Matthew Yglesias (April 07, 2008) - Worst President Ever (Culture)

Woodrow Wilson is generally remembered as a bad president.

Posted by Antid Oto | April 7, 2008 1:21 PM

Sadly, this is correct. Though to be fair, it is difficult for Bush to really be worse than James Buchanan.

Posted by IP Guy | April 7, 2008 1:22 PM

There's a funny irony here. Republicans tend to bash Wilson because of his foreign policy. Isn't that funny?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 7, 2008 1:23 PM

I associate James Buchanan with the Civil War, and he is generally ranked one of the very few worst Presidents.

Posted by DTM | April 7, 2008 1:24 PM

I think he'll be recognized as the president who sped-up America's inevitable relative decline and the creation of a multi-polar world. Depending on how one views that new world will color how his longterm reputation develops, on the other hand regardless of that view, he will be seen as unnecessarily causing severe damage to his country, his office, the international system, his party, and Iraq.

Posted by David | April 7, 2008 1:25 PM

Matt, this is so short-sighted. Our children will be cleaning up Bush's messes. It only gets worse. Has history been kind to Harding? Buchanan? Nixon will have yet another downfall and will justly return to the failure category (for those who lifted him up, shame, shame). That the Bush catastrophies are just beginning is the assurance that his place in history will be secured where it ought to be: the very worst.

Posted by maxgowan | April 7, 2008 1:26 PM

Hoover didn't really get a big boost in later generations from being associated with the Depression.

Eisenhower had a relatively placid eight years, and his reputation only improved with time.

I think your "big events = the smile of later generations" thesis is just wrong.

Posted by brooksfoe | April 7, 2008 1:28 PM

Woodrow Wilson in his first term was responsible for a lot of good legislation - the creation of the Federal Reserve System, the Clayton Antitrust Act, which exempted labor unions from antitrust legislation and put more teeth into the Sherman Antitrust Act; the Underwood Tariff, which reduced tariffs and raised income for the federal government via an income tax; the Adamson Act, which imposed an 8 hour day on railroad workers in defiance of industry wishes; and a lot of other decent stuff. Overall, Wilson's first term was a very productive era for progressive legislation - the most productive by a considerable margin of the Progressive era, I believe.

His foreign policy legacy is pretty mixed, but I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be. He did, after all, win World War I. Versailles was a mess, certainly, but that's always been acknowledged in understandings of Wilson, I think. At any rate, Wilson's legacy is pretty clearly mixed, and his positive reputation has to do as much with his very successful first term as with the failed ideals of his second.

One might also note that Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson were all associated with big, dramatic events. They routinely come in at the very bottom of these kind of presidential polls.

Posted by John | April 7, 2008 1:29 PM

Do you think GWB will leave office with compassionate conservatism and democracy in the Middle East as his two signature issues? In both cases they were convenient campaign talking points to justify less attractive policies. Where is the evidence that he really pushed for compassion or democracy? He'll need a platoon of Grover Norquists to reinvent his legacy.

Welcome to the George W. Bush-New Orleans International Airport.

Posted by wren | April 7, 2008 1:32 PM

Woodrow Wilson is generally well-regarded because he marked a departure from the past in that he tried to make America more engaged with Europe and finally put an end to America's suspicion of foreign entanglements. Whether he was a good president or good person is seen as tangential to the fact that he tried to forge a new path.

Despite Bush's claims, his presidency has really been more about old thinking and mindless interventionist behavior with which we are already familiar. I don't see the future as being one in which Anglo-American interventions in the middle east will be the norm. I see him being regarded as a Nixon- or Grant-like character than Wilson.

Posted by Tyro | April 7, 2008 1:32 PM

I don't see it myself. Just about everything Bush has done has failed even against his own goals. He set out to establish a permanent Republican majority, now the Dems hold Congress and are poised to take the WH; he set out to liberate Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East), and has caused a bloody mess; he tried to phase out Social Security, and got nowhere; he tried to establish the "Ownership Society", and we've got a wave of foreclosures and shrinking home ownership; he swore to get bin Laden "dead or alive", and 6 years on he's still at large.

Against that, we've got a few pretty speeches which obviously never matched the policy priorities. We give Wilson some credit because he didn't just *talk* about establishing supranational organizations - he really tried hard to do it.

Nope, Bush goes down in history as a big loser. Maybe not the worst. But very very bad. Reading
"My Pet Goat", giving the "Mission Accomplished"
speech and flying over flooded New Orleans are
just vivid illustrations of stupidity and incompetence. And anyone who digs behind the scenes into the torture memos, the disappearing emails, the Plame case, and the Alberto Gonzales DoJ isn't going to find any hidden goodness.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 7, 2008 1:36 PM

The Wilson comparison just doesn't fly. Ask the average American what they know about him. If they know anything at all, it'll be that he won WWI. Deserved or not, hostilities were brought to a close under his watch, so he gets the credit. This is like Bush how?

Posted by NHCt | April 7, 2008 1:38 PM

People, people, take heart. Matt has predicted that history will view W positively. That is even more convicing evidence that he will be considered the worst president ever for generations to come.

I half expect Nixon's family to send W a thank you card for the not-so-bad-by-comparison service he has so kindly provided.

Posted by Shochu John | April 7, 2008 1:38 PM

Let's not assume that historians and journalists won't improve, and learn how to hold their own against propagandists?

Posted by ange | April 7, 2008 1:39 PM

Joe "Soft Power" Nye pondered exactly the same question in a piece in the LA Times a week ago

"Is Bush Our Woodrow Wilson?"
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-nye30mar30,0,6538671.story

Posted by Paul | April 7, 2008 1:40 PM

This is a pretty ridiculous analysis...

Look, there's a pretty good chance that our financial system/economy will collapse in the very near future. And our Iraq War has been an utterly total disaster. These things---and maybe additional catastrophes still to come!---will make people very, very unhappy. Who else will they blame?

Bush's "mistake" was being reelected in 2004. After eight full years of Bush, the looming disasters can't really be blamed on anyone else. If Kerry had gotten in, and muddled around for a couple of years, lots of people would be blaming him for Bush's mistakes.

Posted by RKU | April 7, 2008 1:42 PM

His (Wilson's) foreign policy legacy is pretty mixed, but I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be. He did, after all, win World War I.

Statements like this make me worry that Matt's prediction is correct.

I think his general premise that being associated with big events increases one's historical standing is correct. However, Bush's failures are of such high magnitude and so pervasive (he's much WORSE than Woodrow Wilson!) that he will never be rehabilitated.

Posted by Jim W | April 7, 2008 1:42 PM

Come on. WWI marked the beginning of American world ascendance, that later came to fruition post-WWII. That swamps anything about how badly Wilson managed it. So Wilson is associated with something good. The civil rights stuff was bad, but continued stuff that had been going on for decades.

Bush is not associated with anything good, and where he did take action he marks a recognizable departure from previous trends.

Matt still has a bit of the "contrarian" disease. Just say sensible stuff, and don't strain to be different from the consensus.

Posted by mq | April 7, 2008 1:44 PM

Matt it is absurd to compare today's media saturated and highly recorded historical moment with a hundred years ago.

Bush will never be regarded as anything but a disaster because we have the media to record his failures in glorious color and sound.

It would take profound revisionist history to rescue this trainwreck from anything but a Nixonian failure stamp across its wretched forehead.

Posted by WinSmith | April 7, 2008 1:44 PM

Er, no. Lots of presidents have not been resuscitated, notably Nixon, but also Buchanan.

I'm no fan of Woodrow Wilson, but I think it silly to compare him to Bush. For one thing, he had substantial domestic achievements, even if they came at the cost of civil liberties of war opponents. For another, the US won WWI. If the system he helped construct failed to stop (and even hastened the rise) of Nazism, that happened over a decade after he left office.

The better example is Truman, of course. But despite all his foreign policy screwups, Truman proved prescient regarding our current day view of the Cold War and Civil Rights. There are no guarantees that Bush will prove so lucky.

Posted by AWC | April 7, 2008 1:47 PM

"American presidents associated with big dramatic events tend to wind up with good reputations whether they deserve them or not."

There may be some truth to this, but the key counter-example is Lyndon Johnson. Civil rights, the Great Society, a landslide victory, etc. Some pretty dramatic events AND some solid good achievements, and he's not universally remembered as one of the great presidents.

One thing about presidential historians is that they are generally Whiggish to a very remarkable degree. I.e. they judge a president by things he did that seemed to lead toward or away from the U.S. today (civil rights, being a predominant world power, having great industrial wealth, etc.), regardless of what effect it had at the time. So both FDR and Reagan were great presidents, because they both contributed significantly to the particular kind of welfare state we currently have, which is judged to be just as it should be.

This is probably the only type of presidential history that can get the high level of respect that it gets, where these people routinely get invited to be on NBC to talk about the presidential race. But it's also quite boring, because it refuses to ask if we could have had a different kind of country than we now have, and if it might have been better.

"Republicans tend to bash Wilson because of his foreign policy. Isn't that funny?"

And because of his record on civil liberties. He was the "first fascist dictator", after all, according to Jonah Goldeberg. That's so hilarious that somehow I forgot to laugh.

Posted by Colatina | April 7, 2008 1:48 PM

Concurring with the above: Wilson's foreign policy was not nearly as poor as you claim. Ultimately, Wilson was on the right side of the debate over the League of Nations regardless of his legislative defeat. And the vigor of his advocacy for his vision of future international affairs clearly and effectively inspired future generations.

Posted by dry_fish | April 7, 2008 1:48 PM

Heh, heh. matt you certainly have your trolling boots on today.

That so many historians see him as a failure should be a warning. The British 1914 Iraq campaign was so staggeringly expensive that I suspect it precipitated the decline of the British empire. The comparisons are truly compelling here. For this to be true, the petrodollar will have to recover and the debts paid off in a reasonable time, and the Middle East will have to enter stage of peace and prosperity. I would like to think this will happen--seriously--and it could do. The only way it is conceivable is if the US buries the hatchet with the Iranians and a comprehensive and just settlement is worked out for the Palestinians. In this scenario you could see a genuine and just Pax Americana--and I think it is conceivable if the US can make the shift in thinking. It would all hinge in other words on an outrageously successful Obama presidency (I can't conceive of any of the other candidates achieving this under any circumstances).

The you are right, President Bush may get a far better reputation than he has any right to expect. His achievements will have been to so discredit US hard power to precipitate a wise investment of the huge reserves of soft power that remain.

It still remains a long shot though.

Posted by Chris Dornan | April 7, 2008 1:49 PM

In Wilson's defense, by all accounts he could think and speak in complete sentences.

