Is Bush the worst president of all time?

[Big Lebowski]

Has any other president caused as much damage to the country? With his social and economic policies, he seems like he's trying to undo 100 years worth of progress. Rove and company's dirty politics have sunk to an entirely new scumbaggy level. And the war in Iraq has harmed our reputation worldwide and caused huge amounts of suffering.

Could Bush be the worst president (of the USA) ever?

[understandinglife]

1. Yes. He is also the first President to be a TRAITOR. He IS A TRAITOR.

Clear enough.

Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[OrlandoGator]

88. We get attacked by Saudis and he holds hands with their princes.

n/t

[Gronk Groks]

2. Short answer: Yes !!!

He has beat out Richard Nixon...
...and I thought that was impossible !!!

[KamaAina]

3. Of course not.

He's not the President, he's just the pResident (the P is silent).

Now Cheney, on the other hand...

[rzemanfl]

4. Without a doubt. I think most medieval kings and Roman

Emperors probably cared more for their people than this asshat does.

[BlueWolff]

6. A B S O L U T E L Y !!!!!!

HANDS DOWN THE CHIMP WINS!!!

[DivinBreuvage]

23. I would respectfully disagree

I certainly endorse your statement that Bush is an asshat and that he doesn't give a damn about the American people. I just don't want to let Roman emperors and medieval kings off the hook. Many of them were pretty big bastards, at least judging by the stories that have come down to us.

In fact it appears that the early Roman emperors deliberately chose successors who would be more hated than they themselves were. Augustus is supposed to have lamented the way Tiberius would "chew Rome in his slow jaws", yet chose him as his successor; Tiberius commented on what a scourge Gaius Caligula would be to Rome, and chose him. Robert Graves, in his novel "Claudius the God", assigns somewhat the same motive to Claudius in adopting Nero as his heir.

[immoderate]

30. Bush will pick DeLay or Santorum or Brownback...

So he can look good.

[DivinBreuvage]

45. Ah, but Bush is no Augustus or Tiberius

he's more akin to a Domitian, a Julius Didianus, or to some other of the many Roman faineants whose successors were chosen not by themselves but by the disgusted powers-that-be in the Establishment.

[immoderate]

69. Let's hope such is capable.

--IMM

[ThomWV]

70. Yeah, and When Were They Presidents Of The USA?

I thought the Question was about Bush.

[DivinBreuvage]

83. You might want to read a bit more closely.

my comment was a continuation of the discussion started in post #4.

[funflower]

66. He certainly won't support McCain...

who would make him look like the spoiled little brat that he is.

(Not supportin' McCain - unless he's running against *)

[grace0418]

73. I'll never support McCain

He'll whore himself out to anyone. He'll probably say ANYTHING on the campaign trail to get elected but then it'll the same old shit once he's in office.

[DerekG]

56. Actually, Graves's Claudius had good intentions

Claudius saw in his psychopathic heir the chance to finally bring the Empire to ruin, and thus bring Rome back to a republic. It is the same desire harbored by quite a few leftists: a second Bush term, they reasoned, was integral for the destruction of our current empire to occur.

Suffice to say, things didn't work out for Claudius. Let us hope history is not cyclical.

[DivinBreuvage]

60. You are absolutely right, thanks for pointing this out

You tie it in brilliantly with modern political thought in some quarters, too :toast:

[rzemanfl]

64. Okay, I will concede this point. * cares more about his country

than some Roman Emperors and Medieval Kings did. Your "successor mor hated" comment worries me alot regarding the future course of BushWorld, I shudder to think that * is the worst President so far rather than ever.

[DivinBreuvage]

84. NO! That's not what I said.

I was making the point that those guys were no good either.

[Cobalt Violet]

5. Yes, he is thee worse.

[cloudythescribbler]

7. There were Nixon and Reagan and Bush Pere but

W Bush is IMHO worse than any president since before FDR, at the least. He is the worst president of the MODERN US, since the enactment of the New Deal, when the Executive Branch of the federal government plays a major role in domestic and (starting with WWII) global affairs. This country can't afford to have Tories like that in the White House -- he is taking a quasi-republic and it is being undermined to make way for an only thinly veiled imperium.

