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Worst in history

"By the time the history of this administration is written, we will all be dead." President George Bush often makes statements of this sort to show that he does not care about how his record in office will come to be viewed in the future. Mr. Bush would have got away with his apparent nonchalance had his spokesman not reacted aggressively to the words of a former incumbent of the White House, Jimmy Carter. The 39th President subsequently retracted his statement that the 43rd was the worst in history, considering the impact he has had on international affairs. However, Mr. Carter's spontaneous, unguarded comment is pretty close to the studied view of a majority of American historians. In an informal survey of 415 scholars conducted in 2004 by the History News Network, 81 per cent were of the view that the Bush administration was a "failure." That conclusion was drawn before the disastrous handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the deepening of the Iraqi quagmire, and the exposure of a host of scandals after the Democratic party took control of Congress. At that time scepticism ran deeper among historians than among the general public, who accorded the Bush administration a more favourable rating in the opinion polls.

With Mr. Bush's job approval rating falling below 30 per cent, there might now be an even greater proportion of historians who are prepared to rank him alongside such exemplars of ineptitude as James Buchanan, who did little to stop the country's slide into Civil War in 1860; Andrew Johnson, who undermined Reconstruction; Warren Harding, who presided over a famously corrupt administration; and Herbert Hoover, who did little to stop the onset of the Depression. At the other end of the range of discredited presidents stands the competent but crooked Richard Nixon. With scholars as well as the public tending to place Mr. Bush in such company, it is difficult to see how history will evaluate his presidency positively. What is worse is that the current incumbent of the White House will not acknowledge his mistakes, let alone learn from them. The contrast with Mr. Carter could not be more striking. The 39th President ran a lacklustre administration and left office with the reputation of a loser. But he has reinvented himself since then as a valuable player on the world stage. His foundation supports democratisation processes in many parts of the world, builds houses for the poor, and carries out other charitable work. Mr. Carter has also emerged as one of the world's elder statesmen by virtue of his integrity and his willingness to work at settling disputes that governments and international organisations often shy away from.

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