Final-Fan said:
masschamber said:
Final-Fan said:
OK, fair enough, but that was only a small part of the laundry list of scandals and abuses that we have come to know collectively as Watergate. The "enemies list" is pretty infamous but it hardly exonerates Nixon if he wasn't aware of that one thing. I don't think you'll find many, if any scholars, who would justify letting Nixon off the hook because of all the good he's done. If you get caught embezzling from the company you work for, would you expect to get let off the hook because of the great work you've done for your company?
I'm well aware that not every single thing in the past 7 years has been a complete and utter failure, but let's look at your example of Afghanistan. Sure, it went well, we kicked the Taliban out. But now six or seven years later the Taliban is once again growing in strength. Why? Partly because the United States has shifted its attention -- and manpower -- to Iraq, where an occupation that happened for no sufficient cause was criminally mismanaged and continues to drain blood and treasure from the U.S. Army and the U.S.A. Your defense that the situation allowed us to uncover corruption in the Oil for Food program is frankly ludicrous. There are better ways to expose corruption than by invading a fucking country and creating a hotbed of terrorist activity. Are you familiar with the saying "the cure is worse than the disease"?
So the Bush administration had a completely justified invasion and occupation (Afghanistan) which has been hamstrung by the diversion of hundreds of thousands of troops to another invasion and occupation which not only happened under false pretenses but was done so poorly that five years later sectarian violence is only beginning to subside, if it is subsiding and not just in a temporary lull. Iraq is the reason bin Laden is at large. bin Laden is free and Hussein is dead. Of the two, bin Laden is the only one who successfully mounted an attack on the United States. Bush's priorities are not where they should be.
As for the rest of the Bush administration's achievements: Failure to rebuild after Katrina. Illegal wiretapping. Psychotically huge deficits. Underfunding border patrols and wondering why illegal immigration is so hard to keep under control. I don't keep a list of these things but if I did it would be pretty damn long.
Bush might not be the worst president in U.S. hitory, but he's sure in the running. And hey, he's still got a year to go; he's still got a chance to lock up the title. |
actually there are plenty that would let Nixon off the hook on the grounds of the China card alone, frankly watergate no matter how you slice it was political espionage, and it's pretty nieve to think that every president isn't involved with similar tactics, Kennedy's families' mod ties, the convienent death of Huey Long, Ross Perot are all suspicious things,
spying on the opposing party is hardly more important than China or Detente or any number of other action that Nixon enacted,
and one other thing, secretarian violence has always existed in what is now known as Iraq
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Now, as for scholars letting Nixon off on account of the good he's done, link please. These have to be reputable individuals respected for their historiography. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents#Scholar_survey_results
Sienna poll seems the most fair balanced and their college has the most expeirence in it. (Wall Street Journal's has a definite conservative bias.)
They only poll historical and political history scholars.
Nixon ranked 26th in their last poll. (As for Bush's ranking... consider this was just after 9/11.)
Bush may rank the worst in the next poll... look at how badly his dad did right after he got out of office. But he'll bounce up... and probably settle in a little under Harrison. Even scholars need time to adjust and let history set in.
Hopefully under John Tyler. John Tyler was a perfectly fine president who gets ranked really low because after he was president he was a traitor who joined the south and was supposed to be part of the confederate congress.
But yeah... nearly every president that is likely to be considered worse then Bush are all ones who contributed to the Civil War.
Bush has been a horrible president and divided the country... but atleast they haven't taken up arms to shoot each other to death. It's kinda funny, but to be one of the worst presidents ever you kinda need a bunch of other dumbass presidents to follow or preceed you so you are part of the reason a giant diasaster happens like the Civil War. Or the after effects (Reconstruction.).
Or just be Warrin G Harding I guess. What a douche.
Andrew Jackson gets a bad rap too. He wanted to go with Lincoln's reconstruction plan, but with lincoln dead... the northerners wanted blood... and he really had no option.
