Canadian mag asks: Is George W. Bush the worst U.S. president in 100 years?]

[Guest guest]

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/politics/article.jsp?content=20060417_125323_1\

25323

 

April 11, 2006

 

Is George W. Bush the worst president in 100 years?

 

He has always been a polarizing figure, but now his

constant battles at home and abroad are taking on

historic proportions

 

STEVE MAICH

 

On March 16, Iraqi insurgents fired a mortar shell

into the U.S. army base in Tikrit, landing near two

members of the 101st Airborne Division, reportedly as

they stood waiting for a bus. The explosion killed

Sgt. Amanda Pinson of St. Louis, Mo., making her the

2,315th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq since the war

began three years ago. She was 21.

 

A few hours later in Washington, the U.S. Senate voted

52-48 to increase the ceiling on the national debt, by

$781 billion, to $9 trillion (all figures US$) -- or

roughly $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the

country -- thus avoiding the first-ever default on

U.S. debt. The House of Representatives then approved

another $92 billion in federal spending to support the

war effort in the Middle East.

 

That night, Gallup wrapped up its latest opinion poll

on Americans' attitudes toward the White House,

showing just 37 per cent approve of the President's

performance, versus 59 per cent who disapprove -- a

drop of five percentage points in a month -- one of

the worst scores of any president in the modern era.

 

 

 

 

Just another day in the life of the world's last

superpower under the leadership of President George W.

Bush.

 

With deficits and debt swelling to epic levels, an

economy showing massive cracks, and support for

America crumbling abroad, the Bush administration

finds itself increasingly isolated. With mid-term

elections looming in November, the President is now

widely seen as a political liability. Republicans are

actively distancing themselves from Bush, and joining

Democrats in strident critiques of the White House.

And things may be getting worse. Last week, court

documents emerged showing Scooter Libby, former chief

of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, testified that

Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence to

shore up support and discredit critics of the Iraq

war, raising, for the first time, the possibility that

the President may be personally implicated in a

scandal.

 

These are more than just the normal travails of a

second-term president fending off the slings and

arrows of partisan attack. Bush's constant battles at

home and abroad are taking on historic proportions,

hardening perceptions that his administration is

defined by failure on multiple fronts. Just over 16

months have passed since George W. Bush was elected

for the second term that eluded his father, but

already historians and pundits are beginning to debate

whether he just might be the worst U.S. president in a

century.

 

In 2004, George Mason University polled 415

presidential historians and found 80 per cent

considered Bush's first term a failure. More than half

considered it the worst presidency since the Great

Depression. More than a third called it the worst in

100 years. Eleven per cent said it was the worst ever.

Robert McElvaine, a professor of history at Millsaps

College in Mississippi, says scores would likely be

worse if the poll were repeated today. " When I filled

out that survey I said Bush was the worst since

Buchanan [1857-61], but things have gotten worse and

now I'd have to consider him the worst ever, "

McElvaine says. " If you look at the situation he

inherited, and the situation following 9/11, he had

great opportunities and he basically squandered them.

He has put the future of the country in a much more

precarious position than it was when he became

president. "

 

That Bush is unpopular, especially among academics, is

not surprising in itself. He has always been a

polarizing figure, and most presidents have been

deeply unpopular at some point in office, especially

those who dedicated themselves to ambitious projects

beyond America's borders. Even Abraham Lincoln, now

generally considered the greatest of all U.S.

presidents, was widely detested in his day for

triggering the bloodbath of the Civil War for no good

reason.

 

In the final analysis, presidents are judged on a

relatively narrow set of criteria -- fiscal

management, economic stewardship, handling change or

crisis at home, and the promotion of America's

interests abroad. It all boils down to two questions:

how did he deal with the challenges of his day? And

were the American people better off at the end of his

tenure than they were at the start? No president can

claim an unambiguously positive record, but few have

come up so short, on so many counts, as Bush has.

 

Ronald Reagan was attacked for mismanaging the

nation's finances, but he won the Cold War and his

aggressive tax cuts eventually ignited the economy.

