In Your Ear — The Worse-Than-W List

Historical September–October 2016 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

You know, one of the advantages of being, er, older – if not old yet – is that you’ve seen a lot in your lifetime and it’s hard to think that something is as good or as bad as common opinion would suggest.

A Ted Drewes frozen custard, for example, is quite good, but it’s not as good as local lore would have it. Sorry, Ted. Likewise, a friend who lives in Cincinnati tells me that the question everyone there asks is “Where did you go to high school?” So maybe we’re not as provincial as we think. And sure, the Gateway Arch is quite impressive but it feels a bit less grand after you’ve seen the Eifel Tower.

On the other hand, being, er, older – if not old yet – does allow one to recognize something that is terribly bad, a true stinker. Yes, I’m referring to the presidency of George W. Bush, #43 if you’re keeping score.

As bad as we may have thought Bush was at the time (and, believe me, I thought he was really bad), hindsight tells us that he was even worse.

In fact, if you ranked the presidents, he would wind up at #43 since Tricky Dicky Nixon has a permanent hold on rock bottom.

But don’t take my word for it.

A recent book, Bush, by Jean Edward Smith, says, “The fact is, the threat of terrorism that confronts the United States is in many respects a direct result of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.” Thank you, W. (The Smith quote is from a Maureen Dowd NYT column.

While I like to read, wading through this book would be as painful as going through adolescence again. Once was enough for both.) This caused me to wonder if it would be possible for someone to be a worse president than Bush. Being that bad doesn’t come easily; it requires focus, effort, and Dick Cheney as V-P. It’s a high bar, I agree, but out of the millions of people in the U.S. who are older than 35, surely there are some plausible candidates. Thus in the interest of fair play for W, here are five people who I am sure would be even worse presidents than W was.

From bad to worst, here goes, and drum roll please… 5. Pat Sajak. Sure, he is a great host on Wheel of Fortune, but he just asks for consonants and vowels. Deciding whether to invade and who gets appointed to the Supremes would be made by spinning the big wheel, so his presidency would have been even more illogical. Vanna might be a good V-P but who would know since she never says anything. 4. Bozo the Clown. I’m not sure what Bozo is doing these days. Being a circus clown is pretty physically demanding so he may have returned to his law practice.

He makes the list because I can’t imagine him cutting ribbons or being a good negotiator in his clown outfit.

On the other hand, the press conferences might be pretty funny! 3. Sarah Palin. Granted, she can see Russia from her front porch, but so can Santa Claus.

Her lack of foreign policy experience and history of poor judgment and foolish statements would be scary. And she didn’t even finish her last term as governor of Hawaii. (That was just to see if you were paying close attention, dear reader.

We all know that she was mayor of LaDue.) 2. John Belushi. OK, to be fair, he’s long gone, but he was just named the #1 star of Saturday Night Live, so maybe he’s not truly gone. Regardless, despite the fact that he was a lot of fun he would not have been a good president.

He couldn’t have looked presidential in his sweatshirt and there would have been toga parties at the White House. I’m tempted, though, not to list him because I’m sure that he would have chosen Dan Ackroyd to be his president of vice, and that would have been good. Having a ghostbuster in the White House sure couldn’t hurt. 1. Donald Trump. Since when does being born with a silver spoon in your mouth and hosting a reality television show lead to running the country? P. T. Barnum, who said, “Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public,” must be smiling. At least Ronnie Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild and had actually worked, like in a real job.

If Trump were to become president, jobs would be created because we would need more groundskeepers to repair the damage caused by all of the Founding Fathers who would turn over in their graves.

But that could never happen, right??? OK, dear reader, who did I miss? Any other candidates for the worse-than-W list? Oh yeah, let me know if you want a VOTE FOR BOZO bumper sticker.

Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September–October 2016.

Read this article in the original newspaper issue.

Original source: SD_Times2016_09.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.