Is Bush the worst president, ever?

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

I doubt he'll get his head on rushmore, but will be remebered as a decent president, unlike slick willy and Carter.

****, I was President of the Rutgers College REPUBLICANS when he was elected and now I can't stand the *******.

You must be really old.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Funny thing 100 years from now students will be studying Ann Coulter.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

I doubt he'll get his head on rushmore, but will be remebered as a decent president, unlike slick willy and Carter.

You are nuts if you think he'll be remembered as better than Clinton. It isn't "something we don't like" (but it may apply here for you), but the fact he hasn't done anything worthwile during his Presidency and may have gotten us stuck in a quagmire.

I think there's a fair bet that Carter may be remembered as a better president, bad as he was. Leaving aside the killer wabbit (surely no worse that Bush's killer pretzel), Carter's term was dominated by two big problems -- the economy, which was already in the crapper when he took office, and the Iranian Revolution, which no American president could have doen squat about. His lasting legacy (aside from killer wabbit jokes) is the Camp David accords, one of the most important bits of global diplomacy since WWII.

Compare Bush, whose biggest failures are of his own making and active initiative, and whose only "success" -- Afghanistan -- may not last and, at any rate, was undercut by his own diversion of resources to teh needless war in Iraq.

And I'll say one other thing about Carter. One of the moments in his presidency that is frequently recalled with ridicule is when he addressed the energy crisis by appear on television in a cardigan sweater and telling Americans that maybe they should lower the thermostat and just live with less heat. How wimpy! How defeatest! How un-American!

Except, actually, he was right. Moreover, to the best of my recollection, that the last time an American president ever asked the American public to sacrifice anything. As we lurch toward similar crises, it would be refreshing to hear an American president say, "My fellow Americans, maybe we shouldn't be buying $5,000 televisions on credit; maybe we shouldn't be driving gas-guzzling behemoths; maybe we shouldn't be consuming, on average, twice as many calories as we actually need -- in other words, maybe we have to take some goddamn responsibility for the economic/energy/health crisis we're facing, and maybe we can fix it if we get off our fat asses and behave like intelligent grown-ups instead of poorly-reared 5-year-olds yelling "gimme gimme gimme.". Give Carter credit: he was the last president to even try that gambit, fail though it did.

[Wezil]

That would be telling the truth. You guys expect and want your candidates to lie.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


I think there's a fair bet that Carter may be remembered as a better president, bad as he was. Leaving aside the killer wabbit (surely no worse that Bush's killer pretzel), Carter's term was dominated by two big problems -- the economy, which was already in the crapper when he took office, and the Iranian Revolution, which no American president could have doen squat about. His lasting legacy (aside from killer wabbit jokes) is the Camp David accords, one of the most important bits of global diplomacy since WWII.

Compare Bush, whose biggest failures are of his own making and active initiative, and whose only "success" -- Afghanistan -- may not last and, at any rate, was undercut by his own diversion of resources to teh needless war in Iraq.

And I'll say one other thing about Carter. One of the moments in his presidency that is frequently recalled with ridicule is when he addressed the energy crisis by appear on television in a cardigan sweater and telling Americans that maybe they should lower the thermostat and just live with less heat. How wimpy! How defeatest! How un-American!

Except, actually, he was right. Moreover, to the best of my recollection, that the last time an American president ever asked the American public to sacrifice anything. As we lurch toward similar crises, it would be refreshing to hear an American president say, "My fellow Americans, maybe we shouldn't be buying $5,000 televisions on credit; maybe we shouldn't be driving gas-guzzling behemoths; maybe we shouldn't be consuming, on average, twice as many calories as we actually need -- in other words, maybe we have to take some goddamn responsibility for the economic/energy/health crisis we're facing, and maybe we can fix it if we get off our fat asses and behave like intelligent grown-ups instead of poorly-reared 5-year-olds yelling "gimme gimme gimme.". Give Carter credit: he was the last president to even try that gambit, fail though it did.