Richard Nixon resigned under the cloud of Watergate,

and remains one of the nation's most reviled

presidents, but historians now credit him with huge

foreign policy successes, including the opening of

relations with China. Bush's supporters say history

will be kind to him, just as it has been to Harry

Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson. They, like Bush, guided

the nation through wars -- Korea and Vietnam

respectively -- widely seen as unnecessary and

ill-conceived. But Johnson was a champion of the civil

rights movement and an ally of Martin Luther King.

Truman was the driving force behind the Marshall Plan

to rebuild Europe after the Second World War.

 

With just a few years left in his mandate, historians

say George W. Bush has no such achievements to offset

the grievous cost of Iraq in blood and treasure.

Despite the biggest federal spending spree in more

than a generation, the Bush White House has produced

no transformational vision for domestic policy. His

massive tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 have neither sparked

the economy nor bolstered his popularity. They have,

however, exacerbated a fiscal crisis that threatens to

undermine the very basis of the American state. " It

used to be a part of the American character to believe

in delaying gratification, and saving for the future, "

McElvaine says. " But it seems the future is being

ignored in spectacular fashion by this

administration. "

 

Even a couple of years ago this would have sounded

like a partisan indictment. But today it is sounding

more like the general consensus. The latest backlash

against Bush has nothing to do with his folksy

demeanour, his frequent malapropisms, or even the

allegations that the Iraq invasion was launched under

false pretenses. Nor is it rooted solely among the

Democrats and urban intellectual elites that have

always despised him. Over the course of the past two

years, a growing list of Bush allies has broken faith

with his leadership -- conservatives and libertarians

like Bruce Bartlett, Peggy Noonan and Newt Gingrich,

and neo-con intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama. Their

complaints are based on numbers -- huge, frightening

numbers, that cast serious doubt on the notion that

Bush will ever be vindicated.

 

David Walker is an accountant by trade and a political

firebrand by disposition. For the past four years, he

has been preaching the gospel of fiscal restraint to

little effect. As comptroller general of the United

States, he is the independent auditor of government,

and last November he issued a clarion call to the

nation's lawmakers, comparing America's burgeoning

deficits and debt to the forces that ultimately

toppled the Roman Empire. " There is no question both

U.S. government spending and tax cuts are spiralling

out of control, " Walker wrote. " It's time to get

serious about our nation's fiscal future. " The numbers

he cites are nothing short of staggering.

 

When George W. Bush took office at the beginning of

2001, he inherited from the Clinton administration a

budget surplus of US$86.4 billion. He had campaigned

on a promise to use that money for an ambitious

program of tax cuts, which he put into action

immediately upon arrival in the Oval Office. But

Bush's conservative allies had expected those tax cuts

to be followed by an equally sweeping review of

federal spending. That austerity never came. On the

contrary, he's gone on a mammoth spending spree.

 

Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies at the

Cato Institute, is working on a book about the decline

of fiscal conservatism under Bush, and says discontent

among conservatives has been building for several

years. " People thought over the long term he'd try to

do some good and Republicans could finally make good

on their promises of getting spending under control,

but here we are in the second term and that has not

materialized, " he says. " The dam has just broken. "

 

The Bush administration has a standard answer for this

critique. In a time of war, they say, budget overruns

are the inevitable cost of defending freedom and

democracy at home and abroad. But that no longer holds

water with Washington's budget hawks. They point out

that federal spending has risen by $683 billion a year

under Bush, less than a third of which has gone to

national defence and homeland security.

