The estate of James Buchanan and Hebert Hoover owe much to George W. Bush. Both Presidents ended their tenure by leaving the worst crises in American history to their successor. George W. Bush may very well remove their name from the debate over worst President. He has clearly screwed up worse than both of them.
Let's review.
James Buchanan left his successor a nation divided between slave states and free states. He buckled repeatedly to enable slavery to continue through appeasing the South, and still did not prevent the inevitable Civil War.
Herbert Hoover inherited a booming economy that lacked any oversight. He couldn't stop the coming crisis in time and watched the nation take a nose dive into the Great Depression. During his last three years in office, unemployment ranged between 17% and 25%. He was unable and unwilling to take the bold steps needed to end the crisis.
George W. Bush started his Administration with a terrorist attack, providing a great opportunity to unite the country and the world against a common enemy. Fast forward seven years later. America's reputation is in the gutter. His Administration's mismanagement has caused America to be losing two wars. He doubled our national debt. He took us from a significant budget surplus into the worst budget deficit in American history. He practically sold the country to the Chinese. And now we face possibly the 2nd Great Depression.
Quite a record, huh?
So what could possibly be the bright side?
Well, after James Buchanan's mess, his successor, Abraham Lincoln could do nothing to prevent the Civil War. However, through his leadership, honesty, and fortitude, he led the Union to victory, while taking bold steps to finally put an end to slavery. His Administration was followed by Constitutional Amendments that broke down doors for equality and justice. In order to keep an open mind to new ideas, he employed people with vastly differing opinions into his cabinet. And America was better off.
After Herbert Hoover refused to accept the needed drastic changes from the status quo, a man of privilege and wealth named Frankin Delano Roosevelt came into power. Despite his position of wealth, Roosevelt actually cared about the working class who were starving and suffering. Roosevelt passed sweeping reforms that forever changed the American system of government. He created fail-safes for working men and women so they would never have to lose everything due to the failures of investment bankers and Wall Street hustlers. He established the New Deal establishing government's role as a broker for the public good. The policies he championed remained in practice; virtually unchallenged for the next five decades.
So what is my point?
Well, two of the best President's we ever had rose to face and overcome the challenges left by arguably two of the worst President's we ever had in American history.
Now we have somebody drastically different who has the political capital to make drastic changes. Barack Obama is the man, and he also happens to be very smart. The first black President of Harvard Law Review. Running one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in history. Might we be seeing a hopeful trend? We only have one way to find out.
I am not the world's most brilliant historian, so help me if I messed up any facts
I would rank George W. Bush as the worst President in US history, although one could argue Hoover. I sincerely hope we never see a man as unfit, unsuited, sociopathic, arrogant, ignorant, criminal, and dangerous as Bush ever again elected to the highest office in our land.
On the other hand, I've always thought Hoover gets a bit of a bum rap. As head of the American Relief Administration after WWI, Hoover literally saved the lives of millions of Europeans who otherwise would have starved in the aftermath of the war (including millions in the U.S.S.R. who, at Hoover's direction, received food aid over the objections of rightwing Republicans of the time). By all accounts, Hoover efficiently, non-ideologically and effectively prevented an epic humanitarian crisis.
When the Great Depression struck, from all I've read, economists and everyone else were completely flummoxed as to how to deal with an economic debacle of unparalleled magnitude. Hoover's failure to lead policymakers to develop creative solutions (as FDR did) is sort of mystifying given his effectiveness in his earlier post and will always cause him, justifiably, to be ranked as one of the worst. Yet that earlier effectiveness has always caused me to believe that, at least, his failure was not the result of callousness, stubbornness, stupidity or just plain sorriness.
Which brings us to Harding -- probably the most corrupt administration in U.S. history, probably the administration staffed with the greatest percentage of mediocrities and cronies, the only President whose marital indiscretions were so numerous that when he died in office there was immediate speculation that his wife might have offed him - just because he governed in relatively tranquil and prosperous times and didn't manage to really screw up either the country or the world doesn't mean his sorriness should be forgotten.
Still, I have read of Hoover's reluctance to take bold steps after the Stock Market crash. He too was a victim of status quo policies trying to address problems needing completely new policies.
The ones in WWII were even bigger, topping out just around half of GDP.
I thought that was a great response to the right-wing idiots who think the New Deal was the worst government policy in history.
So what could possibly be the bright side?
It's almost over.
(this guy's fairly atagonistic, but from what seems to be left side)
Buchanan gave us war, Hoover gave us Depression, Harding gave us corruption -- but with Dubya, you get all 3 for the price of 1!
(Not to mention Katrina, the failure to catch bin Laden, ridiculous ideas like privatizing Social Security, and on and on and on...)
