Max Boot has gone from being a foreign policy advisor for John McCain to Mitt Romney, to becoming an entertaining and enlightening NeverTrumper. One thing he has had yet to do is to declare Trump the worst president ever. At least, that’s what he says in his latest Washingon Post column:
Until now, I have generally been reluctant to label Donald Trump the worst president in U.S. history.
But, as of today, he’s calling it; his column’s headline: “The worst president. Ever.“ Boot isn’t the only one scouring the history books for sadder examples of presidents. As our esteemed #AbbreviatedPunditRound-up author noted:
That link (“Spin Won’t Save Trump” by David Greenberg at POLITICO) provides a detailed comparison of Trump to Herbert Hoover. I bring that up because (surprisingly) that’s one former president that Max Boot neglected to mention. Anyway, back to Boot, who describes the consequences of the disasterous COVID-19 response in the United States:
This fiasco is so monumental that it makes our recent failed presidents — George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter — Mount Rushmore material by comparison. Trump’s Friday night announcement that he’s firing the intelligence community inspector general who exposed his attempted extortion of Ukraine shows that he combines the ineptitude of a George W. Bush or a Carter with the corruption of Richard Nixon.
Boot namedrops other past POTUS failures: Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding. But James Buchanan seems to hold a special place in his heart, calling him the last “major competitor” for the prize, because his “dithering helped lead us into the Civil War”. Howeer, he concedes:
But there is good reason to think that the Civil War would have broken out no matter what. By contrast, there is nothing inevitable about the scale of the disaster we now confront.
The rest of the piece is a good summary of the grim situation we find ourselves in today. Boot concludes the piece by confronting how history will judge Trump, and then concludes:
But whatever happens in November, Trump cannot escape the pitiless judgment of history.
Somewhere, a relieved James Buchanan must be smiling.