 

As a result, the U.S. national debt has surged from

$5.7 trillion in the last fiscal year before Bush took

office, to over $8.3 trillion and counting. Brian

Riedl, a budget analyst with the right-wing Heritage

Foundation, says the Bush administration has played

the benevolent uncle to every special interest that

comes calling, using its spending power to win support

in potentially vulnerable constituencies. The No Child

Left Behind education bill, for example, was aimed at

suburban families; the farm bill at Midwest rural

voters; and the prescription drug benefit at the most

active voting bloc of all, seniors. " No president

since FDR has accelerated spending as fast as Bush

has, " he groans. " I'm shocked about it, but the

numbers show what the numbers show. "

 

In reality, the $8.3-trillion figure doesn't even

begin to describe the true size of America's fiscal

crisis because it doesn't include the so-called

entitlement liabilities. In Medicare and Social

Security, the U.S. government is committed to

providing retirement benefits and medical care for

senior citizens. But thanks to an aging population

(the first of about 78 million American baby boomers

turn 60 this year) and rising medical costs, those

programs are desperately underfunded. At the end of

2004, government actuaries calculated that the two

programs had unfunded liabilities of $43 trillion, up

from $20 trillion in 2000. In other words, Washington

would need an immediate cash infusion of $43 trillion

in order to meet all its future obligations under

Medicare and Social Security. That was before the

President pushed through the prescription drug

benefit, which added an estimated $18 trillion to the

Medicare shortfall. And when Republicans tried to add

spending caps to the bill, to prevent uncontrolled

cost inflation in the future, Bush threatened to veto

them.

 

The Economic Policy Institute recently projected that

under the current tax regime, by 2014 all government

revenue would be consumed by four budget items:

Medicare, Social Security, national defence and

interest on the debt. Walker's department forecasts

that, at the current rate of growth, the cost of

servicing the national debt will consume half of all

tax revenues within 25 years.

 

Bush does have his fiscal defenders, and they

generally point out that the national debt rose higher

as a percentage of the economy under Reagan. But as

Cato's Slivinski points out, there are key differences

between the two. For one thing, Reagan's deficits got

smaller and more manageable as his presidency went on.

The Bush administration is projecting deficits north

of $400 billion a year for the foreseeable future.

More importantly, as Reagan increased defence

spending, he cut other budget items. Bush has allowed

spending to rise across the board. " The greatest costs

of Bush's legacy are Medicare and Social Security, and

those haven't even been seen yet, " Slivinski says.

" We're going to look back and wonder what the hell

Republicans were thinking expanding all these programs

at a time when we should've been looking at how to

reform them, and pay for them. "

 

America's looming financial crunch would be less

daunting if it seemed like the economy was poised to

take flight. But among economists there is little hope

for such a windfall. With 12.6 per cent growth in GDP

and the creation of 2.3 million jobs since 2001,

President Bush frequently crows about the world's

" pre-eminent " economy. Beneath the surface, critics

see a situation far less healthy than it first

appears.

 

Two million new jobs sounds like a lot, but it's the

most anemic job creation performance by any president

in the postwar era. The gains have also failed to keep

pace with the growth of the workforce, and as a result

the overall employment rate under Bush has declined

from 64.4 per cent to 62.9 per cent. The manufacturing

sector has been particularly hard hit, losing 2.9

million jobs since Bush took office, a decline of

roughly 17 per cent -- worse than the postwar hangover

under Truman, worse than the early '70s stagnation

under Nixon, and far worse than the darkest days of

Reagan's Rust Belt plant closures. Little wonder that

a Gallup poll earlier this year showed more than half

of Americans consider the economy only " fair " or

" poor, " and 52 per cent think it's getting worse.

 

This would be less of a concern, the experts say, if

the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 had formed the

basis of a broad economic resurgence at home. But

while corporate profits hit a record $1.35 trillion

last year, companies have been stubbornly reluctant to

reinvest those earnings. With profits up 65 per cent

since 2001, capital investments have declined by 4.5

per cent. And though that has fuelled a surge in the

stock market, broader financial measures like wage

growth have stalled.

