<p>“George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.”</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>“No other president – Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War – faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president’s own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies – including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president’s supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security. The wise men who counseled Bush’s father, including James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, found their entreaties brusquely ignored by his son. When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, ‘There is a higher Father that I appeal to.’”</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>“There have been presidents – Harry Truman was one – who have left office in seeming disgrace, only to rebound in the estimates of later scholars. But so far the facts are not shaping up propitiously for George W. Bush. He still does his best to deny it. Having waved away the lessons of history in the making of his decisions, the present-minded Bush doesn’t seem to be concerned about his place in history. ‘History. We won’t know,’ he told the journalist Bob Woodward in 2003. ‘We’ll all be dead.’”</p>
I don’t have time today to play in a thread like this, nor to read in toto Sean Wilentz’s non-peer reviewed article in a magazine for aging teenagers. But, I must point out, based on Dig’s cite, one of the most singularly idiotic statements I can recall seeing in a long time, and one that proves Wilentz’s deserved membership in Princeton’s unfortunately ever-growing stable of pop-culture professors, alongside Paul Krugman and Cornel West.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Prof. Wilentz need merely walk across the hallway and knock on the door of Prof. James McPherson to find out how Lincoln dealt with the Democrats, whom he not only demonized frequently (as they did him), but arrested, suspended their habeas corpus, and imprisoned in his own Civil War version of Guantanamo. Would that Bush would be so bold. {winky smily face}</p>
<p>There is no doubt that you are very smart and post with intelligent comments. You’ve corrected my facts several times, and I admitted I was wrong. I always enjoy reading your posts and I think you would be a fantastic debater (which I am not) with your encyclopedic knowledge. I readily admit that in a formal debate with you I would ALWAYS lose. </p>
<p>I honestly, honestly respect your opinion (and almost always agree with your posts on the other side of the forum wall).</p>
<p>That’s why I am so baffled by you continuing to defend someone who is so obviously (to most of America and the rest of the world) unqualified (intellectually and personality-wise) to be in the position he’s in, even as an increasing number of people in his own party are backing away from him.</p>
<p>I sometimes wonder if I start threads like this just to see what driver will say! ;)</p>
<p>Dig–You’re very kind. I hope your PM box isn’t filling up with angry remonstrations. I have a tennis opponent awaiting annihilation just 5 minutes from now, but when I return, I’ll try to explain my blind allegiance to the worst president in history. :)</p>
<p>you can’t judge his presidency completely yet:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe “history will absolve him” like our friend 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Who knows, but it’s too early to judge. One thing we can say, is that this administration was thrust into new territory after 9/11. Could they have done better? Yes, but I think they could have done worse too.</p>
<p>"There’s an old saying in TennesseeI know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennesseethat says, fool me once, shame onshame on you. Fool meyou can’t get fooled again."Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002</p>
<p>Sean Wilentz is a highly respected U.S. historian. As far as I know, most U.S. history professors who have been polled, including “conservative” historians, agree that Bush will probably be viewed as the worst president in US history to date.</p>
<p>In the fall of 1998, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz prophesied that history would regard as “zealots” and “fanatics” members who sincerely believed they had good reason to vote to impeach President Clinton. </p>
<p>In November 2000, days after the presidential election ended in stalemate, Wilentz assembled a bizarre group that included some of our nation’s top professors of constitutional law (including Bruce Ackerman, Ronald Dworkin, and Cass Sunstein) mixed together with actors and other celebrities (including Robert De Niro, Rosie O’Donnell, and Bianca Jagger) and persuaded them to sign their names to a full-page ad in the New York Times that spoke of Al Gore’s having won a “clear constitutional majority of the popular vote,” even though the Constitution says nothing about the popular vote in presidential elections and is perfectly clear that victory goes to the candidate who receives the most electoral votes.</p>
<p>No, The President after Bush, will be more of an idiot. GWB only got the US into an easy situation; The Next President will have to lead us out of a deep hole, which will take much more effort. </p>
<p>Its like money. Its easy to get into debt but its very hard to get out of debt; And it takes a real effort to accomplish debt freedom.</p>
<p>Wilentz is a respected historian-he was a finalist for the Pulitzer this year and won the Bancroft Prize, but he’s actually fairly conservative and stuffy as a historian. He is a bit of a self-aggrandizer, IMO. His, book, for instance, The Rise of American Democracy, seems primarily to stuff as many dead white male Presidents in seemingly to sell books. However, despite this quality-I have yet to meet a historains that likes Bush at all.</p>
<p>If Bush is the worst President (which I doubt), the current crop of Dems. are clearly the worst opposition party in the nation’s history. Go down the list of issues: Iraq? NSA? prescription drug benefit? health care? Social Security reform? immigration? post-Katrina housing? Can you, in two sentences, sum up the Democratic position for any of them?</p>
<p>PHampson makes a shrewd point…Wilentz would have done well to have included a few dead black and female presidents in his recent study of the antebellum U.S…it would have been a fascinating touch. </p>
<p>Conservative? If by that you mean that Wilentz resists inserting contemporary personal biases into his histories, I think that is generally true. Stuffy? Well, his writing does positively plod when compared to colleagues such as McPherson or McCullough, but few can claim to be the equals of those masters of narrative historiography. </p>
<p>As to “liking” the current president: “liking” is something different from “evaluating,” the latter being the province of historians, and, as virtually all would agree, evaluating a presidency from a historical perspctive can’t be done effectively in real time…as soccerguy has pointed out, it takes at least a generation to provide the requisite distance for a meaningful assessment. Wilentz knows this, and therefore, when he involves himself in current politics in ways such as those described by Xiggi above, he is, frankly, no more or less qualified to pronounce on them than his friends Rosie and Bianca. He has removed his scholar’s hat and joined the mob manning the barricades.</p>
<p>The Rolling Stone article was particularly egregious in masking moon-battery with the veneer of scholarship; the example of Lincoln “embrac[ing] the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle” was, as I said, singularly idiotic–embarassingly so for a prominent professor who has an office across the hall from the man who sits at the pinnacle of Civil War historiography’s pantheon. There are actually a great many similarities between the current president and Lincoln, who was widely despised, caricatured for his physical appearance and supposed stupidity, led the nation into a “quagmire” and then stubbornly refused to back off, suffered with a malignant press corps, filled his cabinet with powerful personalities (who, it was alleged, "actually pulled the strings in the White House), was loved and respected by the troops (despite occasional pronouncements in opposition from prominent generals)…the list goes on and on, but unfortunately for Professor Wilentz, embracing the Democrats “to help wage a truly national struggle” was not on Lincoln’s list.</p>
<p>Go down the list of issues: Iraq? NSA? prescription drug benefit? health care? Social Security reform? immigration? post-Katrina housing? Can you, in two sentences, sum up the Democratic position for any of them?</p>
<ol>
<li>Me think we should criticize.</li>
<li>Here’s our plan: stick to the party line eloquently expressed in 1.</li>
</ol>
One similaity that does not exist (or rather, would not be allowed to exist in today’s secularist society) is Lincoln’s view that God sent him a message via the Union turning back the Confederacy at Antietam that it was time to sign the emancipation proclamation. Can you imagine the howling from the left that would exist today if Bush said something like that? Wilentz hints at the nature of the response with his snide comment about Bush seeking guidance from a higher power.</p>