J. TODD FOSTER: Bush Worked Hard To Earn Title Of Worst President
Two days from now, America will breathe a collective sigh of relief. The worst presidency in modern history – possibly U.S. history – mercifully will be over.
Who among us can honestly say they are better off today than eight years ago? Only the descendants of Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson – frequently recognized before now as the four worst presidents ever. Those families waited and prayed for generations for a guy like George W. Bush to come along.
And no, it’s not too early to render such a judgment despite Bush’s 2003 statement to journalist Bob Woodward: “History. We won’t know. We’ll all be dead.”
What an orator.
Many professional historians already have concluded that W stands for Worst. Of 109 interviewed in early 2008 by the History News Network, two historians rated his presidency a success; 107 rated it a failure. Sixty-one percent rated it the worst ever. Another 35 percent rated Bush’s presidency as among the worst.
And that was before the economy collapsed.
“At a time of national crisis, Pierce and Buchanan, who served in the eight years preceding the Civil War, and Johnson, who followed it, were simply not up to the job,” Columbia University history professor Eric Foner wrote two years ago. “Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues). Even after being repudiated in the midterm elections of 1854, 1858 and 1866, respectively, they ignored major currents of public opinion and clung to flawed policies. Bush’s presidency certainly brings theirs to mind.”
I used to think Bush was a decent fellow who was in over his head. He reminded me of a Saint Bernard left alone in a house. The dog’s master returns home and finds broken dishes, a chewed couch and other rampant destruction, but the dog is cheerfully wagging his tail and wanting to go for a walk.
Bush is oblivious like the Saint Bernard. But he possesses numerous dangerous qualities, which taken alone are bad enough.
Together, they forge a toxic cocktail.
Lazy. Stubborn. Arrogant. Apathetic. A lack of intellect and curiosity about how the world works and thinks. A man who sees the world in black and white, instead of nuanced in shades of gray. A man who believes God truly only blesses America and that the U.S. has a monopoly on good, while anyone who disagrees with us is evil.
“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” one historian wrote in that History News Network survey. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”
America’s standards for its presidents are not impossibly high. We want someone who is among the smartest in the room, who works hard, who reads his briefing papers, who listens to reason and, when he fails, is willing to admit it and change course.
W can’t bring himself to admit a single mistake – only “disappointments,” including the inexplicable “disappointment” of not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Disappointment is when Baskin-Robbins is out of your favorite flavor. When it rains out your softball game. When you lose at B-I-N-G-O.
Disaster is when you wrongly invade a country, kill tens of thousands of civilians and send several thousand of your own soldiers and Marines to their deaths. Incompetence and cronyism, not disappointment, result when you preside over the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. Only political stupidity and lack of empathy would allow an American city to drown while you vacation and play the guitar in California – a modern-day Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Speaking of vacations, Bush had nearly twice as many of them as press conferences. He chopped more wood, rode more bikes and played more video games than any president in history.
Even the people he surrounded himself with – notably Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – will go down as among the worst in history.
“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point – rightly – to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”
None of us knows what kind of president Barack Obama will be. But we do know this: Obama is whip smart, pragmatic and eloquent. He reads real books and writes them, too. He can string together words in a manner that inspires Americans, not makes us international laughingstocks. And – the ridiculous label of socialist aside – Obama already has shown himself to be a common-sense centrist.
In 2000, this nation had the opportunity – and actually did by popular vote – to elect the smartest candidate.
The Electoral College, aided by the Supreme Court, threw the presidency to the guy most of us preferred to share a beer with.
We know what a smart president can do. Bill Clinton was an intellectual giant – above the waist anyway – and tireless. He balanced budgets and generated surpluses.
W has put your grandchildren in hock. That’s what happens when you elect a president who’s the smartest person in the room only when he’s alone.
By now, some of you are accusing me of being overly harsh. You probably don’t have relatives who are so afraid of traveling overseas as Americans that they put Canadian maple leaf stickers on their luggage.
And then there’s my latest 401(k) statement. I’ll have to work until I’m 90 to afford retirement. And you think I’m ornery now.
J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at or (276) 645-2513.
