Wilentz: Why Bush is so, so very, very awful

If you don't read the whole Sean Wilentz profile of Bush's "presidency," at least read these two paragraphs:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9961300/the_worst_president_in_history?rnd=1145468541266&has-player=true&version=6.0.8.1024

How does any president's reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

can't wait for history to do it's thing

By not taking the Generals' advice, and not sending enough troops to maintain a peace. A year after "mission accomplished", it became evident that a strong insurgency was emerging. He could have put more troops in then. He could have put more troops in two years after. He shows no adaptability, no proclivity to roll with the changes, and steer a better path. It is just "stay the course". It matters not that the course has already led us off of a cliff.

He is a Decider, and a divider. It occurred to me that his saying that HE is the decider is an off hand acceptance of responsibility, ala Col. Jessup in "A Few Good Men" saying, "You're damned right I ordered the code red".

worse'n the whole pack comBINED.

____

If trendlines continue and the House turns blue in November, John Conyers will have the votes to subpoena documents in support of articles of impeachment.

Bush is cooked. Cheney is pretty cooked, too. This administration is in a desperate survival mode these days, and the poll numbers are still heading downward.

what's wrong with an electorate that put and kept them in office--until you think about all of the election irregularities.

Even solid Repubs like my dad are seeing him as a failure. Not that he would vote for a Dem, but he doesn't think * has gotten anything done, and won't for the remainder of his term. And that's a lot coming from my dad.

but because the Bush administration's wheels are flying off.

Go, Dems.

he's driving us over a cliff, and we're all


in the back seat.

idiots who gave him the car keys to begin with.

You'd think that the powers that be who installed their choice would have had sense to pick someone who'd be less obvious in his/her incompetence and flagarent disregard for the Constitution.

Bush** was given a country at peace, with a vibrant (if imperfect) economy, and the biggest fly in the ointment was some pesky terrorist group that the previous administration had been keeping an eye on (including capturing and prosecuting some of same). He had no vengeful and powerful former colonial master to deal with, no criminal institution of human slavery, no regional dissensions threatening to break into civil war, no depression, no war against Fascism brewing in Europe. In short, he was given an idiot-proof, paint-by-numbers, pre-fab success story. All he had to do was NOT SCREW UP and destroy what his predecessors had built up. That was too much to ask of this middle-aged adolescent, this weak-willed alcoholic, this cokehead, this failed so-called "businessman" (apologies to real businessman everywhere). It was his decision -- or the decision of his cronies and backers, which he accepted and wholeheartedly embraced -- to turn the former "Giant of Democracy" into the world's most oppressive strong-arm imperialist power ever, easily the most thoroughly WRONG decision ever made by any US president. Bush**'s failure is spectacular enough just considering how low he has brought the state of this country, but the most spectacular aspect of his failure is the height from which he started. He was given a gift -- the opportunity to succeed comfortably even if by being nothing more than a caretaker. He had no understanding of what it was he was given, and he squandered it utterly.