How Bad Was Bush?

How bad was Bush?

As an historian, I can not so glibly conclude that he was the worst president in the history of our republic, as many in my profession are so quick to claim. Picking the "worst" American president is like picking the "worst" Bob Dylan album or the "worst" aircraft carrier. They are entities of such unique precision that even the most flawed of their iterations retains redeemable qualities.

And even given that fact, if every American president had been subjected to the same level of scrutiny as Mr. Bush, we would all be absolutely petrified at what we'd discover. Calvin Coolidge? Black uncle. James Buchanan? Gay. Woodrow Wilson? Fascist.

Despite his well-and-duly-harped-upon failures of leadership, Mr. Bush has done some redeemable things. I wish to point to three specific achievements for which Mr. Bush is unduly deprived of credit.

The first is the fact that both of Mr. Bush's Secretaries of State were African-American, and one was a woman. More importantly, both were well-qualified for the job, despite what one may think of their politics. During the Bush years, America's chief liaison to the world was black and/or female, and that is an precedent Mr. Bush set but has not been properly praised for.

The second is that Mr. Bush has done more than any person who has ever lived to alleviate AIDS and malaria in Africa. President Bush saved millions of lives. In my opinion, Mr. Bush criminally and recklessly deprived many people of life and liberty during his tenure, but he also saved millions of our most desperate brothers and sisters from a horrible death, and he deserves no small amount of credit for this.

Thirdly, Mr. Bush's proposal on privatizing social security made sound moral and fiscal sense, yet he was never given an honest hearing. The president shoulders no small amount of blame for this, as his credibility was shredded by this point, but my generation would be better off if we had followed George W. Bush's advice on social security.

Beyond that, this man was a uniquely catastrophic president. Shall we approach this chronologically?

Firstly, President Bush was never legitimately elected president. Secondly, the worst attack on America in its history happened on his watch and, let us be frank, he clearly had no idea what the fuck was going on.

Thirdly, he couched the response to 9/11 in a strictly authoritarian sense. He immediately adopted the presumption that the attacks were not reflective of his administration's failure of anticipation, but of the pesky premise of the rule of law.

"I got this", he said to the American people. He asked for no shows of patriotism beyond consumption and conspicuous silence in the face of his wartime policies. Fourthly, he gave into fear and severely curtailed the checks on his office imposed by the Constitution.

Fifthly, he used the nation's fear and grief and a means towards a personal and ideological end. The invasion of Iraq was irrational, illegal, and unwise in the extreme. Sixthly, he disgraced the troops he had plunged into the cauldron by sending decidedly mixed signals on the legitimacy of torture, which is the moral equivalent of endorsing the same.

Seventhly, he serially subverted the constitution by attaching "signing statements" to laws passed by the peoples' Congress. The gist of these statements was that Mr. Bush would execute the law "as he see fit" the practical implication of which is tyranny.

Eightly Mr. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which gave him the authority to personally deprive citizens of habeus corpus and which retroactively pardoned him of all war crimes he had authorized to date, including torture.

Ninthly and lastly, the intangibles. The way Mr. Bush behaved. The way he carried himself. The way he represented US. "Mission accomplished". "Bring Em On". "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." These were failures of leadership which even the most partisan of citizens were aghast at.

No American president should have to assume the burden that was thrust upon George W. Bush on 9/11. And of course I feel not a little presumptuous critiquing a man who shouldered a burden I can not conceive of. But it is my job as a citizen to do just that.

Barack Obama is inheriting perhaps the greatest burden of any American president since Lincoln, and perhaps of all American history. But unlike Mr. Bush, he has chosen inclusion and hope over passivity and fear.

My final critique of President Bush is that he was a fundamentally well-meaning man who was intellectually and morally unfit to hold the office he did. 9/11 exposed the open book of history to Mr. Bush's self-righteousness, impulsiveness, arrogance, and lack of curiosity.

Put very simply, what GOOD thing has happened in or to this country since George W. Bush took (and I use the word "took" advisedly) the presidency? .........anyone?.....anything?.....(Jeopardy music)......ANYthing?....

Well, there is one. And WE did it on Tuesday.