WELL, AS LONG AS WE'RE HANDING OUT A'S FOR EFFORT...

John Cole flags this post from Eli at Firedoglake:

Worst President Ever, Revisited

No, I'm not ready to crown Barack Obama the Worst President Ever just yet, but consider this:

Yes, George W. Bush wrecked our economy, destroyed New Orleans, turned a budget surplus into massive deficits, ignored warnings of a major terrorist attack and used that mistake to lead us into two disastrous military quagmires...

But he also pushed relentlessly for conservative policies and delivered for his base with war, deregulation, tax cuts, environmental rollbacks, and an army of right-wing ideologues embedded in the federal government and judiciary. He failed to privatize Social Security, but not for lack of trying.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, inherited a mess rather than creating one. But not only has he failed to create jobs or restart the economy, he has paid only lip service to progressive policies and betrayed his base at almost every turn....

So which is worse? The president who serves his base and sets the country on fire, or the president who stiffs his base and fights fire with gasoline?

If I'm following this logic correctly, the results from the Bush presidency were horrible and the results of the Obama presidency are horrible so far, but we ought to give Bush credit because he doled out the horrors deliberately.

By that logic, I guess we ought to ask: who piloted a mass transportation vehicle in the most monstrous way in the past century -- the 9/11 hijackers or the captain of the Titanic?

Really, it's an open question, isn't it? Oh, sure, the 9/11 hijackers killed nearly 3,000 people with malice aforethought, but that's just the point. The malice aforethought is a good thing -- they served their base. The fact that the captain of the Titanic didn't want to kill people very possibly makes him a worse person.

Right?