Several reputable historians recently concluded that George W. Bush has the makings of the worst president in U.S. history.
It is an interesting but ultimately moot issue. What matters now is not how Bush compares to the 42 men who preceded him in the presidency, but how he measures up to the job at hand.
For many of us, there is no room for argument: Based on the kind of person we need in the White House these days, we couldn’t do much worse than Bush.
We have known from early on that this was a man who craved presidential power so keenly that he would rather assume office under a thunderhead of suspicion about his legitimacy than submit to a recount of the vote.
But, I doubt that most of us had any idea just how emotionally flawed this ascender was.
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As the years have rolled on, GWB has shown himself to be a man with heavy psychological baggage. He has maturity issues. Ego issues. Manhood issues. That does not make him a bad person or a lone ranger, but when you load that onto the biggest power seat in the world, it’s a problem bigger than his own.
It is our terrible woe now that GWB feels he has so much to prove and seems to be one of those individuals who think saying “I was wrong” or “I am sorry” is the a kind of emotional suicide -- collapse and surrender from which you cannot rebound.
I’ve known people like that; they brag about not ever admitting errors in judgment or action and not ever apologizing. None seems to have any idea that those declarations have the opposite of their intended effect. They make the person look weak, insecure and pathetic, not strong, self-assured and enviable. I’ve found it usually in my best interest to get away from those types with all deliberate speed.
Of course, we cannot so easily get away from GWB, who holds onto the country’s highest office despite our best interests, best efforts to unseat him and most urgent wishes that he would just leave.
We are stuck with a man who chose to wage a war against a nation he did not understand and didn’t bother to study; lied about why to the people who would furnish the money, equipment and personnel for that war; intimidated and scandalized insiders who disclosed the shenanigans that went on to cook up the war; and showed the world that its richest and most powerful nation now believed the way to make one’s point was by brawn over brains.
Never mind that military officers and ministers, soldiers and scientists, economists and educators, parents and partisans, facts and figures -- and in the end, the voters and a bipartisan commission of trusty old men and one woman -- told him and showed him how and where he went wrong. The naked emperor insists he is in fine attire.
Nearly 3,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead and counting? That, he can take. But, not admitting a mistake. That would leave him curled up in a fetal position, babbling and aquiver.
What a pathetic fellow we have for a president. He had only 35 words to swear to in his oath of office. And he couldn’t even keep those.