Go back to the Big Debates in 2K and 2K4. Objectively, who looks like the better option?

Posted by ed | April 7, 2008 1:51 PM

Anyone who looks kindly on Woodrow Wilson should read "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry. Wilson refused to halt troop shipments to Europe despite the massive levels of deaths onboard due to influenza are horrifying.

Also, according to this book, Wilson's stupid decision to plunge the U.S. into WWI was a key contributor to the spread of influenza in the first place. Admittedly, Wilson had no way of knowing that this would be the case, and I'm also not sure what the current science is on this question.

Posted by Jim W | April 7, 2008 1:53 PM

In the future Bush will be compared to Presidents Harding, Buchanan, and Dewey.

Iraq isn't the only disaster of Bush's 19 years in office.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 7, 2008 1:54 PM

Bush will be remember kindly if and only if: (a) Iraq turns out OK in the end (even if it takes 5, 10, or 20 years), (b) Al Qaeda never manages another significant attack on the U.S., and (c) the economy doesn't completely collapse in the next few years.

(a) won't mean the invasion was justified in the first place, but it will give sympathetic historians sufficient justification for crediting Bush's "vision" ala Reagan.

(b) could replaced with "any future significant terrorist attack is credibly blamed on the lapses of a future administration," making Bush's 9/12/2001-present streak look good in comparison (after all, "nobody" could have anticipated 9/11).

Posted by Chris Conway | April 7, 2008 1:59 PM

There's one area in which Bush's reputation could be even worse in the future: No one, at this point, really holds him responsible for 9/11, but it's easy to imagine the CW 20 years from now being that Bush was the president who sat idly by while 3,000 Americans were killed.

In fact, it's easy to imagine Bush's culpability growing in future years, if more documents emerge showing they were more aware of the threat than has been reported. And the fact that he hasn't caught Osama bin Laden, or even made much of an effort to catch him, isn't going to help.

Posted by Tom Nawrocki | April 7, 2008 2:00 PM

Nah. I think the emerging consensus in comments is correct.

The historical opinion of Wilson was resurrected because his Presidency featured some real, lasting domestic accomplishments, and because he made some unpopular foreign policy decisions that later came to be seen as prescient.

While it's not entirely impossible that the Bush Doctrine will be rehabilitated due to a miraculous flowering of democracy and human liberty between the Tigris and Euphrates, he *still* won't have any lasting domestic legacy that moves him into the category of Wilson or Truman. The best he can hope for at this point is a legacy like Jimmy Carter's -- where one high-profile positive development during his term is usually mentioned during an otherwise negative review.

Even this strikes me as highly unlikely. Bush's legacy will be hubris and mismanagement. He will either be remembered for gross strategic error or for the vindication of the incompetence dodge. Neither one is a legacy any President would want.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 7, 2008 2:00 PM

I suspect that Woodrow Wilson is rated highly among academic historians in large part because Wilson was an academic himself, and of no small repute. Home-team bias plays a role here.

George W. Bush obviously won't have that advantage. Indeed, I suspect that one of the long-term effects of the Bush administration will be a re-evaluation of Wilsonian interventionism. Rather than Wilson and Truman bringing Bush's reputation up, I think he may bring theirs down.

But forget about academia for the moment. How will Bush's reputation fare among the general public? Think about Lyndon B. Johnson. He played a key role in founding Medicare (which is immensely popular) as well as spearheading the Civil Rights Act. His administration was also characterized by a strong economy with abundant, high-paying jobs. Despite all that, he is still routinely considered a failure, primarily because of the charnel house that was Vietnam. Then consider that Bush has Johnson's disastrous war without his economic success or domestic achievements.

Hard times, military setbacks, and a loss of U.S. prestige are never good for your reputation as a President. Just ask Jimmy Carter.

Posted by Josh G. | April 7, 2008 2:04 PM

If global warming does indeed lead to catastrophic economic and social disruptions later in the century, I think Bush will be largely remembered for his role as a denier and disabler of action on climate change at a crucial moment.

Posted by Virginia | April 7, 2008 2:07 PM

Surprisingly objective, Matt, and probably true. I'm just surprised Truman hasn't come up. He was even less popular than Bush at the end, and deservedly so. His handling of the Korean War makes Bush look like Alexander the Great. Still, a few decades later and he's seen as a visionary.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 7, 2008 2:08 PM

I wonder how significant 9/11 will seem in thirty years. Obviously, it's a big deal, but it sure wasn't Pearl Harbor. Maybe even closer to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing under Reagan?

Posted by Joe | April 7, 2008 2:09 PM

I don't think so. I think that Bush's disregard for the Constitution, and grab for total executive power, will make him the bad boy of government classes for years and years to come. The crappy economy he gave us and a losing war won't help. He's historical toast. The "big" stuff he was involved in all failed.

I mean. Suppose the Germans weren't at their ropes end when American troops arrived in France in 1917? And the war held on for another four years, fought to a draw. Think anyone would think Wilson was so hot? That's Bush.

Posted by David in NY | April 7, 2008 2:11 PM

Somewhere between Nero and Caligula.

Posted by goethean | April 7, 2008 2:13 PM

Suppose Bush's intervention in Iraq triggered a global outbreak of influenza that killed 100 million people? And on top of that, resulted in a flawed peace treaty that led to an even worse war 20 years later? That's Wilson.

Note: I still think Bush is worse than Wilson.

His (Truman's) handling of the Korean War makes Bush look like Alexander the Great.

Wow, that's out of left field.

Posted by Jim W | April 7, 2008 2:19 PM

"I wonder how significant 9/11 will seem in thirty years. Obviously, it's a big deal, but it sure wasn't Pearl Harbor. Maybe even closer to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing under Reagan?"

Pearl Harbor was more significant only in that it was the pretext for the U.S. joining a much larger war than the limited Afghanistan and Iraq wars. But 9/11 was the first foreign attack on the continental U.S. since the War of 1812, and it caused about the same number of casualties as Pearl Harbor. Unlike the Pearl Harbor attack, the vast majority of the 9/11 victims were civilians.

The Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon caused a tenth as many casualties and was significant mainly in that it led us and our European allies to abandon their attempts to stabilize Lebanon.

Posted by Fred | April 7, 2008 2:21 PM

Re David in NY

"I mean. Suppose the Germans weren't at their ropes end when American troops arrived in France in 1917?"

The Germans were very far from their ropes end in 1917. In fact, absent the US intervention, they might very well have won the war. It should be remembered that the Russians had been defeated and most of the divisions that had been involved in the Eastern Front were sent west to bolster the German forces there. It was the French Army that was near collapse after the mutinies in 1916 while the British had reduced their forces in France by some 40%.

Posted by SLC | April 7, 2008 2:34 PM

And what does history have to say about Abraham Lincoln, eh?

Lincoln freed 4,000,000 slaves.

The Commander In Chief liberated 27,000,000 Iraqis.

(And Lincoln was a member of which party?)

Oh yeah.

Posted by Taisa | April 7, 2008 2:35 PM

The Commander In Chief liberated 27,000,000 Iraqis.

That number is way too high. Even if you believe the Lancet study, the number is only around 1 million.

Posted by Jim W | April 7, 2008 2:39 PM

if more documents emerge showing they were more aware of the threat than has been reported

Documents? You think Cheney's shredders are going to miss that many? These guys have already made it clear that they aren't going to be preserving records, regardless of what the law might say about it.

Posted by KCinDC | April 7, 2008 2:40 PM

I think GWB will not be viewed by historians as one of the worst, if not the worst, president in history.

Buchanan tried to pander to the South and still didn't prevent the Civil War. But the Civil War was probably inevitable no matter what he did.

Harding was just a garden variety crook.

Hoover was in over his head, but not badly intentioned.

Bush will leave behind him a damaged economy, a damaged military, a chaotic Iraq, damaged international standing, and a legacy of disregard for the Constitution that is second to none.

He is more than incompetent. He is malevolent.

Posted by litigatormom | April 7, 2008 2:42 PM

People don't care about Wilson's low regard for enemy rights anymore than they do that FDR was gleefully using the Constitution for toilet paper rather than value Jap and Nazi rights above Americans. Except ACLU Jews. Who else cares that FDR blatantly lied about violating the Neutrality Act and wiretapped dangerous subversives, or that Wilson rounded up and deported a pack of foregn anarchists, communists, and bomb-makers?

As for Nixon and LBJ, they were, next to FDR, the most consequential Presidents of the 20th Century. (TDR, Reagan, Wilson - 4th, 5th, 6th most consequential) But LBJ is hurt by his enemies crediting all he did to Saint Martin Luther King and the Soviet disinformation and propaganda campaign on Vietnam that used ideologically sympathetic members of the US media to help "win" Vietnam. (KGB archives call their suborning US and Euro media to win the information war, thus the Vietnam victory one of their greatest feats.)

Nixon suffered because media Jews that gave FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ a pass for doing worse and sleazier things than Nixon did - never forgave him for going after their communist and "pinko" relatives, and never ended their war with Nixon until they "got him".

Because Nixon and LBJ were so consequential, and basically intelligent, competent men that achieved most of what they set about to do with voter's approval, and their impact so lasting - their rise in historical estimation is inevitable.

Bush is alas, like Jimmy Carter and Buchanan. Ineptitude, numerous wrong decisions, inability to lead. There is unlikely anything to happen is future history to make Buchanan, Bush II, and Jimmy Carter worth spit. The damage Carter did to our economy took 10years to repair, the damage he did to national security by caving to radical Islam, gutting the CIA, enacting FISA is still unfolding. Bush II will be hated for generations. And most of the rancor will not involve the light, as wars go, casualties of Iraq. But the damage he did to US prestige and to the American economy and every American's standard of living by globalism and putting us in hock to China and letting China gut our jobs that drove all American's standard of living..

Posted by chris ford | April 7, 2008 2:46 PM

I think the final judgment of history will rather closely match this prescient piece from Jan 17 2001:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

...

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

...

"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 7, 2008 2:46 PM

I think Bush will easily win the crown of worst two term president. And contrary to MY, I think his reputation will only deteriorate. When you look at where the US stood in the world on the day that he took office and how it will look the day he leaves -- well short of just burning the whole country down it's pretty hard to concieve of a worse job.

He only escapes worst of all time because Buchanan and Pierce managed to preside over the disintegration of the country in their single terms -- and Hoover allowed the Depression to continue without doing much of anything about it.

If great accomplishments and involvement in great events made you fondly remembered, we'd be celebrating LBJ as though he were Washington.

I don't even begin to understand the claim that Truman's handling of Korea was disastrous, not to say in a league with what the Chimperor has done to us in Iraq.

