I know what you’re thinking.

• FDR ended the Great Depression.
• FDR advanced the cause of blacks.
• FDR was immensely popular.

For the most part, simply NOT true.

FDR did not end the Great Depression.  Have you ever looked at the simple facts?  The Great Depression started in about 1930 and lasted until about 1940 (not exact, give me specifics if you want).  People blame Hoover for this depression and credit FDR with getting us out, but Hoover was only president for two of these years and FDR was president for eight of them (1932 > ).  Now why do you think that the depression lasted until we entered WWII (which, by the way, is what really saved us, what with the selling war materials and such)?  Because of the New Deal.  Think about it.  The government pays people for “beutification projects” and such stuff.  What does the US get out of this?  Nothing much.  All that’s happening is money being moved around a little.  No revenue is being generated, because those workers aren’t producing anything.  Now, some of the projects did produce some things, like roads and such.  So, the New Deal wasn’t 100% horrible, but neither was it the saving grace that the liberal educators of our country make it out to be.  Pouring money into worthless things like beutification projects and bailing out banks (not the same as what we’re doing now, but similar) prolonged the depression until WWII.

On Wikipedia, you can read about how FDR opposed anti-lynching legislation! Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d think that any friend of the blacks would want to pass legislation preventing their murder.  His reasoning was essentially that he required the support of the lynchers (southern Democrats).  That may very well be true, but anyone with an ounce of decency would be willing to commit political suicide to stop mass murder (*cough* Bush *cough*), provided, of course, that such measures would last.  Now, I’m not saying that FDR was anti-black.  After all, he did pass some equal employment legislation or other, but he was not the champion of blacks that we’re taught he was in history class.  He even opposed integration in the military.

FDR was immensely popular?  True, but see previous post.

At this point, Barack Obama has been president for about nine hours. Surprisingly, everything is not all better just yet.

That’s because regardless of one’s political leanings, religious beliefs, or philosophical affiliations, only a deluded optimist would insist that Obama has inherited a good situation. The last eight years have been a nonstop, unending, it-can’t-get-any-worse-but-it-has cavalcade of disaster.

I don’t mean that the Bush years were just bad for Hispanics. It’s true that, in the last decade, Latinos have become the top victims of hate crimes based on ethnicity. It’s also true that the economic wipeout has affected the lower classes more, of which Hispanics make up a disproportionate percentage. And it’s ultimately true that Latinos are currently being blamed for everything from the increase in petty crime to the housing crisis to the country’s apparent moral collapse (this latter disaster seems to happen every few years).

But we do not hold a monopoly on the suffering.

The past decade has been catastrophic for whites, blacks, people of Middle Eastern descent, intellectuals, scientists, union laborers, New Orleans residents, civil libertarians, gays, moderate conservatives, atheists, middle-class office managers, stay-at-home moms, rugged farmers, diabetic stock brokers, one-eyed dentists, and “Battlestar Galactica” freaks – in short, just about everybody in America.

As I say goodbye to President Bush, I’m trying to imagine any administration in history having even one of the following as its legacy:

• Two botched wars (including the worst foreign-policy decision since Vietnam)
• Two recessions (including the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression)
• The worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history (the mastermind behind it is still at large)
• The most inept handling of a major natural disaster in U.S. history (we basically lost the city of New Orleans to mud and water moccasins)
• An unprecedented, massive backsliding of civil rights (historians will be amazed that we put up with this fear-mongering)
• Overt, criminal corruption at the Justice Department (at least in the same league as Watergate)
• An incredibly tarnished image abroad (and yes, it does matter if we want to claim that we lead the free world).

 That’s just the big stuff. I know I’m forgetting a lot.

Any one of those top three items is sufficient to end discussion about Bush’s competence. Put them all together and pile on other major catastrophes and some lesser disasters and… well… really, I’m still trying to comprehend how all this happened under the watch of one guy. This much chaos usually gets spread around over a half-century or so.

Some commentators say that Bush’s reputation will be repaired as time goes on. I agree, in the sense that it can’t get any worse… then again, I’ve said that phrase many times over the last eight years.

