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The HNN homepage brings news that 61 percent in a poll of historians rated George W. Bush the worst president in American history. I fear this finding says more about the groupthink that dominates the contemporary academy than it does about Bush's poor performance in office.
Consider the competition: 61 percent of polled historians consider Bush to have been a worse president than James Buchanan. That's the same Buchanan who: at the least benefited from and at the most surreptitiously schemed with Chief Justice Taney to produce the Dred Scott decision; tried to uphold a pro-slavery Kansas constitution; sought to acquire Cuba, with the expectation that the island could produce more slave states; tried to initiate a presidential war against Paraguay; and sat idly by as the Southern states seceded.
We expect historians, of all people, to eschew presentism in favor of some historical perspective. It's hard to see much historical perspective in a claim that Bush was a worse president than Buchanan.
Some of the rationalizations for the assertion that Bush was worse than Buchanan? Bush is"glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self," said one."Just an immoral man," added another. A third:"Bush does only two things well. He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches."
That's not much of a response: guesswork and presentism. As Alan Allport notes, the stakes are low here, but I think the blanket refusal to consider the magnitude of our present situation is a failure of imagination on your part.
HNN -
4/4/2008
If the congressional investigation by Covode has merit--and I think it does--Buchanan was also guilty of attempted bribery of the legislature.
Alan Allport -
4/4/2008
If I am understanding this post correctly, then what KC is saying is that historians have performed a outrageous disservice to their profession in rating Bush last. What they should have done is rated him second to last. This is apparently a point of great significance, though I'm not entirely sure why.
Robert KC Johnson -
4/4/2008
Jonathan R.'s point is well-taken on the weaknesses of presidential ratings polls--especially in evaluating contemporary or near-contemporary administrations.
On that point: this semester, I'm teaching a course in US-Middle East relations, and have just finished covering RR's policies toward Afghanistan. A poll of historians, or informed journalists, from 1988 likely would have rated Afghanistan as one of Reagan's great successes. I suspect that few people would rate it that way now.
I doubt that Bush's reputation will improve over time--I suspect it will get considerably worse, as the administration's veil of secrecy is cast away. But it's worth remembering that Buchanan consistently sought to use the power of the federal government to uphold, and prolong, the enslavement of millions of Americans--and that he had few, if any, positive accomplishments to balance out his negative ones. I'd be hard pressed to imagine how the record of any contemporary President, including Bush, could be deemed worse. For such a large percentage of historians to make the claim, as I noted in the post, seems to me to say more about them than about Bush.
Jonathan Bole Eddison -
4/4/2008
President Buchanan was very bad. He was a weak man in bad times. President Shrub not only has made the greatest strategic mistake since Germany's invasion of Russia, he is corrupt, vicious, incompetent and racist. Buchanan may have been able to delay or arguably prevent the Civil War but than gives him more credit for wisdom than the evidence supports. The Shrub created a Shia power that may last for centuries, quite likely created the conditions for the failure of the Israeli state within twenty-five years, looted the Treasury and taught the elite that the Constitution is for stupid poor people. I submit that that is worse.
Jonathan Rees -
4/4/2008
This analysis simply points to the stupidity of presidential rating polls. Popular memory of presidencies, like that of every other historical happening, changes over time.
Jonathan Dresner -
4/4/2008
I'm not an Americanist, but based on the description of Buchanan here, I'd say that there's perfectly sound comparisons to be made and that Bush may come out the worse in the end. (Full disclosure: I did participate in the poll, and am quoted in the article, though not in this blog post)
Subversion of the Constitution, including the federal courts: check.
International aggression, often for domestic political gain: check.
Presided over political division and promoted secessionism: check.
Failure to respond to national crises in a timely fashion: check.
You can add to that list things that Buchanan isn't accused of here: cronyism, degradation of functional national bureaucracies and institutions.
Furthermore, while I agree that the language quoted here is strong, for it to represent a failure of academic judgement, it seems that it would need to be wrong and unjustified. I don't see that argument here.
Sage Ross -
4/3/2008
I think the argument that Buchanan made worse choices than GWB is a strong one. But consider: the president's bad choices and poor leadership make a much bigger impact in the early 21st century than in the mid-19th century. Presidential authority has expanded considerably, U.S. population is 15 times larger, and America's impact on the rest of the world (economic, military, and cultural) is vastly greater.
Even if Buchanan would make a worse president than GWB today, I think there is still a strong argument that GWB has been the worst president in history.
But of course, I'm sure even most of the 61% that rated him the worst would agree that it's premature to make a definitive historical judgment just yet.
William Hopwood -
4/3/2008
"...I fear this finding says more about the groupthink that dominates the contemporary academy than it does about Bush's poor performance in office.,,"
Yes, and perhaps something about "groupthink" and the number of "Historians for Obama?"
Interestingly, with the public at large Bush had the highest approval rating of any president ever (92) after 9/11, and the lowest (19) attributable to Iraq. Truman was third highest (87) after our WWII victory in 1945 and second lowest (22) attributable to the following stalemate in Korea.
The current evaluation of the GWB presidency may be too early. Truman's seems to have been. Here is one historian's later view of HST.
"...Revisionist scholars condemn his decision to pursue a Cold War with the Soviet Union and deride his failure to secure passage of most of his wide-ranging Fair Deal social program. Many others, myself among them, believe that containment of the Evil Empire was a necessity, that Truman's incremental domestic achievements were substantial,,,,Surveys of presidential achievement usually place him well within the top ten and rate him a 'near-great'...."
[ Alonzo Hamby, Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio University.]
