Sunday, December 03, 2006

Worst of the Worst

imageThe Washington Post asked a group of historians for their opinions on where George W. Bush’s presidency will rank in U.S. history. Three of the historians, whose essays were published in the Post’s Dec. 3 Outlook section, argued Bush will rank near the bottom, while a fourth said he determined long ago to look with suspicion when members of the left-leaning historical profession delve into contemporary politics or profess near unanimity. This fourth historian suggested time will cool today’s political passions and that Bush will be viewed with a mixed record, like most presidents.

Bush certainly ranks as a dangerous president who has used his position of power to perpetrate scores of depraved actions. Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote that Bush should be turned over to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague. I would agree with Roberts. But I also think every president in U.S. history has committed acts that would warrant them spending the rest of their lives in prison, serving sentences similar to those handed down against white-collar criminals Bernard Ebbers and the now deceased Ken Lay.

Historian Eric Foner writes in his Outlook essay that Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt usually fit in the “great” category of U.S. presidents. Like Bush, each of these presidents used their position of authority to wield near dictatorial powers. That is not a “great” or a good thing.

Considering presidents of the 20th and 21st centuries, I would probably rank Gerald Ford as the greatest president because he was in office for the shortest tenure, which did not give him enough time to wage great wars against Americans and people abroad.

In terms of worst presidents of the past 100 or so years, I would place Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and George H.W. Bush in the bottom rung.

Wilson was a major warmonger who also unleashed the internal police apparatus on people living inside U.S. borders. Truman ordered the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and laid the foundation for today’s massive military-industrial complex. Johnson waged the ghastly war in Vietnam and engaged in smaller invasions around the globe, while also overseeing intense repression at home. And then there’s Bush, who has committed acts, with the blessing of the Congress, comparable to many of these other bottom-tier presidents.

Based on the amount of damage done, I would probably rank Woodrow Wilson as the worst president ever. As Roberts noted in an earlier essay, “Like the current president, George W. Bush, Wilson became a warmonger once he gained power.”

Bill Bonner writes that in the crowded contest for “America’s Worst President,” Wilson stands out:

"Every time we go to Nicaragua we learn more about a sordid and absurd episode in America’s history. This, too, has Wilson’s DNA on it. Marines were sent into Nicaragua in 1916. The country became almost a protectorate of the United States--despite the fact that it was a sovereign nation.

Wilson did not stop there. Soon he had U.S. soldiers all over the diarrhea belt. He sent them into Haiti and the Dominican Republic, too. In Mexico, he backed one party…then, a splinter faction…and then, when the splinter group began killing people on both sides of the border, Wilson sent a force of 6,675 Punitive Expedition down to the Rio Grande to hunt down and kill the splinter himself--Pancho Villa.

From humbug, to farce, to disaster; in the end, the effect of these interventions was just the opposite of what Wilson had hoped for. Instead of increasing America’s friends in the region, the number of her sworn enemies multiplied. For the next two generations, in many Latin American countries, ‘Yanqui go home’ was practically the national anthem."

Even more so than Bush, Wilson sought to quash civil liberties during his time in office. Gene Gerard writes:

"During World War I, there was intense opposition to America’s involvement in its first international conflict. President Wilson and Congress responded with a series of Draconian laws designed to squash dissent. In 1917, Congress passed the Trading with the Enemy Act, which prohibited the mailing of magazines and newspapers that were characterized as offensive to the government. ‘The Masses’ magazine was barred because of an article that asserted, ‘This is Woodrow Wilson’s and Wall Street’s war.’"

Many modern Democrats hold up the reign of Wilson as a positive example. That’s why nobody should expect the Democrats to apply any real pressure on the Bush administration to roll back the U.S. military’s presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere the around.

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