February 16, 2007

Worst President Ever

Link. Also of note is the second comment, posted by a Dallek...hmmmm...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Yes, I've been familiar with the work of historian Robert Dallek for some time, entirely on account of his name.

Here's what I don't get. How is it that in the space of a year a person can go from believing that Bush is not one of the top five worst presidents to believing that Bush is the worst president? Was Bush's performance as president especially bad in 2006-2007? Perhaps you could pin it on the surge strategy, which does represent a new depth of bloody insanity. But if anything should have changed people's minds on Bush, it was Katrina.

Katrina alone should have marked Bush as worse than Nixon. Sure, Nixon was a criminal who resigned in disgrace. He kept the Vietnam War going long after we had clearly lost. He defied the Constitution and abused the powers of the presidency. And yet, unlike Bush, he also had genuine accomplishments. Bush has achieved nothing of value. Absolutely nothing.

With Katrina, Bush's failures grew into the realm of the epic, and without any counter-balancing successes, that alone should have bumped Nixon off the Bottom Five.