Our Worst President Ever? By Victor Davis Hanson

Our Worst President Ever? By Victor Davis Hanson From the November/December 2007 Issue The American

That’s what some on both left and right are saying about George W. Bush. Don’t count him out yet, VICTOR DAVIS HANSON advises.

Bush Geopolitics By October, 15 months before his presidency would end, George Bush’s approval ratings still hovered around 30 percent.

His administration will go down, say historians such as Columbia’s Eric Foner and Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, as a disaster. As Wilentz put it, “Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.”

A new genre in American popular culture has arisen comparing Bush to Hitler—on the Internet, and in fiction, stand-up comedy, and drama. To the radio personality Garrison Keillor, Bush’s Republicans are “brownshirts in pinstripes”—echoing Al Gore’s similar slur of “digital brownshirts.”

Even Bush’s supporters seem resigned to such abuse. They are talking not of a restoration in public esteem before the president leaves office, but rather of a Trumanesque turnaround: a once-despised president only years later becomes appreciated for his unpopular but necessary decisions.

But for now, Bush seems to have an orphaned presidency defended by very few. From the left, he is criticized for his tax cuts for the rich, his lack of concern for African-American victims of Katrina, his illiberal homeland-security measures—and always for Iraq, with shrill, persistent choruses of “preemption” and “unilateralism.” Much of this anger against Bush is Pavlovian and superficial, deeply embedded within the president’s caricatured dead-or-alive, smoke-’em-out lingo.

As a result, the left gives the president no credit for policies that have irked his conservative base. In his first term, he increased federal spending at a faster rate than Bill Clinton. He extended the reach of federal education policy with his No Child Left Behind legislation, and he did not veto a single spending bill, instead sponsoring a major new prescription entitlement for Medicare recipients. His immigration bill, blasted by many conservatives, ultimately failed, but still won over Senator Ted Kennedy and infuriated red-state America.

So will Bush leave disgraced and confirm this prognosis of worst president? Probably not—and not merely because we have had far worse, from James Buchanan to Richard Nixon.

Even Bush’s supporters seem resigned to such abuse. They now talk not of a restoration in public esteem before the president leaves office, but rather of a Trumanesque turnaround sometime later.

Start with the fountainhead of Bushophobia— the postwar reconstruction of Iraq. The surge that began in June seems to be working far better than anticipated. Should such tactical progress translate into strategic success—the verdict is still out—historians may conclude that George Bush removed the two worst regimes in the Middle East, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and then successfully battled al-Qaeda terrorists in both countries in his pursuit of democratic reform. History could further record that he accomplished this at far less the cost than the stalemate in Korea in the 1950s or the defeat in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.

We also forget that the abuse heaped on past presidents while in office sometimes fades with perspective. A once-reviled Calvin Coolidge is generally assessed as a far better president than Lyndon Johnson. Ronald Reagan has been recently canonized, so we forget that during the Iran-Contra scandal there was talk of his impeachment. George H. W. Bush blew a 90 percent approval rating after the Gulf War and was blamed all through the 1990s for cynically not removing Saddam; now he is seen as a sober realist and globalist. Lauded today, Bill Clinton ended his tenure in disgrace.

The current stridency of Democratic presidential candidates is also starting to show Americans that easy criticism of a sitting president is not quite the same as assuming the responsibility of governing.

As the campaign wears on and exasperated Democrats continue to appeal to their base, the bystander president could be seen as a more sober and judicious statesman. And should a Republican candidate— all the frontrunners have more or less endorsed the president’s Middle East agenda—be elected, it will provide a lame-duck Bush with a type of national approval for yet a third time.

Similarly, few have offered alternatives to most of the Bush initiatives. Neoconservatism is slandered as messianic and dangerous in its advocacy of democratic reform. Are we then to revert to the amoral realism that tolerated Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, or winked as the House of Saud funded madrassas that empowered global jihad? Or should we treat terrorism as a “criminal justice” matter? We did that serially in the 1990s, from the first World Trade Center bombing to the attack on the USS Cole—and earned 9/11 as the logical outcome of such appeasement.

In short, should we avoid another 9/11, see North Korea denuclearize, stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps catch Dr. Zawihiri and bin Laden, while the economy stays strong and our southern border with Mexico is closed—all possible in the next year and a quarter—George Bush could still leave office with a successful presidency.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classics scholar, is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Your are right with what you have said. Firings with precipitated accounting scandals, internet bust all due to Clinton's lack of having his 'eye on the ball' His firing of DOJ attorneys and treating terrorism as a criminal matter were all major errors in judgment. But the man himself is a major error in judgment on the part of the American voter.

All that taken into consideration that can not erase the fact that the unemployment and inflation rates were low. That is good for the people. You can call it a 'false economy' if you like, however people lived through it.

Yes, Clinton's lack of control gave Bush a bad first quarter but it came under control and the rates that went slightly up came back down.

Yes, his mis-management caused other problems. Yes, he a a major character flaw and blot on humanity. Regardless of all Clinton's faults, flaws and scandals the economic indicators were good. They will go down in history as such.

As for Congress they also play a role ... and the Republican controlled Congress was not as forceful and a watchful as it should have been. They could have rectified many of his errors and made course corrections ... they didn't.

As for Clinton's impeachment it should have been for his real failing ... in national security. Republicans in Congress sought to placate the minority and in doing so created a circus.

Your last line refers to someone whose "policies will lead us to the next world war." Who do you mean? Aren't we already in the next world war, brought to us by the Islamos?

Hell no! We are fighting an ideology, not countries. Not at the level of WWI or WWII. When China starts to get involved and we have to seriously fight a war at the levels of WWI or WWII, then you will have a World War. Right now its a containment war that no country has any major commitment in to defeat, unlike the other world wars. Don't mis-interpret this by bringing up those that have sacrificed thier time and lives in this endevor. I'm speaking strickly on a historical level of multiple countrys commitment to utterly destroy and crush the enemy. We are not at that level yet, so no this is not a WW IMHO.

Andrew Jackson was a great president. He might have been a Democrat, but he was nothing like a modern day socialist democrat. In fact, if he were alive today he would probably challenge the dumbocratic leadership to a duel. Jacksonian policies set the stage for what would later become known as Manifest Destiny under President James K. Polk. In fact, Polk (also from TN), considered himself the last Jacksonian President. In short, Jackson (along with Polk) is a big reason the USA is one big country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. During his presidency South Carolina even threatened to secede due to tariff disputes. After Jackson threatened to hang all conspirators from the tallest tree, this secession threat was quickly dropped. He was probably the closest thing to John Wayne we ever had in the Oval Office.

everyone forgets the crooked administrations like Harding and Grant...

People throw this crap at me all the time...and my response inevitably is, “I guess you are ignorant of the track record of so many other presidents in our history.”

Benjamin Harrison? Van Buren? the second term of Jefferson almost ended the US economy! Americans need to educate themselves on their history.

And 20 years down the road, when Iraq is secure and Lebanon and Jordan have democracies...he will be praises as Cold War victor Ronald Reagan is today...

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