Nixon W. Bush
Posted on April 17, 2008
by: Big Jar
Who is the worst President in the history of the United States?
OK, obviously. Let me revise the question: Who is the worst President in the history of the United States (active Presidents excluded)?
There are a few names you might be tossing around in your head. Hoover. Buchanan. Harding. But, chances are that there is one especially demonic, psychotic, megalomaniacal gargoyle that immediately leaped forward and started doing somersaults as soon as you finished reading the question.
NIXON
For years, I feel like our generation has lived in Nixon’s shadow. He was always the nadir of American politics. No one ever had anything nice to say about the former President, and he was the constant subject of ridicule for comedians and cartoonists. His physical appearance was ghastly-the demented eyes, the sagging jowls, the profuse sweating, the constant fidgeting, as if he were trying to slip out of his suit without unbuttoning anything. He spoke in a horrible guttural growl that made him sound like a gorgon with laryngitis.
Then there was the way he ran his administration. He had a team of burglars on the White House payroll, who would wiretap his political opponents. When Nixon’s attorney general John Dean testified against him during the Watergate scandal, he even ordered his goon squad to break into Dean’s psychologist’s office. The idea was that he wanted to disseminate the contents of Dean’s personal file and discredit the man. Nixon wielded the FBI like they were his own private security force, using the federal agency to destroy social justice groups like the Black Panthers. He and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, ordered illegal bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. When he was finally caught ordering the break-in at the Watergate hotel, where the Democrats had scheduled their National Convention, everything else came bubbling to the surface in the ensuing investigation (anyone interested in that story should check out All The President’s Men. The movie is good-the book is better).
I remember learning about all of this in high school and college. I remember being outraged at Nixon’s paranoia and thirst for unilateral control of the government. I remember feeling despair and anger that one person could achieve power in the United States and so easily manipulate the system to serve his own needs. I remember feeling that way before, but now I look at this in the present and I say, “That’s it? That’s all?”
Don’t get me wrong: Nixon was a monster. It’s just that, for all of his malfeasance, he seems so much tamer in comparison to the Bush administration. Comparing the two is an interesting exercise, though, since they happen to share a lot of characteristics.
Check this out: George H.W. Bush was Nixon’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Dick Cheney was a White House Staff Assistant and the Assistant Director of the Cost of Living Council under the Nixon administration. Donald Rumsfeld served a number of positions in Nixon’s cabinet. Shit, even the man who sold the Iraq War creation myth to the United Nations was an assistant chief of staff of operations for Nixon.
All of these men gained their political experience within an administration that was one of the most notorious in American history, one that held no regard for the Constitution and believed it had the right to gobble up power and execute that power however it saw fit. It helps explain a lot. After all, why would these individuals execute their politics any differently in the 2000s than they did in the 1970s?
This makes me wonder. When Bush was assembling his cabinet and putting together his administration, what was he thinking? Did he look up all of the people still alive from Nixon’s team and say, “Hey guys! We’re getting the band back together! Remember that awesome time everyone had in the White House during the late 60s/early 70s? Well, get ready for some more of that!” I mean, Bush was alive and cognizant (though slightly coked up and drunk, perhaps) during the Watergate scandal. Did he not remember how things go when you hire a bunch of outlaws to serve on the side of the law? Or is it just that he believes the government runs most efficiently when there is no law? I’m consistently baffled by the current President’s inner machinations. I would eat my weight in Crawford, Texas mesquite wood if I could somehow find out.
So, behold the legacy that Nixon established for Bush: Nixon spied on Americans without due process or warrants. Nixon waged an unconstitutional war initiated on false pretenses. Nixon did not believe in a government for the people; he believed in a government for himself.
But, I must begrudgingly admit that Nixon actually did enact some positive change while in office. For instance, he founded the EPA and OSHA. He negotiated several nuclear arms treaties that helped slow nuclear proliferation, and he used the political divide between the PRC and the USSR to strengthen diplomatic ties between the US and both nations. Nixon passed the Philadelphia Plan and the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, which were the first federal Affirmative Action programs, and helped to supplement Social Security.
Could you ever, in a million thousand generations, ever imagine George W. Bush passing similar legislation? The very concept is laughable.
In other words, the hitherto worst president in the history of the United States, the first and only president to resign from office, was not nearly as awful as the current President.
This is a really terrifying time to be an American.
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