Is George W. Bush the worst president in 100 years?

really, all presidents kind of suck except washington, lincoln, jefferson, fdr and william henry harrison.

"I'm meeting you halfway you goddam hippies!"

now how could you know this funky-cool statue and misspell Cincinnati? jk lots of ppl in Cinci misspell it that way, my old swimming team once had custom-made suits w/that spelling.

gw bush in a dead heat w/rm nixon in WORST PRESIDENT IN 100 YEARS sweepstakes. bet both guys are still revered in Cincinasty.

-- term coined by "Ike" in foreboding farewell speech

Did they look Cinci-natty in them?

"20th Cent. Presidents worse then Bush: kennedy, nixon, ford, clinton"

Seriously, how are Kennedy, Clinton, and even Ford on this list? Nixon was terrible in his own way, but at least he has China on his list of achievements, and his image was partially salvaged as an ex-President. Bush is the worst. Can you imagine any future Presidents turning to him for foreign policy advice?

Harding's currently the consensus pick for the 20th century's worst, right?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/images/wh9.gif

http://www.historylink.org/db_images/Harding.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Franklin_Pierce.jpg/501px-Franklin_Pierce.jpg

... who is also on the short-list of worst presidents EVAH.

Warren G. Harding Is Not A Role Model for a Failed Presidency

Indeed, at the time of his death in office, he was widely respected and greatly loved. He was a president who actually cut taxes while helping the nation accomplish the transition from a wartime (WWI) economy. And he created new agencies of government that remain with us to this day: Veterans Affairs and the Bureau of the Budget.

Harding, a highly articulate president, spoke out against the plight of blacks and against racism when it was highly unpopular to do so. He hired for his cabinet men who were among the best and brightest, such as Herbert Hoover, his Secretary of Commerce, and Charles Evans Hughes, his Secretary of State.

The criminal scandals that engulfed Harding's presidency — after his death — were not of his making nor was he complicit in them. His alleged extramarital activities surfaced after his death, too. That meant, of course, that he thus had no opportunity to explain or apologize, to take or deny responsibility. Moreover, if infidelity determines the rank of a president, many who followed should have their ranking adjusted.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20010511.html

Bush is going to be one of those infamous mishaps that leads to study after study and book after book on how in the fuck did this ever even happen in a democracy and how do we never let it happen again.

true that. hoping the dems win back Congress this fall & the investigations begin.

Anyway, I don't agree with Dean--"a highly articulate president," haw.

just throwing it out there. Apropos I figured since Dean's deemed Bush worse than Nixon elsewhere.

WHIGGA

That's from way upthread, but I'm really interested to hear why Clinton is in that list. The others I may or may not agree with, but I think I get why they'd show up on some folks' lists.

Ford was just the Zamboni after Nixon's Icecapades anyhow.

a. I am opposed to his policies
b. he is unable to implement his policies
c. his policies have had measurably negative impact
d. history will judge him harshly
e. some combination of the above

sorry everyone the correct answer is Reagan

there's nothing i trust the contemporary american public with more than providing a thoughtful, balanced assessment of the truman presidency.

these types of polls always tend to be harshest on the most recent Presidents. as Maddow explained, most of this was due to the fact that Republicans were typically unanimous on their picks for Best and Worst (Reagan and Obama), whereas liberals tended to be more split on both topics.

I couldn't find the average age in the crosstabs either, but while one need not have been around to assess the quality of someone's presidency, the layman generally tends to gravitate towards the ones they remember. and of course, recency bias etc etc

the growing apparently universal consensus on reagan as a 'great' president is srsly depressing.

i make it a habit to shout "I SHOT REAGAN!" in public at least 3 times per day

..as Maddow explained,

Ugh.

I mean, I voted for Obama. And yes the GOP has stopped absolutely any forward movement for years. But that is a horrible way to start any sentence.

she's not wrong in this case.

not that these types of polls really deserve more than the 15 mins they get anyway, but....

Yeah definitely not wrong.

With all his atrocities, stupidity and wars we are still fighting, I might say Dubya, but dude DID make this:

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/08/bush1.o.jpg/a_560x0.jpg

the growing apparently universal consensus on reagan as a 'great' president is srsly depressing.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.)

in part because a week doesn't end without his name coming up in whatever context. Liberals don't discuss FDR often enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_FrB-hkiTc

what liberals, Alfred? The Dems who are misty-eyed over Bubba, Smiter of the New Deal?

Every prez since at least Reagan has seemed like the worst one we could have at the time.

nurse! nurse! he's awake again nurse!

the growing apparently universal consensus on Reagan

This is mainly media echo chamber stuff, but the more time that passes since Reagan's administration, the fewer the people who remember any of the details, and the more people (especially young people) who accept the most frequently broadcast opinion as the 'consensus'. Among those of us who were adults under Reagan there is no such consensus.

