Worst arguments

How can they all be the worst?

WELL, THAT didn’t take long. Not even by American standards. Joe Biden was only inaugurated as president in late January. It’s not even September, and people have begun to use the familiar “worst” adjective. You gotta love Americans. We’re always in the here and now. And we are a short-sighted breed.

Yes, things look bad in Afghanistan. For proof, read this column from the last two weeks. Nothing the Joe Biden administration has done in Afghanistan in the last month—and on this topic, it’s actually led by Joe Biden—has been good for the United States. Or our allies, or Afghanistan, or the world in general. And consequences will follow. The surrender in Asia will be a costly mistake. Not to mention—which is to say we’ll mention it—his domestic spending will certainly have consequences, too.

If it doesn’t, as a wise man once recently said, it’ll be the first time in world history a country can spend like this without consequences.

And right on schedule, TV pundits, a couple of writers and partisans have suggested Joe Biden get the trophy as the No. 1 overall selection as Worst President in United States History.

Wait. We thought Donald Trump was the Worst President in United States History.

Before him, Barack Obama was the worst. We remember writing in 2010 about the congressional candidate who tagged President Obama with that insult. Before him, George W. Bush was the worst president in history. Didn’t this paper score a scoop when a president whose name we won’t mention, but whose initials are “Jimmy” and “Carter,” said the Dubya administration was the worst one ever? Ooh, ooh, even the historians at Rolling Stone weighed in back in the Aughts.

Before that, Bill Clinton. And the first Bush. And Reagan.

The worst president in the history of the United States? But there are so many to choose from.

Is Joe Biden worse than Nixon? Or Hoover? Or Buchanan? Can there be any perspective about how a president ranks while the president still serves?

Hasn’t every president since the first one been called the worst? And even the first one. Remember Jefferson sneaking around, whispering that G.W. was a traitor to the spirit of ‘76? That would be 1776, for our younger readers. George Washington signed John Jay’s treaty with the British! How dare him! And President Washington developed the first agriculture policy of these young United States, back during the Whiskey Rebellion. That agriculture policy consisted of fighting American farmers. (P.J. O’Rourke)

Let’s see, ol’ dour John Adams, that curmudgeon of a second president, was denounced for the Alien and Sedition Acts. Andrew Jackson, that Indian killer, gave us the Trail of Tears. Didn’t a president named A. Lincoln suspend habeas corpus? Some unreconstructed Confederates still insist Abraham Lincoln was the worst of the worst. No accounting for taste or intelligence.

And who let FDR in here? Didn’t that weak and sick president give eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta? To err is Truman. Johnson and Vietnam. Watergate. Ford’s pardon of Nixon. The Iran hostages. We remember a “Saturday Night Live” episode in which the guest host of the week asked the audience to stand up, pull down their pants, and moon a picture of Ronald Reagan that was brought up on stage.

It’s a kick watching Americans at this kind of work. We don’t just disagree with a president’s policies; we have to fight the good fight against the worst in history. And that’ll be whoever’s in office at the time. As long as he (it’s always been a he) is of the rival political party. Here’s a guarantee, and you can take it to the bank, or at least the credit union: Whoever’s the next president, he or she will be called the worst president in United States history. It’s expected. It’s almost required. It’s tradition!

JOE BIDEN probably won’t be the worst president in this country’s short history. Actually, there’s plenty of time for him to be among the best. Or maybe he’ll sink into that category that includes Chester A. Arthur and Millard Fillmore and Rutherford B. Hayes. (If you can name a major policy of each of them, you’re a history professor.)

How about we give President Biden another year? Or even the rest of his term. Then let’s all wait 20 years after he leaves office, and allow ourselves the perspective that comes with time. We’ll give the historians a chance to argue about him. And then the rest of us can argue about the historians. After all, historians are a lot like economists. If you don’t like what one has to say, ask the next one.

After after another four or five administrations, we can look back at Biden’s and compare it to William Henry Harrison’s, or Dwight D. Eisenhower’s, or Abraham Lincoln’s, and have a serious discussion about where this one belongs. Even President Biden’s press people, who are awful, can’t be ranked as the worst. We give you Nixon’s:

“I would feel that most of the conversations that took place in those areas of the White House that did have the recording system would, in almost their entirety, be in existence, but the special prosecutor, the court, and, I think, the American people are sufficiently familiar with the recording system to know where the recording devices existed, and to know the situation in terms of the recording process, but I feel, although the process has not been undertaken yet in preparation of the material to abide by the court decision, really, what the answer to that question is.”— Ronald Ziegler