Iranians staged a demonstration after prayers Friday.
With less than a month to go until the end of his presidency, it is appropriate to wonder where George W. Bush will stand among the rest of the presidents.
A verdict — of sorts — apparently has already been rendered. When the Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at Bush during the president's recent farewell visit to the country he ordered U.S. troops to invade five years ago, that journalist was merely acting out the greatest insult in the Arab world, which is to slap your shoe against somebody.
It's debatable whether Bush knew what it meant. His reaction was to shrug it off.
It's not so easy to shrug off what public opinion surveys have been saying for a long time.
Bush's most recent approval ratings, according to PollingReport.com, are 24% in the CBS News poll, 27% in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 29% in the USA Today/Gallup Poll, 30% in the ABC News/Washington Post poll and 30% in the FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll.
Significantly, these are not his lowest readings ever. That distinction belongs to October of this year, when his approval numbers fell to the mid- and low 20s following the economic meltdown. He seems to have bounced back slightly since then.
Nearly three years ago, in April 2006, historian Sean Wilentz wrote an assessment of the Bush presidency, then barely into the second year of its second term, in Rolling Stone. In hindsight, it seems almost prescient.
"Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace," Wilentz wrote. "Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th … there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents."
And that, Wilentz warned, was a "best-case scenario."
"Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history," Wilentz wrote.
Less than a year later — after Democrats had seized control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the mid-1990s — journalist Nicholas von Hoffman examined the question for The Nation.
"How do you judge?" he asked thoughtfully. His article was critical — and rightfully so — of the presidents who served in the decades leading up to the Civil War — especially Abraham Lincoln's immediate predecessor, James Buchanan, who, "[a]side from being a dull, unimaginative, dray horse of a politician, he was the president whose cowardice in handling the South and slavery ended the remotest possibility that the United States would be spared the horrors of the Civil War."But the 20th century's presidents were not given a pass.
"Ever since the atom bomb was dropped," he observed, "we've had a whole string of bozos who cannot pronounce the word 'nuclear.' How much should that count against them?"
Herbert Hoover, he insisted, was the "unluckiest president," and "it's still too early to tell" about Richard Nixon.As for Bush, von Hoffman wrote, it's also too early to tell. "One of the criteria for being worst is how much lasting damage the president did," he wrote. "Buchanan, for instance, did more than words can convey. With Bush II the reckoning is yet to be made."
In April of this year, after John McCain had secured the nomination of Bush's party, Scott Horton of Harper's Magazine observed that a majority of historians surveyed by George Mason University's History News Network were ready to proclaim him the "worst ever" president.
This, Horton wrote, was a "dramatic deterioration" for Bush. The president "wasn't viewed in the most positive terms" in the spring of 2004, when he was unable, in response to a question at a press conference, to identify a mistake he had made in his first term, "but there was a consensus that he wasn't the 'worst of the worst' either."
Since that time, Horton wrote, "Bush has established himself as the torture president, the basis for his invasion of Iraq has been exposed as a fraud, the Iraq War itself has gone disastrously, the nation's network of alliances has faded, and the economy has gone into a tailspin — not to mention the bungled handling of relief for victims of hurricane Katrina."
As a matter of fact, I have often wondered what Bush's approval ratings might have looked like if his own father and his predecessor had not teamed up to raise relief funds for the victims of both Katrina and the 2004 tsunami.How much worse could things have been following both disasters if those two former presidents had not become involved?
In the aftermath of one of the worst holiday retail sales periods in decades, one can only wonder how much lower Bush's ratings can fall before he leaves the White House.
But a sure sign that he is rapidly becoming irrelevant is the proliferation of web-based games inspired by the shoe-throwing incident. This holiday season, they seem to have replaced the Christmas-oriented bowling games and similar seasonal activities that circulate on the web.
- Sock and Awe! is a nice play on the phrase that was associated with the invasion of Iraq.
- Can YOU throw a shoe at Bush? is a pleasant diversion. Bush keeps moving and ducking, so you won't hit him every time. And the graphic is kind of cheesy. Most players will get their fill of this game in no time.
- Shoe Bush Worldwide isn't so much a game as it is therapy for all the frustrated Bush haters. It might provide some satisfaction — as Bush gets more and more bruised each time he's hit with a shoe.
- Kast En Sko På Bush, which apparently is a Norwegian site, is about the right angle and acceleration to throw a shoe and make a direct hit. If you were a physics major in college, you can probably figure this out quickly — and move on to something more challenging.
- I'm not sure where the Bush Shoe Throwing Game originates, but, although it seems fairly simple, I give it a certain amount of credit for using what seems to be an authentic screen capture from the actual event in Iraq.
- Flying babush invites visitors to play the role of Bush and try to duck flying shoes as long as possible. The more sadistic visitors will put Bush in one spot and leave him there to get pelted by shoes.
- There are other games in which the player assumes the role of Bush, some better than others. Returning to games in which visitors can be the shoe thrower instead of the shoe dodger, GamePro's Hit Bush With Shoe gives players additional time with each successful strike.
USA Today reported this week that, by a very wide margin, Barack Obama is the man who is admired most by Americans.
That can mean an extended "honeymoon" with Congress — or an impatient public.
If Obama is dealing with an impatient public, that may mean a short honeymoon — and lots of pressure to accomplish something quickly.
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