OK, I would say no worse the the average president - I doubt he did long term damage. Look at Hayes, who could have healed some wounds between the North and South and instead rubbed salt in them - we are still living with Hayes’ and Johnson’s idiocy - we won’t live with GWBs 50 years from now when he will rise to be about the same as Carter - flawed, not up to the crisises he was handed. He was middling. You have to be bad to rank in the bottom five - there is no way GWB was the worst President, only those with a poor understanding of History would think so.
He actually had the opportunity to be a great President and blew it. Great Presidents lead our country through very tough times - FDR, Lincoln and Washington are all great because they rose to the occasion when History demanded it. GWB had that opportunity and decided to go to war with Iraq for ‘reasons.’
The rise of ISIS goes back much farther than GWB. ISIS is the result of British Imperialism in the time of Queen Victoria as much as it is GWBs fault. And Soviet expansion. And Post-Colonial policy post WWII. And oil money held in the hands of a very few while much of the Middle East is poor and struggling. Giving Bush credit for the rise of ISIS is like blaming Gavrilo Princip for WWI.
GWB was, I believe, a basically decent man, whose failing was that he was stupid enough to be manipulated by evil men. He was a pretty bad President, to be sure, but that basic decency puts him above the bottom of the heap.
Trump doesn’t even have that going for him. He’s evil and incompetent. He wasn’t the first evil screw-up in the White House, but he’s probably the worst.
Iraq, Afghanista, his tax cuts, 9/11, and the great recession are all historic fuck ups that are mostly/all his fault. You’re nuts if you think he was average. If the median presidency was as bad as Bush we would have failed as a country by now.
What makes Trump the worst to me isn’t the scale and scope of his failings (which are vast and plentiful), but that everything he touches turns to shit. There is next to nothing he says or does that is neutral, much less positive. The only thing I think he’s said was something against Scientology and then he never followed up on that.
However much I hated W, he was a man concerned about his legacy and his place in history, not just his at-the-moment Q rating like Trump is. Part of what makes Nixon a tragic figure instead of pure evil is his reported breakdowns towards the end. These men, whether they were good men who made bad decisions or bad guys who made bad decisions, had some tiny bit of integrity and decency and patriotism.
Trump has nothing. It’s all about him and ego. He’s an embarrassment and the damage he’s done that isn’t visible (international relationships, for example) will be felt for decades.
Even the things conservatives applaud him for doing aren’t HIS doing. Gorsuch and that ridiculous tax bill were McConnell’s.
Please explain why you consider Bush the Lesser to be a “basically decent man.” He is an addictive personality and empty suit maneuvered by fucking assholes, which doesn’t make him “decent” by any stretch of the imagination. He’s a goddamn DUPE.
I’M an addictive personality — I would pinball between cocaine, cannabis, and alcohol all day if I gave in to my lower instincts — and I am the first to admit that I would be a miserable President.
Like R. Crumb in his “If I Was King of the World” comic, I would immediately appoint a Secretary of Womens’ Footwear and meet with her for several hours every morning. And not only take away everyones’ guns, but also their motorcycles, jet-skis, and power tools.
You just said the same thing Chronos said in different words. You said he was duped rather than actually being evil himself.
Go look at Bush. Look at how he talks to people. Look at how much empathy he shows. Look at how he actually puts principles above party. Look at how he’s actually somewhat friends with his opposition. Compare him with the presidents we’ve had that have not been decent men, like Trump and Nixon.
I would have no problem whatsoever sitting down and talking to GW Bush. When I listen to what he has to say, I hear some decent ideas about how to make the country better (because he actually cares about that) even if i also hear some Republican nonsense and a bit of covering his ass.
I didn’t vote in 2000 (too young) or 2004 (college BS*), but my parents both voted for Bush because he was a good man, and that’s all they really cared about. (I know I never heard about Cheney controlling him behind the scenes until later.) Being decent folk who actually care about the country is kinda an important thing in a president.
At least, I thought it was until Trump was elected. Even Nixon pretended to be decent. It’s why I say that Trump was our first openly evil president. He proudly proclaimed he was an awful human being, and not only did some people vote for him anyways, but a good portion did so specifically because he was so awful. That’s what changed my worldview, not the fact that some people would hold their nose and vote for him.
*What good is it having drives to get us signed up to vote and join a political party ,but never tell us where we actually needed to go and vote? We’re already in a special situation, as we don’t exactly know where we officially “live.” But even people back home normally got a notification in the mail. Why didn’t we? Hell, why wouldn’t you have a voting booth set up on campus, since a good quarter of us didn’t drive? And, if you did, why wouldn’t you heavily advertise it in every building?
Trump may be a shit President, but until he launches an immoral, needless war and kills hundreds of thousands looking for weapons that don’t exist, he still beats GWB on points.
That. Trump beats Harding as the worst human being ever to become President, but the worst *Presidencies *are still those of Buchanan and Bush 2. It’s barely been a year, though.
True that, Trump hasn’t started a war yet, but I assume it’s a given that he will. And because he’s Trump it’s going to be the biggest war in history, absolutely huge!
That was sarcasm, right? LBJ is the fucktard who wouldn’t listen to the truth about Vietnam. Even Robert McNamara lacked the courage to tell the moron the truth, telling him instead “we’re almost there.” * Vietnam : A History *by Stanley Karnow, covers that clusterfuck in depth.
That’s being unfair to LBJ, I have to figure. His domestic policies were far-reaching, impressive and indeed courageous in that he correctly called that it would cripple the Democratic Party in the southern U.S. but went ahead and signed the Voting Rights Act anyway.
LBJ was responsible for a lot of good, but also responsible for deep evil. Obama, mostly not having a congressional majority, wasn’t able to accomplish what Johnson did. But he also didn’t do the evil that Johnson did.
