America’s Worst President
I saw a recent list of the worst American presidents. Trump was at the bottom. I get it. He’s lazy. He’s not smart. He’s not trying to learn. He watches TV and tweets all day. He takes credit for things he hasn’t done and deflects blame for things he has. He’s divisive. He’s offensive. He’s an embarrassment on the international stage. He’s also failed the one real crisis he had, the natural disaster that hit Puerto Rico. He’s awful. But he’s not the worst President in US history.
I judge Presidents on three factors.
1. The stuff they want to do
2. The stuff they have to do
3. Personality
How did our worst president do on the stuff he wanted to do?
· He gave out $3 billion in tax cuts to the wealthy that directly led to a huge recession.
· He started an illegitimate war based on manufactured evidence and doubled defense spending to more than $600 billion to pay for it.
· He started unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens
· He ran for office on creating a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage
· He tried to turn social security into a stock market investment fund
· He increased government spending 70% while decreasing tax revenues leading to the national debt jumping from $5.5 trillion to more than $11 trillion.
How did our worst president do on the stuff he had to do?
· He ignored warnings from intelligence that terrorists were determined to attack the United States.
· He ignored warnings from the National Hurricane Center that a huge storm was about to decimate the US
· Argued that detainees were not protected by Geneva Conventions ban on torture because that infringed on the President’s authority to conduct war the way he sees fit
· He ignored warnings that an American invasion in the Middle East would lead to a long civil war causing untold deaths
· He mis-understood both the number of troops and the length of time their service would be needed for his war
Personality
· He appointed incompetent friends to important positions, leading to poor responses and worse consequences from Hurricane Katrina
· He fired seven US attorneys for questioning him and then said his justice department didn’t need to testify to explain why because his executive privilege extended to them. When the courts ruled that wasn’t true, he made them resign rather than testify as to why the US attorneys were fired
· He told the CIA director to only hire officers loyal to his administration and forced out senior agents they considered disloyal
· He created a doctrine to justify preemptive war
· Supported and helped cover-up the release of a CIA agent’s undercover identity as punishment for questioning his manufactured evidence for war
Our worst President started a war for fun, let people die because he ignored information and used his power to punish everyone who opposed him. We can argue about how bad a man Donald Trump is, but he’s got a lot more to get wrong before he approaches George Bush Jr.
