Harry Truman vs. George W. Bush

Missouri is my home state. We have one president from the state and he left office with record low ratings in the polls. Missourians don't really care what the rest of the country thinks so we loved him anyway and over the last few decades his rating as a president has risen among historians and those members of the public who have heard of him. Americans aren't very good at history.

Now reports from the White House have W casting himself as another Truman. As Truman organized the country and our allies for the Cold War. W sees himself as doing the same against radical Muslim terrorists who "threaten our freedom." He is even saying that history will judge him as being in the right on Iraq and all the rest just like they have Harry.

Hold on right there, mister...

Harry Truman would laugh in your face and such a comparison. First, he had no time for rich boys who lives are made by their name and family connections. Ask the Kennedys about the line, "It's not the pope, it's the pop that bothers me." Second, he would despise having anyone with so little sense of history and so lacking in desire to learn. Harry, one of his grandsons said, used to read them ancient Greek history as children. He never went to college, but also never stopped educating himself. I am not sure W ever really started. Third, Harry's counter to Soviet Communism was based firmly on the need for international cooperation and alliances begun under FDR. Harry got the UN started. He never saw himself as being so powerful that he could declare "you're with us or against us." He recognized that the US lacked the power to "beat communism" by itself. His greatest policy action against communism was probably the Marshall Plan efforts to rebuild Europe. The Korean War was only minimally successful at best. It is, of course, Korea that W clings to as a comparison of his FUBAR War in Iraq. W wishes he could get minimal success there. He had that in Afghanistan, but that may be changing for the worse as well. Finally, Harry did not lead the witch hunts for communists that defined the McCarthy Era begun during his presidency. He did fail to act as a strong counter to the whack job congressional Republicans of the day, but he didn't lead the way in attacking the "Red Menace" by undermining the Constitution. Domestically, W's main legacy is his continuing attack on checks and balances and the Bill of Rights. Because Harry did have a knowledge of history and a great love for the US Senate where he served before becoming Vice-President, he would find the behavior of the 109th Congress disgraceful in its inactivity. Google the Truman Committee and see what a real senator does to oversee the executive even during a war led by a president of his own party.

If W wants to look for past presidents to which he may be compared, he may want to start with
names such as Nixon, Hoover, Harding and Buchanan. It is among these lowly past presidents that W may find his own name in the battle for "worst president ever." He has a touch of each them in his presidency. Like Harding, his presidency has involved corruption aimed at enhancing those with political connections to his party. Like Hoover, he has failed to react to dramatic changes in the world, instead sticking to his set views on what policy should be. And his Katrina response invoked Hoover's failures as he seemed to have no response to the suffering of American citizens to disaster beyond state and local government's ability to help. Like Nixon, he sees the president as beyond legal constraints as long as he is acting as "commander-in-chief." And finally, like Buchanan, he has failed to act as civil war approached and, in fact, he has gone beyond Buchanan by creating conditions to start the damn thing.

W, you need to leave Harry Truman out of your efforts at legacy manipulation. He had enough troubles of his own. He doesn't need you screwing with his place in history in a desperate attempt to start spinning your failures.