Wilentz cites a poll conducted among more than 400 historians in early 2004. Already at that point, more than 80% of these historians regarded the Bush presidency as a failure.
Now factor in all that has become known about this administration in the almost two-and-a-half years since that poll was taken: how more fully disclosed are the lies leading to the war in Iraq and the blunders that assured its disastrous consequences; how incompetent the administration proved to be in the face of hurricane Katrina; how clear has become the picture of this administration 's disdain for the Constitution and the law, with its by-passing of the required judicial oversight in the issuing of warrants; how shamelessly they have sought to suppress scientific and economic facts, and so forth-- a list that could be vastly expanded.
The worst presidency in history? Where 's the competition?
Could it be the sleazy administration of Ulysses S. Grant, or the likewise corrupt Harding administration, with its Teapot Dome Scandal?
No, not when you observe how the Bushite regime goes beyond such superficial corruption. Certainly, the sins of this administration include the conventional pigs-feeding-at-the-trough corruption as illuminated by the expanding Abramoff scandals but the corruption here goes much deeper. The moral corruption of this regime -with its apparent unwillingness to hold any value higher than its own advantage-- goes beyond such parasitism to threaten the very life of the American body politic.
How about James Buchanan, the occupant of the White House immediately before the election of Abraham Lincoln and the outbreak of the Civil War?
Buchanan failed to offer the country the leadership it needed at a especially dangerous moment in American history. Surely, the carnage that followed in his wake underscores the gravity of Buchanan 's failure. But Buchanan inherited a sharply divided country. He did not, like our current president, actively create division for his own political self-aggrandizement.
Can the Nixon presidency offer any serious competition, with its dangerous abuses of power?
Hardly. As former Nixon counsel John Dean said in recent days, the abuses of power of this Bushite regime leave Nixon 's "in the dust. " The Nixon administration had plenty of mean-spirited paranoia and resentment. But Nixon did not have the same a take-no-prisoners drive towards domination. Although he was a threat to the rule of law, Nixon didn 't seek to dismantle the system he abused, like these Bushites with their so-called "theories " of the Constitution that seek to rationalize unchecked presidential power.
Consider the systematic assault that this regime and their party loyalists have been conducting on the basic structures of our democracy:
** The use of "signing statements " and bogus "constitutional arguments " to usurp the constitutional powers of the other branches;
** The flagrant violation, under presidential orders, of duly passed laws such as the FISA act, not to mention of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution;
** The violation of duly-ratified treaties banning torture and of constitutional provisions for due process;
** The K street culture of big moneyed interests buying government, even further corrupted with the requirement that only Republican lobbyists be hired;
** The rigging of Congressional districts, and other thuggish abuses of power, orchestrated by Tom Delay and his syndicate;
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