Advertisement
Reader Reactions
J. Foster, it takes a big man to speak his mind knowing he will face retalilation from those that refuse to reconize the facts, you sir are such a man, I commend you for that. Unfortunatly, we live in a part of the United States where such political observations would be denounced, by a majority of the people here, even if they were run over by a truck load of facts. Only our history and the future of our country will either confirm or deny your opinions of George W. Bush, not your critics. My money, what little there is left of it, would be on you being correct.
Have you noticed how hard it is to find anyone lately that will admit they voted for Mr. Bush in 2004? How did he get elected the last time with so little support?
“farmer” you need to seek the answer to your question from your friends in Macon Ga. they heard the chants of “no more bills”. Personally I haven’t heard that around here, where were you when you heard it? And why didn’t you ask someone while you were there? Let us know what you find out because I too would like to know the meaning behind that chant.
Many years ago I worked as a tax preparer and there were some who came in to have taxes prepared who had barely any income, who mainly lived on government assistance. They wanted to do their taxes to get their refunds as quickly as they could, they were more than willing to pay the extra cost to get the cash quickly. Then their children began coming in as they reached adulthood and they were also now living on government assistance. From generation to generation. Farmer is correct, there are some in this area who have always lived this way and probably will continue to do so. They are living on the money that we pay in. I keep saying that I am doing something wrong, I work for my living and eke by. There is something wrong in a country that rewards non-working individuals with hard working individuals monies, something that needs to be corrected. For the benefit of all.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! J. Todd Foster commits a major Freudian slip when he describes President Bush as “Lazy. Stubborn. Arrogant. Apathetic. A lack of intellect and curiosity about how the world works and thinks.“ Mr. Foster uses incredibly sophomoric prose and weak third party confirmations to try to buttress his feeling that Bush is the worst president. He simply says that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. are the worst because he and a couple of Bush hating historians agree with him. Quoting leftist history professor Eric Foner (who regularly writes for The Nation, one of the most leftist magazines published today) is simply taking an outlier who most likely has a very low regard for anyone to the right of Dennis Kucinich. Here are some quotes from the Wikipedia entry on Foner from some of Prof. Foner’s critics “Theodore Draper regarded Foner as “one of our most distinguished historians” and “a partisan of radical sects and opinions.“[4]
John Patrick Diggins of the City University of New York, wrote that Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, is, “a magisterial narrative,“ and, “a moving account,“ but characterized the historian as, “an unforgiving historian of America.“ [5]
Conservative activist and “academia-watchdog” David Horowitz described as “anti-American” a Columbia University teach-in that Foner helped organize in 2003; Daniel Pipes named Foner among the “Profs who hate America” (for the historian’s opposition to the Iraq War).[6] Bernard Goldberg opined that Foner is #75 in Goldberg’s personal list of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America in 2005.“
So we have the Editor of the Bristol Herald Courier who is simpatico with left wing Bush haters. If Mr. Foster could come up with any thoughtful analysis with respect to why Bush was the worst president ever, that would be fine. However, to simply rehash a bunch of half-baked invective shoveled upon us by the Left is Mr. Foster’s prerogative. However, this indicates that all past and future editorials from Mr. Foster must be viewed in light of this sloppy, thoughtless and lazy screed.
Some friends in Macon Ga. witnessed some interesting characters yesterday. There were people chanting “no more bills, no more bills, no more bills” as Obama became president. I’d love to hear from any of the liberals here. Please explain that concept to me. I’ve heard that same thing around here too. Do these bills consist of electric bills? Mortgages? Rent? Groceries? Insurance?
Actually I’d love to hear from my buddy, Chester (aka Bossman or Hoss). Do you think I can stop paying my bills too? Do we need to clear this with someone first? I’d be a little scared, especially in winter, to stop paying my electric bill. Does this mean a person’s credit rating suddenly becomes meaningless? I really need to find out.
An interesting tidbit….Obama spoke the word,“responsibility”, several times yesterday. That word, and liberals, usually don’t mix well. If President Obama actually expects folks to be somewhat responsible for themselves, he may make some enemies. I bet the folks who think they’ve paid their last bills will be a little upset when reality sets in.
