I once said that I thought Bush 43 was the worst President since McKinley. Subsequent events have caused me to realize that I was being unfair to McKinley. Both were whores for big business, and both led us into wars without even a shred of justification.
McKinley comes out ahead, however, since he wasn’t the prime cheerleader for declaring war on Spain (which, like Iraq, posed absolutely zero threat to the U.S.). The press and the Congress were the drum-beaters, and he just went along for the ride. Bush and his inner circle, on the other hand, appear to be the primary war criminals in this era. Game, set, and match.
Oh, I thought this thread was a joke, then I opened it and the OP is serious!
HAAAHAAAHAAAAAHHAHAAAHAHAHA! ::COUGH, HACK::
I gotta second Jonathan Chance’s list here.
Bush . . . top five . . . that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while. Half the country HATES that man, how on earth will he be top five??!! Him and Nixon are tied in my book.
Wilson loses points for his racism and his bungling of post-war foreign policy (his snubbing of Republicans, I mean). Is he the one that had a stroke and his wife took over? Yeah, I vote no. I’d replace him with Truman, for the much more deftly handled WWII end and postgame.
Bush is towards the bottom of the list right now. Keeping company with Harding and McKinley, I’m afraid.
How about some objective criteria by which these presidents are getting measured? Just haphazardly throwing a list together means nothing.
In fact, I wish people had come up with some objective criteria for measuring Bush against Kerry. Bush voters might have realized, hey, I’m voting for the wrong guy.
Yeah, I was thinking that for Wilson, too. But up until the stroke he really got the job done.
And I have doubts about Truman, myself. A good but not great President. And he did sort of allow eastern Europe to be subjugated for 40 years through his decisions. I admit to a certain sympathy with Patton’s supposed ‘Let’s just keep going past Berlin and finish the commies while we’re here.’ line
Bush will be in the top 100 presidents until the 101st is inaugurated. In the past 100 years, my list would be:
1- F D Roosevelt
2- Johnson
3- Clinton
4- Carter
5- Wilson
6- Kennedy
7- Truman
8- T Roosevelt
I dislike Bush as much as anybody but usually refrain from jumping in on the Bush bashfests.
I can understand the Republicans around here sticking up for him in light of all the flack he gets, but in all honesty I don’t see how they could have the audacity to rank him as a great president. I mean, I’m as liberal as can be but if a liberal politician is screwing up, I’ll take him to task for it. Too bad so many righties around here seem incapable of doing that with Bush. At best I’d rank him as mediocre. Bleah.
I’m very disappointed in Bush’s performance so far, but it’s too early to tell how things will turn out, much less know how history will consider him. Successful presidents have sometimes been reviled while in office.
People who’ve decided he’s already failed should withhold their judgement.
People ranking him in the top five presidents are making an even stronger assertion, and should therefore be even more advised to withhold their judgement.
Darn straight, Carter. He was the first and only president to espouse human rights as the centerpiece of foreign policy. He won the Nobel Prize for brokering the Camp David peace treaty, something no successor has come remotely close to achieving. He treated the Panamanians as equals in negotiating the return of the Canal Zone to Panama. And he did not rush into war with Iran over the hostages, as Bush might very well have done. History will judge his presidency better than do those alive today.