Do you seriously mean to suggest that Bush the Younger’s presidency is worse than that of James Buchanan (1857-1861), the useless doughface who actively collaborated in the perpetuation of Southern race slavery, who applauded the court for the Dred Scott, enforced the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, threw his political prestige behind the slavers’ constitution in Kansas, stormed Harper’s Ferry, and presided over the careening of the country towards sectional war? That Buchanan ought to be excused on the grounds that the times on the eve of the American Civil War were less troubled than in 2001-present? That seems factually false; and if the issues were less complex—slavery being obviously inhuman and the Slave Power being a manifest power for evil—that speaks against Buchanan, not for him. Idiocy and incompetance are one thing; open complicity with evil is another.

One might also mention presidents like Andrew Jackson—an active slaveholder and a successful genocidaire)—or Woodrow Wilson—a militant white supremacist who instituted Jim Crow throughout the Executive branch and fought against women’s suffrage, and who, after running for re-election as the peace candidate, deceived the United States into what may have been the single most pointless bloodbath in world history, instituted a military draft to rustle up a slave army to fight it, and repressed the intense opposition to it through the expedient of throwing political dissidents in prison under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.

Perspective, please.