We are in the transition between the two now.

[understandinglife]

8. Oh, and welcome to DU!

WATCH IT; SPREAD IT http://www.bushflash.com/right.html

Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us - How ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists their cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America."

[Wetzelbill]

9. hahahahaha

[Imagevision]

10. Certainly the most crooked/corrupt.

[Chomskyite]

11. I've written about this

The only president that might have been worse was James Buchanan. Bush surpassed Buchanan in October of 04 when we found out he left all those munitions at the Al Qaqaa bunker west of Baghdad unguarded. Before that, Buchanan was the only president who allowed huge arsenals to fall into enemy hands.

But Buchanan's case has some mitigating factors. He had only 20,000 Federal troops to keep the future Confederates from taking over US arsenals and forts in the South. These 20,000 were large scattered about the West fighting the Indians. Bush didn't have those mitigating factors. He had 150,000 troops, a huge air force, satellite surveillance, the NSA, the CIA and a handful of allied troops.

Up to that point Bush was only #2. After the Al Qaqaa debacle, he surged way ahead of Buchanan.

[Lone_Wolf]

12. Yes.

n/t

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

13. Bush may very well be the worst LEADER of all time.

I'd put him up there with Caligula.

[Stirk]

14. Absolutely. No one else even comes close.

He could top the "incompetence" list AND the "corrupt" list.

[mindfulNJ]

15. Hmmmmm...let me think....

....hell yes.

[TWiley]

85. Oh wait ...................

Why yes HE IS

[Hissyspit]

16. Yes.

[LynnTheDem]

17. Yes.

Overthrows democraticaly elected & popular government.

Invades and occupies a nation that was doing nothing to anyone.

Invokes the name of God for his killing tens of thousands of innocent human beings.

Uses the rule of force and mocks the rule of law.

Believes himself above anyone & everyone.

Lies. Cheats. Kills. Wages wars of aggression.

Yes bush is the worst president of all time.

[kodi]

18. a paid enemy agent could not have screwed up the US worse

history WILL NOT absolve george bush for what he has done. in the annuals of history such intentional national destruction by its leader is unprecidented.

[ailsagirl]

34. Well said-- it's as if his mission is to destroy this country

I just don't get it. It absolutely feels as if we're in enemy hands.

[marmar]

19. In my 34 years on the planet...

HELL YES. Sin dudo! I've never seen a president fuck up so many things so fast! Economically, militarily, socially - this administration has been a total fucking disaster. Name more than 2 things they've gotten right and you deserve a trip to the South Pacific!

[sojourner]

20. Oh my god -- how horrible is this that we all agree there's never been a

president (OR resident) of the USA who was so bad.

And I'm pretty content with the Caligula comparison...well, okay...for now that might be a bit of hyperbole. But he sure has potential.

[DivinBreuvage]

27. It's horrible because it reflects a lack of historical awareness here

This is not to say that Bush isn't extremely bad, and since he still has three and a half years left to go he may very well end up claiming the title. But Bush has not yet provoked the same kind of disaster that James Buchanan did. Buchanan's term resulted in the dissolution of the Federal Union.

Bush has yet to provoke an economic crisis equivalent to the Panic of 1857, which struck early in Buchanan's term and lasted through most of the rest of it.

Some posters point to the treasonous act of outing Valerie Plame as the deciding factor in rating Bush the worst president of all time, but, alas for their argument, James Buchanan's Secretary of War (which is what Americans more forthrightly called the Secretary of Defense in those days) spent his tenure selling federal war materiel to Southern separatists. Buchanan himself colluded with the Supreme Court in the grotesque Dred Scott decision, and, like his predecessor Franklin Pierce, openly engaged in a fraudulent and treasonous attempt to force a pro-slavery government on the free-soil majority of the Kansas territory.

In fact Buchanan, a Northerner, was so pathetically beholden to Southern separatists and slaveholders that he alienated his oldest political friends and nearly the entire Northern membership of the Democratic Party (which in that time was the party of conservatives, racists, and morons and opposed the more progressive and/or liberal Whig and Republican parties).

I despise the Bush administration as much as anyone here. But I am forced to concede that James Buchanan is still America's worst president. For now.

