“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”
“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of area: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”
One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: “the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . . . . God willing, this will go down as the nadir of American politics.” Another classified Bush as “an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. He is not a conservative, nor a Christian, just an immoral man . . . .” Still another remarked that Bush’s “denial of any personal responsibility can only be described as silly.”
“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”
“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”
Four years ago I rated George W. Bush’s presidency as the second worst, a bit above that of James Buchanan. Now, however, like so many other professional historians, I see the administration of the second Bush as clearly the worst in our history. My reasons are similar to those cited by other historians: In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States enjoyed enormous support around the world. President Bush squandered that goodwill by taking the country into an unnecessary war of choice and misleading the American people to gain support for that war. And he failed utterly to have a plan to deal with Iraq after the invasion. He further undermined the international reputation of the United States by justifying torture.
Mr. Bush inherited a sizable budget surplus and a thriving economy. By pushing through huge tax cuts for the rich while increasing federal spending at a rapid rate, Bush transformed the surplus into a massive deficit. The tax cuts and other policies accelerated the concentration of wealth and income among the very richest Americans. These policies combined with unwavering opposition to necessary government regulations have produced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Then there is the incredible shrinking dollar, the appointment of incompetent cronies, the totally inexcusable failure to react properly to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, the blatant disregard for the Constitution—and on and on.
Like a majority of other historians who participated in this poll, my conclusion is that the preponderance of the evidence now indicates that, while this nation has had at least its share of failed presidencies, no previous presidency was as large a failure in so many areas as the current one.
And now the Republicans want us to vote for John McSame, to get the same failed war policies, the same irresponsible tax cuts, the same ignorance of the economy. McSame has even flip flopped on immigration, tax cuts, and torture; for Pete's sake, the man voted against banning torture. How can people possibly think this man is qualified to be the president? He's barely qualified to manage a Dairy Queen. Actually, if I walked into a Dairy Queen where John McSame was the manager, and George W. Bush was running the smoothie machine, I'd turn on my heel and walk right out.
JC
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6 comments:
BLAH BLAH BLAH JC. Presidential historians my arse. I bet the majority if those people are flaming code pink left wing radical liberals!!!!. These same people probably think Jimmy Carter was a great president with double digit inflation and almost double digit unemployment. Check out www.miseryindex.us and compare the economy of the last 7 years with the 4 years under Jimma Carter. These "presidential historians" probably thought Reagan was a bad president even though a recent Gallup poll shows Americans picked him as the second best president ever behind another Republican Ronald Reagan.
Interesting Tommy that those 'radical lib' historians used facts whereas you have used good old-fashioned knee-jerk reaction and some HIGHLY questionable polls...and your precious misery-index will be off the charts in a few months :p
It never ceases to amaze me that rational people could ever justify or support torture.. really how absurd is that? Especially knowing that most of us would say anything to make pain stop. The sheeple people.. they just sit there and allow a power over them to legalize torture. It's like a mad fever, like a trance.....
Gallup doesn't account for one thing in their polls - the fact that the VAST majority of Americans can't name 12 of our Presidents and can't name more than 8 of our Vice Presidents. 82 percent can't name the first 5 presidents in order. 77 percent of Ameicans can't tell you what state GW Chimpboy was born in! 91 percent of Americans cannot select all 43 presidents out of a list of 500 names. How would you expect them to consider all 43 Presidents in a Gallup poll? Gallup is not credible in this instance.
Clearly, most Americans, when asked, name George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and FDR as our greatest Presidents and that's mostly because they are the most studied and mentioned in K - 12, thus the ones the people are most familiar with. The Smirking Chimp is familiar to people why, tommyjohnson? Or do you need a link for that?
Ronald Reagan's fortunes are steadily declining, as they should; the whisper is, to use one of Brain Dead Ronnie's favorite phrases, beginning to "trickle down" that Catsup Boy's flag waving was nothing more than a ruse to hide the fact that his true love was not America but rather enhancing the fortunes of his corporate handlers. I'm sure it is the neonut penchant for mediocrity that keeps "One for the Snoozer's" poll numbers high.
George Bush is despised by at least 50% of the people and his "greatness factor" already pales in comparison to all other presidents. Polls I've seen, for what they are worth, show Bush ahead only of another Republican - US Grant. I put Bush below Grant - at least Grant had the courage to serve his nation without going AWOL. I have no doubt the Smirking Coward will join Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Genghis Kahn as one of history's greatest murderers. THAT will be his "legacy."
As for Jimmy Carter - he was none other than a mealy-mouthed Southerner who let the God Squad eat his brain - what the hell did you expect.
from tommyjohnson44: These "presidential historians" probably thought Reagan was a bad president even though a recent Gallup poll shows Americans picked him as the second best president ever behind another Republican Ronald Reagan.
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So they picked Reagan as the second best president behind Ronald Reagan? Who did they pick as third best, Ronald Reagan? Was Ronald Reagan the only name on the list, you bonehead?
My bad JC that was supposed to be behind Abe Lincoln guess I had Reagan on the brain.
Vacreep Americans don't need to remember all of the presidents. Most Americans would like to forget Jimma Carter. Americans do remember the tensions between the USSR and the USA. People older than me especially remember the cuban missle crisis when we were on the brink of nuclear war. After Reagan brought down the USSR those tensions eased. The economy under Jimma Carter was so bad they came up with something called the misery index to measure the economic suffering of the American people. Check out www.miseryindex.us and see how bad things were when Reagan took office and how good they were when he left office.
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