This is the first post in a new feature comparing George W. Bush to the ten worst U.S. Presidents of all history. First up, the tenth-worst: John Adams.
Adams was a decent founding father, but his Presidency was terrible. Let's break it down.
Foreign Policy: He ruined the Jay Treaty, which was brilliant policy conceived by Hamilton and Washington that kept us out of war with France. Combined with the XYZ affair this helped pave the way to many of the foreign policy disasters of the next decade or so.
Did Bush Do Something Worse? Yes. The Iraq War. Bush is also technically a war criminal.
Domestic policy: His most famous move here was the Alien and Sedition Act, which, although it was racist and bad for immigration, also destroyed free speech.
DBDSW? Yes. The Patriot Act, though better on paper, has been enforced and manipulated a lot more and will be difficult to undo. The Gitmo proceedings have ruined our ability to prosecute terrorists.
Civil Rights: Didn't do much to help slaves, but he probably couldn't have done too much.
DBDSW? Eh, call this a toss-up.
Corruption: Adams wasn't historically terrible on this.
DBDSW? Yes. Bush is historically terrible on this.
Value of Replacement Player: This is a concept from sports statistics. If you replace, say, Lebron James with an average player, that's actually a deficit for your team. So a bad President is even worse if he replaces a good President. Adams replaces George Washington. That's a hell of a drop, since Washington is one of our only three excellent Presidents. In fact, the Adams Presidency makes Washington's achievements all the more remarkable, since so many of them survived his terrible successor.
DBDSW? Clinton was basically historically average. America was doing fine when Bush took over, in a weaker economy, but basically OK. Now America is in an even worse economy and also involved in two Asian land wars. Clinton was no Washington, but I'd say Bush loses this one. Replacing Michael Jordan with Ray Allen is tough, but replacing Allen with a guy who throws the ball into the stands is even worse. So Adams wins this one.
Verdict: Bush is worse on every count except Civil Rights, which is a toss-up. He is at least the tenth worst President. Congrats to John Adams, who finally escapes the bottom ten.
7 comments:
That's not John Adams. That's Paul Giamatti.
Adams not helping slaves is not a civil rights issue. They're slaves: they have no rights (much less civil ones).
Not having civil rights is a civil rights issue.
Oh, so not being black is a black issue?
So as a white man, you are a black issue?
not voting for mccain is a mccain issue. I am not voting for mccain and therefore I am voting for mccain.
@anonymous
Other reasonable conclusions by your logic:
Famine is not a food issue because nobody involved has any.
A company that will go out of business unless it gets computers does not have any computer issues.
Obesity is not a health issue.
Public indecency is not a public decency issue.
Context, my friend. Combine this with relevance and more-than-structural knowledge of causal relations, and you will go far.
"I once was a child; now I am a man." You get the picture. ; )
Let's clarify this, as you may find this methodology useful in future blogs:
Categories "color" themselves in appropriated ways by means of what we call the 'understory' of a word, which is a more humanistic approach to identity in combination with experience. As you can see, "Not having civil rights" is really a statement not of the proper definition of rights, but a reflection social constructions of identity, the cultural institutions maintaining basic behavior patterns ("Tom/Elizabeth has no civil rights") and and the institutions that repress alternative modes of identity. This is what most scholars call the "fury of sleep" - the construction of basic alternative actions based on an actually negative view of the overarching culture. So now we arrive at the "Understory" The understory changes the category of a word based on its basic usage and the ideas behind it - this means that when we speak of certain things, we must maintain the "story" behind them as well as the dynamic and perceptually re-aligned ways identity creeps into the discussion. "I am not gay" is not a gay issue, but a sexuality issue, and then some. "I am not black" is not a black issue, but also, "I am not white" is not a black issue either. They are confusions of categories; you might as well say that John Adams did not for the rights of homosexuals in his day. Once you understand things in this way, most other things fall into place.
Seriously though...this is BASIC sociology.
Paul Giamatti played the role of John Adams in a TV mini-series called "John Adams". Some people might therefore consider a picture of him dressed in period-costume from the time of John Adams to be a reference to John Adams. You and I know better, though, because we took Sociology, which is also probably the same thing as not taking Sociology, according to scholars.
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