You get that? As bad as James Buchanan

Daring the posters at The Corner to defy him, Sean Wilentz (author of the mammoth The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln) penned an article in the new Rolling Stone entitled, "The Worst President in History."

I know. This is the same magazine which cooed delightedly when Bill Clinton wished that the Constitution didn't set a term limit for the Chief Executive so that he could run for a third term. But the catalogue of failures makes for grim reading, and, Wilentz suggests, it ain't gonna get better:

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- [James] Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, [Herbert] 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.

Meanwhile I looked at smilin' old Tony Snow, the White House's new press secretary and someone I've always sorta liked, and wonder how he's going to give coherence to an adminstration that ain't got none anymore.