Posted by Sir Charles | April 7, 2008 2:47 PM

My first instinct was "Matt's on crack." My second was, "Hangon, no one more than George W. Bush has ensured that irresponsible Republicans never again get elected to the presidency, so maybe there's something to this."

But now I'm back to "Matt's on crack." Wilson has a good reputation (to the extent he has one) because his internationalism was eventually vindicated and because the U.S. won WWI. We're losing the war on terror and no part of the Bush doctrine is ever going to be vindicated.

Posted by Jack Roy | April 7, 2008 2:48 PM

If Bush gets a positive reputation, it will be long after those of us who lived through him are dead. For all the bones some future president might put on a campaign phrase (more likely it'll just be forgotten) and for all ponies with purple fingers might get their own Middle Eastern country someday (and hopefully they do) the simple fact is that Bush has very nearly bankrupt the country. That might actually be remembered as a bad thing.

Perhaps a more interesting question might be what will Bush's retirement be like? I don't see no rehabilitation of his image coming any time soon. In fact I think he's going to need an extra-thick bubble to keep pretending he's anything but reviled.

Posted by Bullsmith | April 7, 2008 2:49 PM

Two things are possible:

1) All the "Big Events" will be re-investigated to find out what actually happened, as opposed to this endless game of Hide the Paper and Lose the Emails. When we actually know what really happened-there won't be any spin possible to exonerate this crime syndicate.

2) Bush/Cheny will have so successfully destroyed the evidence that in 200 years historians won't even know there was a "Bush Presidency". It will just be an urban myth.

And, I could be wrong, however history is still judging Buchanan, Harding and Hoover quite negatively. Neville Chamberlain too.

Posted by bcinaz | April 7, 2008 2:51 PM

Chris Fraud, you are a racist, anti-Semitic, vile disgusting, degenerate, stinking, creepoid. You are complete slime scum.

Posted by Jennifer | April 7, 2008 2:51 PM

Perhaps a more interesting question might be what will Bush's retirement be like?

This is something I've often wondered about. Is he actually going to try to stay in this country? I wouldn't if I were him. Maybe he can find a nice retirement home in Uraguay.

Posted by Jim W | April 7, 2008 2:54 PM

Matt,

Just curious -- but how many anti-semitic comments does Chris "Protocols of the Elders of Zion is my favorite book" Ford get to post before he gets banned? I'm not a big censorship guy at all, but wow, a single comment that uses both the terms "ACLU Jews" and "Media Jews" -- yikes -- that might fall into the area of "otherwise objectionable" material.

Posted by Sir Charles | April 7, 2008 2:55 PM

"the Soviet disinformation and propaganda campaign on Vietnam that used ideologically sympathetic members of the US media to help "win" Vietnam"

And all this time I'd been thinking that somehow the NVA and the Viet Cong and Ho Chi Minh and General Giap had something to do with it. But now the USSR is gone, who's responsible for planting stories about 4000 dead in Iraq ? Raul Castro ? Hugo Chavez ? Tom Daschle ?

Tell us more, we could all use a laugh these days as we wait to be foreclosed, drafted, or flooded.

Posted by Richard Cownie | April 7, 2008 2:56 PM

If he's starting in last place, then his worst case scenario is to remain there--he can't go down. He can battle with Buchanan.

I do think there's something to this--in future decades, with the details faded, people could say "Bush saw that democracies in the Middle East would transform it, and sadly couldn't quite succeed" without including all the disastrous reasons he failed, both external ones he failed to recognize and internal ones he disastrously enacted.

I don't think he'll get any compassionate conservatism cred, though--Huckabee has governed with that more than Bush ever did.

Posted by Deborah | April 7, 2008 2:57 PM

"I also take the view that Bush is probably correct to think that history will remember him kindly."

You're kidding, right? You must be. Hahahaha! Good one!

Posted by Doofus | April 7, 2008 2:57 PM

"But now I'm back to "Matt's on crack." Wilson has a good reputation (to the extent he has one) because his internationalism was eventually vindicated and because the U.S. won WWI."

What, exactly, did we win in World War I? As Obama might ask, how did it make us safer?

Were wide swaths of the world better off with the Communism, Nazism and assorted despotisms that flourished after WWI shrunk and decimated the old empires of Europe?

Wilson was naive and arrogant, and his "war to end all wars" instead teed-up the bloodiest war in history as soon as Europe grew another generation of fighting-age men.

Posted by Fred | April 7, 2008 2:59 PM

Oh come on. Chris and his crackpot posts are hilarious. Please do not ban him.

Posted by Gary Sugar | April 7, 2008 3:00 PM

Jennifer,

You are awesome.

Posted by Jim W | April 7, 2008 3:01 PM

I think a lot will depend on who suceeds him. After 4 to 8 years of President McCain and ruinous wars with Iran and North Korea, people will surely look back on W's term of office as the good old days. 'If only McCain had shown Bush's judgement and restraint' they'll be saying......

Posted by Andy | April 7, 2008 3:06 PM

I think Bush Needs Obama to Save the Bush Legacy.

Posted by Mike | April 7, 2008 3:08 PM

The Iraq War, even though it's not the single most destructive American war of all time -- that would be the Vietnam War, is the single most cynical American war of all time. The war was begun and has been prosecuted as an adjunct to Republican domestic policies. The cynicism of all that death and destruction used to expand tax cuts is a source of despair.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 7, 2008 3:08 PM

Oh come on. Chris and his crackpot posts are hilarious. Please do not ban him.

Yes, indeed!

Strongly implying that Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are "Lefty Jews" just isn't something you can otherwise find in the regular op-ed pages, and would be sorely missed here...

Posted by RKU | April 7, 2008 3:09 PM

In the future Bush will be compared to Presidents Harding, Buchanan, and Dewey.

Dewey?

Posted by Matt Stevens | April 7, 2008 3:13 PM

Buchanan and Hoover failed to manage crises they inherited. Bush created catastrophes, in Iraq, with the budget, and through relentless hackification of the executive branch. He deserves this categorization. I don't know if I'd put it quite as starkly as litigatormom does, but I agree with her broader point.

I hope that future historians won't be as shoddy as Matt thinks they will be.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | April 7, 2008 3:14 PM

I would call this the Timmy O'Toole theory of Presidential rankin'.

Homer: That Timmy is a real hero!
Lisa: How do you mean, Dad?
Homer: Well, he fell down a well, and... he can't get out.
Lisa: How does that make him a hero?
Homer: Well, that's more than you did!
-- ``Radio Bart''

I do not think it holds. First, Bush was not really involved in big dramatic events, or at least I think you are exagerating the perception of our own current events. The Iraq War is not so much a big event as it is a massive diversionary mistake. Vietnam was a more legit big event, and it was closely related to the truly big Cold War, and it has not covered LBJ with Glory (had LBJ not passed Civil Rights legislation he would not be remembered nearly as kindly).

The Iraq War will look worse over time. Katrina as metaphor for massive failure will take root. "Two-recession" Bush will become a signifier for utter incompetence. Expect people to use phrases like "He really Bushed that up!".

Posted by theCoach | April 7, 2008 3:24 PM

People don't care about Wilson's low regard for enemy rights anymore than they do that FDR was gleefully using the Constitution for toilet paper rather than value Jap and Nazi rights above Americans. Except ACLU Jews. Who else cares that FDR blatantly lied about violating the Neutrality Act and wiretapped dangerous subversives?

Huh? So are you saying FDR valued Nazi rights above Americans, or the opposite? Grammar check: "rather than".

Speaking of Nazis, "ACLU Jews" and "media Jews" are interesting terms. Thanks for reminding us why defeating the Germans in WWII was an important milestone in US history.

Posted by AKBY | April 7, 2008 3:25 PM

Hey, once the Neo-Confederate Sgt Rock crew saves us from the ACLU Jews, can they get rid of all that weird Jewish physics about quantum theory and whatnot? Damn them Joooz.

Posted by El Cid | April 7, 2008 3:29 PM

Woodrow Wilson was a good president because he allowed the creation of the Federal Reserve System?
George Bush will be remembered as a great President? I think it's time for me to disconnect from the Internet and turn off my computer. What's next? The Sun is cold? My head is going to explode!

Posted by renwa | April 7, 2008 3:33 PM

What, exactly, did we win in World War I?

What alternative are you offering?

Posted by Shaz | April 7, 2008 3:35 PM

Bush may yet get a reputation as a good president - after we are all dead, because none of us will forget,and most of us will have quite a few years to regale our children and grandchildren with tales of what happens when we elect an idiot as president.

Posted by edsbowlingshoe | April 7, 2008 3:41 PM

If anything remains of Wilson's corpse now that we have raised it on high then pulled it down repeatedly, it should be said that he must rate as one of our most extreme white supremacist Presidents, even taking his contemporary circumstances into account. And he acted on his views, for example by segregating the federal civil service. Consequently, his shortcomings and strengths make for interesting historical discussions.

But I've looked in vain in the above for some mention of Bush's strengths. There must be something . . . .

Posted by Russell | April 7, 2008 3:42 PM

It's even more amazing how brainwashed by Political Correctness people are. People are actually shamed and ridiculed for questioning the Jews? Americans need to step out of their social engineering. But, they don't even know they're being socially engineered. Have you people not read the Jewish Lobby? Am I a Jew hater for mentioning it? The slaves defending their masters. What has happened to America?

Posted by renwa | April 7, 2008 3:42 PM

What, exactly, did we win in World War I?

We got to stop fighting it, stop spending American dollars on it, and a lot of soldiers got to not die. That's way ahead of Bush.

Posted by Tom Nawrocki | April 7, 2008 3:44 PM

Actually, on the substantive level, I've always thought things might have worked out much better for the 20th Century if Wilson hadn't---rather dishonestly---pushed us into WWI.

Now it's possible that the Germans might have otherwise totally won, and dominated Europe, but I'm not so sure. On the Western Front, the trench lines had held for years, and although the British and French were completely exhausted, the Germans were as well. Hadn't the Kaiser already tried to make peace once or twice earlier?

Probably the result would have been a more or less a "tie", and all the different European peoples would have learned their lesson and been more careful about starting disastrous wars in the future. Meanwhile the Germans would have easily overthrown the crazy Bolsheviks in Russia, either directly or indirectly, and even if they thus extended their dominance in the East, would have thereby saved a minimum of about 25M lives.

Even if the Germans had won outright, they would have probably just annexed a few slices of territory here and there, and become Europe's dominant power for a couple of generations, just as France had been in previous centuries.

There certainly wouldn't have been any disastrous WWII, since the "dissatisfied powers" just wouldn't have been remotely strong enough to overturn German domination. In our own timeline, both Germany AND Russia---the two intrinsically strongest powers in Europe---were "dissatisfied", producing an extremely "unstable equilibrium" situation.