[sojourner]

28. Your points are well taken,

and I can't claim to have studied American presidents to the extent that you have obviously done - so I've learned a good bit just now. Just the same, I see many parallels between Bush and Buchanan (just in the few lines you've provided here) - and as you point out, Bush still has some time left.

[DivinBreuvage]

37. Absolutely there are parallels, and what's most damning is that,

while America has had a number of really horrendous administrations, each of those administrations was made infamous for one or two excessively bad traits: corruption, treasonous activity, civil rights violations, economic mismanagement. The Bush administration has managed to incorporate all of those bad traits within itself. It's just that so far it hasn't managed to give us the Civil War or the Great Depression. It may end up giving us both.

My purpose is not at all to defend the Bush administration. Bush is indeed a rotten and a miserable president. I just think it's important not to let the shadow of historical oblivion absolve these other bastards of their guilt, and, so far, Bush hasn't managed entirely to eclipse them.

[Chomskyite]

43. Buchanan was dithering and indecisive

He is a solid #2, but his sins were of omission more than of commission.

Unlike Bush he could (and did in his post-presidency letters) defend himself on the basis of lacking the means to keep the future Confederates from capturing Federal arms and property. Bush had the means to keep terrorists from gaining Iraqi munitions we'd captured. He did not use those means and felt no need to apologize for the mistake. That is light years ahead of Buchanan, who knew it was a catastrophe that the future Confederates captures Federal arsenals and felt the need to explain why it had happened.

Certainly, you are correct that Buchanan's was a pro-slavery administration, but there were many more such before him. Polk's was even more aggressively pro-slavery than Buchanan's because he actually lauched a war in order to appease the Southern slaveowners. Buchanan did no such thing.

[DivinBreuvage]

58. Excellent post, but I think you let Buchanan off the hook too easily.

His backbending concessions to the Southern slave power and his meddling with the democratic process in Kansas -- to the extent of acquiescing in the murder of freesoil men -- were not at all dithering and indecisive. He knew perfectly well what he was doing then, and doubtless would have pushed harder if he had not alienated the Northern wing of his own party (which had not yet developed the hive-mind behavior of modern American conservatives) and hadn't had to contend with a vigorous and vocal opposition party and press.

I do agree that Polk's trumped-up war with Mexico offers a better direct parallel to the Iraq War, but I do not feel that Buchanan's active collusion in disgusting affairs like the Dred Scott decision (which provoked Northern outrage not because it denied Dred Scott his freedom but because the Taney court appeared to be insinuating that Northern states did not have a constitutional right to ban slavery within their own borders) and the "crime against Kansas" occupy a substantially higher moral plane. Nor did Buchanan himself oppose the use of force to gain more territory such as Cuba for Southern slaveholders, although during his presidential term he did at least have the sense to recognize that doing so would be counterproductive.

There is certainly a critical distinction between "sins of omission" and "sins of commission"; yet, in the final analysis, what matters more: the sin itself, or the outcome of the sin? I think both have to be taken into consideration.

In terms of outcome, certainly the scale of privation, social disruption, and death suffered by Americans during the Panic of 1857, "Bleeding Kansas", and the Civil War were far worse than anything we have yet suffered from the war in Iraq in particular or the Bush administration in general. On that basis the assignation of Buchanan to the #2 slot would seem to me to be the less accurate choice.

In terms of motive, it is quite true that Bush deliberately provoked the war with Iraq, whereas Buchanan just stood helplessly by while the South did as it wished; yet Buchanan, despite his later protestations, did have some options for preventing secession, or at least for preventing the seizure of federal property, as Lincoln himself proved shortly upon his inauguration.

[MissWaverly]

81. I disagree, the Iraq war has resulted in the death of thousands

and the fact that an unknown quantity of people are held around the
world and have been held and tortured for years w/o a trial, this makes
GWB the worst administration, and not all the facts have been revealed regarding this administration

[ailsagirl]

36. A scary thought: they still have 3 + years (at the least)

So it might not be hyperbole at all.
:(

[pinto]

21. No, I think Hoover is. Bush is a no account glad hand for a machine,

which has co-opted government departments for political, not policy, ends. When's the last time you heard of a WH Chief of Staff going to a Dept of the Interior meeting, out of town, just before a Congressional election and outlining election strategy, not discussing Dept of the Interior policy. Hell, when's the last time you heard of a Chief of Staff going to a Departmental meeting at all?

