Posted on 12/07/2005 11:06:54 AM PST by woofie
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 ..."
But after he actually became president himself, he stopped filling them out.
"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 deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
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 is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
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.
Richard Reeves' column appears on Sunday.
He made it possible for Reagan to get elected in 1980.
No joke. IMO Clinton, his cronies, and his ilk oughta be flushed out of history like a bad dream.
Clinton. BTTT.
Worth repeating.
Yea I said a few things about Lincoln and how he was percieved in his lifetime... I do think that during my time on earth Carter wins the race to the bottom, although I hated Clinton more while he was in office...My hatred for Clinton has now mutated into simply despising the left.
I think you captured it
Yea we covered that early on
Carter was the most incompetent. Clinton was the most corrupt.
Social Security as it exists today is not the SSI of the 30s. The welfare state came into existence in the 60s under LBJ.
Read up a bit.
In his 1982 presidential memoir, Carter cited as his biggest mistake "allowing Ronald Reagan to become President of the United States."
Talk about fiddling as Rome burned.
Actually you need to read: FDR did nothing to "pull the country out of the depression" that was the result of the business cycle. That he was president during WWII is true. But that just says he was there during the time. It is purely hypothetical what someone else would've done. Social security was opposed by the Republicans of that time on exactly the basis of what is happening today. They knew it was a ponzi scheme. In case you need more information welfare programs including the CCC were brought into being under Roosevelt.
Read a book called "The Real Roosevelt" before you spread misinformation on here.
Details of the "poll" are here (the comments may be of interest as well). It's embarassingly unscientific to say the least, unconclusive and inconsequential. Nor does it look like much thought went into the survey.
Historians don't seem to be able to view the present in historical perspective. To judge by McElvaine's (the fellow who did the poll) own response, it looks like he basically accepts and sticks together everything bad he's heard about about Bush, rather than look critically at such accusations.
What's missing are objective criteria for judgment, and the perspective that only time can bring. Every political or financial scandal, every setback in war or diplomacy looks like the worst when one is living through it (especially if the other party is in power).
For whatever it's worth, Buchanan and Pierce were our worst Presidents. You can't do much worse than let the country slide into civil war.
How would one have avoided the Civil War? My guess is that it was inevitable.
Actually the book is called "The Roosevelt Myth" by John T. Flynn. I suggest you read it my friend instead of pushing democratic propaganda.
I once asked Mother if the depression was still going when WWII began. She said things were starting to get better but the depression was still there.
I got to thinking and Roosevelt had been in office for 9 years and the depression was around 12 years deep. Really sounds like Roosevelt didn't improve things for a very long period.
He was a good talker tho, and people's attitude was better toward their future.
It may be that Reconstruction was doomed to fail or the economy destined to collapse in the interwar years. But if the President and his supporters can't say and show that he put in a good effort to prevent such failures, he's bound to be ranked low.
BTW it looks like the main question McElvaine asked was something like "George Bush is the best/worst (choose one) president since _______ ________ (fill in the blank)." It's a pretty stupid question, but McElvaine provides charts and graphs for each answer. It's not so easy to explain off the cuff why it's such a stupid question, but it doesn't sound like one a real pollster would ask.
Maybe it's that the question doesn't say much about Bush: too much depends on the other president mentioned and on those in between. If I say "Bush is the best president since Reagan," all I'm saying is that his father and Clinton weren't that good.
If one historian says that Bush is the worst since Hoover, another that he was the worst since Nixon and a third that he was the worst since Harding, are they really saying anything different from one another? Are they saying anything significant about Bush and his Presidency?
"FDR did nothing to "pull the country out of the depression"..." --------- change to deficit spending, increased money supply, CCC (which put millions to work), TVA, etc...who was it who was responsible for those?
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"That he was president during WWII is true. But that just says he was there during the time. It is purely hypothetical what someone else would've done." -------------- That is just ridiculous. FDR was a hands-on CIC who took us from utter defeat to total victory in the Pacific in less time than the WOT has been going on and at the same time juggled Churchill and Stalin to defeat Hitler in even less time. But your take is 'he was president' as though that were just happenstance instead of the US public's validation of his first two (and then his third)terms. You then state that his leadership shouldn't be credited because well, maybe somebody or anybody else might have done as well, who knows? That is beyond silly.
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Here's your next gem; "Social security was opposed by the Republicans of that time on exactly the basis of what is happening today." ----------------------- Intertesting, why did the law pass then with 372 for and only 33 against? Why did it pass the senate vote by 77 yaes and 6 nayes? Why did over 80% of Republicans vote for it? Facts are our friends.
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Finally, CCC, which you describe as welfare, required 40-50 hours per week of work from each participant in order to get paid. And further mandated that 80% of their wages be sent to their families.
FDR the worst President ever? Not even close.
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Dem propoganda? Like what, placing blame for the welfare state at the desk of LBJ, a dem POTUS? Grow up.
Unwinnable war? Using politically correct tactics, I agree. Alienate friend and foe alike? Why the hell should any nation care what others think if national sovereignty and national security is priority #1?
He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
Social spending is growing so fast that it will bankrupt the nation! The rich are getting screwed more and more in our tax system. It is the non taxpayers who are being sucked up to.
He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
National security is priority #1. Who cares?
He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
Scumbag over eight years pulled wool over the eyes of the press and the leftist clueless faggish historians said nothing about it.
He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaeda);
New Orleans? Not his job.
Iraq? I agree he has screwed up by not taking the battle to nations that harbor and aid in the war against America--e.g., Iran and Syria.
He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
What morons! Productivity is FAR more important than employment. The higher the productivity, the better the economy and the standard of living. Only slugs who do not want to educate themselves are victims of unemployment over the long run.
He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
Possibly. I wonder what goes on in meetings over the ABM system, anti-bioweapon research, etc. I don't know Bush's interest or passion, and neither do these idiot commie, limp-wristed historians.
He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
Welfare cheating dwarfs corporate cheating. The commie historians here need to check their facts.
Doesn't this idiot know anything about sampling theory, normal distributions, chi-square tests, etc.? Why in the world would anybody believe that smelly, bearded, be-speckled, pot smoking, torn blue jean wearing, ignorant of real world, socialist "historians" be a fair sample for any study?
Yeah Roosevelt, like Clinton was good at making people feel better. That much I'll give him. But as you can see from the rest of the posts those who disagree take it as an article of faith that FDR was a great leader who did all of these things. Facts and logic don't seem to mean much as one can see from the childish insults.
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