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Bush worst ever? Hold on there Saturday, Mar 11, 2006 By John Brummett Instant history is dangerous. All these people telling me that George W. Bush is our worst president ever need to keep that in mind. He merely has a chance to be the worst. On the other hand, he might not turn out any worse than a certain other modern president. Jimmy Carter's four years, 1977 to 1980, amounted to unmitigated and unqualified disaster. Interest rates and inflation reached record and strangulation levels. A madman in Iran took our people hostage and America seemed powerless. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, all Carter could think to do was punish hard-training American athletes by boycotting the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. The problem, Carter pronounced in an eerily unsettling special televised address, was that Americans were down in the dumps and needed to snap out of it. While it can be argued that Carter's failings contributed to the travails we face today in Afghanistan and Iran, much of his one-term train wreck was repaired. Interest rates and inflation went low and the economy fired back up. The hostages came home. The Soviet Union collapsed. American athletes again went for the gold. If we were depressed, tax cuts and the profits of the Information Age seemed to cheer us. Carter is now globally beloved, a statesman, our greatest ex-president. So, the only way to judge the thoroughness of Bush's vast and undeniable failure is to take stock when he leaves office, then wait a reasonable period of time to see if America manages to survive in spite of him. Bush will assuredly leave the nation with record debt that mortgages the nation's future to foreign ownership, which is a darned sight worse than friendly and westernized Arab ownership of a company employing American longshoreman working at sea ports. That Bush failed so thoroughly even when he was right - on that port deal - is the strongest evidence to date that his presidency faces two crises. One is of competence and the other of stature. Katrina provided an instant revelation of incompetence. It took a little time for the port deal to lay bare the impotence. As yet, these choking budget deficits have failed to place any demonstrable drain on the American economy. That's largely because a country, like a family, can live beyond its means for a while thanks to credit. Meantime, the housing market has buoyed the entire economy, providing the appearances of assets, not to mention cash-generating mortgage refinances and lines of credit. Now there are signs of a housing slowdown. And when you lose your buoy, well, you know what happens then. At the very least, it will befall the next president to emulate Bill Clinton and restore fiscal discipline. Beyond that, Bush will assuredly leave the nation with damaged relations around the world. That's because of his administration's arrogance in going it alone to try to impose freedom, as if that weren't a contradiction in terms, and impose democracy, unless the voting doesn't go as we want. Now it appears that Bush may leave us with a failed invasion of Iraq, perhaps an outright retreat to leave civil war and a bigger mess in the world's most incendiary region than existed before he started. Then if Osama stays on the loose, and if Hamas stays in power, and if the holy war grows more fervent than ever thanks to new Islamic extremist recruits compelled by America's arrogant failure in Iraq, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We should hope and pray that this does not turn out to be our worst presidency ever. Partisanship ought to stop at disaster's edge. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