Anyway, I'm not a historian, but those are my casual thoughts.

Posted by RKU | April 7, 2008 3:51 PM

Matt, you are completely wrong and everyone here is nuts. Wilson did all sorts of things for civil rights, yea, Woodrow Wilson ordered the re-segregation of the federal government, he vetoed a clause on racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and in 1916 the Colored Advisory Committee of the Republican National Committee issued a statement that said: "No sooner had the Democratic Administration come into power than Mr. Wilson and his advisors entered upon a policy to eliminate all colored citizens from representation in the Federal Government."

On Wilson's racial policies, Land of Promise notes:

"Woodrow Wilson's administration was openly hostile to black people. Wilson was an outspoken white supremacist who believed that black people were inferior. During his campaign for the presidency, Wilson promised to press for civil rights. But once in office he forgot his promises. Instead, Wilson ordered that white and black workers in federal government jobs be segregated from one another. This was the first time such segregation had existed since Reconstruction! When black federal employees in Southern cities protested the order, Wilson had the protesters fired. In November, 1914, a black delegation asked the President to reverse his policies. Wilson was rude and hostile and refused their demands."

Read a book.

Posted by Matt Yglesias and his revisionist history | April 7, 2008 3:53 PM

Matt, you are completely wrong and everyone here is nuts. Wilson did all sorts of things for civil rights, yea, Woodrow Wilson ordered the re-segregation of the federal government, he vetoed a clause on racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and in 1916 the Colored Advisory Committee of the Republican National Committee issued a statement that said: "No sooner had the Democratic Administration come into power than Mr. Wilson and his advisors entered upon a policy to eliminate all colored citizens from representation in the Federal Government."

On Wilson's racial policies, Land of Promise notes:

"Woodrow Wilson's administration was openly hostile to black people. Wilson was an outspoken white supremacist who believed that black people were inferior. During his campaign for the presidency, Wilson promised to press for civil rights. But once in office he forgot his promises. Instead, Wilson ordered that white and black workers in federal government jobs be segregated from one another. This was the first time such segregation had existed since Reconstruction! When black federal employees in Southern cities protested the order, Wilson had the protesters fired. In November, 1914, a black delegation asked the President to reverse his policies. Wilson was rude and hostile and refused their demands."

Read a book.

Posted by Matt Yglesias and his revisionist history | April 7, 2008 3:54 PM

Matt, you are completely wrong and everyone here is nuts. Wilson did all sorts of things for civil rights, yea, Woodrow Wilson ordered the re-segregation of the federal government, he vetoed a clause on racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and in 1916 the Colored Advisory Committee of the Republican National Committee issued a statement that said: "No sooner had the Democratic Administration come into power than Mr. Wilson and his advisors entered upon a policy to eliminate all colored citizens from representation in the Federal Government."

On Wilson's racial policies, Land of Promise notes:

"Woodrow Wilson's administration was openly hostile to black people. Wilson was an outspoken white supremacist who believed that black people were inferior. During his campaign for the presidency, Wilson promised to press for civil rights. But once in office he forgot his promises. Instead, Wilson ordered that white and black workers in federal government jobs be segregated from one another. This was the first time such segregation had existed since Reconstruction! When black federal employees in Southern cities protested the order, Wilson had the protesters fired. In November, 1914, a black delegation asked the President to reverse his policies. Wilson was rude and hostile and refused their demands."

Read a book.

Posted by Matt Yglesias and his revisionist history | April 7, 2008 3:54 PM

This depends a lot on what happens after Bush is gone (i.e. will Obama become President, will McCain, then what happens next?). And that's simply impossible to predict.

Posted by Korha | April 7, 2008 3:54 PM

That's very open minded of you Matthew, but I suspect wrong. Bush's failures are monumental and clear. And he has some distinguishing characteristics:

1) Bush is a war criminal who got a million people killed based on a gigantic hoax he perpetrated about WMD

2) Bush is responsible for worst strategic fuckup in American history

3) Bush stole the 2000 election

Once the current generation of media courtiers and cowardly Democrats passes away, reality will become quite plain for all to see.

Posted by Junius Brutus | April 7, 2008 3:55 PM

Though to be fair, it is difficult for Bush to really be worse than James Buchanan.

I have faith in the boy. This is one thing he can pull off without dad's help.

Posted by sglover | April 7, 2008 4:00 PM

Most bad presidents are either corrupt or they lead us into wars on false pretenses. President Bush is a zesty combination of the two.

making Bush's 9/12/2001-present streak look good in comparison

You're forgetting the anthrax attacks, which President Bush himself called "a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country." I believe in holding people--especially the president--to their own words. In his own terms, we were attacked by terrorists using Weapons of Mass Destruction (the little vial Colin Powell shook during his UN presentation represented anthrax ) during the War on Terror. As with the 9/11 attacks, President Bush failed to prevent the attacks and failed to punish the people behind them. Doesn't look so good.

Posted by croatoan | April 7, 2008 4:10 PM

Will he deserve a good reputation? No. Will he get one? I'd say yes.

Even though I'm twice your age, Matt, I'm planning to stick around until midcentury, give or take. I bet historians don't rehabilitate GWB by then.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | April 7, 2008 4:24 PM

Wilson was a disaster, not just because he was a racist but because he put his racism into practice with the wacky idea of giving every identifiable group their own country, leading directly to the rise of Hitler, WWII, and the ongoing unraveling of the world into ever-smaller separatist groups.

Truman was pretty bad too. It had been official US policy since the end of WWII that Korea was an area of no strategic importance that would most likely devolve into the Soviet sphere of influence, and no one cared. Harry and Dean Acheson changed their minds on the spur of the moment, throwing soft occupation troops with obsolete equipment in front of the Soviet-equipped Norks. We spent money at the rate of 19% of GDP (Iraq is running about 4%), killed about two million people (including nearly 40,000 GI's) in order to achieve a tie that left the aggressors in control of all the territory they started with which is now the world's largest concentration camp, and working on nuclear weapons.

Iraq would have to get FAR worse to be in the same ballpark. Given the same amount of time, it's more likely to look like South Korea, with much higher stakes, and at a much lower cost.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 7, 2008 4:28 PM

Just because your POV is "contrarian," Matt, doesn't mean it's accurate. After a few more decades, there'll be nobody left who recalls those romantic 1950s TV westerns -- or derives a cultural thrill from Bush's faux-gunslinger, dead-or-alive Decider pose. Unlike more distant Presidents, he can be YouTubed to our survivors -- who will observe what, in his manner and speech? And what "successes" might a future Civics or history teacher hoist to counter that on-screen image?

Posted by Sophie in VA | April 7, 2008 4:42 PM

Actually, on the substantive level, I've always thought things might have worked out much better for the 20th Century if Wilson hadn't---rather dishonestly---pushed us into WWI.

I'm really on the fence about this. Wilson was thoroughly dishonest about our entry into that war, and along with the war itself he goosed the country into one of its uglier xenophobic spasms.

On the other hand, the Hindenburg/Ludendorff junta that was de facto 1917 German government was a different kind of beast than the Kaiser's bonehead regime. If you look at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and German administration of Ukraine, it's pretty clear that the post-Barbarossa atrocities a generation later didn't just come out of the blue. The German government of 1917/18 didn't make the extermination of Slavs a formal goal, but it sure didn't mind if that happened as a side effect of official looting.

Granted, the Germans had treated their African colonies pretty much the same way. As did pretty much all the other European empires.....

Posted by sglover | April 7, 2008 4:49 PM

Bush will be remembered as the president who, at long last, brought democracy to the Arab world. It can only grow. The world will be better for it. Instead of the failed policies of the past of tolerating homocidal dictators for the Kissenger/Scowcroft model of "stability", Bush boldly fought for a new order of democracy in a very backward part of the world. We have a struggling democracy in both Afghanistan and Iraq to show for it. The US democracy took 100 years to overcome its very fragile and violent state, and it resulted in the deaths of millions of American citizens, billions of dollars in destruction (and those were 1860's dollars) and the suspension of the most basic civil rights (habeaus corpus, martial law, executive fiat disregarding the Supreme Court, arrest of elected officials without charge or trial) and in the end, the US came out stronger and more unified and with an end to the pernicious practice of slavery.

After 5 years of war and only about 3 of democracy, leftists like the above are whining that Iraq, with zero tradition of human rights or democracy, has not mastered the art of popular sovereignty and its government does not control the country, there are acts of violence and dissent.

Bush has changed the world, and in a positive way. There can be no argument that Iraqis are on a path to a better life than they were in 2003, and if the US troops had not been there, even if Saddam had fallen from popular revolt, there would have been a bloodbath that would have dwarfed the turmoil of the last five years.

Bush will be seen as a visionary and someone who truly changed the course of history, for the better. God bless our brothers in Iraq, and good luck to them. Its getting better, quicker, than anyone could have predicted.

Posted by jones | April 7, 2008 4:56 PM

Since the odds are that the next President - or at best, the one after that one - will likely be even worse than Bush, I'd say predicting Bush will end up with a "good reputation" will be a no brainer.

After all, in the race to the bottom, the guys who aren't actually AT the bottom when the bottom hits usually come out looking better than the guy AT the bottom.

Meanwhile, nitwit Powell thinks Iraq is going to end up looking like South Korea. Given another fifty years, maybe. So this means Powell wants us to stay for another fifty years, like his hero McCain wants us to stay for 100. This makes Powell fifty percent less stupid than McCain - which isn't saying much. Fifty percent of stupid is still stupid.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 7, 2008 5:01 PM

On the other hand, the Hindenburg/Ludendorff junta that was de facto 1917 German government was a different kind of beast than the Kaiser's bonehead regime. If you look at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and German administration of Ukraine, it's pretty clear that the post-Barbarossa atrocities a generation later didn't just come out of the blue.

Yes, but on the other hand, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime was a different kind of beast than the Hindenburg/Ludendorff junta. If Germany hadn't been defeated in WWI, then Hitler would never have come to power.

Posted by Stefan | April 7, 2008 5:06 PM

Re jones

I think that Mr. jones has been partaking of the nose candy for far too long. Dubya has about as much chance of being labeled a great president as he has of winning the Tour de France this June.

Posted by SLC | April 7, 2008 5:19 PM

Yes, but on the other hand, Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime was a different kind of beast than the Hindenburg/Ludendorff junta. If Germany hadn't been defeated in WWI, then Hitler would never have come to power.

Well, without American entry into the war, a victorious Hindenburg/Ludendorff regime might have starved as many people as Hitler. I can't really come down hard on either side of this argument...

