JOHN ADAMS, GEORGE BUSH AND DONNA EDWARDS

Not quite as bad as Bush, but...

Earlier today I looked over new a Rasmussen poll about which presidents Americans most admire. Most of it is quite intuitive.

Six American Presidents are viewed favorably by at least 80% of all Americans. Those esteemed six are led by the first President George Washington. The Father of our Country is viewed favorably by 94% of Americans. The sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln, is the second most popular. The man who gave us the Gettysburg Address is viewed favorably by 92% (see Presidential favorable ratings). The next four are Thomas Jefferson (89%), Teddy Roosevelt (84%), Franklin D. Roosevelt (81%), and John F. Kennedy (80%).

So far, so good. The next batch, however is where the trouble begins. Before I get to that... yes, of course Nixon and Bush II are the two presidents who are the least admired. 60% assign Nixon a negative rating and 59% register the same contempt for Bush. In fact, the "very unfavorable" category is not used much to describe anyone at all. Even Nixon only gets a 25% very unfavorable. Bush, on the other hand, gets the most-- aside from William McKinley (who was also governed by an unscrupulous, much-hated Rove-like figure, Mark Hanna)-- the only president to get more very unfavorables than Nixon. And it was way more. Nixon's 25% is positively dwarfed by Bush's 40%.

None of that surprises me. What does is the overwhelmingly favorable ratings (74%) for another Bush-like figure: John Adams. Aside from John Adams, Bush is most compared to James Polk, who has a meager 27% approval, Warren Harding (29% approval), Nixon (32% approval) and the aforementioned McKinley (42% approval). Adams' presidency was what Thomas Jefferson-- for good reason-- called the "reign of witches." Today Scott Horton explained why-- and why Adam's heavy-handed rule resembles that of Bush more than 200 years later-- in Harper's. "Jefferson believed that the Federalists had overplayed their hand-- that they had manipulated threats from abroad to seize for themselves vastly greater powers than the Constitution permitted them. He also believed that their demonization and mistreatment of the political opposition was an abuse of the powers of office and an assault upon the body politick. Adams had used the power of criminal prosecution to destroy the reputations of dozens of opposition political leaders, and to throw many of them behind bars. Even Jefferson expressed concern that he might be prosecuted... He termed Adams’s tactics as 'divide and conquer.' 'This is not new,' he wrote to John Taylor, 'it is the old practice of despots; to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those who have once got an ascendancy and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage.'"

Does this all sound disturbingly familiar? It should. Bush has been using many of the same divisive tactics, the same fear-mongering, the same narrow politicization of the national business. And it's almost over-- until Democrats, convinced it is their turn at the public trough, turn people against them and back to the Republicans. Is there a way out? Absolutely: primaries. There are too many corrupt, incompetent Democrats in Congress. We write about them all the time-- the Al Wynns, Max Baucuses, Mary Landrieux, John Barrows. Defeat slime like these and watch how fast your Rahm Emanuels and Steney Hoyers will shape up. Right now there are five progressive Blue America candidates who are seriously contending with unworthy Democratic primary opponents. For now that's where the real battle for the soul of our country lies. We'll have more coming soon. But if you want to donate-- and even small amounts help tremendously-- let me recommend the 5 with the primary battles: Victoria Wulsin (OH-02), Steve Cohen (TN-09), Angie Paccione (CO-04), John Laesch (IL-14), and, most important of all, Donna Edwards (MD-04). A victory for Donna over Al Wynn is a shot right across the bow of every faithless, corrupt Democrat on Capitol Hill. There's is nothing the American people could do between now and the February primary-- short of demanding Bush and Cheney be impeached-- to invigorate our democracy that would be more effective than replacing Al Wynn with Donna Edwards. Do the right thing... for America.