worst president ever?

how the mighty have fallen.

only a few short years ago, W was at the top of his game. he was the Man, and those terr-or-rists were going to get what was coming to them, because he was on a Mission™ from God to destroy the “axis of evil”. he didn’t seek approval from the UN, didn’t wait for hard evidence to back up an invasion; those were trivial items that lesser nations had to do, not things the all-powerful united states should be concerned with. he wanted to strike while the iron was hot – because it seemed like the right thing to do, and because his advisors told him it’d be over quickly. the majority of the public ate it up.

today, things are a bit different. fingers are being pointed. heads are starting to roll. the public is restless for a solution that probably can’t be reached. in other words, we screwed over iraq, we can’t fix it, and we want out.

now, with rumors of an impending attack on iran making headlines, fear is in the air once again. will the same mistakes be repeated?

roling stone seems to think it can’t get much worse. in fact, this month’s issue paints W as the worst president in our history.

No president, including Harry Truman (whose ratings sometimes dipped below Nixonian levels), has experienced such a virtually unrelieved decline as Bush has since his high point. Apart from sharp but temporary upticks that followed the commencement of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and a recovery during the weeks just before and after his re-election, the Bush trend has been a profile in fairly steady disillusionment.

hey, wha happened? where are all of those “you’re either with us or against us” types that paraded onto fox news after 9/11? was the government’s botched response to hurricane katrina the tipping point? is it the lack of achievement in iraq that’s causing problems? or the fact that the current administration can’t seem to keep its own secrets under wraps?

no one ever said being president was easy. I doubt I could handle the constant criticism, or the lousy salary… not to mention the lack of privacy. it must be unsettling to make decisions daily that affect millions of lives across the world. needless to say, it’s a difficult job that requires political ingenuity, speechwriting genius, economic foresight, and a master tactician, among other things. but not all of us are named george washington, so most of those who take office have the wisdom and humility to surround themselves with competent advisors; those who don’t are labeled as failures.

time will tell, of course, but with the house cleaning of the past few weeks, it’s looking more likely that the history books won’t be too kind.