Posted by sglover | April 7, 2008 5:21 PM

Bush will be seen as a visionary and someone who truly changed the course of history, for the better. God bless our brothers in Iraq, and good luck to them. Its getting better, quicker, than anyone could have predicted.

Are you employable?

Posted by sglover | April 7, 2008 5:29 PM

Dubya has about as much chance of being labeled a great president as he has of winning the Tour de France this June.

This June he has a theoretical chance.
Next June, out of office, but subject to the strict new WADA doping controls, he wouldn't even make it to the start line.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | April 7, 2008 5:38 PM

If Germany hadn't been defeated in WWI, then Hitler would never have come to power.

Surely this was unforeseeable in 1917. The fact that Hitler was unbelievably awful doesn't make the kind of Europe that Hindenburg and Ludendorff would have created an attractive one. It's worth noting that Hindenburg was the guy who put Hitler into power and that Ludendorff was just about as loony and far right a figure as Hitler (he actually was involved with Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and was the Nazi candidate for President of the Republic in 1925.

Further points:

Wilson is not, in fact, to blame for the fact that all the nationalities of central Europe ended up with their own states after World War I. Wilson was actually until very late in the war a supporter of the continued existence of the Habsburg monarchy. The 14 points only speak of "autonomy" or "self-determination" for the peoples of the Habsburg empire, and not of "independence," because Wilson did not actually support independence until much later, when it was pretty clear that dismemberment was inevitable. The various different successor states had already been created by the time Wilson got to Paris, something which he had little to do with - they emerged as a result of the defeat of the Habsburgs and the dethronement of the Emperor, and were in no sense creations of Wilson. At Paris, all they did was try to demarcate sound boundaries, which was probably an impossible task, but which they did a perfectly adequate job with, given the situation.

It's worth noting that one area where Wilson and Bush are similar is that both faced particularly tough re-election challenges for incumbent presidents, and only barely managed to be re-elected. But it's worth considering what their historical legacy would have been if they'd been defeated. Wilson's first term, as I said before, was quite successful, and featured the passage of much progressive legislation, some of it still in effect (the income tax, the federal reserve system, the Clayton Antitrust Act). His foreign policy was also reasonably successful - he had kept the US out of the war, as his campaign slogan declared, and his offer of mediation had garnered him respect worldwide, if not actual results. Obviously, the racism is a massive blemish on his record, but I think it would be arguable that his other accomplishments were quite sound. One assumes that historians, seeing how President Hughes almost immediately enmeshed the country in the war in Europe, would longingly wonder what would have happened if Wilson had remained president.

In terms of getting the US into World War I, I'm not sure why this was so unjustified. German submarines were sinking American merchant vessels. This was a deliberate policy by the Germans, one they initiated in full knowledge that it would likely lead to American entry into the war. Elite opinion in the United States was, at the time, pretty strongly for war - Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes, and Henry Cabot Lodge all supported the war. And, as noted above, I don't think it's fair to say American participation was useless. It seems evident that American manpower probably provided just enough of an edge to give the allies the victory, and while that victory proved not lasting, it at least had the promise of something better than all of Europe under the fist of German military warlords.

Where Wilson failed was in winning the peace, and he actually made what were really only a few key errors, mostly having to do with pride. I tend to think that the actual treaty was about the best that could have been attained. He may have alienated Clemenceau and Lloyd George (not to mention the Italians) and come off as a giant prick to the Europeans more generally, but that wasn't the big problem. The big mistake was his failure to include any significant republicans (and particularly Lodge) in the delegation. If he had made Lodge own the treaty, the US probably would have joined the League. And, as others have said, Wilson was more right about the League than his critics. The main criticism of the League of Nations, in hindsight, is that it was toothless and weak. But Wilson's Republican critics were, in fact, arguing the opposite - that it would destroy America's sovereignty, etc. etc. etc. In retrospect, they were utterly absurd, and completely wrong, and, really, they were mostly just demagoguing the issue to embarrass Wilson.

Wilson was an unattractive figure in a lot of ways (not least: massive racism! Although it's unclear whether he actually said that Birth of a Nation was "history written in lightning", or whatever it was), but he's a lot more complicated and interesting a figure than Bush.

To get back to my point about not getting re-elected, if Wilson had been defeated, he'd look like a near great president, and people would wonder what he could have accomplished in a second term. If Kerry had beaten Bush in 2004, Bush would come off looking like a fool and a failure, and would be heckled off the stage of history.

Posted by John | April 7, 2008 5:39 PM

How many Richard Nixon high schools are there in this country? Wouldn't Bush be on par with Nixon for worst ever given this score of 61%??

I wouldn't name a school after Bush. I doubt there would be many places that would.

Posted by TimW | April 7, 2008 5:42 PM

Bush's place in history will depend on how the Permanent Majority decides to rewrite it.

Posted by Hans B | April 7, 2008 6:09 PM

Between Lincoln's election and inaugeration, James Buchanan allowed/encouraged the South to secede and also to arm itself to begin the Civil War. He was a traitor, pure and simple. It is impossible to be a worse president than Buchanan.

Posted by Liberal Chris | April 7, 2008 6:29 PM

In case of a dramatic decline of US power and wealth future people may blame HIM.

The Republican myth machine will try to make him a hero. And succeed with part of the US population.

Posted by Leo Brux | April 7, 2008 6:33 PM

Because the winners write the history, Bush's long term legacy depends upon the success or failure of movement conservatism. I predict ultimate failure, and therefore disagree with Matt's assertion that he will be remembered kindly

Posted by Paul in NC | April 7, 2008 6:37 PM

Bush rode into the White House on the strength of his name and family connections, became a symbol of national and international unity due to the tragedy of 9/11, then squandered all the goodwill at home and abroad by radically bankrupting the nation, plunging it into a stupid war, and being an out-of-touch, obtuse, arrogant, crony-driven loser (Katrina, economy, etc.). In short, the worst president in American history, bar none.

The only member of his administration who will emerge unscathed is Barney.

Posted by TKD | April 7, 2008 6:39 PM

Don't be so sure, Chris. A president could still be worse than Buchanan. Of course, to do so you'd have to do something really horrendous, like touching off a global thermonuclear war or some such. So let's all hope that Buchanan keeps the title.

Posted by AlanC9 | April 7, 2008 6:52 PM

Between Lincoln's election and inaugeration, James Buchanan allowed/encouraged the South to secede and also to arm itself to begin the Civil War. He was a traitor, pure and simple. It is impossible to be a worse president than Buchanan.

As awful as Buchanan was (and he was pretty awful), this isn't actually fair. He had played a role in encouraging secessionism, especially by his encouragement of the split in the Democratic party that had occurred in that year, and his own support for the Southern candidate, Vice President Breckinridge.

However, he certainly did not encourage secession, which he condemned and declared to be illegal (he might very well have declared that he thought it to be legal, and many expected him to do so). His view of it, however, was that while it was illegal, the federal government did not have the right to suppress secession by force. He hoped, as one might expect, to engineer a compromise that would result in the seceding states voluntarily coming back.

Even then, though, he wasn't nearly as pro-southern as he might have been. Among other things, he refused to abandon Fort Sumter or Fort Pickens, and he got rid of most of the pro-secession members of his cabinet and replaced them with much more hardline people like Joseph Holt and Edwin Stanton.

Accusing Buchanan of treason in his last few months in office is unfair and untrue. His response was not as strong as it might have been, but if he had truly wanted to provide support for secession, he could have done a lot more, and it seems clear that, in fact, he strongly disapproved of it.

Posted by John | April 7, 2008 7:13 PM

Most presidents who compete for the bottom position do so on the basis of isolated misdeeds (Nixon) or policies widely thought to be reasonable at the time they were pursued (Hoover). Bush, on the other hand, brings incompetence, arrogance and cronyism to everything he does. His presidency reminds me of the cartoon SpongeBob Squarepants, only with every character's worst qualities - Mr. Krabs' greed, Plankton's deviousness, Squidward's arrogance, Patrick's intelligence and SpongeBob's driving skills - combined in a single character.

Posted by Paul B | April 7, 2008 7:14 PM

How many Richard Nixon high schools are there in this country? Wouldn't Bush be on par with Nixon for worst ever given this score of 61%??
I wouldn't name a school after Bush. I doubt there would be many places that would.
Posted by TimW

There aren't any FDR HSs or many surviving "JfK" HSs left, either.

But there are lots and lots of MLK named schools. All, alas, by having that name, send up a red flag on the quality of the school and the quality of the educational attainment of the students.

Given a choice of sending kids to the Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan HS -or the MLK or Malcolm Shabazz one, which do you think most parents would go with??

Every year, Nixon goes up in esteem. He and FDR have the most scholarship devoted to them of 20th Century Presidents. Nixon also left 7 major books for scholars to delve into and Nixon was linked to some of the best intellects of his era, that have their own scholarship and contributions while in the Nixon sphere that are being avidly studied. Men like Moyhnahan and Kissinger. All despite their many moral flaws, and putting the nation and the People ahead of certain laws and Constitutional clauses - as Lincoln and Jefferson also did....

Bush II is down in Carter territory. Don't hold your breath for either to rise in estimation.

Posted by chris ford | April 7, 2008 7:36 PM

Truman was pretty bad too. It had been official US policy since the end of WWII that Korea was an area of no strategic importance that would most likely devolve into the Soviet sphere of influence, and no one cared. Harry and Dean Acheson changed their minds on the spur of the moment, throwing soft occupation troops with obsolete equipment in front of the Soviet-equipped Norks. We spent money at the rate of 19% of GDP (Iraq is running about 4%), killed about two million people (including nearly 40,000 GI's) in order to achieve a tie that left the aggressors in control of all the territory they started with which is now the world's largest concentration camp, and working on nuclear weapons.

Iraq would have to get FAR worse to be in the same ballpark. Given the same amount of time, it's more likely to look like South Korea, with much higher stakes, and at a much lower cost.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 7, 2008 4:28 PM
*************************************************

I think you are exactly right. Truman left office even more unpopular than Bush is now. I'd think part of it also has to do with a volunteer army now versus a drafted army in Korea.

All these screw-ups and Truman is well regarded today.

************************************************

The Iraq War will look worse over time. Katrina as metaphor for massive failure will take root.
************************************************

Oh, and apparently (adjusted for inflation) we've spent about as much money on Katrina recovery $95 billion, as we did on the Marshall Plan - $100 billion

Posted by Campesino | April 7, 2008 7:40 PM

Yup, Matt's wrong here.

Historians look closely at the internal communications of an administration when making such an assessment.

