Presidential Popularity

2 Mar, ’07

It seems of late that the established media has become quite concerned about the popularity of George W. Bush, and his future place in the history books. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and of course political literature loudly proclaim that Mr. Bush the younger is rated very low in the polls, that the public lacks confidence in him, and now the buzzwords include claiming that he’s one of the worst presidents ever. That last part comes with a raised eyebrow of course. The February 26th issue of U.S. News contains a long article concerned with “Americas Worst Presidents”, which includes a list of those the author (Jay Tolson) consider to be failures. Based on an updated 1948 historical study, many of these so called failures were some of the pre-civil war eras most inept presidents, and interestingly enough most of these “worst” men were quite conservative, and are not seen as being either progressive or liberal enough by modern standards.

The list of the ten worst presidents include Buchanan, Harding, Andy Johnson, Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler, Grant, Harrison, Hoover, Nixon, and Taylor. (Hoover and Nixon are tied for 9th place.) I’ll argue placing Andy Johnson and Herbert Hoover on the list, although the rest were at best rather ineffectual during their terms, with Nixon being a hard luck type that got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The primary question being asked in the article; “Is George W. Bush’s presidency shaping up to be the worst in U.S. history?”, and goes on to note that “you hear this question more and more often these days”. Perhaps an easier question would be, what makes a good, or even a great, president?

Consider, particularly in this day and age, that good communication skills are a necessity. I suspect that President Bush should probably get a C- on communications ability, as, despite having an Ivy League education, he doesn’t seem to speak a language the eastern liberals can understand. The media seems to enjoy pointing out his numerous gaffes and occasional word mispronouncing, but I rather think that if we had wanted an English language professor for president we’d have elected one.

Next a President must be lucky. To be considered great, a president must be handed crises that appear spectacular in the media, and yet can be readily solved at minimal cost, leaving the office holder to come up smelling like the proverbial rose. Considering that the 9-11 attack came like a bolt from the blue and generally taking everybody by surprise, the president definitely came up short in the luck department. Nor have things been much better for him with the War on Terror and the Iraqi War. Nobody in Washington seems to realize that once a military victory has been won, it’s time to send the combat troops home and let the diplomatic set from the State Department take over. The military is good at smashing things, but they don’t have much experience or training at the job of nation building. Now it’s to late for that as we’re faced with a full scale guerrilla war mixed into a religious civil war, and the US military is not very good at fighting those things either, with “guess who” taking the blame.

The national economy has been another hard luck story for the president. For one thing most people don’t seem to realize that a sitting president is faced with economic problems initiated a couple of terms in the past! Herbert Hoover is often blamed for the “Crash of ‘29”, yet the roots of the great depression dated clear back to Woodrow Wilson. The economic slump Mr. Bush is blamed for began under Slick Willie Clinton. You might also consider that even the economic experts have yet figured out how to regulate the economy of a free market society, but yet again it’s considered the sitting presidents fault.

Corruption in government is another item that historians and the media like to grade a president on, and seemingly Mr. Bush fails here as well. What they don’t mention is that corruption is quite common at all levels of government, and the bigger the government the worse things get. The problem President Bush faces is that the situation in Iraq is tailor made for corruption. When hundreds of billions of dollars are administered by thousands of career bureaucrats, big business sees it as manna from heaven and sends in the lions, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bills. The administration of Ulysses S. Grant is commonly considered to be the most corrupt in our history, with good reason. Yet U.S. Grant was an incredibly honest man. Somewhat naive in the ways and means of politics perhaps, but he was undoubtedly an honest man, once nearly jailing his own father for trying to make a quick buck off the Army during the Civil War. He was also the president that started cleaning up an entrenched federal system that made corruption standard procedure. Unfortunately Grant, Bush, nor any other president can pronounce from on high “Go Ye Forth and Sin No More”, thus changing government procedures overnight. Government corruption can be dug out by the roots and eliminated of course, but it’s a difficult job, particularly so under wartime conditions.

Nor has the president had a lot of luck with his staff and advisors either. Initially he was praised for calling back so many of his fathers advisors. But then the press, and the public, soon noticed that political goals of many of those people remained fixed in the early 1990’s rather than the present. Essentially the president was being ill served by his staff and advisors. I admire loyalty to one’s subordinates, but Mr. Bush carries it to extremes! When your advisors fail you, repeatedly, it’s high time to start looking for new advisors, something Mr. Bush has failed to do. With this failure he’s brought on much of his own bad luck.

No, I’m afraid that the soon-to-be-written history books are not going to be kind to President George W. Bush, or at least not if they’re written by the socialist left. A well thought out and unbiased history still wouldn’t put him in the ranks of the great presidents either, but at least he’ll probably be considered a reasonably competent and well meaning man, faced with a lousy situation, and a horrible run of somewhat self induced bad luck.