One of the more interesting pieces of political bombast in the last couple of decades calls the current office-holder the worst president in American History. Like all bombast it is hard to separate it from fiction, and it is really meaningless without context. For instance, Bush, the Lesser gets beat up pretty bad over using fear-mongering to drag us into war in the Middle East, but he doesn't hold a candle to Woodrow Wilson, who used propaganda and outright lies to drag us into World War I, one of the bloodiest and most pointless wars in the history of the world. Obama gets pummeled for his shabby record on economics, but he isn't even close in the economy-wrecking game to Herbert Hoover (ever heard of the Great Depression?) or Smilin' Jimmy Carter (15% unemployment, 19% prime lending rate, 12% inflation, and less than 1% private savings rate). How about civil liberties? Obama and Bush do have dismal records on that count, but how about this quote from Andrew Johnson?
"This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men."
Or Andrew Jackson, one of the biggest slave owners in the country and who used the Manifest Destiny to steal every bit of land from the Indians. Or Abraham Lincoln, who suspended the writ of habeas corpus to keep a political enemy in jail. Or worst of all, John Adams, who got the Aliens and Sedition Act passed into law so he could throw people who were critical of him in prison.
So, whenever I hear the accusation (or its converse, horn-tooting), I silently chuckle. I feel pretty certain that Bush and Obama will go down in history as godawful presidents, but I doubt that either of them will merit the label of worst (or even really fall into the bottom 10). It's early in the century, though, so we'll have to watch and see.
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