Rove's role is about getting out a vote and using the machinery of government to make that happen. I doubt if policy means one whiff to these folks. It's about manipulating the federal bureaucracy not making policy. That's why Bush seems so "flat" on policy. There is none, unless it has to do with votes. Or payback.

[sojourner]

22. For me, that's what makes him such a bad president. He has the position

and all he's done with it is try to grab personal glory (the WAR president indeed) and give the nation's treasury away to his buds while simultaneously stealing oil from Iraq (and he intended to do the same with Iran and Syria). All the while strutting around like the little dictator he imagines himself to be.

[DivinBreuvage]

29. Wilson and Coolidge have been there and done that.

Wilson promised to keep America out of WWI and then jimmied the country into it. His Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer out-ashcrofted John Ashcroft.

Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon took advantage of his position to distribute the US Treasury as tax refund gifts to his corporate pals. Coolidge's legacy to America was the Great Depression. Hoover was just left holding the bag for that mess, and since he was a conservative and a republican he was unable to do anything about it because all possible solutions were, to him, blasphemous violations of the sanctity of laissez-faire capitalism.

This is not to say that Bush isn't a horrid president. It's just that America has suffered from a number of Bush-like disastermongers throughout its history.

[sojourner]

31. Hmmm....now I hafta go get some books on presidential history.

Look what you did!

Are you SURE that the people and the world suffered as much as we seem to be doing? I mean...global warming...nuclear armaments...not sure we can blame all the recent threats on Bush but he sure as hell isn't doing anything to counter them.

[DivinBreuvage]

41. I would indeed say that the human suffering of WWI, Great Depression, WWII

not only equals but far exceeds anything that global warming and nuclear armaments have yet attained. Of course that may very well change in the next five or ten years.

Please understand that I am certainly not making the argument that, since things are not as bad now as they were then, we can be blissfully ignorant and keep coasting right along. I think that if the course of events is not changed we may very well surpass these earlier horrors. But we haven't done it yet, and until we do I think it is important not to lose sight of them or diminish them. In fact a better awareness of them may illuminate our own path, and certainly they illustrate that, no matter how dark and evil things are, there is always reason to persevere in the hope that humanity will one day ultimately triumph.

[sojourner]

44. I really appreciate your point of view. Thanks for sharing it here.

B-)

[DivinBreuvage]

61. What a nice thing to say! Thank you very much n/t

[mwb970]

78. The strutting part bothers me as much as anything.

There is just such arrogance in the little prick.

[mvd]

35. You're completely right, and that's why I think Bush..

is the worst ever. At lease Hoover was in charge a little. Bush's only real principles are power and helping his rich buddies.

[merbex]

24. The book shelves will filled with tomes devoted to THE WORST PRESIDENT

EVER

[ladjf]

25. Without a doubt. He's the worst President of any Country

ever.

[wli]

26. John Paul II suspected him of being the antichrist for a reason

[NMMNG]

57. Wow, finally something I could agree with JPII on

What do you know?:shrug:

[MODemocrat]

32. Bush is the worst president in my time

At first, it was my hope that since he was placed in the high position of the presidency, that he would be all right. He has been so arrogant and hateful that he has pretty well screwed up everything he has ever touched. What a disappointment he is. :thumbsdown: So sad for our country, and our relations with other countries a well.

[fob]

33. Dude, yes he is, dude.

:evilgrin:

[DanCa]

38. I have never spoke bad about any public official before.

I was raised to believe that right and left we are all part of the same team and that you respect the office if you dont respect the man. However President Bush has openly insulted half the country every chance he gets. He turned veteran against veteran, steals from the old and the disabled, and sentance me to a chronic neurological movement disorder to appease his base, and then he insults me on top of it. Yes President Bush is the worst president we have ever had not just be cause he lied to get us into the war and stole two elections but because he divides the country by the lowest common demonitors and than has the audacity to use the name of jesus too.

