The worst president ever?

PARIS -- President John F. Kennedy was considered a historian because of his book "Profiles in Courage," so he received periodic requests to rate the presidents, those lists that usually begin "1. Lincoln, 2. Washington ..."

"No one knows what it's like in this office," he said after being in the job. "Even with poor James Buchanan, you can't understand what he did and why without sitting in his place, looking at the papers that passed on his desk, knowing the people he talked with."

Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have served in the highest office. But he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.

Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott case declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaeda);

He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over time as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed seen worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President Dick Cheney.

Most historians are Marxists to one degree or another, the reason I did not continue in my quest for a degree in History as my career as an associate professor would be shortlived. They are broken toys.

Oddly enough, the few historians who publish for the general public are generally conservative and they have done quite well over the years. Go figure.

As far as the worst Presides go, Buchanan is probably the worst, followed by Jimmy Carter, who was instrumental in the growth and feeding of Wahhabi'ist terrorists in Iran. He may vvery well be the author of "World War IV".

It is also possible that when you take into consideration that the dismal performance of Carter was International in scope and that the results of his stewardship, such as bombings in Bali, The World Trade Center, any number of other bombings and killings, are so awful he may knock Buchanan out of the coveted position of "last in his class".

But we won't know for a decade or so.

My comments on the "historians" comments about W":

1. It has not yet been determined that the war Iraq is "unwinnable." That is a position taken for political reasons by Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and John Murtha. Based on my conversations with members of our military who have served in Iraq, they believe they will achieve the objectives of their mission in Iraq.

2. How do you alienate a foe? It seems to me that, by definition, foes are already alienated or they wouldn't be foes. As to the alleged alienation of our "friends," I suspect the "historians" are referring to our erstwhile former allies in Paris and Berlin as well as the vast swath of humanity known as the European Left. The French haven't liked us since 1956, the Germans haven't liked us since the fall of the Soviet Union removed their only reason for liking us, and the European Left hasn't liked us since 1946 when the instructions they were receiving from the Comintern began identifying us as foes of Uncle Joe.

3. How do you fight a war after 8 years of reductions in military spending without engaging in military spending? And why are these folks not complaining about his concurrent and dramatic increases in domestic spending? Although his first couple of dometic budgets could be justified on the basis of pump priming us out of the Clintonian recession, his subsequent budgets have resembled the guns and butter budgets of Lyndon Johnson with little macroeconomic justification. If they are going to criticize his spending, they might at least pick on the objectionable spending.

4. The total amount of taxes paid by high income earners, and the percentage of all taxes paid by high income earners, have increased during W's administration.

5. I am unclear as to what W has done to "deliberately and dangerously" attack the separation of church and state. Two things come to mind: the Faith Based Initiatives legislation and perhaps a more vigorous defense of religion in the public square against the unremitting attacks of the ACLU, neither of which seems to me to be violative of the Establishment Clause.

6. The "Bush Lied" theme is a canard begun by that accomplished liar Joe Wilson.

7. Katrina proved that government is not competent to plan for or deal effectively with a major natural disaster. Bush is part of government. To that extent he shares the blame for that incompetence. So do former presidents, current and former members of Congress and the Louisiana state legislature, Governor Blanco and her predecessors, Mayor Nagin and his predecessors, the Army Corps of Engineers, and countless other elected officials and bureaucrats.

8. W's record on foreign affairs is actually quite good. He rightly rejected Kyoto. He kept us out of the ICC. He exposed A.K. Kahn's proliferation activities. He removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from power. He caused Libya to abandon its nuclear ambitions. He has caused the military to inflict signifigant casualties on the ranks of Al Qaeda. He has caused the nations of the world to significantly reduce Al Qaeda's ability to raise and transfer funds. Syria has retreated from Lebanon. Mistakes have been made in Iraq, but mistakes are always made in war and are not therefore necessarily a mark of incompetence.

9. How does a President sacrifice employment "to increase overall productivity?" It seems to me that, in a free market, employment is a result of productivity. Productive workers are employed, and unproductive workers are not. Those making this criticism must be advocating the protection of comparatively unproductive workers through tariffs and other means. However, since they are historians, they surely must know that trade protectionism has historically resulted in lower rather than higher levels of employment.

10. The reference to hostility to science is probably a comment on his ban on federal funding for research involving new fetal stem cell lines. I have some problems with that position myself, but it is hardly a basis for concluding W is hostile to, or ignorant of, science and technological progress.

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