The worst president ever?

Michael brought this up a few days ago over at his blog, All Now Mysterious . . . (link over at the right side) and historical accuracy and honesty requires me to add my buck fifty.

Those who say President George W. Bush is the worst president in U.S. history are historically illiterate buffoons. I won't list the alarmingly high list of mediocre presidents of the nineteenth century (especially pre-Civil War). I need only list the terrible presidents of my own short lifetime to make my point that not only is President Bush not the worst in history but he's actually been a good president.

I was born during the Nixon administration. Bush worse than Nixon? Watergate, price controls, and Vietnam anyone? I happen to think Vietnam was a just war but Nixon pulled our troops out of the region and mass slaughter--including one-third of all Cambodians--was the result. Communism is evil, folks, and Vietnam was a just cause.

Gerald Ford, a good man, was a terrible president. He was a completely ineffective commander-in-chief. It wasn't really his fault (Congressional Republicans didn't see him as legitimate because he wasn't elected; congressional Democrats wouldn't work with him because he was a Republican) but he had no noteworthy accomplishments as president.

Jimmy Carter. Perhaps the worst president in history. He wouldn't back the pro-American Shaw in Iran and that nation fell to Islamic extremists. He created two incompetent federal bureaucracies in both the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. His policy failures are hurting us today. And then as an ex-president . . . the guy is a worthless human being.

George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton weren't bad presidents but they both left a lot of foreign policy messes that George Walker Bush had to clean up. Iraq and Islamic terror chief among them.

Bush's eight years in office are notable because of a soaring economy during the vast majority of his presidency, his response to September 11th, and his subsequent liberation of fifty million people in two nations. Folks, Lincoln brought freedom to a few million slaves. President Bush brought freedom to fifty million slaves. Or do you really think Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were kinder masters than Southern slave-owners?

Look, not only is President Bush not the worst president in history or in my lifetime, he's one of our better presidents. The second-best in my lifetime after Reagan.

When those of you who don't like Bush say he's the worst ever, it doesn't say anything about the former president, it says something about you. It makes you look like fools.