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IS GEORGE BUSH THE WORST PRESIDENT -- EVER

Posted by salaamallah@hotmail.com on Mon Dec 5 01:36:56 2005

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Some questions are now being asked in if the President can improve his image and what it would take? From an unbias standpoint regarding Iraq, I believe all he has to do is add the troops the General said they need and improve their infrastructure as he promised while helping them build their government. I would then make sure he makes national security a priority in authorizing and pushing in all the changes outlined by Homeland Security, and present a clear plan for Katrina and let the public knows he cares, tighten the borders and charge corporations violating hiring non citizens and undocumented workers, and then remove the pork he authorized. Finally simplify the drug program. I'm not sure why that is a problem for him.
By Richard Reeves Fri Dec 2, 8:13 PM ET

PARIS -- President John F. Kennedy was considered a historian because of his book "Profiles in Courage," so he received periodic requests to rate the presidents, those lists that usually begin "1. Lincoln, 2. Washington ..."

But after he actually became president himself, he stopped filling them out.

"No one knows what it's like in this office," he said after being in the job. "Even with poor James Buchanan, you can't understand what he did and why without sitting in his place, looking at the papers that passed on his desk, knowing the people he talked with."

Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history. Ironically, the Pennsylvania Democrat, elected in 1856, was one of the most qualified of the 43 men who have served in the highest office. A lawyer, a self-made man, Buchanan served with some distinction in the House, served as chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee and secretary of state under President James K. Polk. He had a great deal to do with the United States becoming a continental nation -- "Manifest Destiny," war with Mexico, and all that. He was also ambassador to Great Britain and was offered a seat on the Supreme Court three separate times.

But he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.

Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.

He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.

There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

# He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

# He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

# He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

# He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

# He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (
Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

# He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

# He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

# He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious. Besides, many of the historians note that however bad Bush seems, they have indeed since worse men around the White House. Some say Buchanan. Many say Vice President
Dick Cheney.
When a President goes to war and calls it a pre-emptive war, you would think he would have valid information checked and re-checked to back himself up. When all that rationale has been thrown out and he's still gun ho in killing the enemy when you no longer know who they are-it's difficult to justify the sanity.
You have the government throwing out 9,000 computers minimum a year. With the baby boomers about to retire and now retiring, simple solutions like taking those computers to correctional instititions and teaching the prisoners how to use them and can skills in programming ect would help fill the gaps that show there simply aren't enough bodies that are going to be able to fill the current work force.

My main issue is the President has spent so much on pork and is not trying to find creative solutions to solve problems that would cost no extra money at all to solve.

As the population ages, we are going to see a lot of old people driving with a lot of medical problems and poor driving skills that will be a greater problem on the roads. Without investment in out transportation infrastructure, we are going to face some problems.

Border protection is a problem. I personally see debt problem getting worse, creative solutions getting drowned out, and a agenda to push poorly thought out agendas using illegal tax payer funds to advertise.

Even as to war progressed, Rumsfeld has misjudged every single option he had. On top of that you have scandal after scandal administrative staff literally getting cuffed in the white house, west wing. This a long with the highest ranking members of congress of the same party and more coming is already historic on a major league level.
I would say anytime a Presidents reasons for going to war prove false, you have a problem. It is my belief, history will show he went to war for oil and another US attempt to control the region and his spending in porportion of the GNP made no sense and hurt the people that needed it most.
I also see the department of Homeland security being created largely as being unnessary and because the administration is reasoning for telling the public why they went to war and then try coving up the real reason force the Prseident to capitulate to creating an entirely knew security agency that was not necessary.

The Enron, Energy meeting and funding given to help them all they way to the last day before the scandal hit. And no-bid give aways and collecting payoffs.


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