I don't know that the Reagan consensus is growing - I'm not quite old enough to really remember the end of Reagan's time but even by 1992 it seemed like he had been proclaimed the GOP's FDR, no serious look at or criticism of his terms would be undertaken except for fringe characters like Chomsky and Hitchens. That eased up a bit when Dubya was at his most unpopular, but even then the media and Republicans have treated him like a deity and Democrats were scared to actually criticize a guy who died of Alzheimer's out of the spotlight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oskP72Xqoio

Is it misguided to blame Reagan for all the income inequality going on these days? Reagan basically mainstreamed 'trickle down' to the point it was accepted by everyone including the media.

Unfortunately Clinton helped metastasize it with eliminating glass steagall and his neoliberal corporate whoring. =(

George W Bush just helped along its rapidly snowballing path.

and obama getting played like a nouveau riche pledge at dartmouth by "conservative" deficit hawks hasn't helped income inequality do anything but grow

http://theweek.com/article/index/264151

Is it misguided to blame Reagan for all the income inequality going on these days?

IIRC the current trend toward greater and greater inequality first ticked quickly upward during reagan era, although i think it started moving in that direction in late vietnam/nixon era

it actually decelerated in mid-late 90s IIRC and then accelerated again in early 2000s and has done so ever since

http://www.usnews.com/dbimages/master/50614/GR_120513_Stone1.jpg

jimmy carter is not innocent iirc. william greider: "A Democratic Congress and Democratic president (Jimmy Carter) enacted the Monetary Control Act of 1980 which removed all remaining controls on interest rates and repealed the federal law prohibiting usury (note that sky-high interest rates and ruinous predatory lending have been with us ever since). It was the 1980 legislation that took the lid off banking and doomed the savings and loan industry, the mainstay that used to provide housing loans and home mortgages. The thrifts were able to raise capital because they were allowed to pay a half percent more in interest to depositors. Bankers wanted them out of the way. The Democratic party obliged."

and others ~
http://articles.herald-mail.com/2011-02-20/opinion/28614285_1_jimmy-carter-deregulation-peanut-farmer

of course there are a lot of diff't ways to measure "income inequality"

xpost

oh yeah every administration shares blame, even LBJ since the hugely expensive war distracted from the great society stuff

Carter's defense budget for fiscal year 1980-81 was lauded by the Reagan administration.

carter legalized usury. look what's happened to inequality since. big business loves democrats. the DJIA is over 17,000 for the first time ever, and look who's president

if obama were a better president, there'd be republicans and plutocrats in jail for lying the country into war, and then crashing the economy. but he's a corporatist, and that's why people are pissed at him. that and he's not white. this is one racist stuck up country

Is it misguided to blame Reagan for all the income inequality going on these days?

No, IMO. Blame Reagan, blame Reagan fiscal and monetary policy and blame everything Reagan represents in terms of shaking your head knowingly and chuckling at what a fool someone would have to be to think that lowering taxes on the rich could ever be harmful to anything. There's a reason "Reaganomics" is a word - I'm all for laying bare the evils of the Carter administration but let's not forget that supply-side thinking and deregulation (the gutting of the SEC is particularly relevant here) was embraced, hardcore as national policy and over 8-12 years baseline assumptions were so altered that is now almost amazing to think the New Deal was once considered some kind of untouchable bedrock or third rail of postwar policy. I'm very comfortable demonizing that administration as especially if not uniquely destructive. Let us also not forget that it was all phony math based on bogus claims: "the increased productivity will balance the lower tax rates, government revenues will be fine" was always a lie, akin to "Iraq has WMDs." The game was always to simultaneously fill the pockets of the already-rich, and starve out government programs that Republicans objected to anyway on ideological grounds. To the extent that the gap was ever covered, it was done through payroll taxes so that your Gordon Gekkos could enjoy the fruits of a hard day's insider trading without those pesky old Eisenhower-style ultra-high rates on megabuck income. Wikipedia on Reaganomics offers some convenient nuggets:

In 1981, Reagan significantly reduced the maximum tax rate, which affected the highest income earners, and lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50%; in 1986 he further reduced the rate to 28%. (...) (S)ince the Reagan tax reductions, top marginal tax rates have remained lower than at any point in US history since 1931, when the top marginal rate was raised from 25% to 63%.

So yeah, I feel okay linking Reagan up with income inequality in America. It's been impossible to put any of this shit genie back in the bottle and every administration since has very comfortably followed in these footsteps, varying only in how much they further expand on these policies. The greatest injustice is that him dying in obcurity of a terrible disease left so little room for protest, alternative narratives, or the kind of clearly satisfying, cathartic cheering that Thatcher's death occasioned. Fuck this guy forever. See also: U.S. Presidents - Cold War and New Millennium Edition

I just want to chime in and say that I live in the sticks, pretty much surrounded by conservative culture, and if you say anything bad about Reagan, you're opinion almost immediately becomes "invalid" to these people. They really put him up on a pedestal

meanwhile nobody in his administration could give two fucks about them

I'm all for laying bare the evils of the Carter administration but let's not forget that supply-side thinking and deregulation (the gutting of the SEC is particularly relevant here) was embraced, hardcore as national policy and over 8-12 years baseline assumptions were so altered that is now almost amazing to think the New Deal was once considered some kind of untouchable bedrock or third rail of postwar policy. I'm very comfortable demonizing that administration as especially if not uniquely destructive. Let us also not forget that it was all phony math based on bogus claims: "the increased productivity will balance the lower tax rates, government revenues will be fine" was always a lie, akin to "Iraq has WMDs."

otm. David Stockman's book is still the only conservative tome that has acknowledged the Oz-esque qualities of the Reagan administration, but the myth of small(er) government effected by Reagan persists, just like Dems want to believe Clinton was Good For America when he was really Reagan's Reagan.

