The Worst President in History?

From the latest Rolling Stone:

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.
From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.

Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.

More.

My thoughts:

1. My Pet Goat

2. Iraq

a. Lying about the reasons ("But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," the aluminum tubes, Nigerian yellowcake, discussions with Blair to get the Iraqis to shoot down a plane with fake UN colors).

b. The prosecution of the war.

3. Torture

4. Rendition

5. Illegal spying on American citizens (NSA scandal, DOD and FBI spying on and infiltrating peace groups)

6. Katrina

7. Medicare part D

8. Corporate looting

9. From surpluses as far as the eye can see to deficits as far as the eye can see, in less than four years.

10. Income distribution policies not even worthy a banana republic.

11. Torture

12. Preventive war

13. Tactical nuclear strike on Iran??

14. Torture

15. From everyone loving us on 9/12 to everyone hating us (totally with justification) now

Worst. President. Ever.

QED