Will Obama be a fresh start and the beginning of a bold new era of greatness and American strength? Or will he be our second dud in a row?

I’m optimistic that he will be a good president, even if I’ve never quite bought into the whole “Obama as Lincoln/Roosevelt/savior” thing. Hell, I’ll settle for basic competency at this point.

In any case, I join all Americans – Hispanic, white, black, Asian, and purple –  in wishing the new president well. Hopefully, we can get back on track.

It’s not like we’re due for some good news or anything.

In the closing days of the Bush Administration, George Bush now being the lamest and the most duck-like he could be, one begins to reminisce on his time spent in the White House. There is no doubt in my mind, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how many writers he commissions to write a book, he will go down in history as one of the worst, most ineffective presidents in US history. He will not be forgotten. In the eight years as president, George W. Bush’s administration has been littered with scandals, deregulation, grammatical mishaps, and war. 

Back in 2000, George W. Bush “beat” Al Gore in an arguably close, controversial election which came down to the wire (and the Supreme Court). Seeing that most of the nation considered that a “stolen election”, Bush already started off a little badly. Frankly if Al Gore was half as cool then as he is now (I chose to overlook the fact his ranch uses more electricity than Kennedy Space Center), history would have been different but hey, that’s just me. Between 2000 and 2001, Bush was known for his obvious and often comical grammatical gaffes, which really didn’t help the rumor going around that he was, well…a moron. People didn’t know the “guy they’d want to have a beer with” and more over didn’t really know what to expect. Then came September 11, 2001, the darkest day this nation has ever seen.

Al Qaeda strikes the US in a jaw dropping attack to the mainland that cost thousands of lives, billions in damage, two iconic buildings and an outer wing of every ones favorite geometric shape. Bush was now in a position to rise above and become a great leader…and that’s what he did for a bit. President Bush saw the highest approval numbers in his career. Soon after he was so bold as to declare war on the idea of terrorism and create a new chapter in US foreign policy book, the Bush Doctrine (if you don’t know what that is, ask Sarah Palin, she’ll tell you). First target, Afghanistan, the home base of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The administration’s failure to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden seem to find it’s way out of the spotlight. Soon however, Bush switched focus to…Iraq?

Arguably the most controversial occupation of a sovereign nation the Bush Administration sponsored, the Iraq War proved to be a bit more than America wanted to chew. I am sure everyone would have been for the Iraq War if we were pulling nukes and chemical warheads in droves from Saddam Huessein’s posh Bagdhad palace (even more so if they were golden warheads to match his toilet) but alas, that wasn’t the case. The Iraq War will go down as the biggest lie the Bush Administration dropped on the American people. Primarily because the war was founded on intelligence Dick Cheney scribbled on a cocktail napkin one night when he was bored. Soon after he prematurely declared “mission accomplished” by pompously landing on an aircraft carrier in full flight gear, Iraq turned from an occupation to a policing action. One that cost the lives of our troops (4,209 to be exact) and billions upon billions of dollars to fund. 

While the government continued to spend, spend, spend in Iraq, not only by increasing troops but by handing out contracts to Bush Administration BFF Haliburton, Afghanistan became the forgotten war. Troop reallocations crippled forces in Afghanistan. Recent studies show that the Taliban now control 72 percent of Afghanistan, up from 54 percent last year. Our entrance in to Iraq also gave Al-Qaeda another front in the jihad against the United States, where it lurks in the shadows, attacking U.S. troops and interests with IED’s and ambush attacks. Now keep in mind, Iraq’s link to Al-Qaeda came only after coalition forces occupied Iraq. Intelligence reports of Al-Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein were also exaggerated, as Bin Laden had branded Hussein an “infidel” and asked his followers to support the Iraqi people and NOT their government.

But the most notable Bush Administration blunder didn’t happen on some foreign battlefield, but here at home. The catastrophic failure of the U.S. Government to act in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was, in my opinion, the final nail in the Bush Administration’s coffin.  Leaving people for three days in a giant stadium with no food, no water, no support what-so-ever is frankly…unacceptable. Our National Guard was streched thin due to deployments in Iraq, and FEMA was caught with it’s pants down. Warnings of the possible disaster a category five hurricane could create in New Orleans fell on deaf ears, and the governments lack of preparedness caused U.S. citizens to suffer. The thing I noticed at the time is that whenever people debate issues, whether its the Iraq War, or the Bush Doctrine, there are always two sides, two parties one for one against. During the aftermath of the Katrina, there was one side, a thoroughly saddened and disappointed one. 