 

So while CEOs and politicians can point selectively to

indicators of a robust economy, the story on Main

Street doesn't look so rosy. Consumers know much of

their lifestyle has been financed on credit. Household

indebtedness has skyrocketed by 60 per cent to $4.5

trillion in the past five years, and U.S. consumers

now owe close to five times as much as they did 20

years ago when adjusted for inflation. Economists have

been ringing alarm bells about this for years, and

last week Treasury Secretary John Snow issued the

government's starkest warning yet. " While credit and

credit cards are a boon to life in America today, they

also present some potential problems if credit and

credit cards aren't used wisely, " Snow said. " People

can get into trouble. They can cause themselves

financial wrecks. " To financial analysts, Snow's

comments seemed like common sense, but they have

fuelled speculation that he and Bush have parted ways

with regard to the economy, and that he'll soon resign

from cabinet.

 

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the election over Jimmy

Carter by repeatedly asking voters, " Are you better

off today than you were four years ago? " In 2004, Bush

wouldn't have dared ask such a question, and since

then things have deteriorated substantially. While not

all of this can be blamed on the President, the

perception is now taking hold that America's vaunted

standard of living is under assault. A decade of

improvements in alleviating poverty have reversed in

recent years. While the economy has grown, the poverty

rate has risen to 12.7 per cent of the population, the

highest level since 1998, representing five million

people who have fallen into poverty in five years.

 

Even economists who supported Bush's tax cuts see

little hope that they will form the bedrock of a

future boom -- not with U.S. consumers so deeply

indebted, and with future administrations saddled with

massive funding liabilities that will, in all

likelihood, force taxes back up again in the near

future. But those are long-term concerns, and America

has more immediate problems to face.

 

Jack Trout is a legend in the marketing business. He's

written several classic books on branding, and his

firm, Trout and Partners, is adviser to dozens of huge

clients, from Apple Computer to Xerox. In late 2002,

he was hired by the U.S. State Department to develop a

strategy for diplomats to polish the image of America

around the world, casting the U.S. as a partner in

peace. " I presented this idea and they loved it, but

they said, 'There's just one problem,' " he recalls.

" They told me, 'I think we're going to invade Iraq.'

And I said, 'Forget it then. All this stuff goes out

the window.' "

 

Trout sensed a global PR disaster on the horizon, and

his fears were soon realized. Last June, the Pew

Global Attitude Project released its latest

international survey on America's image, carrying the

remarkably optimistic title " American Character Gets

Mixed Reviews. " This was technically true, though the

" mix " ranged from hostile to scathing. The report

found that world attitudes toward the U.S. had

deteriorated sharply between 2000 and 2005. In Canada,

those with a favourable opinion of the U.S. had

slipped from 71 per cent to 59 per cent. In Germany,

approval ratings fell from 78 to 41 per cent. The

story was even worse in the Muslim world: in Turkey

and Pakistan just 23 per cent saw the U.S. in a

favourable light. " This is the mother of all branding

problems, " Trout says now. " What do you do to rebuild

America's brand and image? When a business has had a

bad run and turned off a lot of its customers, they

hang out a big sign that says 'under new management.'

And we will get nowhere until we have that sign

hanging out there. "

 

According to Pew's research, George W. Bush appears to

be at the core of international disfavour. This, says

Bruce Buchanan, an expert on presidential politics at

the University of Texas, has the potential to be an

enduring roadblock to U.S. objectives around the

world. " I think it's extremely bad for the United

States and for the world, " he says. " The chances of us

continuing to be seen as an honest broker is seriously

compromised, and I think that hurts our interests in

the long run. Where else can you put the blame? The

buck stops on the President's desk. He's the man in

charge. "

 

Robert Dallek, a presidential historian and professor

emeritus at Dartmouth University, agrees. He has

written books on John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.

Johnson, is now working on a biography of Richard

Nixon, and says no other president has been so

universally reviled around the world as Bush, with the

possible exception of Johnson. " There is an old

weakness in our foreign policy, " Dallek says. " We make

the mistake of believing that inside every foreigner

there is an American just waiting to emerge. It's just

not true. Woodrow Wilson made that mistake, and George

Bush is making it again. The whole notion that you can

export democracy at the point of a bayonet simply does

not work. "

 

To be sure, Bush's record in the Middle East is not

entirely negative. Last year, Iraq held elections that

far exceeded the expectations of the skeptics, and

Afghanistan is slowly rising from failed state status,

thanks primarily to the U.S. determination to root out

the murderous and regressive Taliban regime. And even

though his policies are deeply unpopular through most

of the world, Bush has managed to rally support in

several areas. For example, Europe and the United

Nations have been broadly supportive of U.S. efforts

to dissuade nuclear development in Iran and North

Korea. And given that there have been no major

terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, the White

House can justifiably claim success in homeland

security.

