Worst president ever?

Liberals apparently made up their minds several years ago that Bush would go down in history as the worst president in U.S. history -- or, in any event, that it would be a good idea to try to tag him with that label. It has become such a commonplace on the left that nobody ever bothers to explain what Bush has done to earn this uncoveted distinction.

It should be obvious that a ranking of the "greatest" or "worst" presidents requires a lot more work than compiling a list of, say, history's greatest golfers or baseball players. For one thing, all golfers and baseball players are trying to accomplish the same thing: winning championships. Moreover, an athlete's success or failure is determined objectively; they either hoist the trophy or they don't. Presidents come to office with an assortment of plans and goals, and the "playing field" changes dramatically from one era to the next. This makes it exceedingly hard to compare one president to another.

Despite this, it is still possible to craft a set of loose criteria for evaluating presidents that I think most people would find generally acceptable. I would propose something along the lines of the following:

First, did the president accomplish things, or was he largely unable to make progress on his agenda?

Second, were the president's achievements consequential and of lasting duration, or were they insignificant and/or short-lived?

Third, were the president's policies generally beneficial to the country or were they harmful?

Fourth, did the president exercise effective leadership on the major problems of the day, or did he fail to perceive or confront such issues?

Finally, did the president's tenure in office enhance the dignity and stature of the office, or did the president leave the office in a worse condition than he found it?

Based on these five measures, which I think are fair and completely neutral, it should be clear that Bush fares reasonably well against other presidents.

To take the easy part first, Bush clearly scores well on three of the five criteria: the first, fourth, and fifth. His major accomplishments include NCLB, Medicare prescription drugs, reorganizing the government in the wake of 9/11, combating disease and poverty in Africa, tax cuts, and fighting two wars. He also has a number of important but lower-profile accomplishments, such as bankruptcy reform, class action reform, and the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system. Bush's record of accomplishments compares favorably to that of his immediate predecessor, Bill Clinton. Clinton's signature accomplishment was welfare reform, and he had a signature non-achievement in HillaryCare. By comparison, Bush failed to get anything done on immigration and Social Security privatization. Even so, Bush clearly took on more and got more done.

Bush also scores well on the fourth criteria: taking on the major problems of the day. Bush directed most of his attention and energies to the struggle against Islamic extremism, which is without question one of the biggest problems the country faced during his time in office (if not the biggest). Bush never played small-ball and was perhaps the antithesis of the caretaker-style presidents America had during much of the 19th Century. Not to pick on Bill Clinton, but so much of his presidency was spent on impeachment and various scandals, squabbling with Newt Gingrich, the failed health care program, and small-ball programs like midnight basketball, it seems those are the things he is most remembered for. Whether you appreciate him or not, Bush will be remembered for his handling of major substantive issues such as 9/11 and Iraq.

A third area in which Bush scores particularly well is on the question of enhancing the stature and dignity of the office. Bush was a strong president who was willing to make unpopular decisions. His critics complained of an "imperial presidency" and accused him of expanding presidential powers beyond the limits of the Constitution. Fair to say, presidents who have been accused of acting like a dictator, e.g., Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, have fared better in the judgment of history than presidents who were regarded as weak, e.g., Buchanan, Taft, Carter, Bush 41. George W. Bush has never been accused of being a "weak" president.

In addition to being a "strong" president, Bush deserves credit for avoiding any personal scandal and for never, to my memory, engaging in petty, personal politics. He treated his opponents with respect and class, despite rarely being repaid in kind.

Thus it appears that on at least three of the five stated criteria, Bush scores fairly high. The remaining two, however, present a great deal more difficulty.

The first of these remaining criteria asks whether the president's achievements were consequential and lasting, or whether they will prove to be of minor or only temporary significance. The obvious answer is that it's too early to tell. However, Bush may indeed have left a lasting mark in a number of ways. First, he redefined Islamofascist terrorism as a serious national security threat, rather than a mere law enforcement concern. Bush took a lot of grief for labeling the struggle a "War on Terror." Some critics thought that formulation portended the sort of bureaucratic dog-and-pony show we've seen in the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty. But Bush ran the War on Terror like a real war, not a p.r. campaign. He mobilized the government, gathered intelligence, and sent troops overseas to kill bad guys. It was a deadly serious business and it accomplished real results. Because of this, it's hard to imagine Obama or his successors closing down the operation anytime soon.

