As George W. Bush’s time in the white house and his approval rating lower, political analyists and historians are beginning to ponder his place in history as a United States president. As of now, there are two main schools of thought. The more popular one is that Bush will be seen as one of the worst presidents ever, lamer than a lame duck for four main reasons: his administration’s blind eye towards the forth amendment (the U.S. Patriot Act), accusation use of torture at Guantanamo Bay, the record breaking deficiet that he will undoubtedly leave for the next administration, and the lack of WMD’s and Al Qauda in Iraq in which Bush brought the U.S. into conflict with against teh wishes of most of Western Europe making the U.S. one of the most disliked countries in the world.
The other school of thought, and one that Bush shares, is that he will be remembered as a Harry Truman type character. Truman had a 25% approval rating in 1952 mainly because of the Korean War, but history has been kind to him because of his leadership at the end of World War II and although his decisions were unpopular at the time, most of turned out for the better. Bush is hoping for the same kind of turn when future historians look back his eight years in office.
As I see it, Bush will not be seen in the same light as Truman, but he will not be remembered as horrible as his approval rating is seen now. All four of the forementioned issues that people have with Bush have been committed in far worse ways by other presidents throughout American history.
When it comes to the Patriot Act, it is obvious that the Bush Administration used the fear and paranoia that followed 9/11 to pass a bill that allows law enforcement to legally search and seize information and property from American citizens not only without their consent, but most of time without them even knowing, via the internet essentially drawing a line through the forth amendment with a big, black marker. As horrible as that is, beloved president, Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, appropriated powers no previous President had wielded: he used his war powers to proclaim a blockade, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, spent money without congressional authorization, imprisoned 18,000 suspected Confederate sympathizers without trial and in a with hunt manor. Like the Patriot Act, Congress and the Supreme Court did not try to stop Lincoln. What Lincoln did is worse than Patriot Act because the Patriot Act can only lead to the arrest of individuals, whereas Lincoln’s withhold of civil liberties took away citizen’s rights to a fair trial.
Next, there is the accusation of torture at Guantanamo Bay. We have to look all the way back at the Presidency of James Monroe. Monroe ordered future president Andrew Jackson (militia leader at the time) to secure the Spanish territory of Florida to stop slaves from crossing the boarder to freedom. Jackson grossly exceeded his orders by slaughtering Native American villages. Taking one step farther, Jackson and his troops impaled the heads of native women and children while the warriors were out trying to fend off the American military. Afterwards Monroe and Congress defended Jackson’s actions to the American people and to an angry Spain by citing the new Monroe Doctrine that enlisted the United States to Manifest Destiny allowing the U.S. to do what ever it took to expand its boarders and its democracy. Although torture is horrible and should never be used, the torture going on at Guantanamo Bay are happening to terrorists who are people using extreme violence for political purposes, not the innocent women and children that Jackson brutalized.
Third is the deficiet. The deficiet is hard to defend because it is the largest in U.S. history, but Bush is following in line with his party. The last two Republicans in office, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, also ran up huge deficeits, however, Reagan does have the excuse that he was trying to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Also when it comes to history, large deficiets are forgotten because most of the time they are needed based on the times the president presided over. Bush had 9/11 and the Iraq war, which brings me to the last point.
Bush is most hated for the war that he started and more precisely, how it was started. Bush and his administration is accused of fabricating faulty intellegence that claimed that Saddam Hussien had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by people ranging from conspiracy theorists to United States Senators. If true, Bush will never be in the top ten presidents of all time, but he won’t be in the bottom because of this possible lie because this kind of lying has been happening thoughout American history, the most notable is the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898. The sinking brought national attention to the crisis that was going on in Cuba and then lead to the Spanish-American War. Historians are still fighting over what had exactly happened to the Maine, but it is believed that either the ship never sunk or the William McKinley administration had it sunk to get start a war with Spain, but they never cited it as a casus belli. Bush’s apparent WMD lie is as bad as any, but it is not any worse than other lies that have lead the U.S. getting into conflicts.
A quick history lesson can show that Bush is not the worst president ever, but his decisions and actions show that he is certainly not the even close to the best.