 

Still, critics point to many other aspects of national

security that seem to have deteriorated as attention

has focused on Iraq and al-Qaeda. Russia, for example,

seems to be sliding gradually backward into

authoritarianism, with scant notice from Washington.

In South America, one nation after another -- Brazil,

Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile -- has embraced left-leaning

politicians hostile to America's traditional interests

in the region, and threatening trade links vital to

its financial security. In the Middle East, Iran is

growing more belligerent by the day while pursuing

nuclear capability in defiance of Western pressure.

And the push for democratic reform in the Palestinian

Authority yielded a resounding election win for Hamas,

the terrorist organization dedicated to the

annihilation of Israel. Overall, it's difficult to

mount a convincing argument that the world is a safer,

more stable place today than when Bush took office

five years ago.

 

Foreign policy is often a nightmare for U.S.

presidents, since Americans have a long history of

preferring isolationism to foreign intervention. John

F. Kennedy suffered the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs

fiasco; Carter was embarrassed by the Iranian hostage

crisis; and every president from Truman to Reagan

operated under the shadow of the Soviet menace. Bush

doesn't yet face a threat on the scale of the Cold

War, but no president has attracted such hostility on

so many fronts, in so short a time.

 

More worrying are the signs that Bush's tendency

toward unilateralism has weakened ties to America's

traditional allies, including Canada. Perhaps the most

dramatic example came in 2004, with Spain's election

of a new left-leaning government, which immediately

bowed to public opinion and pulled the country's 1,300

troops out of Iraq. Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and the

Netherlands began their own gradual withdrawals last

year. And last September, Italy -- which had the

fourth-largest contingent of troops on the ground in

Iraq -- began a phased pullout after an Italian agent

was accidentally killed by U.S. troops and the public

turned strongly against the war. The NATO deployment

in Afghanistan has been more stable, but not without

controversy. It recently took six months of wrangling

in the Dutch parliament before the Netherlands finally

authorized deployment of 1,400 troops to the region to

relieve a withdrawing U.S. force.

 

Observers say these foreign controversies would be

easily manageable, if not for a steady stream of

domestic missteps eroding confidence in the

administration. The bungled relief effort following

hurricane Katrina, Bush's aborted attempt to appoint

his close friend, the woefully underqualified Harriet

Miers, to the Supreme Court, and Scooter Libby's

revelations about the ongoing CIA leak affair, have

all contributed to the President's slide. Last month,

Pew released its latest study of American attitudes,

finding that just one in three support Bush's

leadership. Even among those who say they voted for

Bush in 2004, his support has fallen from 92 per cent

at the beginning of 2005 to 68 per cent. Asked for a

one-word description of the President, the most common

response was " incompetent, " followed closely by

" idiot " and " liar. " A year ago, the top response was

" honest. "

 

Two weeks before Christmas 2003, U.S. troops found

Saddam Hussein cowering in a tiny hidden cellar, just

south of Tikrit, and pollsters noted an immediate

surge in support for Bush. " We've come to this moment

through patience and resolve and focused action, " Bush

said that night. " That is our strategy moving forward.

The war on terror is a different kind of war, waged

capture by capture, cell by cell, and victory by

victory. Our security is assured by our perseverance

and by our sure belief in the success of liberty. "

That night, it seemed, America was ready to believe.

But it would prove to be the high point of a

presidency that is fundamentally defined by the

decision to invade Iraq. The President's approval

ratings have never returned to the levels of that

December, when images of a haggard and unkempt Saddam

Hussein flashed across the nightly newscasts.