[libodem]

39. YES!!!!

I hope history has a field day with him. I'm sure he could care less. He's all about plundering everything he can get his hands on as fast as he can. I can't even begin to describe the utter dismay I feel when I consider the damage he's done. What a different place this country has become since Bill Clinton left office. A country full of fear and war mongering bullies.

[davekriss]

40. Hands down, Bush is the worst president this century (eom)

[LibertyorDeath]

42. George Bush is unarguably the worst US president of all time.

Bar none.......

[B Calm]

46. In my lifetime of 55 years Bush has been the worst.. Bush has to go!

[Octafish]

47. By far.

Bush is a traitor.

A hearty welcome to DU, Big Lebowski. Have I heard of you before? Frankploitation, maybe?

[ultraist]

48. Absolutely! W=WORST PRESIDENT EVER

* is the most corrupt, greedy, selfish, inept, pres ever and a total embarrassment to our country.

[madinmaryland]

49. So far, no.

Jefferson Davis was the worst. He actually managed to split the nation "legally".

[tibbir]

50. His legacy will be that he took America down the toilet.

[jayctravis]

51. Yep. He took a country ostensibly whose philosophy is peace

and freedom and knocked it off track, spending into oblivion for a needless illegal war and quite inevitably knocking our economy out of whack. Think how much further we could be in science and technology if we hadn't had this war. Think of the schools we could build, the automobile technology that could have been invented to wean us off the petroleum needle.

Didn't Bush do this with a baseball team years back? Send them to war and lose all the money?

[kittenpants]

52. Yes.

He's so bad, I'm not even sure he's smart enough to know what the hell is even going on!

[mcscajun]

53. Yes he is. The historians are lining up to write it up...

...displacing Warren G. Harding and Millard Fillmore as also-rans.

[anarchy1999]

54. IOVHO (in our very humble opinion), YES. Hands down worst administration

ever, but along with that goes the apathy of john q. public and the corruption of the media along with control of the government by and of and for the corporations.

Just go buy yourself a corporate america flag at adbusters. It will make you feel better at the very least. You can also download a printable file to make copies of and give to friends, use them for moneymakers at fundraisers (we used to print off full color 8X11,s and we never had enough), and so on and so forth.

We are up to a challenge, that is for certainly true. Remind us again, just what was Clinton impeached for?

[DerekG]

55. NO: several presidents have accrued far greater body counts

This pugnacious administration, coupled with the repulsive character of Bush himself, has merely exposed the American Empire. Our little Nero is the culmination, not an aberration, of all that has come before. Consider these four tyros.

William McKinley, Bush's closest antecedent, was also in the pocket of big business, and waged a war of annihilation that left some 600,000 Filipinos dead.

Harry Truman authorized the use of atomic weapons against civilian populations, and created the national security apparatus that destroyed our republic.

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon set Indochina afire, leaving 3 million dead.


Butchers, all.

[LibDemAlways]

59. Since he is a puppet and Cheney and Rove

are the puppetmasters, I would call him the least qualified person ever to hold the office. He was sworn in as "President" but does none of the work. He can't even speak English well enough to complete a coherent sentence at a scripted press conference. He has answers fed to him through an earpiece, and he still screws up.

The chimp is nothing more than the dim-witted front man for the crime family. They drag him out to mouth platitudes to military audiences and heavily partisan, carefully screened repuke crowds. Otherwise he's free to ride his bike and snack on pretzels in front of the tv.
Worst "President" of all time? Only if you accept the premise that he, and not Cheney (who gets my "worst President" vote), is actually calling the shots.

[Liberal In Texas]

62. I think he's actually overtaken Hoover. The Great Depresson was

awful, but he didn't start any wars for no particular reason.

[kestrel91316]

63. If Bush were actually president I would say the worst, but ..............

he is not the president, he is a pretender. John Kerry is the president.

[funflower]

65. No doubt about it. #43 is 43rd. Worst of the worst.

:puke:

[JackDragna]

67. The worst was U.S. Grant.

You think Bush is bad? Grant ran a kleptocracy, out of intent or sheer idiocy due to not knowing what his cabinet was doing.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

79. Bush is running a kleptocracy too

Cheney's buddies are robbing the taxpayer and lining their pockets with massive profits from war profiteering.

