CBS Cites Liberal Historians to Label Bush ‘Worst President in American History’
On CBS’s Sunday Morning, correspondent Thalia Assuras examined President Bush’s historical legacy: "On January 20th, 2001, George Walker Bush took the oath of office as the 43rd president of the United States. His presidency and the future, a blank slate...Before the Iraq war. Before Katrina swept ashore. Before the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Assuras cited two historians in her report, both of whom labeled Bush one of the nation’s worst presidents. She first turned to historian Douglas Brinkley, who declared: "I think it's safe to say that President Bush is going to be seen as the very bottom-rung of American presidents...As a judicial historian looking at what's occurred on his watch, it is almost void of genuine accomplishment." The other historian Assuras included in her report was Joseph Ellis, who said of Bush: "I think that George Bush might very well be the worst president in American history...He's unusual. Most two-term presidents have a mixed record...Bush has nothing on the positive side, virtually nothing."
Following these Bush-bashing historical assessments, Assuras exclaimed: "And that's not a minority opinion. In a 2006 Siena College survey of 744 history professors, 82 percent rated President Bush below average or a failure. Last April, in an informal poll by George Mason University of 109 historians, Mr. Bush fared even worse; 98 percent considered him a failed president. Sixty-one percent judged him, as Ellis does, one of the worst in American history."
In contrast to his opinion of Bush, Brinkley managed to find positive words for Jimmy Carter in his 1998 biography of the former president, entitled: "The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House." In the first chapter, Brinkley described Carter this way: "In fact, although his critics saw him as self-righteous, Carter was the most principled American president since Harry Truman – and nowhere was his morality on clearer display than in his insistence that human rights be a cardinal principle of global governance." During the Sunday Morning story, Brinkley attacked Bush on the same issues: "I think President Bush was a good man so infuriated and angered by 9/11 that he put on his ideological blinders and forgot that we have other things we represent -- civil liberties here at home, a Constitution, global human rights. That he started disliking the world community, alienated allies for no reason."
While some may point to Bush preventing another terrorist attack after September 11th, in a 2006 New York Times editorial, Ellis saw the 9/11 attacks as a mere footnote in American history: "...it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency." In the CBS story, Ellis argued: "John Adams, the second president, said that there's one unforgivable sin that no president will ever be forgiven, and that is to put the country into an unnecessary war. I think that Iraq has proven to be an unnecessary war, and will appear to be more unnecessary as time goes on."
The only positive assessments of Bush’s legacy in the report came from former Bush advisors Dan Bartlett and David Frum. No historians who viewed Bush positively were featured.
Read entire article at Newsbusters
Assuras cited two historians in her report, both of whom labeled Bush one of the nation’s worst presidents. She first turned to historian Douglas Brinkley, who declared: "I think it's safe to say that President Bush is going to be seen as the very bottom-rung of American presidents...As a judicial historian looking at what's occurred on his watch, it is almost void of genuine accomplishment." The other historian Assuras included in her report was Joseph Ellis, who said of Bush: "I think that George Bush might very well be the worst president in American history...He's unusual. Most two-term presidents have a mixed record...Bush has nothing on the positive side, virtually nothing."
Following these Bush-bashing historical assessments, Assuras exclaimed: "And that's not a minority opinion. In a 2006 Siena College survey of 744 history professors, 82 percent rated President Bush below average or a failure. Last April, in an informal poll by George Mason University of 109 historians, Mr. Bush fared even worse; 98 percent considered him a failed president. Sixty-one percent judged him, as Ellis does, one of the worst in American history."
In contrast to his opinion of Bush, Brinkley managed to find positive words for Jimmy Carter in his 1998 biography of the former president, entitled: "The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House." In the first chapter, Brinkley described Carter this way: "In fact, although his critics saw him as self-righteous, Carter was the most principled American president since Harry Truman – and nowhere was his morality on clearer display than in his insistence that human rights be a cardinal principle of global governance." During the Sunday Morning story, Brinkley attacked Bush on the same issues: "I think President Bush was a good man so infuriated and angered by 9/11 that he put on his ideological blinders and forgot that we have other things we represent -- civil liberties here at home, a Constitution, global human rights. That he started disliking the world community, alienated allies for no reason."
While some may point to Bush preventing another terrorist attack after September 11th, in a 2006 New York Times editorial, Ellis saw the 9/11 attacks as a mere footnote in American history: "...it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency." In the CBS story, Ellis argued: "John Adams, the second president, said that there's one unforgivable sin that no president will ever be forgiven, and that is to put the country into an unnecessary war. I think that Iraq has proven to be an unnecessary war, and will appear to be more unnecessary as time goes on."
The only positive assessments of Bush’s legacy in the report came from former Bush advisors Dan Bartlett and David Frum. No historians who viewed Bush positively were featured.