Bill Maher: On "America's Worst President"

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

A little dated, but well put. From the Real Time with Bill Maher site ( link ).

... New Rule: Jimmy Carter must be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. Last weekend, former U.S. president and current Al Qaeda operative--Jimmy Carter, launched an unprovoked attack upon democracy itself by telling an Arkansas newspaper that the Bush Administration has been the worst in history. And people were shocked... Arkansas has newspapers?!

But, once again, we were sucked into a phony controversy about who said what and how it hurts George Bush's feelings. Because when you hurt George Bush, you hurt America's feelings; and when you hurt America's feelings, you hurt the troops. And when that happens, Tinker Bell's light goes out and she dies.

Now, as for Carter's assertion, I was up all night on Wikipedia doing an exhaustive study of former presidents. And while other presidents have sucked in their own individual ways, Bush is like a smorgasbord of "suck." He -- he combines the corruption of Warren G. Harding, the war-mongering of James Polk, and the abuse of power of Richard Nixon.

Nixon got in trouble for illegally wiretapping Democratic headquarters. Bush is illegally wiretapping the entire country!

Nixon opened up relations with the Chinese. Bush let them poison your dog.

Herbert Hoover, who was literally named after a machine that sucks--sat on his ass through four years of Depression, but he was an actual engineer. And if someone told him about global warming, he would have understood it before the penguins caught on fire.

Ulysses S. Grant let his cronies loot the republic, but he won his Civil War.

Harding...Harding sucked, but he once said, "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here." So at least he knew he sucked. He never walked offstage like Bush does after one of his embarrassing, language-mangling press conferences--with that smirk on his face like, "Nailed it!" Or maybe that's just the look you get when you have a showdown with the Democrats, and you win. Like he just did with Iraq. You don't get to become the worst president ever without a little help from the other side.

You know, I like Jimmy Carter, but when the -- when the Republican "fake outrage" machine pretended to be so upset at his remarks, Carter did what Democrats do, and backed down. He said his words were careless and misquoted, and the sun was in his eyes, and his hearing aid went out, and he was molested by a clergyman.

Instead of looking them in the eye and saying, "No, I meant what I said because it's true! And speaking as the first citizen of Habitat for Humanity, let me take out my Jimmy Carter toolbox and build you a house where we can meet, and you can blow me."