Is Bush the Worst?

The Opinion section of today's Washington Post is a veritable smorgasbord of Bush bashing today. I'm just reading all of this online, of course, but I'd be very curious to see if the actual hard copy of the paper is as overwhelming as it seems. There are five op/ed pieces under the heading of "What Will History Say," each by a noted historian, and four of them on the section's front page. Not all of the historians place Bush in the very bottom of presidential quality, but even the most ardent defenses add up to little more than, "He's not that bad."

I'm guessing that the whole thing leads off with Douglas Brinkley's "Move Over, Hoover." He's given prominence on the main Opinions page and on the Post's main page itself. He starts wit a caveat, but it doesn't take him long to get down to business.

Clearly it's dangerous for historians to wield the "worst president" label like a scalp-hungry tomahawk simply because they object to Bush's record. But we live in speedy times and, the truth is, after six years in power and barring a couple of miracles, it's safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder. The reason: Iraq.

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There isn't much that Bush can do now to salvage his reputation. His presidential library will someday be built around two accomplishments: that after 9/11, the U.S. homeland wasn't again attacked by terrorists (knock on wood) and that he won two presidential elections, allowing him to appoint conservatives to key judicial posts. I also believe that he is an honest man and that his administration has been largely void of widespread corruption. This will help him from being portrayed as a true villain.

This last point is crucial. Though Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock, he won't have the zero-integrity factors that have kept Nixon and Harding at the bottom in the presidential sweepstakes. Oddly, the president whom Bush most reminds me of is Herbert Hoover, whose name is synonymous with failure to respond to the Great Depression. When the stock market collapsed, Hoover, for ideological reasons, did too little. When 9/11 happened, Bush did too much, attacking the wrong country at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president.

Brinkley doesn't offer anything more than his personal hunch that the Prez is an honest man, and if that's the only thing that's keeping him from the bottom rung, we'll have to wait for history's verdict (or a Democratic Congress's investigations).

Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, has no hesitation in offering his opinion: "He's the Worst Ever." He takes a look at those presidents who usually inhabit the bottom of presidential rankings, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Richard M. Nixon, and demonstrates how Bush compares unfavorably to each. He also shows how he comes up short of James K. Polk, the president who manufactured the Mexican-American War but, as he greatly expanded the territory of the United States as a result, is often considered a better-than-average president. You can find the details in the column itself, but here's how he closes his essay:

Historians are loath to predict the future. It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history.

A dissenting opinion, such as it is, comes from Vincent J. Cannato of U Mass in Boston. Cannato mainly argues against premature judgment, entitling his column "Time's On His Side." After a couple of examples of historians naming Bush among the worst presidents, Cannato responds:

So, case closed? Not yet. I long ago learned to look with suspicion when members of the left-leaning historical profession delve into contemporary politics or profess near unanimity. Today's pronouncements that Bush is the "worst president ever" are too often ideology masquerading as history.

Historical and popular judgments about presidents are always in flux.

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Most clearly, the Iraq war colors every judgment about Bush these days -- and increasingly, that color is dark. Weakened by the conflict, the administration is now stymied on challenges such as North Korea and Iran. And while focusing most of its energies on terrorism and Iraq, the Bush administration -- for which I worked briefly as a speechwriter in 2001 -- has been less energetic on the domestic front. Attempts at entitlement reform and tax reform have stalled, as has immigration reform. But there have been domestic policy successes: tax cuts, the No Child Left Behind Act, the prescription drug plan and housing policies that have expanded home ownership. All have their critics, but they represent some semblance of a domestic policy.

Any appraisal of Bush's record must consider that he took over in difficult times. By most objective measures, the economy is doing well: Inflation, interest rates and unemployment are low, economic growth is steady, and the stock market is climbing. Complaints about income inequality are legitimate, but the issue has long-term structural roots, and neither party has done much to address it.

Fair enough. We should look at both pros and cons when assessing the success or failure of a presidency. The pros seem light, the cons seem serious, and I'm not sure why we should consider 2000-2001 difficult times, but I guess we should take all of it into account. Still, he makes a reasonable point that just because we think poorly of Bush right now doesn't mean that opinions won't change in the future. But I'm not holding my breath.

Still on the first page of the opinion section, David Greenberg of Rutgers points out that "At Least He's Not Nixon." After providing a litany of presidents that someone called "the worst," he points out that Nixon was bad enough to be threatened with impeachment, and there's not a significant groundswell for Bush's impeachment at this point.

While Nixon had his diehard defenders, something close to a national consensus emerged over the idea that his crimes were unprecedented and required his removal from office. Barry Goldwater conservatives and Lowell Weicker Republicans, libertarians and liberals, Main Streeters and Wall Streeters all agreed that Nixon was, if not necessarily the worst president in U.S. history, deserving of the most extreme reprimand ever visited on a commander in chief. Instead of being impeached and removed from office, Nixon resigned.

No such consensus exists for a Bush impeachment. On the contrary, in this fall's election campaign, Democrats pointedly quashed any talk of seeking his ouster if they were to win control of Congress. One can argue that Bush's sanctioning of illegal wiretapping by the National Security Agency constitutes an impeachable offense. His policy of depriving suspected terrorists and POWs of Geneva Convention protections may also strike some people as grounds for removal -- although Congress, by acquiescing in Bush's military detention policy last fall, made the latter argument a tougher sell.

By impeaching Clinton for his personal failings rather than high crimes and misdemeanors committed carried out as part of his official duties, the Repubs have made sure that a similar step will not be taken against presidents any time soon unless there's absolutely no choice (and having Dick Cheney in at number two is fairly effective anti-impeachment insurance, too). Still, Greenberg does allow that anything is possible:

Bush has two years left in his presidency and we don't know what they'll hold. They may be as dismal as the first six. Future investigations may bear out many people's worst fears about this administration's violations of civil liberties. And it's conceivable that the consequences of the invasion of Iraq may prove more destructive than those of Nixon's stubborn continuation of the Vietnam War. Should those things happen, Bush will be able to lay a claim to the mantle of U.S. history's worst president. For now, though, I'm sticking with Dick.

Finally, if we move on to page 3, we get to the end of our little series. Michael Lind, the Whitehead senior fellow at the New America Foundation, comes up with a compromise of sorts: "He's Only Fifth Worst."

What makes a president horribly, immortally bad? Poor luck is not enough. Some of the greatest presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, have inherited crises and risen to the occasion. The damage must be largely self-inflicted. And there's another test: The damage to the nation must be substantial. Minor blunders and petty crimes do not land a president in the rogues' gallery.

Lind names four other presidents who he believes fall below Bush's placement in the rogues' gallery, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and James Madison. He provides a good argument for each, but you'll have to come to your own conclusions about how they each relate to Bush.

These essays will provide plenty of fodder for discussion, but it's a welcome surprise to see them placed in such a prominent location to begin with. Like Frank Rich's column I linked to below, it's just more evidence that the press (and the country with it) is returning to a more reality-based conversation.