Is george w bush the worst president ever?

[mathwonk]

I am only 65 years old so i am not sure, i can only remember back to truman.

Anyone with more history background?

Bush has given us such an amazing example that even right wing christian conservatives like Mitt Romney are claiming to be the agents of change.

Exactly how does Romney differ from Bush, that he is not stupid? Help me out here.

 

[Astronuc]

Romney is Mormon (not quite Christian - but then his religion shouldn't matter), and AFAIK, Romney actually worked and was a real manager of a company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney#Business_career - Wikipedia is probably suitable for this thread.

Bush takes the prize as the worst president, IMO, eclipsing even Harding.

 

[mathwonk]

I used to live in Utah, and I seem to recall that Mormons consider themselves christians, but i may be wrong.

 

[wildman]

It depends on how you rate them. LBJ killed a lot more people in his war (on both sides) and trashed the economy real quick (the inflation in the seventies was really his fault). On the other hand he did some good stuff too. Hard to say. Bush is certainly way below average though.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yes, Mormons are Christians. They are formally called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They use the Bible, and the Book of Mormon as a "supplemental text".

Given that I believe that Bush is an enemy of the state and should probably be up on war crimes charges, yes, I would say he is the worst.

How is Romney different? He doesn't have Cheney standing next to him. Romney also has better skin and nicer hair.

I don't like Romney but he would be better than Bush. He must be reasonably intelligent, at least.

Mathwonk, how do you think Bush compares to Nixon? Remember the good ole days when Nixon was the prime example of corruption? How far we have sunk!

 

[russ_watters]

mathwonk, if you do a search, you'll probably find the several threads we've had asking this exact question. They provide a history lesson of some truly awful Presidents. You can also google the question.

Ultimately, though, it comes down to a matter of opinion and as you imply - people's opinions are shaped by what they know and their short memories.

To put a finer point on it, of the half a dozen different things people generally think of when they do their rankings, I see only one ('Gitmo) that has the potential to be a [nearly] universally agreed upon heavy and lasting black stain.

 

[Integral]

If starting a unnecessary war for personal reasons is not a black stain then what is? Bush must be the first president to use US forces to resolve a personal vendetta. IMHO This makes him, as Ivan said a war criminal.

 

[nabki]

i like to think of a presidential list of faliures:
invade 2 countries: check
turn a succesfull economy into a failing one: check
turn 1.3 billion people into alleged terrorists: check
make your enemies stronger: check
be the worst speaker in american history: check
cause genocide: check
abuse power: check
longest time spent in vacations: check
be loathed by michale moore: check
help your corparate buddies by waging a few wars for them: check
total score: 10/10
good for you bush, you rank as the worst president of the US in modern history.

 

[seycyrus]

If starting a unnecessary war for personal reasons is not a black stain then what is? Bush must be the first president to use US forces to resolve a personal vendetta. IMHO This makes him, as Ivan said a war criminal.

Oh man, what was the UN and the rest of the world doing when all this was going on?

Where were those purveyors of liberty (Russia, China, France and Germany) at the time? They must have been forcibly removed from their seats in the UN.

For their was not a single resolution offered that condemned the US action.

 

[lisab]

i like to think of a presidential list of faliures:
invade 2 countries: check
turn a succesfull economy into a failing one: check
turn 1.3 billion people into alleged terrorists: check
make your enemies stronger: check
be the worst speaker in american history: check
cause genocide: check
abuse power: check
longest time spent in vacations: check
be loathed by michale moore: check
help your corparate buddies by waging a few wars for them: check
total score: 10/10
good for you bush, you rank as the worst president of the US in modern history.

One more (I'm sure we can brainstorm a bunch) -
Lose any claim we had to the 'moral high ground': check

 

[nabki]

extra marks for mr. bush!

 

[D H]

i like to think of a presidential list of faliures:
invade 2 countries: check

With this metric Bush pales in comparison to FDR.

be loathed by michale moore: check

This is a good thing. Not being loathed by Michael Moore would be a bad sign.

 

[Integral]

Oh man, what was the UN and the rest of the world doing when all this was going on?

Where were those purveyors of liberty (Russia, China, France and Germany) at the time? They must have been forcibly removed from their seats in the UN.

For their was not a single resolution offered that condemned the US action.

I did not see them on the ground fighting either. If there had been a real reason for the invasion would not there been some help? Bush was bound and determined to finish the job his pappy started.

 

[DeadWolfe]

Well, I'm Canadian, so I suppose I have no right to comment, but it seems to me that if you agree with the founding fathers on much of anything, than Abraham Lincoln was the worst president.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Here is a USNEWS list
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/worstpresidents/index.htm

 

[seycyrus]

I did not see them on the ground fighting either. If there had been a real reason for the invasion would not there been some help?