Part of Bush's vision for combating international terrorism included a new Grand Strategy for the U.S.: the spreading of democracy and liberty around the world as a means of neutralizing or marginalizing would-be terrorists. Bush actively pursued this strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, an experiment Obama is unlikely to repeat anywhere else. But the fact that Obama won't, for example, send troops to "liberate" Iran doesn't necessary signal an abandonment of this aspect of the Bush Doctrine. Although the Left is fond of caricaturing Bush as an egotistical loose cannon recklessly demanding other countries become "just like us," the fact remains that freedom and democracy may be the best medicine the civilized world has against violent extremism. Future presidents will likely recognize this and conduct their foreign policies accordingly, whether or not they credit Bush for the inspiration.

Finally, we come to the most controversial part of the analysis: whether the president's policies were ultimately good or bad for the country. The answer to this question obviously depends on the answerer's own ideology and policy preferences. There are serious people even today who consider Lincoln a terrible president for answering the movement of southern states toward secession with violence. With the possible exception of Gerald Ford, one has to go back at least as far as Truman to find a president largely admired across the ideological spectrum (although Harry's growing popularity with conservatives is perhaps at the expense of his popularity with liberals).

Because of the ideological component, it seems silly to expect consensus on the question of whether a president's policies were good or bad for the country. Moreover, there is the problem of not knowing how events would have played out had the president chosen a different course from what he did. One way to get around this problem is to consider whether future presidents (or generations) ultimately decided to reaffirm or to reject the president's policies, and if so, with what results. An example of reaffirmation might be the Republicans' refusal to try to dismantle New Deal programs during the post-war era. An example of rejection might be Reagan's refusal to go along with the Cold War policies of detente and arms reductions, but instead take a hard line against the Soviets.

In Bush's case, it seems unlikely Mr. Obama or future leaders will seek to undo many of the things he has done as president, except perhaps symbolically. Obama will eventually close Guantanamo, but that should be of little real consequence. He will remove troops from Iraq, but that would have happened under Bush anyway. He will put more troops into Afghanistan, thus essentially reaffirming Bush's decision to go to war there. The FISA controversy has already been addressed legislatively; Bush signed the bill and Obama supported it. Obama will probably try to mollify his supporters on the "torture" issue by rejecting Bush's "harsh interrogation" policy. However, much of that will be symbolic as detainees are no longer being waterboarded anyway. Obama's clearly not going to undo the sweeping reorganization of government to address the terror threat. It seems doubtful he would take down the missile shield. He won't slash aid to Africa. Perhaps he will repeal NCLB, but I would question whether that makes sense politically. He won't kill the Medicare prescription drug benefit unless it is done in order to make way for a more sweeping health care program that would include prescription medications. He may not let the Bush tax cuts expire until after the economy is moving again.

Don't get me wrong. There will be a lot of changes throughout the government marking the handover of power from a Republican to a Democratic administration. My point is simply that there is unlikely to be a wholesale effort to dismantle the substantive legacy of the Bush administration. In particular, it seems absurd to suggest Obama will seek a restoration of the pre-9/11 approach to counterterrorism and homeland security. More likely, Obama will look for ways to make symbolic breaks from Bush -- closing Gitmo, for example -- while leaving much of his actual accomplishments intact.

My proposed criteria for evaluating presidents does not particular notice of economic conditions during a president's administration, which I'm sure some people would argue let's Bush off the hook for the current economic crisis we are facing. Generally speaking, however, presidents don't have enough influence over the health of the economy to justify evaluating them on economic conditions. Bush inherited a recession from Clinton and is leaving one for Obama. While I believe Bush's tax cuts helped revive the economy in the wake of the bursting of the dot.com bubble, I don't think he deserves a great deal of the credit or blame for economic conditions over the last six or seven years. I don't believe Bush should be blamed for the credit crisis that emerged last October, and I would note that the people claiming Bush is the worst president ever started making this claim well before the economy started falling apart.

Overall, it seems to me that Bush was far from the worst president we've ever had. In fact, he was at least an average president, probably better. He was very much a mixed bag in that he was a good executive decision-maker but an inept communicator. He infuriated people on both ends of the political spectrum, yet still managed to build a fairly impressive record of accomplishments. He clearly left a mark on America's foreign policy and national security infrastructure, and plainly succeeded in confronting his biggest challenge: the threat of terrorism in the U.S. I'll miss him, and I wouldn't be surprised if the country starts to miss him before too long.