Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
…insofar as how it will remember George W. Bush.
President Bush often argues that history will vindicate him. So he can’t be pleased with an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted by the History News Network. It found that 98 percent of them believe that Bush’s presidency has been a failure, while only about 2 percent see it as a success. Not only that, more than 61 percent of the historians say the current presidency is the worst in American history.
“Informal” is right. What if it were more formal, something with more gravity than an anonymous, smarmy remark being compiled into an “informal survey” with more of the same? What if there were stakes involved? Imagine the thinking that would be going on if you asked 109 professional historians to put money down on the answer.
History shows just a few definite trends in figuring out who is “worst”; I don’t agree with them all, but they’re there. And the traits for which history seems to look, aren’t sported in abundance by the current President. They are things like…just off the top of my head…obscurity. Unless you’re a “buff,” you’ve got no clue who the guy was, when he served, what he did. That can apply to Millard Fillmore or Franklin Pierce, perhaps, and who can argue against the statement that those two gentlemen are consistently nominated for the bottom slots. But George W. Bush? In a generation or two, it’ll be tough to remember who he was or what he did? On what planet?
Damage and polarization in the republic…well, that’s a matter of opinion and his critics have a right to theirs. For precedent, we have Andrew Johnson. And who else? Our nation’s other impeached President, Bill Clinton, was certainly a polarizing figure — seems to me I’m entitled to my opinion that he did some damage — I don’t see anyone putting him in the bottom slot. Just a few right-wing nutballs like me. Why, he spoke so eloquently when he told us things that weren’t true, he must’ve been great. But who else did some damage to the country’s sense of unity, and consequently was remembered by history as a crappy President? John Adams is sometimes placed in the bottom half, but never so far as I can recall in the few bottom slots. Andrew Jackson? Franklin Roosevelt? Nope.
Scandal…this has had the effect of flunking out Ulysses Grant here & there, sometimes. But history is beginning to wake up about him. Warren Harding, Richard Nixon, yup. Bill Clinton? Eh. The pattern has been disrupted. Looks like we’re going through a change of direction in how history remembers scandal; she seems to find it arousing lately. Actually, is George Bush’s administration marred by scandal any more than any other? I know we’re often instructed that we should think so. But it can be difficult to assess that in an era when you’re living in it. That’s why we have history in the first place, right?
The big common factor in our historically lousy Presidents, is that they were complacent and they didn’t get an awful lot done. Well, most of the criticism thrown at President Bush, I notice, is awkwardly constructed and cobbled together according to a haphazard design that presumes complacency to be a good thing, since the Commander-in-Chief is regarded by friends and foes alike as anything-but. Okay, then. When you start out with the objective of making him a bad President, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. Not getting an awful lot done? Here again, the criticism for President Bush invariably arises from something he did.
So now it’s in two distinct areas: Current sensibilities manage to achieve the desired condemnation of the current President, by sustaining values oppositional to what is embraced by “history.”
Now about this thing he did. Was that contrary to the well-being of the country over which he’s supposed to preside?
Well I suppose the fairest answer is going to be that history will take awhile to figure that one out. Suppose history eventually decides toward the negative. Quickly, now — what other President in our nation’s history became a “bad” President, by doing something that was really hard to do, that a lot of people opposed when he did it…but not until just a few weeks before he got serious about doing it? What President became “bad” because he mobilized the military in an operation, with which some among us disagreed, and said operation actually incurred a death toll?
But you really don’t need to get into all that to raise a red flag or two about the study.
It says 98% of them consider it a failure. How high does the number have to be before one is inclined to call shenanigans?
Perhaps what we need, is a study on studies like this one. Who gets ’em going, how they get going, who participates and why. Actually, I’ve got the oddest feeling history is going to be pretty curious about that.
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Pretty much.
In general, Historian = Academic = Progressive = “Bush is Bad”
What else would we expect?
- philmon | 04/16/2008 @ 11:59We should expect them to always have the same opinion. All the time. It’s all that independent thinking-for-yourself and freedom-of-expression that goes on.
Or as Lockjaw said:
- mkfreeberg | 04/16/2008 @ 12:16Well, if you remember Reagan was painted as either a madman hell bent on nuclear war with the Soviets or as a senile old man who fell asleep in cabinet meetings depending upon the week. Despite the media’s efforts to portray him as such he is revered by many Americans. Hell, I’d bet that a plurality think he was a good if not great president. Witness his funeral. Conversely, Jimmah was given every break in the world by the media during his term. The horrible economy and pussification of American foreign policy was seen as being driven by externalities not by Jimmah’s horrendous decision making.
- Duffy | 04/16/2008 @ 14:16One need only look to the rehabilitation of Truman to see what wankers presidential historians generally are. I trust Humanities professors about as far as I can throw ’em. Slightly less, actually.
- Buck | 04/16/2008 @ 15:24Maybe I mentioned this in these pages somewhere before.
When I read Grant’s biography back in the summer of ’04, and we remember what a tumultuous and politically-charged year that was, I was struck at the parallels with 140 years previous.
The war, the Republican President whose re-election chances were riveted to it for good or ill, the blustering, the grandstanding, the rhetoric on both sides, the nail-biting…all of it. Knowing what I know now, anybody who seeks to advance an argument that Bush will be remembered differently than Lincoln had better explain himself or at least see the need to do so. If he can’t see the need he doesn’t know anything about American history and should be defrocked of any credentials that might suggest that he does.
- mkfreeberg | 04/16/2008 @ 16:18