The stuff about recruiting Romney for another run in the link that started this revive is bizarre:

An adviser close to the former Massachusetts governor told CNN that he received a bunch of calls Wednesday, following the release of the poll, from donors who contributed to the 2012 Romney presidential campaign.

I know about Nixon, and know that Stevenson was given a second chance to lose in '56. Neither party would ever run a losing general-election candidate these days--there's just too much money involved, and people get tired of everybody a million times faster now than then. Losing the nomination and getting another chance is almost the rule, but not the election itself.

trying to remember the last person to lose a general election to even attempt another run (not counting third party types like perot or wallace) - mcgovern in 84? and i'm not sure what the hell his 84 campaign was about but i don't think it was a 'serious' campaign. there was talk of ford in 80 but i don't think he ever actually considered it. the same w/ humphrey in 76 but he definitely didn't consider it since he was already dying of cancer. both of those lost close elections where history and public opinion had turned against the person who beat them plus it was close enough to an era where ppl lost general elections and ran again (nixon, stevenson, dewey).

Also, even though my point was general, I think it'd be especially inconceivable in Romney's case. The one thing you'd need for even the possibility of a second run would be fierce party loyalty. Pre-Watergate Nixon had that, and I'm guessing Stevenson had it too. The party loyalty to Romney lasted for about five days after the first debate.

Romney standing up there with Rubio, Cruz and Paul... I would be entertained.

there was talk of ford in 80 but i don't think he ever actually considered it.

He did! Reagan's people considered a "co-presidency" whereby Ronnie was the CEO and Ford the actual administrator but Ford got yellow at the last minute plus there's the uh Constitution.

Yeah, I think by that point Reagan had no interest in being vice-anything, and certainly it would have been goofy and diminishing for a former president to take that role.

Closest 'second chance' might be Ford/Dole losing in 76 and Dole/Kemp running twenty years later, but I never had the sense that the previous run in any way 'defined' Dole or really affected the campaign at all.

it defined him in the 'this guy is so old he ran as ford's veep candidate in 76'. i'd say 88 defined him more. obv plenty of veep candidates from losing tickets have made later attempts for top of the ticket - dole, mondale, quayle, lieberman, edwards.

Oh mannnn forgot about Lieberman's run. Quayle's was wonderfully pathetic, dude seemed genuinely oblivious to the fact that 80% of the country thought of him as a punchline and the rest just thought of him as a nonentity veep.

quayle was a bit of a hero to the conservative movement, it's a huge part of why he was picked in 88. he was young and thru the prism of beltway press he was somehow 'sexy' (ALOT of comparisons to robert redford). the story the right told themselves is that the left recognized quayle as a threat and immediately used the media to discredit him as an idiot as they would later do w/ sarah palin. by 2000 there had been enough vague rehabilitation - three bestsellers about conservative principles and family values, the atlantic's very high profile 'dan quayle was right' piece, various other challopsy takes - that he could run in 2000 and be penciled in as a factor. he wasn't. bauer stole some of his natural base, mccain became the anti-bush candidate, and if all the faces of 96 seemed too old and familiar - libby dole, buchanan, and alexander dropped out before the primaries, forbes dropped out after new hampshire - than a face of 92 was definitely ancient history. quayle had lost to clinton, bush had walloped a high profile clintonite governor. they went w/ the winner.

Let's give thanks to Quayle for giving Bill Kristol work.

God, those primaries. I followed that whole thing pretty closely. Really seemed, within the dubious bubble of the coverage, that at least for a while there Bush was not 100% a foregone conclusion. Would have been kind of amazing if he'd been knocked out of the race by a sex scandal or out-of-control watermelon truck, but after he'd successfully smeared the McCain campaign out of the running. Quayle positioning himself as the late-primary comeback kid, a who's-more-conservative slugfest with Alan Keyes...sigh.

But you're right - there was at least something there for Quayle to build on, or for his team to blind themselves with. But even if he'd rebuilt his brand a bit I'm not sure anybody ever found him compelling, or felt a connection when he was speaking or anything. Just seemed okay on paper.

I will never forget the day Quayle came to my town and pointed to a "now hiring" sign at a Burger King as evidence of the economy improving.

and at BK you can have it your way!

hey I think we have a new candidate guys

yeah fuck Joe Biden

stole my joke, dammit. That's what I get for taking a pee.

Trump didn't kill a million Iraqis. Nicest thing you can say about him probably.

xp
forgive me my Lord

also a pretty good display name / post combo there from Neanderthal