[jzodda]

68. No...there have been worse

Go back into history

All the presidents of the 1850s were total disasters...Could not stave off the civil war and did nothing to really try

Grant's 2 terms had more scandals then any other admin in history

John Adams 4 year term was a disaster (He was a great rebel and thinker but not a good leader)

Hoover's admin was a disaster: Total paralyis while our country sank into the depths of total dispair.

Carter was totally useless as a president. Had no answer to the Soviets and his economic policies did nothing to ease the 70s economic crisis

Nixon was an effective president but watergate has had more lasting damage to the image of how we perceive government then anything that came before. Its now common to assume the gov is lying-before that era it was not assumed to be true.

All in all Bush's damamge does not even come close to some of those guys.

So no bush is a bad president but far worse things would have to happen for it to reach the above lofty heights

[Cooley Hurd]

74. I disagree - Bush IS the worst...

...not only is his administration deeply corrupt, they've damaged the reputation of the US for generations to come. No other president has done that.:thumbsdown:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

80. We won't know the extent of the LONG TERM damage from Bush

Wait a few years.

[Speed8098]

71. And the dumbest

Before the inauguration, George W. was invited to a 'get acquainted' tour of the White House.

After drinking several glasses of iced tea, he asked President Clinton if he could use his personal bathroom. He was astonished to see that the President had a solid gold urinal!

That afternoon, George W. told his wife, Laura, about the urinal. "Just think," he said, "when I am President, I'll have my own personal gold urinal!"

Later, when Laura had lunch with Hillary at her tour of the White House, she told Hillary how impressed George had been with his discovery of the fact that, in the President's private bathroom, the President had a gold urinal.

That evening, Bill and Hillary were getting ready for bed. Hillary turned to Bill and said, "Well, I found out who peed in your saxophone."

[no safe haven]

72. He's the laughingstock of the entire planet

Even Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon, the bumbling Gerald Ford and brain-addled Ronnie managed to garner some respect during their careers, if only because they were presidents of the US in the days when that office meant something.
Shrub has done nothing in his sideshow of buffoonery that redeems him in any way whatsoever. A complete clown and a tool. He's trashed the presidency, your country and the world along with it. No respect deserved, none given.

[grace0418]

75. I think he's the worst President ever (esp. cause he wasn't elected)

and I would almost go as far to say he's one of the worst leaders ever, at least relatively. People talk about Nero and other historical leaders being far worse. And yes, maybe in an absolute sense, they are. But consider how modernized America is supposed to be, how distasteful we (in a general sense) find things like slavery, feeding people to lions, fighting to the death in arenas, complete subjucation of women and minorities, etc. Relative to the mores of today, his policies are perhaps even more damaging. He seeks to undo even more than 100 year of progress, it seems to me.

[Hugin]

76. Nah....

At 11:59:59 on the eve of the next Presidential Inauguration.

*THEN* he'll be the Worst. President. Ever.

He's still got some growing to do.

[Name removed]

77. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mtnsnake]

82. Worst president ever & most DIVISIVE. And in the Top 5 List of Most

Dangerous People in History.

Oh, and he's the biggest ASSHOLE in history, too...and a flaming douchebag to boot.

[Swamp Rat]

86. yes n/t

[Tsiyu]

87. If he was really the President I would say yes

but he's only a fraud INSTALLED as Preznent. And then, yes, he is the worst person ever to reside in the White House.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

89. Worst. President. Ever. Selected.

First. Simian. To. Hold. The. Office.

[newportdadde]

90. I could see him end up positive. Think 100 years + corporate RW spin.

There are a lot of us who think Reagan was horrible but his one speech "tear down this wall", put him up very high in rank of the American people. You know because he did it all by himself brick by brick.

So going with that logic.. if and this is a big if, Iraq were to become a stable 'democracy' or even a theocracy so long as our corporations can put up McDonalds and Taco Bell and make a lot of money on it and bring 'civilization to the savages' I could see W becoming, the single handed bringer of Democracy to the middle east.. ala Reagan and the cold war.

If that was the case then 100 years from now nobody would remember those 1500+ kids that died over there because it was 'worth it'.

Do NOT underestimate historical revisionism and rose colored glasses.