Is Babe Ruth still the best ever?

Indulge me.

Way back when, in those heady days when this blog had no readers at all, instead of the six or seven it has now, I wrote a post in which I said that George Bush was "in the conversation" about who the Worst President Ever was. Usually, the conversation's about things like Best Left-Handed Catcher Ever and the like-today it was Walter Johnson vs. Roger Clemens for Best Pitcher Ever-but occasionally things less important than baseball get a look in, and it seems to me, what with articles on this very topic cropping up in places like Rolling Stone and Maclean's, that it might be an idea to take the old blogmobile out for a spin round Buchanan Drive and Hoover Lane in a quest to find the Worst President of All Time.

The first thing you have to do when discussing Bush and his awfulness is to take his political successes into account. Indeed, His Fatuousness Lord Black of Crossharbour argues in his defense of Bush in Maclean's that his successes in themselves refute the charge that he's number 43 with a bullet, and while I don't agree it does have to be addressed that Bush is a two-termer.

Generally, contenders for this particular title-Fillmore, Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Grant, Harding, Hoover and Jimmy Carter if you're insanely right wing-are one term guys, who either retired after one term, died in office or were unceremoniously chucked out of the White House by the electorate. There are two recent Presidents who served parts of two terms-LBJ and Nixon-who occasionally get mentioned as contenders, and Andrew Jackson's genocidal Indian policy gets him onto the bottom of some people's lists, but generally the career of a Really Bad President is weak, failure-filled and short. Bush is highly unusual in these respects, because he's been remarkably successful in implementing his agenda (gigantic tax cuts, war in the Middle East, a sweeping expansion of the power of the executive, etc.) and, of course, a two term President.

The reason I think he's in the conversation with all of the weak Presidents overwhelmed by events (Fillmore and Pierce by the slavery crises, Buchanan by secession, Hoover by the Depression) is because he has unerringly charged off like a mad bull in precisely the wrong direction on everything. That he has brilliant political pros working for him doesn't change the basic fact that his fiscal policy is bankrupting the federal government, his domestic policy is regressive, short-sighted and incoherent and his foreign policy is...well, "murderously stupid" may be overly harsh, but it's what comes to mind.

My favourite quote about the Bush Administration, the source of which I've unfortunately forgotten, was that "The irritating thing about this administration is that they are extraordinarily incompetent at everything except politics, at which they are exceptionally good." I think that this is completely right, and I also think that it's why, contra the criticisms of Bush defenders, that Bush's stock is going to go down over the long term, rather than up like Harry Truman's. Right now, Bush is as popular as he is because he has his crack political team on the job trying to make him look good. When we're all significantly older or dead, historians will be able to look at the way Bush cut taxes right into the bone, dragged the US into at least one and possibly two disastrous wars and failed to improve the lives of anybody who wasn't already wealthy when he got in. This is on top of aggressive assertions of executive power unseen since at least the crisis point of the Civil War, if even then, and corruption scandals that get worse by the day.

He's got the total package, and unlike some of the traditional contenders for the bottom slot he hasn't just impotently fidgeted while things got worse but actively made them worse himself. It's hard, I think, for Bush supporters to point at any concrete accomplishments he's had-there's a lot of stuff about how Iraq will get better and the economy will improve, but very little that actually has happened.

The exception to this is the absence of terrorist attacks in the States since 2001, which he should be credited for at least in part. But that's a damn precarious thing on which to hang one's hat: I'm not sure I'd want my Presidential legacy to hinge on playing perfect defence against terrorists for the next two and a half years-particularly if I was contemplating doing something crazy like bombing Iran.

So is he the worst ever? I'm actually inclined to say no, and to give it instead to Franklin Pierce, who was particularly somnolent between 1852 and 1856 as the Civil War first appeared as a possibility on the horizon. James Buchanan, who immediated succeeded Pierce, is also probably Worse Than Bush. But I wouldn't put him any higher than 41st, and to fail to crack to top 40 on a 43-man list is pretty shameful in its own right. Also, it should be remembered that I tend to stick with the old guys on questions like this-I still say Walter Johnson was better than Clemens...