I think it’s too soon to say, but BrainGlutton put it very well. Dubya is certainly in the running for the dubious distinction of Worst President Ever, and I believe he’ll definitely end up in the bottom of the presidential pack along with Harding, Buchanan, Hoover, Grant, Pierce and Nixon. Don’t think anyone upthread has mentioned the budget mess he’s going to leave his successor(s) - from healthy surplus to heart-stopping deficits in just a few years. Ouch.
It doesn’t matter how Iraq goes from this point. What has already happened is enough to damn him. The deaths and the destruction and the chaos and the suffering. ‘All’s well that ends well’ just doesn’t apply to a crime and a display of unconscionable incompetence of this magnitude.
Iraq still doesn’t measure up to Vietnam.
I’ve had Vietnam drilled into my head from an early age as the poster-boy for unnecessary, incompetant warfare. If you want Bush labeled “worst ever”, Iraq needs to approach Vietnam in terms of death, destruction, and impact on the US. I don’t think it’s close, it’s an entirely different level of warfare, all volunteer army and far fewer casualties. We don’t know yet what the future holds.
In terms of US lives lost, no; and probably not even in terms of local lives lost.
However, though Vietnam achieved nothing, in the long term, it didn’t damage relations between the US and the region. We won’t now for some decades, but it does seem likely to me that the Iraq War has serviously damaged relations between the US and the Middle East, in a way in which (for example) the first Gulf War did not, and even US support for Israel has not.
Perhaps the solution to the problem of historical perspective that concerns Bricker is to start at the beginning and keep a running list.
Therefore:
As of January 1797, George Washington was both the best and worst US President* ever.
By the end of John Adams tenure, Washington had a track record of having seen a newly-constituted nation through its birth, and allowing the peaceful transition from one chief executive to the next (when he probably could easily have declared, “Dammit, election or no election, I’m staying!” and probably still had a certain amount of public opinion to support him. Adams, meanwhile, had the Alien & Sedition Acts.
So by 1801, Washington was the best president ever, and Adams was the worst.
By 1809, Jefferson had arranged the Louisiana Purchase, probably his most lasting legacy to the nation beyond the Declaration of Independence. I’d stillplace Washington’s achievement above it, but certainly had a lasting positive result for the country**.
So we have:
Washington
Jefferson
Adams
I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.
*Meaning of course, President as the office is described in the Constitution.
** Anyone klnow what Napoleon’s backup plan was if Jefferson hadn’t bitten? Who would be our neighbor?
Based on various assessments, the 1837 financial crisis cannot be solely attributed to Jackson either (overheated land speculation and the less than energetic response of Jackson’s successor Van Buren are also among the factors blamed).
Of course, the economy is just one of the reasons you apparently think Jackson is worthier than GWB for the title of Worst Prez. And as I noted, the clock hasn’t yet run out on GWB (and it’ll take some time to assess just how bad a President he has been).
Bush isn’t even bad enough to be the number one worst president. 
You guys are giving him too much credit for being bad! At best he makes the top (or bottom I gues) 10…but the worst? No way. He’s got at least 2-3 in front of him IMHO. WHich ones? Well, go back to the other (myriad) threads on this subject if you are interested and look up my answer.
-XT
To answer the question honestly, BUSH IS TEH SUXXORR!!!1111
Seriously though, how many people have the in-depth knowledge of ALL previous presidents’ policies as well as the detailed historical context that those policies existed in? I know I don’t. I’ve heard that various presidents of 100 or 150 years ago were the worst, but I can’t say if I personally can determine if this is so.
As for Bush, as well as Clinton, Bush Sr. and maybe Reagan, it’s not just a cowardly dodge to say that it’s very difficult to judge their performances accurately from this close proximity.
So I don’t bother with the question of determining if Bush is the worst president. It is enough for me to know that the policies of the Bush administration have amazed, bewildered, depressed and terrified me beyond any measure that I thought would be possible in my lifetime. Who knows? Perhaps worse is still to come, but this shit going on right now is almost beyond words.
And there really is more and more shit coming out all the time. It is sad that so many Americans (myself included) are so shell-shocked by the irresponsible, self-serving, partisan and probably illegal destructiveness of the Bush administration that we are numbed and adapted to it.
Like the frog in the tepid water—slowly being heated to a boil.
The shit keeps getting more and more unfathomably horrible (I’m speaking just about human rights violations here) that we have no choice but to protect our psyches by assuming the mental equivalent of the fetal position.
We’re already down and bleeding, but we keep getting kicked. Just curl up and hope it’ll end or someone will save us. But who can you count on for help when it’s the police who are beating you?
This was Hoover’s failing in my view. His laissez faire ideology got in the way of the necessity for action by the federal government to relieve actual suffereing.
Iraq is fully and wholly owned by Bush. Vietnam was a creeping screw-up over many administrations. And arguably an order of magnitude less incompetent.
Not to hijcak this thread into a discussion of the Panic of 1837, but let’s look at those factors in turn.
“Overheated land speculation?” What would have been so terrible about that, if the payments for those lands had not suddenly artifically been restricted to “hard” money?
“Van Buren.” Fair point. But if we had to pick one man responsible for Van Buren ascendancy to the office, who would it be? (Hint: AJ).
