Thursday, October 15, 2009

Contextualizing past presidents

Doug Casey writes about George Bush in the context of the presidency:

"As disastrous as he was, I rather hate to put him in competition for “worst president” in the company of Lincoln, McKinley, Wilson, the two Roosevelts, Truman, Johnson, and Nixon. He is simply too small a character — psychologically aberrant, ignorant, unintelligent, shallow, duplicitous, small-minded — to merit inclusion in any list.

On second thought, looking over that list of his personal characteristics, he’s probably most like FDR, except he lacked FDR’s polish and rhetorical skills. I suspect he’ll just fade away as a non-entity, recognized as an embarrassment."

Alternatively, Austrian Economists, in an interesting post listed the 6 free market presidents

The order is from the most laissez-fairist to the least (dates of presidency in brackets):

Grover Cleveland (1885-1889 and 1893-1897)
Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)
Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)
Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)

1 comment:

  1. Doug Casey makes the best argument I have heard for why George W. Bush was a disastrous president. A well reasoned, thoughtful, and damning all at once. Here I was expecting the normal partisan hatchet job. -Ken

    ReplyDelete