The Baddest of Them All?
Yesterday's Quinnipiac University poll showing that respondents rate George W. Bush the worst President since 1945 raises some interesting questions. Here at Kafalas.com Central, we've pondered the question of who was worse: Bush or Jimmy Carter. Personally, I'd say those two are head and shoulders above (or below) the rest, in terms of bad Presidents in my lifetime. As for who was actually worse, though, that's a tough one.
Carter was most notable for stagflation, unemployment, and in the foreign policy arena, the Panama Canal treaty and the Iran hostage rescue attempt (which my dad dubbed the Jimmy Carter Desert Classic). His smarmy speeches about the "national malaise" afflicting the country -- the main symptom of which being his unpopularity -- exemplified how incompetent and out-of-touch he was. Although I was a youngster at the time, I formed an opinion, which I still hold, that his actions in office were more blatantly political than those of any other President -- he was not concerned with doing the right thing so much as with appearing to do the right thing, in order to cultivate voters. However, even in this regard, he was completely inept, as was revealed when he got clobbered in the 1980 election.
The Quinnipiac poll lists Clinton as the third-worst, behind Nixon. This is most likely the result of the bluenoses who rate him a bad President because of what happened under his desk in the Oval Office. As far as I'm concerned, that had nothing to do with his performance as President -- and since my income tripled while he was in office, what more need be said?
But it's pretty clear that GWB has been the worst we've seen. That was readily apparent since before he even took office -- clearly lacking the qualifications, he was anointed as the GOP candidate well before any actual voters had a chance to register their opinions at the ballot box. On-the-job training was supposed to make up for his inexperience -- but as we've seen, it didn't work very well. Basically, there isn't a single success story since he took office. Obviously, Iraq is the big disaster -- the whole world sympathized with us after 9/11, and he's managed to turn it right around to where everyone hates us, and justifiably so. (There's a curious parallel with his father's remarkable feat of losing the 1992 election only a little over a year after having enormous popularity in the wake of the first Gulf war.)
On the domestic front, maybe the economy has had a lukewarm recovery over the past year or two -- but that's not his doing; it has a lot more to do with the private sector doing what it does best -- innovating and creating jobs on its own.
Meanwhile, the administration treats the Constitution like "just a piece of paper," with its blatant attacks on the privacy of you and me. Have you heard the latest one? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller met with representatives of several ISPs last week to demand that they record their customers' Web-surfing activity and keep those records for two years. The idea, they say, is that somehow, a record of which Web sites were visited from which IP addresses would help them track Al-Qaeda.
The Bush administration has come up with some howlers in recent weeks, but this is the best one yet. Just exactly how do they think they're going to get useful information out of these records? Do they think terrorists use the same IP addresses they were using two years ago? Their Web sites change on an hourly basis -- and, if they're as smart as I assume they are, they don't have static IP addresses, either.
The other explanation for this initiative is that it would help track the spread of child pornography. As I've noted before, the Bush Administration's prurient obsession with child pornography is troubling, to say the least -- why they spend so much time thinking about it is anyone's guess. But in any case, using it as an excuse to attempt such a massive invasion of privacy is inexcusable.
All in all, it's hard to disagree with the results of the Quinnipiac poll -- at least as far as the booby prize is concerned.
Urb's Blog
Carter was most notable for stagflation, unemployment, and in the foreign policy arena, the Panama Canal treaty and the Iran hostage rescue attempt (which my dad dubbed the Jimmy Carter Desert Classic). His smarmy speeches about the "national malaise" afflicting the country -- the main symptom of which being his unpopularity -- exemplified how incompetent and out-of-touch he was. Although I was a youngster at the time, I formed an opinion, which I still hold, that his actions in office were more blatantly political than those of any other President -- he was not concerned with doing the right thing so much as with appearing to do the right thing, in order to cultivate voters. However, even in this regard, he was completely inept, as was revealed when he got clobbered in the 1980 election.
The Quinnipiac poll lists Clinton as the third-worst, behind Nixon. This is most likely the result of the bluenoses who rate him a bad President because of what happened under his desk in the Oval Office. As far as I'm concerned, that had nothing to do with his performance as President -- and since my income tripled while he was in office, what more need be said?
But it's pretty clear that GWB has been the worst we've seen. That was readily apparent since before he even took office -- clearly lacking the qualifications, he was anointed as the GOP candidate well before any actual voters had a chance to register their opinions at the ballot box. On-the-job training was supposed to make up for his inexperience -- but as we've seen, it didn't work very well. Basically, there isn't a single success story since he took office. Obviously, Iraq is the big disaster -- the whole world sympathized with us after 9/11, and he's managed to turn it right around to where everyone hates us, and justifiably so. (There's a curious parallel with his father's remarkable feat of losing the 1992 election only a little over a year after having enormous popularity in the wake of the first Gulf war.)
On the domestic front, maybe the economy has had a lukewarm recovery over the past year or two -- but that's not his doing; it has a lot more to do with the private sector doing what it does best -- innovating and creating jobs on its own.
Meanwhile, the administration treats the Constitution like "just a piece of paper," with its blatant attacks on the privacy of you and me. Have you heard the latest one? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert Mueller met with representatives of several ISPs last week to demand that they record their customers' Web-surfing activity and keep those records for two years. The idea, they say, is that somehow, a record of which Web sites were visited from which IP addresses would help them track Al-Qaeda.
The Bush administration has come up with some howlers in recent weeks, but this is the best one yet. Just exactly how do they think they're going to get useful information out of these records? Do they think terrorists use the same IP addresses they were using two years ago? Their Web sites change on an hourly basis -- and, if they're as smart as I assume they are, they don't have static IP addresses, either.
The other explanation for this initiative is that it would help track the spread of child pornography. As I've noted before, the Bush Administration's prurient obsession with child pornography is troubling, to say the least -- why they spend so much time thinking about it is anyone's guess. But in any case, using it as an excuse to attempt such a massive invasion of privacy is inexcusable.
All in all, it's hard to disagree with the results of the Quinnipiac poll -- at least as far as the booby prize is concerned.
Urb's Blog
posted by Urbie at 7:48 AM
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