Good point, friend Bricker. Could the next lawyer sent to Hell baste Andy Jackson as he rotates on his spit?
You left out the point that, unlike Viet Nam, our actions in Iraq have poisoned our relations with a large number of governments and citizens in a region of the world that is vital to our economic self-interest.
In the Middle East, our diplomacy, our culture, our trade, will suffer from GWB’s actions for a long, long time.
That was one of the points I made in my post upthread. Most other presidents were not capable of being as bad as Bush, due to the time period they lived in. Nothing Jackson could have done would have effected the world the way the Iraq War has. The way Bush’s environmental policy has. The way Bush’s economical policies have. You can’t give Bush a pass because other presidents didn’t have the means to do so much damage.
I like this assessment, although my opinion isn’t really worth that much, as I’m not really knowledgable about the actions of these presidents that people have been mentioning.
I’ve moved to the state of really hating the guy, as a person. I can’t think of much of anything he’s done that I respect. Even on the positions I agree with him, he’s done so little that I can’t think of anything.
And I voted for him.
He had a point about Iraq, I thought, that made sense at first. IF (if if if if if) Iraq was a probable source of large terrorist attacks, then invading had some merit. It now seems that this was mostly just an excuse, and he also had as little idea as I did about how Iraq is really three nations lumped together by the British, who don’t get along at ALL unless you step on their necks hard. How could he really think that these groups would sing “Kumbaya” and hold hands on a hilltop?
I also really resent the coat of paint he’s put on by spouting Bible verses and so on. He may even actually believe what he says, but who were the most criticized people in the gospels? The hypocritical Pharisees. They believed what they said, too, but had the whole system rigged for their own benefit, showing that they didn’t really have the spirit of what they said.
I actually have little fantasies about punching the guy. And I’ve never voted Democrat.
Let’s not get carried away here and ignore Jackson’s finer points. According to Wikipedia:
“Jackson had the first known case of a President being handed a baby to kiss. However, Jackson declined to and handed the baby to Secretary of War John H. Eaton to do the honors.”
There’s also the story about Jackson’s pet parrot being removed from Jackson’s funeral service in 1845 because it was swearing. You don’t get color like that anymore, unless you count the Clintons’ dog running out into traffic.
If after reviewing all the evidence you still despise Jackson, you’ll want to remove from your wallets all those nasty $20 bills with his picture on them. Send them to me and I’ll see that they get a good home. 
I don’t agree that Bush’s economic policies have been a disaster by any means. Nor do I agree that Bush’s environmental policies have been a disaster. You are viewing both of those issues through an ideological lens, I suspect. As am I, no doubt. But there’s no reason to heap your subjective ideology onto the fire along with realtively objective marks of failure or success. For example, I contend Bush’s tax cuts were a welcome stimulus to the economy and should be extended.
Specifically, by what OBJECTIVE criteria do you contend Bush is a monumental, bar-no-worse failure in the realm of domestic economic policy?
Conservapedia also notes that he was the nation’s longest lived president:
Oh, please.
The person who is the “Worst President Ever” is Woodrow Wilson, who did in his eight years all of the miserable shit Bush did, but to a larger extent.
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Feel that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was just an imperalistic land-grab? Remember that Woodrow Wilson did the exact same invade/set-up-a-new-government-under-a-constitution-we-wrote/set-up-big-corps-for-easy-exploitative-access in Haiti in 1915.
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Feel that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was sending troops into a meat grinder for no discernable purpose? Try to explain how World War One was somehow a more just war, a more useful one to fight, and was worth casualties numbering twenty times current American casuality rates.
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Think that Bush is divisive? When Wilson went to Versailles to attempt to negotiate a treaty to end World War One, he refused to take along any Republican members of the Senate, or consult with them in any way, and refused to take into advice any of their suggested changes to the Treaty, even though they had a majority in the Senate at the time.
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Hate how Bush agitates against homosexuals? Well, Wilson allowed his Cabinet to segregate their offices, and stated “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.” His words about Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan in his A History of the American People were quoted extensively in the film Birth of a Nation, leading to a revival of the Klan in the 1920’s.
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Scared of Bush’s detaining of “enemy combatants”? Wilson supported and enforced the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a crime to “print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States’ form of government.” Hundreds were jailed for being involved in anti-war protests. And not just for a few hours or days - Eugene Debs, head of the Socialist Party, stayed in jail for two years until President Harding - Harding! - commuted his sentence.
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Scared of Gonzalez and Ashcroft? Wilson’s Attorney General, Alexander Palmer, organized information on over a hundred thousand Americans suspected of being “traitors” for leftist views or foreign birth. The “Palmer Raids” remains the largest mass arrest in this country’s history.
Anyone who thinks that Bush is the “Worst President Ever” has the historical understanding of a flea. Or Donald Trump.
Kind of like Cecil said way back in 2003 when he mentioned “…his damn fool war,”* the harshness by which he will be judged will be directly in proportion to the ramifications of Iraq. I think this is why Bush so steadfastly refuses to give up the fight there, Iraq is his legacy, with a distant second being the number of Supreme Judges he installed.
- Kind of puts the shitstorm that arose out of that in perspective, doesn’t it?