In Bush's case, about 3 years worth of these communications have been 'lost' in a most improbable but convenient manner. There's no way that's going to be looked upon favorably.

Also:

50 years from now, a person watching him talk is going to think the same thing that 95% of the English-speaking world today thinks when they see him speak.

Posted by Chris | April 7, 2008 7:45 PM

Matt, you're high. Or insane.

"Bush" will always be followed by "comparable to Buchanan, Harding, and Hoover." Will he be considered as bad as them? Maybe not, but he's giong to be in the ballpark, hardly being "treated kindly."

Posted by L2p | April 7, 2008 8:01 PM

"Versailles was a mess, certainly, but that's always been acknowledged in understandings of Wilson"

Wilson couldn't overcome the avarice and wish for retribution by the British and French.

His stubbornness concerning the League of Nations is overplayed.

In some areas the world wasn't ready for Woodrow Wilson.

About that democracy in the middle east thingy. Don't hold your breath Matt. Sounds like you're still trying to find a pony in your support for the invasion of Iraq.

George W. Bush will be remembered as an absolute catastrophe. Bank on it.

Posted by cal1942 | April 7, 2008 8:05 PM

I'll go out on a limb here and say I don't think we've even started to see the real damage.

By now, the federal bureaucracy is larded with tens of thousands of the most corrupt and ignorant hacks you can imagine- the kind of people who would make you think, "Well, at least Al Capone gave out turkeys at Christmas".

It is far from clear to me that this government won't fall. Probably the best and last safeguard against that is that we're too stupid to form another.

Posted by serial catowner | April 7, 2008 8:15 PM

I don't see W being rehabilitated. Two main reasons, IMO:

1) "Just about everything Bush has done has failed even against his own goals." (hat tip Richard Cownie in comments)

The main way the historians in the group rank Presidents is by asking "did he do what he set out to do?" That's why Polk consistently ranks as a top-ten President. Set some goals, achieved them all, left after one term. W has set lofty goals and failed to reach any of them. Hell, he's set lowly goals and failed to reach them. That won't play well.

2) He started two wars and didn't win them.
Whenever (if-ever?) we leave Iraq and Afghanistan I doubt it'll feel like a big victory. More like a relief. Americans like winners. W started wars and didn't win. That more than anything else will consign him to loser-dom.

Posted by hubcapiv | April 7, 2008 8:42 PM

WMD
"The Mushroom Cloud"
Niger Forgeries
CIA Agent outted
Signing Statements
Yoo Memos
Abu-Gharib
"Not that concerned about Osama Bin Laden"
Blackwater Kills Innocent Civilians
Halliburton No-Bid Bonanza
Walter Reed
Halliburton Overcharges 61M for gas in Iraq
Cheney's Energy Task Force
Katrina failures
Libby sentence commutated
The Lincoln Group propaganda

Posted by AKBY | April 7, 2008 8:49 PM

No way Matt.
Bush will be seen as a doofus son of privilege whose fear-mongering facilitation of the attack on the Constitution and fiddling-during-the-fires incompetence were the impetus for a dramatic-to-radical reorientation of American politics and (eventually, hopefully) society.

Posted by Brian in OR | April 7, 2008 9:39 PM

The historical opinion of Wilson was resurrected because his Presidency featured some real, lasting domestic accomplishments, and because he made some unpopular foreign policy decisions that later came to be seen as prescient.

Wilson reputation hasn't been resurrected. He'd always been ranked in the top 10 but only because the rankings (A. Schlesinger Sr.) were conducted among liberal historians. More recent rankings (WSJ-Heritage) with a diverse ranking group have dropped Wilson much lower properly considering the disaster of his 14 points and his inability to get anything ratified. More recently we've become aware of a series of civil liberties abuses which by comparison make GWB look like a Boy Scout. I addition Wilson was openly racist. These latter facts have become popularized by Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism".

Wilson's days as a top 15 President are over if only for the racist thing. Moreover, by any objective measures Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan were far more important and effective Presidents.

GWB will do much better than liberals will give credit. Look no further back than Reagan. Even today liberals still get the vapors over Star Wars yet even NATO approved installation in Europe last week without a dissenting vote.

Posted by rdw | April 7, 2008 9:47 PM

yeah, right. when pigs fly.

Posted by jay Dwight | April 7, 2008 9:54 PM

yeah, right. when pigs fly.

Posted by jay Dwight | April 7, 2008 9:56 PM

Ah, this is exactly the kind of thing one expects from taking a technical stockpicker's view of history. You look for some pattern in history, then mechanically apply it to totally different circumstances, letting the analogy determine the way you view those circumstances - and thus missing the point. So it is Wilson equals Bush, the occupation of Germany equals the occupation of Iraq, and so on. Hell, under Wilson the continental U.S. was attacked - by Pancho Villa - although there was no warning given to Wilson beforehand, unlike with Bush. But these repetitions are, in the end, meaningless. It sucks as history per se. Actually, the whole good president/bad president contest is pretty bogus. For instance, looked at in one way, Eisenhower is the Interstate highway president - and that in a sense changed everything. He's also the almost madly aggressive president who brought us close to WWIII by continually pushing the envelop with over the top bomber flights over the Soviet Union to check out the radar defense which no later president would have dared to do.

A more important question, to my mind, is whether Bush is an important president, like Reagan. Reagan, too, was a lying, murderous son of a bitch. But he was also important - the introduction of policies designed to reward predatory behavior on behalf of the wealthy, tear up the social welfare net, and break the bargaining power of labor made him crucial.

Bush, I think, is not an important president like Reagan. Rather, he is the extreme projection of Reagan. I imagine he marks the end of the Reagan era. Everything that the GOP has stood for since Reagan - corruption, using military spending as welfare, lying and manipulation in foreign policy, and an affection for death squads and authoritarianism, haS finally reached critical mass under Bush. As Carter marked the end of the liberal era, Bush marks the end of the rightwing era.

Posted by roger | April 7, 2008 10:08 PM

Truman was pretty bad too.

Harry is correctly rated in the top ten. South Korea is a top ten economy and mature democracy thanks to Harry. He did a great job correcting for the mess FDR left after getting smacked around by Stalin in setting up the cold war to protect the Capitalist world from the various religions of the left.

Socialism/Communism were the worst things to ever befall mankind. Harry started the war that ended their scourge. Reagan ended it.

Posted by rdw | April 7, 2008 10:09 PM

More recently we've become aware of a series of civil liberties abuses which by comparison make GWB look like a Boy Scout. I[n] addition Wilson was openly racist. These latter facts have become popularized by Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism".

People familiar with history knew about the Palmer raids and "Liberty cabbage" and Wilson's, ahem, eccentric views of Reconstruction and race relations long before mama's boy Goldberg hunkered down with a word processor and a pallet of Cheetos.

Posted by sglover | April 7, 2008 10:18 PM

I won't pretend to be a history buff like most of the commenters here like I know anything about Buchanan, Wilson, etc. I can only rank him against the ones I have lived through or read enough history on - FDR through the present. I would put the worst in this list as Carter, followed by Nixon, then LBJ, then Clinton, then GW Bush maybe.

I'd agree with Matt that his star will rise through history as many will see that he led with principle and not by watching the polls, and having freed the people in Iraq and Afghanistan and establishing the democracies that will grow there - unless of course we elect one of the Democrats now running and they actually do pull us out of Iraq precipitously - they will then become the Nixon/ Kissinger dupes that led to the slaughter of our allies and the killing fields.

Posted by Bill W | April 7, 2008 10:26 PM

Jonah Goldberg probably thinks highly of Harry Truman since his mother claims to have had a sexual encounter with him.

Posted by SLC | April 7, 2008 10:28 PM

This can be said without fear of contradiction. As we sit here today, there can be no doubt that Dubya is the greatest president since Clinton.

Posted by SLC | April 7, 2008 10:33 PM

Bush, on the other hand, brings incompetence, arrogance and cronyism to everything he does.

Well then how did he win in the 1st place and how did he get reelected so easily? A president doesn't get rewarded for incompetence with a 2nd term. He is a skilled politician as we just saw with the vote in NATO 18-0 supporting the installation of Star Wars. That was supposed to be impossible remember? How many times have the Democrats in Congress promised to block his Iraq war funding or place restrictions on him only to fail totally each time?

I know this is a sore subject but think back to the race against Al Gore and how many times Al changed his mind on taxes promising no cuts and then increasing the amount of tax cuts each month?
And he still lost.

Bush is not an arrogant man but one skilled in driving his elitist foes out of their minds. He is unusually talented in this regards. The Yale graduate and Harvard MBA can speak very well when necessary by why when it's so much fun making liberal heads explode.

How else is it possible for seemingly sane people to call a man capable of putting himself in the position of running for President, putting together an organization to win the nomination and then running a very successful two year campaign, stupid.

Aren't the people calling GWB stupid quite obviously themselves stupit. It's just a dumb thing to say. They have to know that before they say it. Yet GWB, merely by bringing out that patented smirk, drives them over the edge. It's a gift.

Posted by rdw | April 7, 2008 10:35 PM

"Meanwhile the Germans would have easily overthrown the crazy Bolsheviks in Russia, either directly or indirectly, and even if they thus extended their dominance in the East, would have thereby saved a minimum of about 25M lives."

You do know that the Hindenburg/Ludendorff regime actually created and fairly strongly supported the Bolsheviks (insofar as anyone did create the Bolsheviks)? The German Ambassador in Moscow was regularly consulted by the higest Bolshevik leadership and it was considered a grave attack upon the Bolshevik regime when other competing parties (we still don't really know who) attempted to kill the German Ambassador.

Sure, a victorious Ludendorff/Hindenburg regime would likely not have been very charmed by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Civil War. But that would merely mean a very hard Right regime (probably equally as Right as Franco, and far more Right than Horthy).

Posted by burritoboy | April 7, 2008 10:37 PM

For instance, looked at in one way, Eisenhower is the Interstate highway president - and that in a sense changed everything. He's also the almost madly aggressive president who brought us close to WWIII by continually pushing the envelop with over the top bomber flights over the Soviet Union to check out the radar defense which no later president would have dared to do.

Wasn't that LeMay, more than Eisenhower? If memory serves, when Francis Powers was shot down (granted, his was a CIA operation), Eisenhower was as surprised as anyone else (and angrier than most, since it happened on the eve of a summit). Richard Rhodes' hydrogen bomb history goes into some detail about LeMay's determination to avoid supervision, and his very risky "reconnaisance" operations.

For my money, Eisenhower is one of the most consistently under-rated presidents. But I agree your larger point, that ranking presidents like some kind of beauty pageant, is wankerific. Actually, the main lesson that comes out of these rating games is that most of time Americans like to see an amiable empty suit in the White House. In that sense, Fred Thompson really was more "presidential" than any of the other candidates.