Of course, our current economic crisis can’t help but have Bush Administration fingerprints either. Inheriting a budget surplus from the Clinton years, George W. Bush quickly turned it in to a budget deficit. Shortly after 9/11, Bush urged the American people to “spend, spend, spend” their way out of the recession. It was this moment in our nation’s history that began the downward spiral of our economy and the beginning of the credit crunch. Also the ever increasing cost of the two wars weighed heavily on the budget, to the point where shortly after the bailout passed, an extra space had to be added to the debt clock. Also the administrations over all disdain for regulation led to these massive amounts of bad mortgages, and over all irresponsibility in the economy.  

Sadly these aren’t the only follies of the Bush Administration. There’s that whole CIA leak thing, all the secret contracts with Halliburton and various other oil companies, and…you know, Dick Cheney shot a dude. But I don’t want this to get too long. Point is George W. Bush was a president. He we elected to the highest seat of power this nation has, and served in it for 8 years, TWO terms, so give that man the credit that is due. Watch Oliver Stone’s “W” and even the most militant Bush hating, Prius driving, tree hugging pacifist will at the very least understand the guy. His rise from a coke snorting Yale frat boy to President of the United States of America is mind blowing. But along with that credit, tack on some criticism & blame.

I spent many an evening compiling all my results. All the links for all the individual detailed presidential analysis are here.

Now I acknowledge before I go any further that this exercise was purely subjective. If a hundred people did the same thing I did, they numbers would turn out a hundred different ways. Different presidents would be good, or not good, and the presidents’ experience could be counted as “executive” in ways I didn’t consider or excluded. This isn’t fact, it’s simply my opinion. My overtired, worn-out, bleeding-heart liberal (but fiscally somewhat conservative) opinion. I also want to thank the internet, without which I could never have put this together. Specifically, Wikipedia and all the relevant cited sources in each president’s article, and the excellent essays of the Miller Center of Public Affairs were especially helpful.

To review and sum up, I wanted to look at each president and see if their “executive experience” was a strong predictor of their success as president … or if their lack of executive experience was a predictor of a poor presidency. I had a null hypothesis — that being that more presidents that had executive experience (or lacked it) would be good presidents (or not good, if they didn’t have executive experience). The alternative hypothesis would be non-expected results… more presidents who didn’t have executive experience being good presidents (or with executive experience being bad presidents). I decided “executive experience” would be someone who’d served in the executive branch as a governor, but not vice president. A general in the armed forces counted, as did entrepreneurial experience by running a company, or presiding over a college. I went president by president, summing up their experience and whether history has shown them to be a good president.

There were three presidents who I didn’t score because of the brevity of their term, and Grover Cleveland only got scored once, even though he served two non-successive terms. What that means is though there were 43 presidents so far, I’ve only got 39 actual presidencies represented here on out.

I ended up with a pretty even match-up — 21 good presidents and 18 not-good presidents. There were also 24 with executive experience and 15 without executive experience. You get a matrix that looks like this:

When it comes to the null and alternative hypothesis… well, things start getting interesting. Out of 39 presidencies, ones where either a good president had executive experience or a bad president didn’t have it, 16, or 41% of presidents, met the null hypothesis. That means 23, or about 59% of presidents, met the alternative hypothesis. If executive experience were a good predictor of success as a president, I’d expect the percentage of presidencies meeting the null hypothesis at LEAST over 50%… and we didn’t even get there! A very safe conclusion from these numbers is that executive experience is simply NOT a strong predictor of success as a president. If my statistical analysis skills weren’t so rusty, and if I had Excel on this laptop and not just MS Works (which is basically good for making a grocery list and not much else) I could attempt to slap some real statistics on this, but I frankly don’t have the energy and the numbers mostly speak for themselves anyway, in my opinion. If anyone WOULD like to work out some statistical conclusions, be my guest! I’d be happy to supply my original spreadsheet and anything else you may need.

