Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine posted the other day on a survey of historians showing that 61% percent of them considered George W. Bush the worst president in U.S. history. Horton raises the difficulties in making such definitive pronouncements concerning a sitting president, but also marks President Bush as a special case.
I find all the talk using negative superlatives regarding the current administration to be a bit much and a potential distraction from more pressing matters. We have an unhealthy addiction in our society to spectacle, and enlivening the headlines with superlative assessments feeds that addiction. Besides, peaking of Bush as “the worst of the worst” inspires more knee-jerk reactions than conversions; if persuasion is your game, tempered language might be in order.
Adding weight to a historical figure with “best” or “worst” labels also can create an imbalanced historical perspective in which attention is paid to those superlatively honored and dishonored at the expense of attention being given to other figures whose historical influence shouldn’t evade our sight. To his credit, Scott Horton has an eye for underlying and peripheral details.
Then there’s the controversial question of what criteria are used to measure and compare presidents: ability, effectiveness in implementing policy, faithfulness to his oath to uphold the constitution, etc. Those considered by consensus to be the “great” presidents may, in light of other criteria, be regarded as candidates for the most tyrannical rulers.
If fair evaluation presupposes full and accurate understanding, then we have a ways to go before a relatively complete evaluation of this presidency can be made, for, as its critics are quick to point out, the inner-workings of the Bush Administration are largely unknown, shrouded in, among other things, secret memos. As Donald Rumsfeld might say, there are many known unknowns about this presidency. And unknown unknowns as well. That doesn’t rule assessments of Bush’s performance, but maybe we ought to withhold the superlatives until we get a better picture.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Speaking Superlatively
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7 profound comments:
You bring up some good points. I am certainly in the camp of those who want to vomit when I think of all the psedonews Americans follow so closely. Strangley, the fake news people like Jon Stewart many times have better coverage of actual events than CNN, Fox, etc.
According to Frank Rich (NYT? I forget who he writes for), Stewart was the ONLY major 'journalist' who did not buy the Administration line leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
But, to me, and maybe I'm too simple minded, it isn't that hard to dubb Dubya as the worst president based on harm to the nation. IMHO, he has brought too much (maybe another way of saying it is "unchecked") power to the executive branch, gotten 4K American and countless Iraqis killed (for no good reason, and failure in the reasons we have), he has weakened our military by putting it through a needless meat grinder (We did to ourselves what we suckered the Soviets into doing in Afganistan), and made our country probably more hestaint to go to war if we really need to than we were in 1976 (Let's hope this does not turn into a boy that cried wolf scenario if we face a real threat),and infringment on liberties.
BUT, I will admit that I probably ought to listen to you and not rush to judgment, because I never would have thought I would long for the days when Bill Clinton was in office--or does that support my rash judgement (beats the hell out of me--maybe he is the worst until McCain gets a crack at driving us in the ground).
Thanks for the comment, Civis.
Stewart and Colbert are wonderful.
Well anyone who needlessly opens the Pandora's Box of war should be counted among the 5 worst at least.
Add to that the ability to twist Torture into 'harsh interogation' and make it a semi-respectable practice takes him up to top 2 worst.
Throw in 'known unknowns' and 'unknown unknowns' for obscurity and he just might deserve kudos for rising to the top of the bottom.
Dubya is a man who invites superlatives.
Expletives as well.
He invites adjectival expletives of the superlative kind.
I'm no fan of Dubya and I rarely defend him, but the urge to rank everything today from baseball blunders to rock 'n roll guitarists generally reveals the age and perspective of the rankers rather than the abilities of the ranked.
I see Dubya as a Woodrow Wilson-type of president in both rhetoric and action. He has changed our role in the world based upon what appears from 9/11 to be dramatically changed international circumstances. He has projected American military power in a part of the world it has never stayed long. He has justified his actions based upon democratic principles, even if reality, as in every other American military intervention, doesn't always bear out the stated goals.
He has received strong, if not often broad, support which includes undeniable election victories in 2002 and 2004. He has won because the Democratic Party is led by people who have even less credibility in wartime than his mistake-prone administration (and choose to give up the heartland to the Republicans because of their positions on gun control, partial-birth abortion, and other issues).
Americans don't elect presidential candidates who promise to throw in the towel, even if a large minority of American voters, right and left, are isolationists by habit or philosophy and disapprove of most of our military adventures. The fact that John Kerry, most memorably the face of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, could come as close as a few thousand votes in Ohio to winning in 2004 tells you how poorly the President has conducted the war.
As much as people dislike the war and the President, nobody wants to see the last chopper fly off the roof of the U.S. embassy and hear horrid reports of Al Qaeda bloodbaths and people massacred by Shiite militias.
The Vietnam analogy is a two-edged sword, but no one I've seen but Peggy Noonan has written that the images of failure in 1975 are just as disturbing as the images of the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the Kent State shootings of 1970. They are, and many Americans are more haunted by our loss in 1975 than by the death and difficulties that led up to it.
As much as everyone wants an "expiration date" for the current world crisis of Muslim fascism and American military intervention, no newspaper or government agency can publish one. It is possible that this war is going to be like so many decisive wars from the Peloponnesian War to the wars with Germany in the 20th century: it will likely consume the energy and treasure of two generations, regardless of who wins in November 2008.
George W. Bush is going to be judged by the twenty to forty years after 2009 as much by the eight years which the current generation of know-it-alls claims to be a "catastrophe."
He might be the worst president ever, but we won't know until we have lived through four or five successors.
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