The Atlantic Magazine Gets This So Right

 Yes, it's heartening to see the truth spelled out so big and so bold.

Trump Is the Worst President in History - The Atlantic

I like it so much I'm going to post it twice.

Worst President Ever - The Atlantic

Just a bit from the article:

Three particular failures secure Trump’s status as the worst chief executive ever to hold the office.

President Donald Trump has long exulted in superlatives. The first. The best. The most. The greatest. “No president has ever done what I’ve done,” he boasts. “No president has ever even come close,” he says. But as his four years in office draw to an end, there’s only one title to which he can lay claim: Donald Trump is the worst president America has ever had.

In December 2019, he became the third president to be impeached. Last week, Trump entered a category all his own, becoming the first president to be impeached twice. But impeachment, which depends in part on the makeup of Congress, is not the most objective standard. What does being the worst president actually mean? And is there even any value, at the bitter end of a bad presidency, in spending energy on judging a pageant of failed presidencies?

It is helpful to think of the responsibilities of a president in terms of the two elements of the oath of office set forth in the Constitution. In the first part, presidents swear to “faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States.” This is a pledge to properly perform the three jobs the presidency combines into one: head of state, head of government, and commander in chief. In the second part, they promise to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States....”

As Trump prepares to leave Washington, the capital is more agitated than during any previous presidential transition since 1861, with thousands of National Guard troops deployed around the city. There have been serious threats to previous inaugurations. But for the first time in the modern era, those threats are internal. An incumbent president is being asked to discourage terrorism by supporters acting in his name.

...There are many verdicts on Donald Trump still to come, from the Senate, from juries of private citizens, from scholars and historians. But as a result of his subversion of national security, his reckless endangerment of every American in the pandemic, and his failed insurrection on January 6, one thing seems abundantly clear: Trump is the worst president in the 232-year history of the United States.

It's an excellent, not surprisingly well-documented article. Here's hoping lots and lots of Americans read it so they both know more of our nation's history but also so they can and do put this soon to be former President Trump in the correct light and category, perspective.

Not done there, however, Trump and his administration did this on their way out.

Trump's 1776 Commission Report Roundly Condemned

Trump Administration’s '1776 Report' Justifies Slavery

Because I guess there's just not enough lies or stupidity to go around for this guy and his people.

Fortunately, there is, rightly, yet more good news, too.

Support for convicting Trump grows among Republicans

Yet more goodness.

Trump Approval Plunges Again To Record Low In Final Poll

GOP in bind over Trump as corporate donations freeze

Opinion: Trump is destroying his own party on the way out 

Have heart, America.  In 24 hours, we'll have intelligent, adult, informed, rational leadership again.

Another way Dubya' was the Worst. President. Ever.

Documentable proof.  And it's from a (Conservative, Right-wing) Wall Street Journal blog, too:

Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record

President George W. Bush entered office in 2001 just as a recession was starting, and is preparing to leave in the middle of a long one. That’s almost 22 months of recession during his 96 months in office.

His job-creation record won’t look much better. The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under PresidentBill Clinton‘s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.

Here’s a look at job creation under each president since the Labor Department started keeping payroll records in 1939. The counts are based on total payrolls between the start of the month the president took office (using the final payroll count for the end of the prior December) and his final December in office.

Because the size of the economy and labor force varies, we also calculate in percentage terms how much the total payroll count expanded under each president. The current President Bush, once taking account how long he’s been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records. –Sudeep Reddy

President	Jobs created	Jobs at end of term	Jobs at start of term	Payroll expansion	Jobs created per year in office	Population growth	Percent change in population
George W. Bush	3.0 million	135.5 million	132.5 million	2.3%	375,000	22.0 million	7.7%
Bill Clinton	23.1 million	132.5 million	109.4 million	21.1%	2,900,000	25.2 million	8.9%
George H.W. Bush	2.5 million	109.4 million	106.9 million	2.3%	625,000	12.5 million	4.8%
Ronald Reagan	16.0 million	106.9 million	90.9 million	17.6%	2,000,000	17.3 million	7%
Jimmy Carter	10.5 million	90.9 million	80.4 million	13.1%	2,600,000	9.8 million	4.3%
Gerald Ford	1.8 million	80.4 million	78.6 million	2.3%	745,000	5.1 million	2.3%
Richard Nixon	9.4 million	78.6 million	69.2 million	13.6%	1,700,000	12.3 million	5.7%
Lyndon Johnson	11.9 million	69.2 million	57.3 million	20.8%	2,300,000	11.3 million	5.6%
John F. Kennedy	3.6 million	57.3 million	53.7 million	6.7%	1,200,000	8.2 million	4.3%
Dwight Eisenhower	3.5 million	53.7 million	50.2 million	7%	438,000	23.3 million	12.8%
Harry Truman	8.4 million	50.2 million	41.8 million	20.1%	1,100,000	N/A	N/A

He'll go down in the history books, all right.

And this isn't even touching the fact that he created an illegal war, sending thousands of American military men and women to their deaths, forget the budget expense.

Worst. President. Ever.

Link:  http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

Worst. Ever.

Worst.

President.

Ever.