I'm no expert on the Carter administration, but it always seemed to me that he did get trashed for a lot of stuff he had no control over, while not getting as much credit as he should for others.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well, Carter was a good man who did have a lot of stuff he had no control over, but he was a pretty bad President in terms of actually governing. He had big problems communicating with Congress (which was Democrat).

[GePap]

W can be proud after he leaves office, because it will take a lot of work for any future president to ever reach the levels of unpopularity he has reached. Trully historic.

I would say he is certainly the worst post WW2 president we have had, and in the long run he will probably end up in the bottom ten list.

[Bosh]

Well with most bad Presidents you get either:

1. Large amounts of corruption in their administration (Grant, Harding, etc.)
2. Doing a crappy job of dealing with a crisis that they didn't cause (Buchanan, Carter, etc.)
3. Unforced errors, just doing stupid-ass **** that really wasn't necessary at all (Nixon, the Iran policies of a whole slew of presidents, etc.). There's craploads of incompetant presidents who don't rank lower because they didn't go out of their way to stir up ****.

The problem with Bush is he gets the hat trick. His administration isn't as corrupt at Harding and even My Pet Goat reading tops Buchanan for dealing with crisis, but having a hat trick really drags Bush down. He definately deserves at least a slot in the bottom three.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Bosh
Well with most bad Presidents you get either:

1. Large amounts of corruption in their administration (Grant, Harding, etc.)
2. Doing a crappy job of dealing with a crisis that they didn't cause (Buchanan, Carter, etc.)
3. Unforced errors, just doing stupid-ass **** that really wasn't necessary at all (Nixon, the Iran policies of a whole slew of presidents, etc.). There's craploads of incompetant presidents who don't rank lower because they didn't go out of their way to stir up ****.

The problem with Bush is he gets the hat trick. His administration isn't as corrupt at Harding and even My Pet Goat reading tops Buchanan for dealing with crisis, but having a hat trick really drags Bush down. He definately deserves at least a slot in the bottom three.

QFT. Plus, he can't pull off the Johnson/Nixon/Carter trick of doing something great that mitigates all the bad stuff a bit; nor is he due the Madison/Grant/Hoover consolation of having been a great man in spite of having been a lousy president. And, while it's too soon to say, I'd bet he doesn't get any JQ Adams/Carter great-ex-president brownie points either. Really, you have to admire the sheer thoroughness of his failure.

[Berzerker]

I see the usual slamming of Carter, but lets take a look at Carter's foreign policy - we're just coming out of Vietnam with our tails between our legs and communism is supposedly winning, and Iranian and Sandinista revolutionaries overthrow two dictators we supported.

Many on the right wanted US invasions but Carter held back, instead he started funding Afghan resistance thereby inducing a Soviet intervention to prop up the government leading to a nasty war that drained the USSR of blood, treasure, and morale. The Cold War would end within a decade because Reagan continued Carter's policy.

The irony of the comparison between Carter and Bush is that Carter got the Russians to invade Afghanistan and bleed and now Bush has us there. I'd argue Carter did quite a lot to win the Cold War, his decisions at a most crucial time saved us from 2 wars and stuck the Russians with a war that led to their downfall. If Reagan gets credit for winning the Cold War, Carter gets credit for starting the policy. Bush has got us stuck in a mess...

[Vesayen]

Only Baltar is worse. Anyone who says he is NOT the worse, I defy you to name one WORSE then him, specifically. No "in the top 5" or "the top 10", name a specific president who was worse then Bush.

[DinoDoc]

That's already been done several times, Ves.

[Thue]

Article arguing that America's decline is large self-inclifted, and laying much of the blame on Bush.

[dannubis]

Well Bush sure tried to be the most incompetent one.

A lot of the mess you are in right now is on the conto of degenerates like Cheney and Rumsfelt

[Elok]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Funny thing 100 years from now students will be studying Ann Coulter.

Just like we study old yellow journalism headlines today? Oh, wait, we don't.