplished’ on May 1, 2003, less than two months after it began. Wow, that is some stellar work George! One problem; it’s November 21, 2008 and “major operations” persist. By the time 2004 rolled around Duh-bya had created a different kind of civil war, the election (But we’ll delve into elections later). The first four years of the Bush administration had seen unification fall into their laps and it took less than three years to kill it. The truly stunning part about this division was the central issue causing the rift was Bush. People were fighting over Bush! It wasn’t pro-Kerry versus pro-Bush, it was pro-Bush versus anti-Bush. Through his own activism, Duhbya materialized as his own national partition. Activism and a resulting divide certainly gives Bush a leg up on the competition.
Point 2: War
There is probably no single common determining factor as significant to the success or failure of a presidency as war. Look at almost any list of the best and worst and you will find a war somewhere in the neighborhood of their tenures. Washington, for example, was so popular after the Revolutionary War that he was voted in unanimously. Lincoln is an icon thanks to his handling of the Civil War. A saving grace keeping Nixon from the very bottom is that slowly, but surely he took us out of Vietnam when LBJ could not. Looking at the very bottom of the barrel of any list of the worst Presidents you will usually find a handful that played a role in the beginning or aftermath of the Civil War; the aforementioned Buchanan and Andrew Johnson along with Pierce, Tyler, Fillmore and even Grant. What makes Duhbya’s time in office so remarkably bad is that he has presided over and failed in two actual wars and one war of perception – The War on Terror - all at the same time. Even more incredible is that Bush essentially re-wrote the rulebook in order to start the war he wanted and still failed. The Bush Doctrine allowed for the invasion of any nation that either ideologically dislikes democracy or happens to harbor anyone that dislikes democracy. Somewhere amidst the cobwebs in the Crawford Kid’s brain he decided preventing war was possible through war (I just got nauseous writing that). Must have been something he learned in the Texas Air National Guard. As of right now the United States is seven years into the War on Terror/Get Lucky and Find Osama and five years plus in Iraq. So far we have lost thousands of soldiers, killed and wrongfully held hundreds of thousands of civilians, spent hundreds of billions of dollars and…well that’s pretty much it. Waging two wars that have no real end in sight, spanning both of his terms earns Duhbya the worst war President bid.
Point 3: Scandal and Corruption
All right so who are we kidding? Corruption and politics get the class superlative for “Best Friends”. They are inseparable to say the least and no presidency has gone by without at least a little bit of it. As for the kings of fraud and sleaze we have more than a few. As far as administrations go those most shrouded in corruption and scandal are typically Nixon, Harding, Grant, Clinton and our boy Duh-bya. Harding is probably the granddaddy of them all because the corruption and scandals surrounding him were both personal and political. Harding basically played poker and slept with women not named Mrs. Harding while his appointed officials committed about every political crime in the book. Grant, although not terribly corrupt himself, sat back and let his buddies exploit the power he gave them. Nixon, of course, had Watergate and Clinton, of course, had an intern. We should not overlook John Q. Adams and the “Corrupt Bargain”. This election scandal put Adams in office, despite losing the popular vote, in exchange for Henry Clay (second runner-up) being named Secretary of State (at the time considered the last step before becoming President). Especially uncouraging about the Bush administration is not only the amount of corruption but also how many times they got caught. From the very get go the scandal that was the 2000 election should have warned us this guy was not who we wanted running the show. I firmly believe at least the Florida election was rigged and if you don’t buy it check out HBO’s Hacking Democracy. I don’t care who you are you can’t explain away a Florida county reporting -16,000 votes for Gore. The only explanation is that the Bush folk misjudged the number of votes they thought Gore would get when they fudged the memory cards prior to the voting. From there the fun and games continued right in the public’s face; Iraq as a pre-determined agenda point, invisible WMDs, Halliburton, stealing Ohio in 2004, Katrina and FEMA, The Patriot Act, etc. Speaking to the 9/11 Commission only behind closed doors and editing out whatever he chose was a particularly sleazy move as well. Over and over and over these things popped up in real time, they couldn’t hide it. A sad commentary to be sure, but truth be told the Bush administration was so bad it even sucked at being corrupt.
Point 4: Qualifications and Perspective
Well if English is a qualification than Bush is a no brainer, almost literally. Who is actually the least qualified is hard to determine. Taylor pretty much wanted nothing to do with the Presidency and appeared the least presidential. H ended up accepting the nomination and won. Taylor's early demise shorts our ability to judge if he was actually worthy of the office. Harding again comes into the mix as a frontrunner in this category. His being in the lead is mostly because he openly admitted he was not qualified to be President and shouldn’t have run in the first place. Like Harding, Bush had no business running for President and did so anyway. Unlike Harding, Bush will never admit he had no business being President because he thinks God selected him for the job. By the way George, feeling that the Almighty is speaking directly through you is not a qualification to be President either. What makes George the least qualified is that he never excelled at anything. Sure he went to Yale and Harvard, but that is only to say he went. His business ventures failed, he never brought his baseball team anywhere, etc. Oddly enough it is Bush’s transparent ineptitude that has been his only constant.
As for perspective Duhbya is an easy worst. His perspective has been the same since he entered the office, his own. He has been unwilling to listen to anyone else feeling he has been doing the right thing all along. His inability to recognize his misguidance of the nation and more importantly the lack of owning up to it should be the stain that soils his legacy. To be that ineffective for eight years and yet continually think you are on the right track shows a level of incompetence unmatched in Presidential history.
Point 5: Crisis Management
Crises are really the ultimate test of any President. Handle them well and you’re destined for greatness i.e. Lincoln and FDR. Handle them poorly and you will find yourself at the bottom. Carter usually ends up towards the bottom because of the hostage crisis. Although ultimately it was his efforts that brought the hostages home safely it was too late and his fate was sealed. Hoover was an economy wiz kid that presided over the beginning of the Great Depression and had no way out. Bush had his first handling of a crisis filmed. When told we were under attack he sat for ten minutes in front of a room of grade school kids. Just sat there. He then sorta went after the “evil-doers” and as previously pointed out the head honcho is still out there. Then Katrina hit and our fearless leader headed to the scene to assess the damage…three days later. The benchmark failure of the Katrina disaster as it concerns Bush is that once again he was just sitting there when his under-qualified FEMA guy told him this was going to be huge. He just sat there. Bush should also be given credit for helping create our current financial crisis. When people who knew what they were doing used crazy words like recession and market instability Duhbya did the same thing, just sat there. He assured us that despite what experts may think “the economy is strong”…and then it collapsed. Good call. Poorly handle a terrorist attack plus have a hand in a financial meltdown plus being absent for a national disaster equals –drum roll- worst ever!
The Final Uncouragement
George W. Bush. To even type the name turns a small knot in my stomach. He is, quite frankly, the greatest embarrassment of a President we have ever had. Say what you will about Nixon, Clinton, and a handful of others, but no single leader made the United States look so much the fool as Duhbya. How dumb were we as a nation to vote him in eight years ago? Well to be fair we didn’t. However, that the second vote was even close and actually went his way made us look like idiots on a global scale. In any case this was our elected our leader, our key decision maker…and it was nauseating. The only comment I will accept from George on his way out would be “Sorry about all the mess folks, I really sucked at that.” Truth is he shouldn’t be given the time to speak, just kicked out the door. So there you go George, you are the first worst. Kinda like the sound a that, don’tcha?
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