Bush: Worst President Ever?
By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real
Posted on May 20, 2005, Printed on May 20, 2005

For the record, I don't like George Bush. And I don't like most of
the people who work for George Bush. So, diehard Republicans can
just brush aside my remarks as so much partisan blather.
But by now I suppose very few diehard Republicans ever read what I
write. So do me a favor -- e-mail this to the diehards in your
family and circle of friends. Ask them to tell me why I am wrong
about this:
George Bush is the worst president of the United States of America ,
ever. Hands down.
And here are just a few reasons why I believe that statement is true.
America the Disgraced
President Bush's actions and policies have destroyed America's image
as a nation that adheres to a set of core values, such as the rule
of law, humane treatment of prisoners, presumed innocence, trial by
jury and respect for international laws.
How do I know this? Because the world is telling us so, whenever we
care enough to ask.
Positive views of the U.S. in Russia have risen 11 points in the
past year. But U.S. favorability ratings in France and Germany are
somewhat lower than last year and there has been a larger decline in
Great Britain (58 percent now, 70 percent last year). Young people
in Great Britain , France , and Germany have more negative views of
America than do people in other age groups.  An important factor in
world opinion about America is the perception that the U.S. acts
internationally without taking account of the interests of other
nations. Large majorities in every nation surveyed believe that
America pays little or no attention to their country's interests in
making its foreign policy decisions. This opinion is most prevalent
in France (84 percent), Turkey (79 percent) and Jordan (77 percent),
but even in Great Britain 61 percent say the U.S. pays little or no
attention to British interests.
Nice going George. Even Richard Nixon couldn't tarnish America 's
image that much.
George's Vietnam
Then there's the war that is largely responsible for that drop in
our international image. President Bush really screwed this one up.
First, everyone not drinking the neocon Kool-Aid tried to warn
George not to pull that trigger. Then Army chief of staff, Gen.
Shinseki, warned Bush that a war in Iraq would not be the "cake
walk" his neocon Rasputin, Paul Wolfowitz, promised. Instead, he
warned, we would need a lot of troops in Iraq for long time. For
that piece of advice he was first publicly embarrassed by his boss
then shown the door, according to The New York Times:
At a Pentagon news conference neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Wolfowitz
mentioned Gen. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, by name. But both
men were clearly irritated at the general's suggestion that a post-
war Iraq might require many more forces than the 100,000 American
troops and the tens of thousands of allied forces that are also
expected to join a reconstruction effort.  "The idea that it would
take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the
mark," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
That was 2003. Here's a story from today's paper.
BAGHDAD , Iraq , May 19 - American military commanders in Baghdad and
Washington gave a sobering new assessment on Wednesday of the war in
Iraq . ... In interviews and briefings this week, some of the
generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same
officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major draw-down
in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One
officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could
last "many years."
Gee. Who saw that coming?
So, thanks to George W. Bush and the handful of Neocon nuts you
listen to. Now we are stuck in another Vietnam-type war thousands of
miles from home. All the Vietnam trappings are here for anyone who
cares to notice -- indigenous insurgents, driven by a fanatical
ideology, supported and supplied by "spoiler" nation-states with
their own anti-U.S. agendas, thousands of dead civilians, American
soldiers dying by the gross week in and week out, with no end in
sight.
Nice going, George. Maybe because you skipped out on the Vietnam War
you didn't know this could happen. Or maybe you really are as dumb
as common road gravel.
Sovietization of America
One of the Republican party's proudest boasts is that Ronald Reagan
defeated the Soviet Evil Empire. The irony is they are now
recreating pieces of that police state here at home now.
Hyperbole? You judge -- while you still can. From The New York Times:
WASHINGTON, May 18 - The Bush administration and Senate Republican
leaders are pushing a plan that would significantly expand the
F.B.I.'s power to demand business records in terror investigations
without obtaining approval from a judge, officials said on
Wednesday. "This is a dramatic expansion of the federal government's
power," said Lisa Graves, senior counsel for the American Civil
Liberties Union in Washington . "It's really a power grab by the
administration for the F.B.I. to secretly demand medical records,
tax records, gun purchase records and all sorts of other material if
they deem it relevant to an intelligence investigation."
Now, the Patriot Act -- you know, the law that among other things
allows federal agents to demand your local library tell them what
books you are reading -- is about to be expanded.
Little by little this administration has chipped away at state
powers by transferring them to Washington . And nowhere has this
process been more pronounced than in the area of law enforcement and
the courts. The FBI, which once had to defer to local and state law
enforcers when on their turf, can now barge right in and take
charge. All they have to do is an investigation a "national
security" or "homeland security" matter.
Federal courts, which have acted as a brake on law enforcement
abuses, are being systemically stacked with rightwing judges less
likely to side with victims of overzealous cops or invasions of
personal privacy.
That's why this is going on right now:
WASHINGTON , May 18 - The Senate plunged into an intense partisan
struggle on Wednesday over the fate of stalled federal court
nominees and the governance of the institution itself as the two
parties locked in a debate over the right of the minority to prevent
votes on a president's judicial candidates. "If Republicans roll
back our rights in this chamber, there will be no check on their
power," said Senator Reid. "The radical, right wing will be free to
pursue any agenda they want. And not just on judges. Their power
will be unchecked on Supreme Court nominees, the president's
nominees in general and legislation like Social Security
privatization.