 

Decades from now, academics will debate fiscal policy,

jobs, the UN and the Supreme Court, but only as

footnotes to another stark question: when that mortar

shell killed Amanda Pinson on March 16, less than

three years after she graduated from high school and

immediately enlisted, was her sacrifice and that of

more than 2,300 others in vain, or in the service of a

noble, world-changing cause?

 

Bruce Buchanan, for one, isn't willing to write Bush's

name among the worst presidents of all time just yet.

" Short-term perspectives have a short shelf life, " he

says. " It is possible he's set in motion forces that

might turn out in his favour years down the line.

Perhaps breaking those eggs over there in Iraq will

result in the eventual rooting of democracy in the

Middle East. But that's the citizen's dilemma: we must

judge in the here and now. "

 

It's the here and now that really concerns Dallek. He

has spent years studying presidents like Johnson and

Nixon, who were reviled in office and revered in

retrospect, but when he looks at the trajectory of

Bush's agenda, he sees little hope that the 43rd

President of the United States will ever be redeemed.

" We are now deep into the wadi, and the majority of

his term has been put in place, and what great

achievements can he point to? " he asks. " He's

alienated so many peoples around the world. The war in

Iraq is turning out to be something of a nightmare,

perhaps the biggest foreign policy blunder since

Vietnam. Historians will point to imperial overreach

in terms of domestic spying. They will complain about

him being anti-intellectual and far too evangelical.

But ultimately it all comes back to Iraq. And if it

continues to go as badly as it's going, he's in

serious trouble. "

 

For his part, the President is pressing ahead with his

audacious Middle East gamble, appealing for faith, and

chiding those who dare to bet against him. " We must

never give in to the belief that America is in

decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel, " he

said in his State of the Union address last January.

" The American people know better than that. We have

proven the pessimists wrong before, and we will do it

again. "

 

For now, the pessimists outnumber the believers. And

with every one of Bush's former allies that turns away

from his leadership, the margin grows and the odds get

longer.

 

To comment, email letters

 

Copyright by Rogers Media Inc.

[Guest guest]

The only way to resolve this question, that is, whether GWB is the worst

president ever, is to answer that he isn't the president at all, which happens

to be the case. If he were the president, the question would have some

relevance. A president, after all, has to have fulfilled at least one of two

essential requirements to lay claim to the job: he has to have 1) won office by

something resembling legitimate means and methods, and 2) he has to have

something resembling qualifications for the office. Bush has achieved neither.

Bush has managed to " appear " to have gotten into the oval office. by fraud in

the elections, and by fraudulently passing himself off as a potentially capable

chief executive. He failed on both counts. He can be then be said to have

never held office. We simply didn't have a president between 2000 and 2008, a

period during which the office was held in abeyance, taken over by an imposter.

 

This is a satisfactory solution for the vexing problem we face here. Never mind

whether he has been the worst president this country has had to endure. He

actually was, by a vast margin the worst president. But this is an anomaly only

for those that are taken in by this fraud. For my part, there is no question to

be answered, because there is no presidency. I mean this with all my heart and

soul. In the privacy of my mind, I deny him the office, and that's the end of

it. He's akin to a bridge that's closed for a period, during which structural

repairs need to be made before it becomes, once more, passable. I'm mildly

troubled, only, by the inevitable fact that history, that mixture of truth and

falsehoods, will preserve decorum and continuity, pretending that Bush was,

after all, the president. But for me, it's " closed for repairs. "

 

jp

-

dar

9 AltMed

Tuesday, April 11, 2006 5:20 PM

Canadian mag asks: Is George W. Bush the

worst U.S. president in 100 years?]

 

 

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/politics/article.jsp?content=20060417_125323_1\

25323

 

April 11, 2006

 

Is George W. Bush the worst president in 100 years?

 

He has always been a polarizing figure, but now his

constant battles at home and abroad are taking on

historic proportions

 

STEVE MAICH

(snip)