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Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties - Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush - have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off.

In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust.

Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures - an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

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Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever.

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Recent events provide an especially good illustration of Bush's fateful - perhaps fatal - approach. Six generals who have served under Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have called for his resignation - making a strong substantive case as to why he should resign. And they are not alone: Editorialists have also persuasively attacked Rumsfeld on the merits.

Yet Bush's defense of Rumsfeld was entirely substance-free. Bush simply told reporters in the Rose Garden that Rumsfeld would stay because "I'm the decider and I decide what's best." He sounded much like a parent telling children how things would be: "I'm the Daddy, that's why."

This, indeed, is how Bush sees the presidency, and it is a point of view that will cause him trouble.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
I'm the Decider (Koo Koo Ka-Choo)

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His ... family is mighty tight with the old Hitler regime

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Originally posted by BlueBerry Pick'n:
Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced

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