US Politics Feature: "Who was the Worst Foreign Policy President?" --- Scott Lucas with CNN

April 2004: George W. Bush struggles to remember any mistake he ever made

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Last week, CNN asked a group of historians, "Who was the best foreign policy President?" --- answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt, although even Jimmy Carter got a look-in --- so it was natural that the US outlet followed up with, ""Who was the worst?"

In contrast to the "best" survey, this one was a landslide, as almost all of the eight respondents named George W. Bush. Carter was a distant runner-up. One historian, just to be a historian, denounced James Polk.

Oh, yes. There was a mention of Barack Obama, coming from Danielle Pletka --- who just happened to be a fierce supporter of the George W. Bush Administration.

After playing the "None of the Above" spoiler in the first interview, I was comfortably with the majority this time:

The worst foreign policy president is easy: George W. Bush. A man of limited intelligence, vision, and knowledge of life beyond the United States, but a man of street-fighting political skills and a determination to persist, whatever the circumstances. A man working with advisors dedicated to the achievement of U.S. power as a perpetual state of dominance – the “unipolar era.”

It was a combination that, before 9-11, was already looking at the possibilities. The day after 9/11, it asked – as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying – “How do we capitalize on these opportunities?” And so one tragedy begat more tragedies. The plan to topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein as the demonstration of U.S. unipolarity, sold on the basis of 9-11 and WMDs, would achieve the opposite: it illustrated vividly the limits of American power and, indeed, of American values.

We – not the American “we” but all of us around the world – are still paying the price of that ill-conceived quest.