Publius' Forum

Historian, Sean Wilentz, has authored a positively ridiculous appraisal of George W. Bush's presidency in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Called "The Worst President in History?", Wilentz makes the worst mistake an historian can make; he assumes he knows the future, instead of interpreting the past.

Why do I say that? Because, any historian worth his salt will admit that one cannot evaluate history as it has long unfolded, and can only do so in with the clarity of hindsight, after you have had the time to see all the results of that historical event. Yet, Wilentz has already passed judgment on Bush's presidency even as it has three more years to go before it is even over!

Yet, even with his crystal ball reading, he misreads much of the history he writes about in this article. Here are just two examples:

No previous president appears to have squandered the public's trust more than Bush has.

Wow, is THAT off the mark. He completely forgets LBJ, for instance. LBJ so badly bungled his last years in the White House that he couldn't even run for his own Party's nomination and had to "refuse" to run for the it! He also forgets how close Truman came to not winning a second term (his first elected) the country had become so disillusioned by his years in the presidency to that point. And BOTH those men came into office with much less contention than did Bush!

Here is another badly bungled historical assessment:

No other president -- Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War -- faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle...

Total nonsense. Lincoln fought the "Peace democrats" nearly to the end of his own presidency and refused to take any of their ideas into consideration and actually banished from the United States an anti-war candidate from Ohio, sending him forcibly to Canada! Wilson even IMPRISONED a presidential candidate during WWI, a far more anti-oppositional move than Bush ever made. And, as far as Kennedy is concerned, he nearly agreed with every last Cold War goal that the Republicans wanted, so it isn't as if he was "opposed" over his own anti-communism. Kennedy's opposition came more from domestic matters than his Cold War ideas.

Wilentz has no idea what he is talking about and this article is just plain leftist tripe.

-Warner Todd Huston