I recall more than a couple of people saying, “Worst. President. Ever.” And I, for one, am only saying that no matter what Clinton (or Klinton, your choice) may have done to “Bring shame upon the presidency,” Bush has done so very much more. Honestly, the people comparing Bush fils to Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Kim Jong Il and that girl who treated me shabbily when I was 12? I haven’t seen them. Where are they? “Worst. President. Ever.” on the other hand, well, look at what Bush is giving us to work with. And saying that those who said Clinton was a bad prez are comparable to those who rail that Bush is worse than Hitler? Is that really what you’re implying? Because that’s sure what it looks like.
Well, we can start here for some comparison to Mugabe, and Kim Jong Il. In that lovely thread we have lissener putting Bush as Kim’s running mate for worst leader, and rjung suggesting that “it’s hard to get more immoral than lying about WMDs to start a war” as if mass starvation or genocide are roughly on par with Bush’s record. Those are only the well known posters early on the first page.
Worst president ever? We can check out this thread for some highlights of abuses from other presidents. Little things like the Trail of Tears, or the Civil War, the Great Depression, we have corruption that makes today’s politicians look like rank amateurs, we have Vietnam, which someone not named Bush got us into costing 60,000 US lives, etc, etc, etc.
Yet, people (apparently with a straight face) argue that Bush is as bad as all of them. Can you really take these people seriously when they spout off about a damaged microfilm? I almost expect people to say “See? He’s hiding his military records, that proves he’s just as bad as the genocidal maniac killing thousands of his countrymen!” “Sure, Buchanan sat by and watched the country fall apart around him, but Bush lied about intelligence reports!”
It’s you and others like you who turn anything and everything into a constant stream of fodder. Once your eyes become signficantly jaundiced, everything’s gonna look yellow. Your assumption that the terror warning was merely a political ploy is not borne of anything remotely rational. You’re using your already existing opinion of him to seek ulterior motivations in absolutely everything he does. Why is the burden of proof on this board so high for absolutely everything/everyone else except Bush?
Hey our track record at calling out the bullshit is in this stupid war and all the shenanigans surrounding it is better, so just go ahead and trust us ok? 
If this somewhat jaundice discussion of just how very convenient it is that Tom Ridge woke up to give another vague and factually unsupported cry of warning about terror just as Senator Kerry announced his preference for a running mate has turned into the usual whining that people are just picking on poor President Bush (who is after all doing the best he can, he being in the arena with his face marked with dust, sweat and blood) I might as well stick my paltry two cents worth in to the general melee.
It is hard to accept the Administration’s actions at face value when you are convinced that the Administration has consistently acted to advance the interests of a fairly narrow economic constituency with crumbs and leavings distributed to its principal support groups and a occasional unavoidable boon trickling down to people who are not international businessmen, religious conservatives and proponent of a Imperial America. When you see the policies of the Administration as aimed at comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted, as focused on reducing the tax burden of people who are wealthy by any standard, as establishing US homogeny over the sources of petroleum and as concerned above all other things with keeping power until those aims can be accomplished beyond undoing, then it is very hard not to see Secretary Ridge’s breathless announcement as little more than a shameless attempt to shout down the rising enthusiasm for Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards.
Is my view of the Administration and its works based in distrust of the Administration? Hell, yes. Is my distrust of the Administration irrational? I don’t think so, but reasonable minds may differ. The shame is that with all this shouting of WOLF there is every possibility that some day the wolf may show up. You know the fable.
Go back and look at my original post. Bricker was making a general comment about what he perceived as a general trend on the boards. That it happened to be made in this thread was pretty much by the by, as I read it.
BINGO! Kinda (it was Sunday and there are “specifics”).
And there is a thread already about this.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2713552
Just in case anybody missed the real point…