Posted by sglover | April 7, 2008 10:40 PM

People familiar with history knew about the Palmer raids and "Liberty cabbage" and Wilson's, ahem, eccentric views of Reconstruction and race relations long before mama's boy Goldberg hunkered down with a word processor and a pallet of Cheetos.

Not true. Little of this was covered in the typical school curriculum nor does it get referenced often in todays press. Wilson has been treated in the image of a kindly College President with the highest intellectual talents. Note the many claims his failures were not his failures but our own. You see, he was ahead of his time. We failed him.

There are two fascinating ironies regarding Wilson. That contemporary criticisms of GWB regarding civil rights are laughable in comparison to Wilson's policies. That Wilson's racism, far more widely discussed now due to Liberal Fascism, makes a high ranking for Wilson's Presidency almost impossible in todays hyper-PC environment. Can a racist be ranked high? Won't the academic invite severe scorn? Is it worth the risk?

Posted by rdw | April 7, 2008 10:58 PM

He's also the almost madly aggressive president who brought us close to WWIII by continually pushing the envelop with over the top bomber flights over the Soviet Union to check out the radar defense which no later president would have dared to do.

He did not bring us to the brink of WWIII. That was JFKs bungling in Cuba. The reason later Presidents didn't fly over Russia is because satellites replaced the jets rendered obsolete by improving Russian missle technology.

Ike was a terrific President correctly ranked in the top ten. Like Reagan and Bush he was considered a dimwit by the elites convinced he was managed by his staff. It's only fairly recently historians reading his papers became aware Ike was far more involved in the details of his administration and HE was the boss.

Posted by rdw | April 7, 2008 11:11 PM

The French Revolution was a big event

But somehow, being intimately associated with it hasn't improved Louis XVI's standing in history.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | April 7, 2008 11:42 PM

How can anybody doubt that Bush is the worst of all Presidents?

Look at his record. A huge increase in unemployment, to the worst levels in 60 years. Double digit inflation. The stock markets down over 50%. Thousands of Americans imprisoned without trial. Newspapers and magazines censored and suppressed. Dissent forcibly stifled. American troops routed in battle, with tens of thousands killed and captured.

Oh, wait, none of that happened while Bush was President. Under other Presidents in the last century, but not under Bush.

But it doesn't matter, because the people who keep score don't like Bush. They've already managed to convince most of the American people that a recession is in effect, even though unemployment is lower than its average during the
Clinton "boom years".

Wilson makes a good contrast. He enacted some things that good liberals like, and he was an Ivy League intellectual - therefore his record is set down as positive. His vicious Klan-level racism is ignored. Likewise the proto-fascist war regime he imposed (look up the American Protective League). And the way the war effort was bungled by his "central planners" - all fellow elite intellectuals. (The U.S. built 341 destroyers for WW I: 68 before the war, 96 during the war, and 177 after the war was over.) The Red Scare and the brutal Palmer Raids are remembered, but somehow never charged to him. I can't blame him for U.S. involvement in WW I (the Germans worked hard to provoke the U.S.), but his influence on the postwar settlement was disastrous.

Bush gets no credit even for things liberals are supposed to like, such as doubling Federal education spending, providing billions for AIDS treatment in Africa, or having 6 women and 9 "minorities" among his 32 Cabinet appointments, or canceling major military projects like the Crusader self-propelled artillery.

As for using American power to destroy two abominable tyrannies and liberate 60 million people: well, it just didn't happen.

Ah, well. You can't fight City Hall.

Posted by Rich Rostrom | April 7, 2008 11:55 PM

sglover,

We know more about what Eisenhower was doing now that many of the cold war docs have been released. Let me quote Derek Leebaert’s The Fifty Year Wound: the true price of America’s cold war victory:

“During one seven week period in early 1956, it flew almost daily missions over the Soviet Union’s northern reaches from a base in Greenland. As those flights continued, an unarmed C-130 A (not on a spy mission) was shot down in 1958 over Soviet Armenia, the fate of its seventeen crewmen unknown until the 1990s. All had perished.”

Far from being LeMay’s patsy, Eisenhower, who pushed military spending up to heights which are unique in peacetime America, knew precisely what he was doing. The U-2s were for photographing nuclear installation, but Eisenhower was as concerned with the soviet radar system.

As he also knew precisely that the above ground nuclear tests were killing Americans – they aren’t counted among our casualties, but if they were, Eisenhower’s war would have cost about 200,000 lives, in terms of thyroid cancer, immune deficiencies and other diseases linked to fallout. Certainly this is more than Vietnam. Hell, Eisenhower might have zapped John Wayne, since the crew filming around St. Georges, Utah – fallout ally - for a John Wayne flick notoriously died at an astonishing rate of the same kind of cancers.

How is one to judge Eisenhower? Well, we can thank god that the wwii mentality is dissipating. The greatest generation could also be called the bloodiest generation. When you get too used to wars costing hundreds of thousands of lives, it is a bad thing.

But in fact, I think Eisenhower did represent the general will of the American people, who are an easily panicked bunch, creative and greedy, open to risk but at the same time eager for scapegoats, racist and yet the first white majority country that struck real blows against racism, and most of all seeking impossible defenses against vulnerability, and easily adopting to those unnatural situations (like our recent five years of free credit) from which they derive some ephemeral benefit. They immediately assume that the natural course of things is what benefits them, and the unnatural that out of which they can't make a profit. They've brought the same view they had about the lands of the Indian nations to, say, the countries of the Persian gulf. As Barrington Moore said, America is a predatory democracy. In that sense Bush, a man so dumb he'd be fired as a golf pro at a second rate country club in Lafayette Louisiana - which, if his last name wasn't Bush, is the kind of job he'd have ended up with - really mirrors the kind of America his deadenders want.

Posted by roger | April 7, 2008 11:57 PM

I'd also argue that Eisenhower was one of the best---perhaps even the best---post-WWII presidents.

I'd probably rank Kennedy as one of the worst, solely because he nearly started a nuclear war for no logical reason. A single mistake that big is worth a lot.

And I obviously knew that Germans helped to install the Bolsheviks in Russia. After all, they were fighting a war, and wanted to weaken or even overthrow their enemy.

But if the war had ended in a German win or draw, I can't imagine they would have allowed Lenin and his friends to remain in power, and as Lenin himself noted, the German army could have crushed his regime like an eggshell. Why do you think the Bolsheviks agreed to give away 1/3 or whatever of their entire country at Brest-Litovsk?

As I said, I'm not a historian nor obviously a specialist in WWI matters. Perhaps the German wartime occupation policies in the Ukraine were indeed much more harsh and brutal than I'd realized. But I just can't possibly imagine that the end result of a German-dominated Russia in following decades would have been even a tiny fraction of the 25M people killed by the Communists.

Later propaganda aside, Germans and Slavs/Russians had generally gotten along reasonably well over the previous centuries. In addition, the Russian Imperial family was heavily German (first cousins to the Kaiser), and many of Russian's top generals and political elite were ethnic-German.

Probably the Czar would have been forced to abdicate, and his heir the young Czarevitch (who was mostly German) installed in his place, under some pro-German regent. Certainly a little humiliating for a powerful country like Russia, but hardly as bad as having 25M Russians die in the Gulag.

Posted by RKU | April 8, 2008 12:02 AM

The Bush-hating "thing" is the result of: (1) a cynical, unrelenting, and orchestrated effort by Democrats to demonize Bush that started with the 2000 election where they created the myth that he stole the election to explain away their failure; (2) a biased media in the pocket of the Democrats that habitually characterizes Republican Presidents as "intellectually deficient political anomalies to explain away presidents who,somehow, managed to dupe a normally democrat-oriented electorate into voting for them not once but twice"; and a pathetic group of academicians who impute unto themselves an unwarranted authority to make judgments about the performance of others without ever having ventured outside the cloistered halls of academia to experience the reality of the world beyond in which they live.
Bush's place in history will be judged not by the current crop of liberal historians bought and paid for by a party that never found a principle or a cause worth fighting for, but rather by the long term results of his policies and actions. Among other things, Bush will be lauded for:
1. understanding that the seminal issue of our time was the life or death struggle between radical Islam and the West, not the myth of man-made global warming;
2. having had the moral courage to do what he believed best for the country, not what pollsters found to be playing well on Peoria at the moment;
3. having convinced former Soviet vassal states in Eastern Europe that their future well-being lay with NATO and the West rather than in appeasement of Russia;
4. having reversed a half-century of French hostility and non-cooperation with NATO and the US and having convince the leadership of that country that its destiny lay in cooperation with us--not in confrontation;
5. having created the environment that made possible the emergence of a democratic state--other than Israel--in the Middle East;
6. having restored morality and personal integrity to the presidency besmirched by the smarmy ethics of his predecessor; and...
7. having been the first American president to take a firm position in opposition to the designated hitter rule in baseball.

Posted by jpw | April 8, 2008 12:14 AM

The Bush-hating "thing" is the result of: (1) a cynical, unrelenting, and orchestrated effort by Democrats to demonize Bush that started with the 2000 election where they created the myth that he stole the election to explain away their failure; (2) a biased media in the pocket of the Democrats that habitually characterizes Republican Presidents as "intellectually deficient political anomalies to explain away presidents who,somehow, managed to dupe a normally democrat-oriented electorate into voting for them not once but twice"; and a pathetic group of academicians who impute unto themselves an unwarranted authority to make judgments about the performance of others without ever having ventured outside the cloistered halls of academia to experience the reality of the world beyond in which they live.
Bush's place in history will be judged not by the current crop of liberal historians bought and paid for by a party that never found a principle or a cause worth fighting for, but rather by the long term results of his policies and actions. Among other things, Bush will be lauded for:
1. understanding that the seminal issue of our time was the life or death struggle between radical Islam and the West, not the myth of man-made global warming;
2. having had the moral courage to do what he believed best for the country, not what pollsters found to be playing well on Peoria at the moment;
3. having convinced former Soviet vassal states in Eastern Europe that their future well-being lay with NATO and the West rather than in appeasement of Russia;
4. having reversed a half-century of French hostility and non-cooperation with NATO and the US and having convince the leadership of that country that its destiny lay in cooperation with us--not in confrontation;
5. having created the environment that made possible the emergence of a democratic state--other than Israel--in the Middle East;
6. having restored morality and personal integrity to the presidency besmirched by the smarmy ethics of his predecessor; and...
7. having been the first American president to take a firm position in opposition to the designated hitter rule in baseball.

