Historian Sean Wilentz recaps Bush’s presidency and concludes it’s headed for colossal historical disgrace

Before dismissing the historian as a left wingnut, consider that his professional reputation is on the line when he makes such pronouncements. To attack his conclusion effectively, his facts and comparisons must be credibly challenged.

Check out Wilentz’s opinion piece yourself: Worst President in History - Rolling Stone.

If you want to see an organized executive summary, check out Daily KOS diary about the Rolling Stone article.

Below are some passages from the Rolling Stone piece.

To support his opinions, historian Wilentz states some alleged facts. Partisans can always come up with ways to argue that alleged facts are not being accurately stated due to some technicality or another.

For example, is it a “fact” that Bush believes he has authority to violate federal law and order torture? It appears he does so believe, because that’s what he did - except that Bush and his partisan supporters argue that the torture was not really “torture”, and so no law was violated. AHHH! I see! Bush’s supporters redefine torture! Therefore, under the new definition, the President didn’t order torture! Slick Argument! Problem: The entire non-Republican civilized world seems to disagree with this redefinition of torture. The world will judge Bush for posterity, not Bush’s partisan supporters. Therefore, the history books will say Bush authorized torture.

With the above in mind, let’s proceed to a few excerpts from the Wilentz piece:

Worst President in History - Sean Wilentz - Rolling Stone

While wiping out the solid Clinton-era federal surplus and raising federal deficits to staggering record levels, Bush’s tax policies have necessitated hikes in federal fees, state and local taxes, and co-payment charges to needy veterans and families who rely on Medicaid, along with cuts in loan programs to small businesses and college students, and in a wide range of state services.

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Real wages for middle-income Americans have been dropping since the end of 2003: Last year, on average, nominal wages grew by only 2.4 percent, a meager gain that was completely erased by an average inflation rate of 3.4 percent.

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According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever — with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006.

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The No Child Left Behind educational-reform act has proved so unwieldy, draconian and poorly funded that several states — including Utah, one of Bush’s last remaining political strongholds — have fought to opt out of it entirely. White House proposals for immigration reform and a guest-worker program have succeeded mainly in dividing pro-business Republicans (who want more low-wage immigrant workers) from paleo-conservatives fearful that hordes of Spanish-speaking newcomers will destroy American culture.

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But no president before Bush has allowed the press to disclose, through a close friend, his startling belief that he was ordained by God to lead the country. The White House’s sectarian positions — over stem-cell research, the teaching of pseudoscientific “intelligent design,” global population control, the Terri Schiavo spectacle and more — have led some to conclude that Bush has promoted the transformation of the GOP into what former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips calls “the first religious party in U.S. history.

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While forcing federally funded agencies to remove from their Web sites scientific information about reproductive health and the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV/AIDS, … Bush officials have censored and suppressed research findings they don’t like by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture. [Bush is] dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to “the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends.”

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[About crimes of those around him] The full report, of course, has yet to come on the Bush administration. Because Bush, unlike Reagan or Clinton, enjoys a fiercely partisan and loyal majority in Congress, his administration has been spared scrutiny. Yet that mighty advantage has not prevented the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges stemming from an alleged major security breach in the Valerie Plame matter. (The last White House official of comparable standing to be indicted while still in office was Grant’s personal secretary, in 1875.

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History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution. … Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president’s powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees

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