Matt Yglesias preaches:Today being the day America chooses a successor, it’s worth reflecting for a moment on the abysmal leader we have right now. I think an issue like asking whether or not George W. Bush is the worst president we’ve ever had gets a little too imponderable considering the historical issues. I mean, say what you will about Bush, but unlike many American presidents he didn’t believe in slavery. That said, by any kind of absolute standard the man is an appalling moral leper[...]A major American city was nearly destroyed, in part because of the predictable incompetence of his clearly unqualified appointees. Bush has taken eight years’ worth of time when we could have been getting a jump on our energy/climate problems not content to do nothing, but fanatically determined to do everything he can to make the situation worse. Even if we act as rapidly as possible following his departure from office, tens of thousands of people will likely die as a result of his actions on this front. The costs of his 2002 farm bill in terms of American public health and global poverty are beyond my ability to calculate. One could find a redeeming feature amidst the wasteland of Bush-era policymaking, but it would be difficult. It’s tempting to see the horrors of the Bush administration as mostly reflecting a largely, more impersonal rot — some fundamental decay of the conservative movement. But the truth is that Bush could very plausibly have been a much better president. He could have taken foreign policy advice from his Secretary of State, Colin Powell. He could have taken environmental policy advice from Christie Todd Whitman. He could have taken economic policy advice from Paul O’Neil. The results of an administration animated by figures like that probably wouldn’t have thrilled me, but they would have been much, much better than what we got. But instead, we got what we got. Not because the political coalition of which Bush was a part was so rotten that nothing else could happen, but in large part because he was so rotten that he drove or suppressed the best elements of his coalition and spread the rot around.If you can say anything good of the financial crisis, it's that it has sealed Bush's historical fate. There will be no revisionism, no credible reconstruction of his legacy. He has been worse than a bad president: He has harnessed the power of America to do genuine evil under his watch. On Iraq, on global warming, on famine, on nuclear non-proliferation, and on much else, America has not been the last, best hope of mankind, but instead, a contributor to the very forces that threaten the health and welfare of countless human beings. I have no particular opinion on whether Bush meant well, or is a good man in private. Nor am I particularly interested in those questions. As a president, he has been monstrous, responsible for the needless deaths of, at least, tens of thousands. As one of those rare individuals who had the opportunity -- indeed, the power -- to do great good, he has been negligent in a fashion that's borderline sociopathic. He left a world largely united in its contempt for America and a country largely united in its revulsion for him. History will, and should, judge him harshly. Image used under a CC license from Benoutram.