Either that or they were making money under the table despite the official sanctions THEY had voted to initiate and enforce.

Got to love the revisionism.

 

[BobG]

I can't find the video on the web, but CNN showed Bush and Bahrain's king marching with swords held in their right hand and over their right shoulder. It being a Barhrainian ceremony, the Bharain king displayed the proper way to march with a sword - serious, solemn, and proud. I wouldn't expect an American President to look quite as natural, but Bush's marching captured my image of him perfectly.

His walking style would have been more appropriate for Harry Husker (the Nebraska Cornhusker's mascot). It said "I'm an ignorant hick." His sword laid flat and at an angle - as if he were carrying a pitchfork back to the farmhouse after a day's work baling hay (while the Bahrainian king's sword rested on his shoulder with the blade parallel to his body and parellel with the direction he was walking).

His expression was worse. An open, ignorant expression would have at least been consistent with his marching style. Instead, his expression was more arrogant ignorance. "Life is easy, especially if you're rich and your daddy's President of the USA."

Expect his daddy's not President of the USA anymore - he is!

"I am? Heh hee, you got to love the USA."

Seven years on the job and he's not grown even a smidge. And it shows in both his policies and the people he hires to carry those policies out.

 

[jim mcnamara]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101509.html

This is a newspapr article written by an academic, citing how Arthur Schlesinger ranks Bush and others. Since Schlesinger is considered a leading Presidential scholar, it is worth a look. -- if you are disinclined to peek - he finds Bush to be the worst by a long shot, but for completely different reasons than those cited by Greg's link or other posts in this thread.

 

[turbo]

Here is a USNEWS list
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/worstpresidents/index.htm

The poll at the bottom is quite instructive. People can vote for any three presidents as the "worst" and 67% chose "W".

 

[edward]

One thing different about the Bush Presidency is that it has been veiled in secrecy. Until the secret web is untangled, if ever, history scholars will be to a great great extent left in the dark.

Bush's greatest obvious failure was to allow Cheney to control the executive branch.

 

[edward]

The poll at the bottom is quite instructive. People can vote for any three presidents as the "worst" and 67% chose "W".

That is an interesting poll.

http://www.usnews.com/poll/ePollResults.php3?pollId=1&optionIds=40&pop=1&expiration=

 

[BobG]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101509.html

This is a newspapr article written by an academic, citing how Arthur Schlesinger ranks Bush and others. Since Schlesinger is considered a leading Presidential scholar, it is worth a look. -- if you are disinclined to peek - he finds Bush to be the worst by a long shot, but for completely different reasons than those cited by Greg's link or other posts in this thread.

Except according to Michael Lind from the same newspaper, Bush is only fifth worst.

Although Madison doesn't make many worst President lists, I have to admit that starting a war in which the US capitol is burned to the ground is pretty bad.

 

[turbo]

Except according to Michael Lind from the same newspaper, Bush is only fifth worst.

Although Madison doesn't make many worst President lists, I have to admit that starting a war in which the US capitol is burned to the ground is pretty bad.

That article was written over a year ago, though, before Bush tried to expand the war to Iran - in spite of the fact that the NIE asserted that Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Bush and Cheney knew of the contents of the NIE in the fall of 2006, and blocked its release for a year because it did not agree with their assertions that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. If the disastrous war in Iraq isn't already bad enough, W and Shooter want to start another one. That alone should launch W to the top of the list.

 

[BobG]

Here is a USNEWS list
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/worstpresidents/index.htm

The poll at the bottom is quite instructive. People can vote for any three presidents as the "worst" and 67% chose "W".

The top six are six of the last seven Presidents. Was Gerald Ford so inconsequential he couldn't even make that list?

And among Presidents that served prior to 1970, Abraham Lincoln tops the list of worst Presidents?

That almost looks like a poll asking, "Can you identify three Presidents of the United States from among these photographs?"

 

[mheslep]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101509.html

This is a newspapr article written by an academic, citing how Arthur Schlesinger ranks Bush and others. Since Schlesinger is considered a leading Presidential scholar, it is worth a look. -- if you are disinclined to peek - he finds Bush to be the worst by a long shot, but for completely different reasons than those cited by Greg's link or other posts in this thread.

The author Foner doesn't cite a Schlesinger ranking of Bush; its written solely as his own opinion. He likens Bush policies to the pro-slavery and racist ideologues of reconstruction. I value the opinion of the 'first twelve people in the phone book' over this Columbia academic.

 

[jim mcnamara]

The author Foner doesn't cite a Schlesinger ranking of Bush; its written solely as his own opinion. He likens Bush policies to the pro-slavery and racist ideologues of reconstruction. I value the opinion of the 'first twelve people in the phone book' over this Columbia academic.

