Monday, March 17, 2008

Immanentizing the Eschaton

[Political rant here. Proceed with caution.]

Via John Scalzi I see that the White House is "on top of the situation" with regard to the economy. Well, given the way this White House was "on top" of Iraq, Afghanistan, the post-Katrina debacle, making sure we're torturing people, deficits as far as the eye can see, and everything else it's touched since January 20, 2001, I'd breathe a lot easier if they just said, "You know, folks, we're actually going to let this one work itself out on its own."

Mr. Scalzi recently ranked his list of the worst Presidents of all time, awarding the Number One spot to James Buchanan on the basis that Buchanan "broke the country". I can see the point, although there are different ways to break a country -- if a country's a car, you can break it by driving it into the ditch outright (Buchanan), or you can drain its engine of oil and the radiator of fluid, cut the brakelines, deflate the tires to just ten percent of the recommended PSI, remove the wiper blades, and then drive the vehicle at a high rate of speed on a twisty mountain highway on a rainy day through a cloud of marauding locusts (George W. Bush).

OK, that's out of my system. Moving on.

1 comment:

Roger Owen Green said...

I was appaled by this poll listing GWB aas the 10th BEST President. Obviously decisded by abunch of Americans with zero sense of history. http://news.aol.com/story/_a/americans-rank-lincoln-as-top-president/20080216154509990001
BTW, my ever-changing worst five always includes Buchanan and Harding, but Pierce, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes and Hoover bounce in and out. I gotta think that when his term is over, GWB will join the permanent members of the lousy Presidents' club.