Posted by jpw | April 8, 2008 12:16 AM

jpw writes: "5. having created the environment that made possible the emergence of a democratic state--other than Israel--in the Middle East;"

Wow.

You really are a complete fucking idiot, aren't you?

"6. having restored morality and personal integrity to the presidency besmirched by the smarmy ethics of his predecessor"

Let's see - blowjobs vs. torture... which one is the more serious moral issue?

You disgust me.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | April 8, 2008 12:54 AM

Seriously, number 6 was the best one. It's as if jpw's only news source is Laura Bush.

Posted by 55 | April 8, 2008 1:17 AM

I think Bush's ranking will depend in part on what happens in the first term of his successor. If we successfully withdraw from Iraq and the economy avoids a serious recession, I suspect Bush will be treated by history as merely inconsequential. If we instead continue to lose lives and waste money in Iraq with no end in sight and the economy slips into a prolonged deflationary recession, then Bush could end up with bottom five status.

Posted by DTM | April 8, 2008 1:40 AM

"But I just can't possibly imagine that the end result of a German-dominated Russia in following decades would have been even a tiny fraction of the 25M people killed by the Communists."

Well, we can't really say what a theoretically victorious Ludendorff / Hindenburg regime that had still taken incredibly massive losses to win WWI would look like. It's fairly possible that it's economy would have collapsed anyway, just like Weimar's did 18 or so months later. Such a regime couldn't have held on to all of the Czarist Russia Empire, at least without some fairly nasty little nationalist insurgencies here and there (or perhaps everywhere). That regime would probably have to (or feel itself forced to) at least de-facto, if not quite formally, take over the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That means that Ludendorff (who, we should remind ourselves of, shortly became the Nazi party's leading figure - this was hardly a moderate politically) would be ruling Europe (de-facto) from the Atlantic Coast to at least somewhere in the Urals, if not to the Pacific, with a severely damaged core Germany. And insurgent movements everywhere from Belgium to the Ukraine (certainly throughout Eastern Europe). Obviously, that's a less than amusing prospect.

"Later propaganda aside, Germans and Slavs/Russians had generally gotten along reasonably well over the previous centuries. In addition, the Russian Imperial family was heavily German (first cousins to the Kaiser), and many of Russian's top generals and political elite were ethnic-German."

Ummm, perhaps, except that was changed by the war itself. By early 1917, the Russians literally thought that the Tsaritsa was a German agent, and she was widely hated partially because of that perception. The British royals were pretty much equally ethnically German as the Romanovs and that didn't make much difference.

Russians would certainly not particularly be accepting of any long-term German puppet regime - the Bolsheviks had to constantly defend themselves against the charge of being the Germans' pet dogs anyway (Lenin was extremely upset when someone nearly killed the German Ambassador, for instance). Something that was only relieved because Wilhelmine Germany itself didn't last much longer and because the Bolsheviks quickly supported (well, at least, verbally) the Spartacists and the Bavarian Soviet Republic.

Posted by burritoboy | April 8, 2008 2:11 AM

I wonder how big of an event the Iraq War will be 50 years from now. Sure it means a lot to anyone who's alive now, but is it as important as say the Spanish-American War was? McKinley seems to be considered as a minor president in the grand scheme of things. Korea doesn't resonate much with anyone, and even Vietnam, which once loomed so large, is fading somewhat thanks in no small part to the Iraq War. I suspect that the war will only have a modest long-term impact on the country, an impact that will pale compared with World War I.

Posted by Guscat | April 8, 2008 3:49 AM

It's not the Iraq war per se that will have impact fifty years from now - and I'm not saying that much that happens today really will have much impact fifty years from now.

But there will be consequences. One consequences of Vietnam was that the US military wanted to forget it, so they turned to outspending the Soviet Union on weapons systems - which proved useless once they again faced an urban insurgency in Iraq. So they resorted to stupidity, and destroyed what little credibility they had after the invasion. That was a consequence of Vietnam - and the more overall nature of the stupid military mind.

There will be consequences from Iraq decades from now. Whether they will be any where near that of, say, WWII, is unlikely.

But if the US attacks Iran, you can bet there will be consequences for the next decade or two or even three.

If the US pursues this stupid war in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next ten years, yes, there will be consequences. There will be blowback. Iraq alone has produced at least five million people with reasons to hate the US - the families of the million who died and the four million displaced. And that doesn't count all the other Muslims in other countries who hate the US more now because of what happened in Iraq.

Bet your ass there will be consequences.

Korea may not resonate with anyone, but we're still paying for our involvement today. The North Koreans have nuclear weapons because of it - and that hasn't finished playing out yet.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 8, 2008 6:22 AM

Well then how did he win in the 1st place

Funny you should ask. The most insider-saturated, crooked, special pleading election since James Blaine was shafted.

But you knew that and were pulling our leg in your response.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 8, 2008 9:03 AM

Such a regime couldn't have held on to all of the Czarist Russia Empire, at least without some fairly nasty little nationalist insurgencies here and there (or perhaps everywhere)....That means that Ludendorff (who, we should remind ourselves of, shortly became the Nazi party's leading figure - this was hardly a moderate politically) would be ruling Europe (de-facto) from the Atlantic Coast to at least somewhere in the Urals...

I'll admit my knowledge of Ludendorff is pretty sketchy, but I had the impression his ideology was just that of a typical conservative Junker. In our timeline, he was extremely unhappy about the overthrow of his beloved Hohenzollerns, the disbandment of most of his army, and government rule by Socialists and other leftist radicals. But if Germany had won or fought to a draw, I'd imagine he might have become something like another Bismarck, an extremely influential minister, but a minister nonetheless. Also, I have the impression that his skills were much more logistical and military rather than diplomatic and political, so most of his influence would probably have ebbed away once peace was reestablished. And remember that he'd already served his entire adult life under the Kaiser, and was presumably totally loyal to him, and to Hindenburg, his superior. After all, none of the victorious powers overthrew their previous forms of government.

And I find it difficult to believe that the Germans would have tried to set up post-War "puppet regime" in Russia, at least anything cruder than the "puppet regime" the allies set up in Germany. They probably would have amputated the Ukraine and established it as a separate, pro-German state, which would have made the Russian leadership extremely unhappy, but might have pleased quite a lot of newly promoted local Ukrainian elites. Russian Poland would presumably have become German Poland, probably a wash to the Poles. Finland and the Baltics would certainly have gained independence, and been very happy about that.

But I can't imagine the Kaiser removing his cousins the Romanovs and putting some other dynasty in their place. He liked Nicky, had been his backer and ally during the Russo-Japanese War a decade earlier, and had supposedly tried to enlist him a few years before WWI in a secret new alliance aimed against his other cousin, the British king, whom he strongly disliked.

Putting young Alexei on the throne, with a (pro-German) Russian Grand Duke or something as Regent running the country would certainly make the prouder Russian nobles grumble, but that's the sort of thing that traditionally might happen when a monarchy loses a huge war. The visible changes would have been almost minimal to ordinary Russians, nothing remotely like the abolition of Hohenzollern rule under Weimar, or even the Duma Revolution of 1905. So certainly no popular "guerilla war", though probably some strong revanchist sentiment within elements of the aristocracy.

Frankly, this sort of "moving boxes around" and switching a few provinces from one royal family to another after a war had been going on for hundreds of years in Europe, and only very rarely sparked any sort of popular resistance. By contrast, overturning an entire social system, replacing the Czar with Communism, collectivizing the land, and putting all Russian political power in the hands of a rather bloodthirsty and---as Chris Ford will gleefully remind us!---overwhelmingly Jewish Bolshevik political elite is a recipe for horrible civil war, which is exactly soon what happened.

But remember, I'm no great expert in the WWI Era, so my impression might easily be mistaken.

Posted by RKU | April 8, 2008 9:44 AM

re: Probably the Czar would have been forced to abdicate, and his heir the young Czarevitch (who was mostly German) installed in his place, under some pro-German regent.

??
In what sense was Alexi "mostly" German? Alexandra was only half-German since her mother was English (a daughter of Queen Victoria, through whom Alexei's hemophilia gene descended in the recessive female line). Nicholas was, obviously, Russian on his father's side (OK, his father had a German mother), but Danish on his mother's side (his mother was sister of Queen Alexandra of England, Edward VII's wife-- European royalty was one big family soap opera!).
Anyway, I doubt Alexei could have served even as a figurehead, given his frail health. More likely one of his sisters would have succeeded instead-- who could of course have been married off to some German or Austrian noble.

Posted by JonF | April 8, 2008 6:58 PM

"After all, none of the victorious powers overthrew their previous forms of government."

The constitutional monarchy/parliamentary government of Italy actually was overthrown within a few years, destabilized by the war. You could make a similar, if weaker, case for Japan (which was one of the Allies and declared one of the "Big Five" victor nations at the Versailles conference).

"And remember that he'd already served his entire adult life under the Kaiser, and was presumably totally loyal to him, and to Hindenburg, his superior."

That's not a fully accurate depiction. Hindenburg was not, at least in the last ~18 months of the war, Ludendorff's effective superior (though Hindenburg had the . It was Ludendorff (who was much younger than Hindenburg, with a lot less experience and from a significantly less notable family) who seems to be the driving force behind the duo's military dictatorship. Ludendorff/Hindenburg were certainly willing to do such things as forcing the Kaiser's choice of Chancellor, v. Bethmann-Hollweg out of office. They certainly wouldn't have technically removed the Kaiser from office, but they were quite willing (and, in fact, did) to make him a puppet or shadow ruler.

Posted by burritoboy | April 8, 2008 8:16 PM

In what sense was Alexi "mostly" German? Alexandra was only half-German since her mother was English...

JonF:

You totally nailed me! I'd known that Nicholas was part-German but vaguely misremembered that Alexandra was all German, forgetting her English ancestry, hence thought of their children as being "mostly" German rather than something like 37.5% German.

That's exactly why I'd said: "But remember, I'm no great expert in the WWI Era, so my impression might easily be mistaken."

Posted by RKU | April 8, 2008 8:22 PM

Why won't Bush be remembered as "the Pretty Face" that made possible a Dick Cheney Presidency? That's how I'll prefer to remember his smirkin' sorry ass... ^..^

Posted by herbert browne | April 10, 2008 2:18 PM

I'm fairly confident that GWB will be most remembered as a reviled fool who squandered an outpouring of global sympathy over a horrendous terrorist attack by lashing out at the world while enriching his cronies and eradicating the United States' moral authority. He'll be remembered as a very, very small and stupid cowboy who carried a giant gun he couldn't point in the right direction.

Posted by YeahWhatever | April 11, 2008 1:27 PM

Worst President Ever

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