Take a look at that 2×2 matrix by rows, focusing on the “executive experience” or “no executive experience” categorization. I’d say that based on this, if someone comes into office with executive experience, it’s basically a crap shoot whether or not they will be a good president. Without executive experience, however, odds are 2:1 that they WILL be a good president. I guess this is promising for both Obama and McCain, since neither have the executive experience the GOP is claiming makes Palin soooooo “qualified”. It would be interesting to do a multi-categorical analysis of all the presidents, looking at a number of factors to determine which factors were most predictive of presidential success. Maybe it’s a long congressional service. Or geography. Or education. Or personality traits. Or some combination therein. Or some other factor I am not thinking of.

Some interesting observations:

• The largest of the four categories in the 2×2 is the category of presidents who had executive experience but were not good presidents. I don’t think with a proper statistical analysis that this category would stand out as significant in and of itself, but it just is interesting to look at and ponder.
• Some of the most highly regarded “good” presidents were in the “no executive experience” category — Lincoln, Kennedy, and Truman stand out. So it’s not like the presidents with executive experience were all the really great presidents and the ones without were just OK.
• Three of the most consistently ranked worst presidents — Pierce, Harding, and Buchanan — had no executive experience before entering office. So, while executive experience doesn’t mean any sort of guarantee of success, perhaps it at least helps ensure that a president isn’t going to be horribly, tremendously, stupendously awful.

In summary, I believe this executive experience talk is hogwash, and Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani and all the other Republiclones need to just shut their pieholes about it. Unless what they’re trying to say is “Hey, at least if Sarah Palin becomes president, she won’t be as terrible as Warren G. Harding.” (Wow, that would be a great campaign slogan!)

Abusing Power for Dummies by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf (pictured above at the worst presidents ever convention):

1. Get elected under questionable circumstances that draw international scrutiny.
2. When the Supreme Court attempts to question your election, declare a state of emergency, take control of the country and its military, cancel scheduled elections and arrest the Supreme Court justices who were questioning you (as well as other political opponents).
3. When the international community demands you stop acting like a dick, put together your own Supreme Court and reschedule elections but refuse to step down as commander of the military.
4. When international pressure continues, step down from your military position but refuse to give up power.
5. Finally, lift the state of emergency and restore the Constitution (only after adding your own amendments that specifically state that you can’t be held responsible for your previous actions).

Yep, that’s right.  I mean, 70% of our nation thinks our president is an idiot, but just imagine having this clown!  Who does he think he’s fooling with this?  Does he really think that scribbling in a few of his own amendments in the margins of his country’s Constitution is going to protect him from what he’s done?  Does he think that people are going to stop questioning the validity of his election if he simply replaces the Supreme Court?  All he has done is bring more international attention to how incompetent of a leader he is!  I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried:

Mr. Musharraf said in his executive order restoring the Constitution that any provision made during the last six weeks of emergency rule “shall not be called in question by or before any court.”

A second order revoking the proclamation of emergency states that any future presidential order regarding the issue could also not be challenged in any court. Presidential orders usually lapse after three months unless ratified by Parliament, but if issued under a state of emergency, they automatically become law.

Mr. Musharraf also issued six constitutional amendments late Friday night that strengthen his legal position regarding his re-election and his dismissal of the Supreme Court. Three amendments cleared away restrictions raised by lawyers challenging Mr. Musharraf’s eligibility to run for another term. Another confirmed that the former judges of the Supreme Court could no longer continue in their jobs, and that the newly installed judges would replace them.

Don’t worry, Pakistan isn’t going to take this laying down.  Already, 23 former ambassadors and foreign secretaries have signed a statement calling for Mr. Musharraf to reverse all the steps he has taken since imposing emergency rule.  Also, lawyers in the country are boycotting the courts and refusing to work before judges who took a new oath under the emergency.  Imagine, lawyers holding their President responsible for violating their country’s judicial system!  Keep your eyes on Pakistan over the coming week.  I think things are only going to get worse for Musharraf.

Musharraf Lifts State of Emergency in Pakistan – [New York Times]