Alex Beam: Bush the worst president? Contrary to popular belief...
[Eric Foner et al. may think Bush is the worst president ever, but not everyone agrees, argues Beam in this column.]
... Renegade academic and New York Times blogger Stanley Fish thinks differently. Last month he posted a persuasive essay on George Bush, "The Comeback Kid," arguing that within a year of his leaving office, "George W. Bush will be a popular public figure, regarded with affection and a little nostalgia even by those who . . . thought he was the worst president in our history."
Why? Fish argues that the nation's vast booty of problems - most of them of Bush's making - will soon hang around someone else's neck. Then Bush's inherent goodness will impress itself on the American public. "He's likable," Fish writes. "He comes across as a basically decent man who is at peace with himself." Fish, who now teaches at Florida International University, suggests that Bush might consider a second career in baseball or as a university president. "Don't groan," Fish writes, "He'd probably be good at it."
You can hear the Xanax bottles rattling in the faculty lounges and on the Times website. Hundreds of comments, almost all negative, poured in. "That might be expected given the profile of their readers," Fish told me by phone from his mountain fastness in Andes, N.Y. "Many of them are dedicated Bush haters, so it's not surprising that they would resist a prediction that President Bush will become an affectionately regarded member of the cultural scene."
There have been other, half-hearted attempts to buck the anti-Bush tide. Fareed Zakaria published an endless wheeze in Newsweek, "What Bush Got Right," lauding some of Bush's second-term course corrections. The essay is heavily seasoned with rote anti-Bush rhetoric - e.g. "dysfunction and incompetence . . . fiscally irresponsible . . . utterly obstructionist" - because this is, after all, Newsweek, and Zakaria needs to get invited back to Council on Foreign Relations tea parties.
David Frum penned an utterly unconvincing defense of Bush's legacy in Foreign Policy magazine. Well, what did you expect? Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, has an amen chorus of his own. They just happen to sing in a different key.
Policy analyst Ivan Eland of the Oakland, Calif.-based Independent Institute wrote an interesting essay last month, comparing Bush favorably to several better-known presidents. "Make no mistake," he wrote. "George W. Bush has been a horrible president and is one of the worst in U.S. history. But of the 42 men who have served as president, these four men - Polk, McKinley, Wilson, and Truman - were probably worse."
Eland wrote that essay before the economic meltdown and before Bush's imposition of what the author calls "Mussolini style economics" sometimes known as national socialism. "He could drop a couple of points if this turns into a great depression," Eland told me by phone. Eland rates US presidents in his forthcoming book, "Recarving Rushmore," and he still doesn't think Bush is the worst. "He's a crummy president," Eland said. "But we always think the times we live in are the worst imaginable. These wars are disastrous, but they are also very small wars."
What do the people think? In August, about 50 percent of Americans polled by Rasmussen Reports opined that Bush was not the worst president in history. Of course, that was before he took the ax to their 401(k)s. What do I think? The crowd is always, unfailingly, unerringly, unapologetically, inscrutably, wrong. Eland has it more or less right. Bush will certainly rank in the bottom tier of American presidents, but hardly among the very worst....
Read entire article at Boston Globe
... Renegade academic and New York Times blogger Stanley Fish thinks differently. Last month he posted a persuasive essay on George Bush, "The Comeback Kid," arguing that within a year of his leaving office, "George W. Bush will be a popular public figure, regarded with affection and a little nostalgia even by those who . . . thought he was the worst president in our history."
Why? Fish argues that the nation's vast booty of problems - most of them of Bush's making - will soon hang around someone else's neck. Then Bush's inherent goodness will impress itself on the American public. "He's likable," Fish writes. "He comes across as a basically decent man who is at peace with himself." Fish, who now teaches at Florida International University, suggests that Bush might consider a second career in baseball or as a university president. "Don't groan," Fish writes, "He'd probably be good at it."
You can hear the Xanax bottles rattling in the faculty lounges and on the Times website. Hundreds of comments, almost all negative, poured in. "That might be expected given the profile of their readers," Fish told me by phone from his mountain fastness in Andes, N.Y. "Many of them are dedicated Bush haters, so it's not surprising that they would resist a prediction that President Bush will become an affectionately regarded member of the cultural scene."
There have been other, half-hearted attempts to buck the anti-Bush tide. Fareed Zakaria published an endless wheeze in Newsweek, "What Bush Got Right," lauding some of Bush's second-term course corrections. The essay is heavily seasoned with rote anti-Bush rhetoric - e.g. "dysfunction and incompetence . . . fiscally irresponsible . . . utterly obstructionist" - because this is, after all, Newsweek, and Zakaria needs to get invited back to Council on Foreign Relations tea parties.
David Frum penned an utterly unconvincing defense of Bush's legacy in Foreign Policy magazine. Well, what did you expect? Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, has an amen chorus of his own. They just happen to sing in a different key.
Policy analyst Ivan Eland of the Oakland, Calif.-based Independent Institute wrote an interesting essay last month, comparing Bush favorably to several better-known presidents. "Make no mistake," he wrote. "George W. Bush has been a horrible president and is one of the worst in U.S. history. But of the 42 men who have served as president, these four men - Polk, McKinley, Wilson, and Truman - were probably worse."
Eland wrote that essay before the economic meltdown and before Bush's imposition of what the author calls "Mussolini style economics" sometimes known as national socialism. "He could drop a couple of points if this turns into a great depression," Eland told me by phone. Eland rates US presidents in his forthcoming book, "Recarving Rushmore," and he still doesn't think Bush is the worst. "He's a crummy president," Eland said. "But we always think the times we live in are the worst imaginable. These wars are disastrous, but they are also very small wars."
What do the people think? In August, about 50 percent of Americans polled by Rasmussen Reports opined that Bush was not the worst president in history. Of course, that was before he took the ax to their 401(k)s. What do I think? The crowd is always, unfailingly, unerringly, unapologetically, inscrutably, wrong. Eland has it more or less right. Bush will certainly rank in the bottom tier of American presidents, but hardly among the very worst....