Let's be clear on this and let's say it again and again so we all remember our lessons:

George Walker Bush was, by far, outstripping all other Presidents in the history of the United States of America, the absolute worst President this country ever lived through.

The former "worsts" now pale compared to this buffoon.

Wareen Harding was incompetent and there was graft in his administration but not even he could touch the lows of this "leader".

President Harding didn't attack another sovereign nation, defying international law and opinion.

President Harding didn't spend every dollar he could get his official hands on like this clown, and put us into massive, historical deficits, thus bankrupting the country.

No other President put so many people, from the very industries they came from, into positions meant to oversee those same industries.

No other President in the history of this country set his very administration against the very people of the country, the way George Walker Bush did.

The thing is, when Ronald Reagan became President, I wasn't sure we'd live through his tenure, even for four years, let alone all eight.

Not with all that demagoguery and ideology.

But we did.

We lived through it and it turned out he realized some of the things he originally wanted weren't good for the country so he changed his opinions and the course for himself and the country.

And Bill Clinton came in and cleaned up his messes. And pretty well, too.

So we lived through that and we've come out at the end of the George W. Bush administration, too, albeit bedraggled, beaten, abused (literally, physically and constitutionally, as it turns out), in horrific debt, with a sullied American name, but we made it.

And now we have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and clean up this mess.
____________________________________________________________________

For more information and clarification and support on George W. Bush as the worst President of the United States--ever--go to this link:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002804

Worst. President. Ever.

Worst. President. Ever.

If Donald Trump, of all people, thinks you're the worst President ever, in the history of the United States, you have screwed up on a pretty large scale. The bar is pretty low on that one.

Worst. President. Ever.

Worst. President. Ever.

Worst. Ever.

The inspiration of tonight's entry is from having just watched a "Frontline" edition on PBS about the recent--and not so recent--past and present of the Afgahnistan war, pointing out where we've been, where we are and where we must go, there and internationally.

Considering the following:

1) How thinly the US military is spread, between our 2 ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

2) What a complete clusterflick the war in Iraq is and has been

3) What a complete clusterflick the war in Afghanistan is and has been

4) How badly planned the Iraq war has been and is

5) How badly planned (or unplanned) the Afghanistan war is and has been

6) How large a deficit the United States already has

7) How badly our current American government is spending money

8) How corrupt our current American government is and has been

9) How incompetent and ineffective our current American government is and has been

10) How badly damaged the American economy is, largely due to the lack of regulation of the banking industry by this administration and its Republican Party

11) How badly damaged the world economies are, again, due largely to the collateral damage set upon the world from the deregulation of the banking and other industries by this administration and its Republican Party

and more, the question rears its obvious, ugly and ominous head:

How can you come to any other conclusion but that this current 7+ year old Presidential Administration of George W. Bush is the most corrupt, incompetent, ineffective and most exposed to graft and cronyism in the entire history of this same country?

In short, how can you not say that this administration of George W. Bush is the worst, literally, worst administration ever, in the history of the United States?

Ulysses Grant and Warren G. Harding or any other president no longer share this title.

Wost. President. Ever.

If you ever voted for George W. Bush, we blame you.

And we're pissed.

Worst. Ever. (Now official)

TITLE Worst. President. Ever. (from Harper's Magazine: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002804)

DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton

PUBLISHED April 5, 2008

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

America’s historians, it seems, don’t think much of George W. Bush.

Now in all fairness, historians should wait a while before passing judgment on a president’s who served recently, much less one still in office. But the current incumbent is a special case. After all, 81 percent of Americans, according to a recent New York Times poll, believe he’s taken the country on the wrong track. That’s the highest number ever registered. The same poll also says 28 percent have a favorable view of his performance in office, which is also in Nixon-in-the-darkest-days-of-Watergate territory.

But, as George Mason University’s History News Network reports, the historians have a different measure. They want to stack him up against his forty-two predecessors as the nation’s chief executive. Among historians, there is no doubt into which echelon he falls–his competitors are Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Franklin Pierce, the worst of the presidential worst. But does Bush actually come in dead last?

Yes. History News Network’s poll of 109 historians found that 61 percent of them rank Bush as “worst ever” among U.S. presidents. Bush’s key competition comes from Buchanan, apparently, and a further 2 percent of the sample puts Bush right behind Buchanan as runner-up for “worst ever.” 96 percent of the respondents place the Bush presidency in the bottom tier of American presidencies. And was his presidency (it’s a bit wishful to speak of his presidency in the past tense–after all there are several more months left to go) a success or failure? On that score the numbers are still more resounding: 98 percent label it a “failure.”


Historians Rate George W. Bush a “Failure”
This marks a dramatic deterioration for Bush. Previously he wasn’t viewed in the most positive terms, but there was a consensus that he wasn’t the “worst of the worst” either. That was in the spring of 2004. In the meantime, Bush has established himself as the torture president, the basis for his invasion of Iraq has been exposed as a fraud, the Iraq War itself has gone disastrously, the nation’s network of alliances has faded, and the economy has gone into a tailspin–not to mention the bungled handling of relief for victims of hurricane Katrina. In 2004, only 12 percent of historians were ready to place Bush dead last.

Here are some of the comments that the historians furnished:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”