After eight years of the worse governance since James Buchanan...
-Linda Hirshman
Now, I understand that many people are unhappy with G.W. Bush's presidency, but come on. How can any intelligent person make the kind of a statement Hirshman makes with a straight face? I have heard this kind of rhetoric from all kinds of Bush detractors and it sounds a lot like people trying to wish history into making it true.
I agree that Bush has made mistakes, even some big ones. It turns out every president is guilty of that flaw to one degree or another. The only thing that really makes Bush different is the feedback loop created by 24/infinity media combined with the internet.
Further, the election is over, folks. Bush lost--oh, wait, Bush did not run. For people who claim their objective in supporting an Obama presidency based on high flying rhetoric like hope and change, maybe they also need to add the additional practical rhetoric of getting over it.
Whether Bush turns out to be the worst president since Buchanan will be decided by people writing history books many years from now who have the advantage of looking at everything that has happened over the past eight years and the years yet to come with a degree of detachment. I wonder how history will record such powerful pronouncements of disdain when that history is written.
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This is essentially true. Bush himself noted the correlation between himself and Harry Truman.
While I don't personally feel that the man can reasonably hope for a renaissance into the sort of political/presidential touchstone that Harry became, it is true that Truman was phenomenally unpopular when he left office. Which played a significant role in the election of Eisenhower to succeed him. Not to mention the Korean conflict, the firing of MacArthur and a hundred other things, not least of all his view of the office and overreaching of its powers and prerogatives. Who can forget the 1952 faceoff with the Steelworker's union and - eventually - the US Supreme Court (Youngstown -v- Sawyer) which led to the landmark delineation of the scope of executive powers we have frequently alluded to here.
There are a lot of parallels. I do not think they will be borne out over the long term, but I agree that there's a lot of hyperbole flying around now that the trough of election-season hyperbole has run dry.
Is Bush the worst since ______? Time will tell. He's the worst one I can remember, but that's an opinion. And anyway, the historians won't agree on it any more than we do now.
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