At 08:41 PM 12/5/2004 -0600 Dan Minette wrote: >> At 04:01 PM 12/5/2004 -0600 Dan Minette wrote: >> >I think focusing on just the White House race misses the point. The >> >Democrats are not doing well across the board. GWB should have been a >weak >> >president because he bungles so much in office. Gautam rated him D-, >and I >> >wouldn't call Gautam a raving liberal. :-) >> >> In fairness, Gautam is being unduly pessimistic there. > >How do you know? Why are you sure he is wrong?
Well, I should start out with the caveat that of course I am not sure that he was wrong. After all, Bush is not even halfway through his Presidency, which of course makes historical ratings of said Presidency highly sepculatively. So I'll continue with the usual caveat that the future could, well, change everything. Anyhow, the center of my objection is that you claimed that "GWB should have been a weak president because he bungles so much in office" and then attempted to support this assertion by noting that "Gautam rated him D-, and I wouldn't call Gautam a raving liberal. :-)." I concluded that your point was that even those with conservative leanings think that Bush is a poor President. I object ot this conclusion because I think that Gautam's assessment is unusually pessimistic. While the "D-" grade might be representative of the grade our nation's traditional foreign policy establishment would give George W. Bush, I think that is at least in part because Bush has shown an unusual lack of deference to the nation's traditional foreign policy establishment, and has instead charted a somewhat unconventional course and populated his foreign policy team with relative outsiders (or from Bush's perspective, with insiders.) At any rate, I don't think that his rating is representative of the conclusion that Presidential Historians - and certainly isn't characteristic of any larger population of, say, conservatives, or the American people. >> By the usual standards historians use to judge Presidencies, Bush will be >> rated much more highly than that. > >Well, it will be interesting to see what historians say, since Bush is >keeping the material that historians typically use to evaluate presidents >secret. That usually doesn't work, because speculations about what is >hidden for political purposes often covers possibilities that are far worse >than what really happened. Oh please. While historians find Presidential documents to be absolutely invaluable for a number of purposes, the exercise of rating Presidents is not one of them. An important thing to realize is that historians try to rate Presidents regardless of ideology. That's why a President like Franklin Roosevelt, who only tried to subvert the separation of powers and who instituted the policy of Japanese internment is nevertheless rates as a "great" President. Anyhow, here are some of the usual criteria in rating Presidents used by historians: -Was the President re-elected? For example, in this List, of the four Presidents rated as "Failures", none was re-elected: http://www.opinionjournal.com/hail/rankings.html Only Grant and Nixon make the "Below Average" rating, while being re-elected. Nixon resigned, of course, which probably cements his rating as a failure, but even Grant has been undergoing a bit of a rethinking of sorts lately, and many historians would now rate him as "Average." Likewise, on this List, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/leadership/schlesin ger.html#chart , only Polk rates as "Near Great" or higher without being re-elected. Overall, historians tend to very much defer to the judgement of the American people. -Did the President have signature accomplishments? Whatever your opinion of the Bush tax cuts, it nevertheless remains the case that Bush campaigned on tax cuts in 2000, and upon election managed to push a set of tax cuts that substantially altered the US tax code through Congress. That will rate highly on historians' score cards. And of course, there is the most signature accomplishment of all. For better or for worse, the entire history of the world took a sharp turn when Bush decided to liberate Iraq. Unless Iraq ends up being an absolutely unmitigated disaster for the United States itself, Bush will likely be rated highly by historians for forever altering the nature of American foreign policy. -Did the President lead America through a war? Bill Clinton was famous for musing that it is hard to demonstrate greatness without a war. Well, American was attacked for the first time since Pearl Harbor on Bush's watch, and Bush's speech at the World Trade Center will rate highly on historians' score cards. Likewise, leading the very successful liberation of Afghanistan will rate highly. Obviously, there is a lot of history left to be written, as I noticed. By the usual criteria under which previous Presidents have been rated, however, I suspect that Bush will be rated quite well so far - in particular, Bush is clearly on the path to establishing himself as a transformational President, which is generally a recipe for greatness or at least near-greatness. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