Everyone needs to leave a little earlier for work today. The roads will be overflowing with the unemployed as they’re now out seeking jobs. Bush held them down. Obama has now freed them to flourish, and filled them with motivation. Should be exciting!!!
I just read an interesting essay in the Feb ‘09 issue of HARPER’S MAGAZINE entitled “A Quibble” by Mark Slouka. He writes as if he has been following our current stream of blogs:
“What we need to talk about, what someone needs to talk about, particularly now, is our ever-deepening ignorance (of politics, of foreign languages, of history, of science, of current affairs, of pretty much everything) and not just our ignorance but our complacency in the face of it, our growing fondness for it…
Although perfectly willing to recognize expertise in basketball, for example, or refrigerator repair, when it comes to the realm of ideas, all folks (and their opinions) are suddenly equal. Thus evolution is a damned lie, global warming a liberal hoax, and Republicans care about people like you…
But doesn’t this past election, then, sound the all clear? Doesn’t the fact that Obama didn’t have to lower himself to win suggest that the ignorant are outnumbered? Can’t we simply ignore the third of white evangelicals who believe the world will end in their lifetimes, or the millennialists who know that Obama’s the Antichrist because the winning lottery number in Illinois was 666?“
There is much more that is worthy of attention in this article, but I would never expect you to take the recommendation of a “progressive.“
Message to Chester, you might try reading something other than your high school history book.
For less govt, that was I that apologized for using the term boy, not farmer. Although, I meant no disrespect, but that term used in some ways is offensive to blacks. I’ve shared foxholes with Marines who were black, seen both black and white die. I will pay more attention to my wording in the future.
However here’s a real irony for all. Lincoln was a white supremacist and President Obama was sworn in on his bible.
For Chester, the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 “I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.“ Abraham Lincoln
President Obama must have skipped history class at Harvard.
bbart,
Come on. Foster spoke the truth? It was no more than a simple I hate Bush parting shot at someone, as of today, is history. Full of half truths.
Personally, I think history will treat “our former president” kindly.
Secondly, I think you are right. The people have spoken. Let’s see what happens. Personally, I’m looking forward to the tax break he campaigned on. The right wing bloggers don’t think much, but I remain hopeful. Doubtful, but hopeful. I’ll keep my hands on my pocketbook (as if the IRS will allow it).
Thirdly, Barak Obama is my President. I can handle it. I despise his idealogy, but I can live with it.
Forthly, I think forthly is a word, calm down. The world is not against you.
First, go back and re-read Todd Foster’s original editorial. He spoke the truth.
Second, realize that the American people have spoken, using the ballot box as their voice.
Third, Barack Obama is the president of all Americans.
Fourth, get used to it!
You know, I said I was done with this. I guess I can’t be trusted.
Guy’s,
You might as well let this go. Denial like I have never witnessed. We’ll call this summer “the summer of love”.
This will be OK as long as the producers keep producing and the whiners sit back and take from the producers.
Chester, bbart, tmullens, all you other libs, I’m curious, how do you earn a living? I work for a coal mining company. Yes, dirty coal. Brrrrr. I’m proud to be a part of making electricity to power your computer, to help make steel for most things we use. Give me another real plan and maybe I’ll go there.
Tmullens, I’m sure you have every reason to hate me. I really could care less. What do you do besides making protest signs and posting on this pointless thing? I want to know and so does everyone else.
One more thing. From posts a couple of days ago. bbart took issue with a harmless post from Farmer that used the word “boy”. I looked at the post and saw that no attack was intended. A first grader could have seen this.
Farmer, Never appologise for something you didn’t do.
bbart, get that enormous black chip off your shoulder. This points out the biggest problem of racial relations today. Over the top black attitudes. What else do the whites have to do? Put pampers on you? I’m tired of this hatred the blacks have toward whites. Trust me, the opposite is not true, at least with me. I started voting in 1979. I, nor maybe everyone here had nothing to do with any oppression toward blacks. I’m sure I’ll get the normal racist attacks from the Libs. So be it. Like Michael said “I’m startng with the man in the mirror”. I’m at peace with that guy.
I opologise for nothing.
1/20/09 Please go to the White House web site. Please read AGENDA of our president. May God have mercy on this nation.
Advertisement