Good for you - it seemed to me he was citing work by Schlesinger.

 

[BobG]

The author Foner doesn't cite a Schlesinger ranking of Bush; its written solely as his own opinion. He likens Bush policies to the pro-slavery and racist ideologues of reconstruction. I value the opinion of the 'first twelve people in the phone book' over this Columbia academic.

Good for you - it seemed to me he was citing work by Schlesinger.

He mentioned Schlesinger. The article was his personal comparison of Bush to Presidents that routinely wind up at the bottom of the rankings of many scholar surveys.

Counting the entire phone book, I value the opinion of one of the first three people in my phone book over Foner's (the first three people mentioned in my phone book are the Representative for Colorado Spring's Congressional District and the two current Colorado Senators). I think the rest of the first page is city and county agencies instead of people. I'm not sure. I got bored before I got half way through the first page.

 

[fourier jr]

From CIA historian Bill Blum's intro to Freeing the World to Death:

This is written in June 2004, in the midst of the United States presidential election campaign. Millions of Americans, regardless of what they think of the Democratic Party candidate, are determined to vote for Anyone But Bush, so loathsome and repellent have the man and his policies become for them. They are convinced that the Bush administration is virtually unique in the manner in which it relates to the world; that no previous American government has ever exhibited such hubris, deceit, and secrecy; such murderous destruction, violation of international law, and disregard of world opinion.

They are mistaken. All this wickedness has been exhibited before, regularly; if not packed quite as densely in one administration as under Bush, then certainly abundant enough to reap the abhorrence of millions at home and abroad. From Truman's atom bomb and manipulation of the UN that spawned bloody American warfare in Korea, to Clinton's war crimes in Yugoslavia and vicious assaults upon the people of Somalia; from Kennedy's attempts to strangle the Cuban revolution and his abandonment of democracy in the Dominican Republic, to Ford's giving the okay to Indonesia's genocide against East Timor and his support of the instigation of the horrific Angola civil war; from Eisenhower's overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala and the Congo and his unprincipled policies which led to the disaster known as Vietnam, to Reagan's tragic Afghanistan venture and unprovoked invasion of Grenada.

(some examples of stuff that Reagan, Nixon, LBJ, Walt Rostow & others said/did)

Does anything done by the Bush administration compare to Operation Gladio? From 1947 until 1990, when it was publicly exposed, Gladio was essentially a CIA/NATO/MI6 operation in conjunction with other intelligence agencies and an assortment of the vilest of right-wing thugs and terrorists. It ran wild in virtually every country of Western Europe, kidnapping and/or assassinating political leaders, exploding bombs in trains and public squares with many hundreds of dead and wounded, shooting up supermarkets with many casualties, trying to overthrow governments ... all with impunity, protected by the most powerful military and political forces in the world. Even today, the beast may still be breathing. Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act in the 1970s, the CIA has regularly refused requests concerning Gladio, refusing not only individual researchers and the National Security Archive -- the private research organization in Washington with a remarkable record of obtaining US government documents -- but some of the governments involved, including Italy and Austria. Gladio is one of the CIA's family jewels, to be guarded as such.

The rationale behind it was your standard cold-war paranoia/propaganda: There's a good chance the Russians will launch an unprovoked invasion of Western Europe. And if they defeated the Western armies and forced them to flee, certain people had to remain behind to harass the Russians with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and act as liaisons with those abroad. The "stay-behinds" would be provided with funds, weapons, communication equipment and training exercises.

As matters turned out, in the complete absence of any Russian invasion, the operation was used almost exclusively to inflict political and lethal damage upon the European Left, be it individuals, movements or governments, and heighten the public's fear of "communism". To that end, violent actions like those referred to above were made to appear to be the work of the Left.

the rest is here:
http://members.aol.com/essays6/intro.htm

 

[russ_watters]

If starting a unnecessary war for personal reasons is not a black stain then what is? Bush must be the first president to use US forces to resolve a personal vendetta. IMHO This makes him, as Ivan said a war criminal.

As already pointed out, the UN gave tacit approval and congress gave specific approval, but even assuming you are correct about his motives, what law, exactly, was broken?

Was Vietnam a less unnecessary war?

 

[russ_watters]

Well, I'm Canadian, so I suppose I have no right to comment, but it seems to me that if you agree with the founding fathers on much of anything, than Abraham Lincoln was the worst president.

This is an important point. Depending on what is important to certain people, some Presidents may make the best-of list for some people and the worst-of list for others...and perhaps even for the same people. People hate the Patriot Act, but Lincoln did by far the worst damage to the Bill of Rights of any President, ever (it didn't outlast his Presidency). He'd still make my ten best list, though.