The Bushites are on a neocon roll and the federal judiciary is their
final obstacle. If they can stack the appellate courts and appoint
two rightwing Supreme Court justices before the end of Bush's final
term, it will be "game over" for civil libertarians -- and America
as we knew her.
Peasantization of Workers
Over the past five years we have seen the biggest transfer of wealth
in the history of money. The already wealthy have become mind-
numbingly rich under George Bush. Where did the money come from? It
came right out of the pockets of working Americans and the poor.
I heard that groan from the right. Same old liberal, bleeding-heart
bullshit, right?
So, you judge.
What the right has accomplished in just five years is the creation
of a low-wage economy -- a management wet dream -- a country filled
with high-skilled workers so desperate for jobs they will work for
peanuts. Once powerful labor unions have been powerless to stop the
flow of once high-paying blue and gray-collar jobs to cheap overseas
venues. The jobs that replaced those lost to outsourcing pay an
average of ten grand a year less. (As I said above, the money came
straight out of workers' pockets.)
Deflating Inflation
The administration likes to boast that it has kept inflation in
check. Yes they have, at least somewhat. But the reasons inflation
remains low are all bad reasons that will result in very bad news
down the road.
First, consumers have less money to spend, as noted above. Since
consumer spending power is a prime driver of price inflation, prices
on many core consumer products have remained low. And many of those
now low-price products keeping inflation low are no longer made here
but in cheap-labor countries like China .
But inflation has many causes, not just consumer spending. Raw
materials, shipping costs, currency fluctuations. And deep inside
the bowels of the economic gut, rumbling can be heard.
WASHINGTON -- Consumer prices jumped again last month, primarily
reflecting sharp increases in food and energy costs, the government
reported today. But prices for items other than food and energy were
flat in April, while oil and gas prices have fallen since then, the
Labor Department said, boosting hopes in financial markets that the
recent inflation flare-up may be fading. Food prices climbed 0.7
percent last month, largely because of the rising costs of fruits
and vegetables. But the so-called core-CPI, which excludes food and
energy costs, was unchanged in April and is up 2.6 percent from
April of last year.
Inflation is not as benign as the government figures pretend. This
is because of how they calculate inflation on individual items in
the CPI and can fiddle with the facts. For example, if HP replaces a
printer with a new model that might include a few modest
enhancements over it's predecessor which sold for $100, but prices
the new model $125, government economists can claim the price really
did not go up because the new model is better than the old model.
Trouble is you can't buy the old model any longer, but never mind
that. Even though you have to pay more for basically the same
printer, the price did not go up -- because "they" say so.
How much of that is going on in calculating the CPI? Plenty. And if
you shop you know it. They keep saying inflation is in check, but
the checks I have to write for everything from my utilities to the
food keep getting larger.
The point -- figures don't lie but liars can figure -- and they are.
Keeping Up Keeping Up
If things are so bad, why hasn't the economy slipped back into
recession? Because it's been running on credit.  During Bush's first
term the economy perked up because Bush pumped $1.6 trillion in tax
rebates into it. That was like giving a dying patient an injection
of meth and then claiming he was cured because he was up and jerking
around in bed.
Once consumers consumed their paltry tax rebates and the wealthy had
deposited their hefty rebates into family trust accounts, the
economy would have slowed again -- had it not been for low interest
rates and easy credit. Consumers turned into home-equity vampires
and credit card addicts in order to maintain the middle-class
lifestyle their new low-paying jobs could no longer finance.
And, the government as well went on a borrowing binge running up a
national credit card debt of just over $7 trillion.
All that damage in just five years! It's almost unimaginable, but
true. And the negative long-term implications stagger those who
understand that there really is no such thing as a free lunch, that
deficits do matter, be they government deficits or consumer's.
Christian Jihadists
I will not belabor this point, except to say that, at the very time
Bush berates religious fundamentalists abroad, he has breached the
wall between religion and state here at home. He has jimmied open
this Pandora's Box and there will be hell to pay for it eventually --
as there has been everywhere on earth where this was done.
All the above, and more, is why I contend that George W. Bush is the
worst president EVER. Hands down, no one else even comes close.
Herbert Hoover may have triggered the Great Depression, but he
didn't invade another nation on false pretenses, authorize torture
of prisoners, or try to stack the courts. Franklin Roosevelt did try
to stack the courts but Congress said "no" and he said "OK," and
went on the save the world from fascism and secure the lives of
America's elderly by creating Social Security -- which Bush now
wants to subvert.
Johnson and Nixon did fight an illegal and immoral war but Johnson
lifted millions out of poverty and got the Civil Rights Act passed,
much to his own party's determent. Nixon tried to subvert the
Constitution but was caught and thrown out of office before he could
succeed.
But I fear it's too late to stop George W. Bush and his band of
right-wing revolutionaries. We have let them get too far along now
to stop them. We have let them neutralize too many constitutional
checks and balances. And once they deep-six the filibuster it truly
will be game over.
Yes, the Democrats have begun to fight, but too little and now too
late. The only recourse soon will be public demonstrations of the
kind and size not seen here since the 1970s.
The only question is, are there still enough of us out here who give
a damn.
Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including Inside Job:
The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for
a Pulitzer.
http://www.alternet.org/story/22057/