Bush Vs. Worst: Part II

This is part two of our ongoing series comparing George W. Bush with the worst U.S. Presidents of all history. Today, the ninth worst President: Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant is an interesting case because he isn’t actually that bad a President. We’ve mostly included him here because he usually ranks pretty low and I feel like talking about him. This might be the longest of these posts because I like Grant.

Domestic Policy: In Grant’s day the South was dominated by racist terrorists who frequently killed black people and tried to overthrow their own governments. Grant reestablished order there, more or less. He staunchly supported rights for black people, the rule of law, and the 14th and 15th amendments. He also defeated the KKK. On the economy he was pretty good. The Panic of 1873 was bad, and he could have done more about that, but he also reformed the Treasury, ran it at a surplus, cut the national debt, improved national credit, reduced annual interest rates, and swung the trade deficit to a surplus. He was a big supporter of free education for all and of keeping church and state separate, especially in schools.
Did Bush Do Something Worse?
Bush hasn’t confronted any domestic crises on the level of the Post-Civil-War South, which is understandable, but seriously, it’s hard to think of a single domestic accomplishment for him.

Foreign policy: Oversaw the Treaty of Washington. Probably the best U.S. treaty of the 19th century, it resolved every standing dispute with England at terms highly favorable to the U.S., and the two nations have never fought since. He managed to avoid a pointless war with Cuba even though there was a lot of popular demand for it. He also tried to annex the Dominican Republic, because most people there wanted it, it was a useful bargaining chip in securing black rights in the U.S., and it would have put pressure on Cuba to outlaw slavery. But Congress said no. Also settled the Liberian-Grebo war, whatever that was.
DBDSW?
Again, Grant seems to have done mostly good things, so Bush is a pretty obvious loser here.

Civil Rights: Grant was a major supporter of rights for freed slaves, and made political sacrifices to uphold them even after it became unpopular. Because he forced the South to let blacks vote, under his tenure black people actually got elected to national office. Also, again, he defeated the KKK. The U.S. didn’t catch up to the civil rights of his term until the 1950s. His Native American policies were more progressive than anything America would do until 1924. In fact, his low rankings on most Presidential lists probably have something to do with his having held more progressive views than the next century or so of historians.
DBDSW?
Although his callous disregard for civil rights is pretty typical for post-Southern-Strategy Republicans, he went the extra mile by screwing Katrina victims. Bush seems to have arguably less enlightened racial views than a President from the mid-19th century.

Corruption: This is where Grant was pretty terrible. The major scandals of his terms were Black Friday, the Whiskey Ring, the Sanborn incident, and Crédit Mobilier of America scandal. He didn’t have anything to do with any of them, nor did they profit him at all, and that kind of crap was pretty common in national politics of the time. But he should have exercised better judgment in appointing and oversight, and he should have punished offenders more.
DBDSW?
I’m not sure what counts as a scandal for this guy, but off the top of my head, his administration has had the Plame scandal, the lying about WMDs thing, the illegal domestic wire tapping thing, the approval of torture and subsequent cover up thing, the various other things that are technically war crimes, the cronyism that helped make Katrina worse, the illegal hirings/firings at the Justice Department, and probably other things that I’m forgetting or that we haven’t discovered yet. Bush was involved in many of these directly and has handled all of them at least as poorly as Grant handled his, and many of the Bush scandals are directly injurious to people, not an “Oh this sends a bad message and hurts the economy” kind of hurt, but an “Oh, this waterboards an innocent person” kind of hurt.

Value of Replacement Player: Grant replaced Andrew Johnson, a terrible, terrible man and an even worse President. America improved drastically with the change.
DBDSW? Clinton was alright, and America is clearly much worse under Bush, so Bush loses this category by a wide margin.

Verdict: This isn’t even close. On the one hand, the comparison is kind of unfair, because Grant was actually a pretty good President. I value Civil Rights enough to put him in my top ten, although the scandals were pretty terrible. On the other hand, it's amazing to see how utterly horrible Bush is compared with a decent leader. Bush is at least the ninth-worst of all time. Also, Adams is back in the top ten, because I'm taking Grant out of it now that I got to talk about him.