Rush to Judgement

Stephen Knott, a professor at the U.S. War Naval College, has a good column in the Washington Post on the rush to judgement made by historians on the record of President George W. Bush.  This column is a snapshot of his full length treatment of the subject in his book Rush to Judgement:  George W. Bush, the War of Terror, and His Critics.  Much like smearing of Calvin Coolidge by the New Deal historians, historians today have similarly trashed Bush--even when he was still in office.  A sample:

In April 2006, Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz published an essay in Rolling Stone titled “The Worst President in History?” Wilentz argued that “George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace” in part because he had “demonized the Democrats,” hurting the nation’s ability to wage war. No other U.S. president “failed to embrace the opposing political party” in wartime, Wilentz claimed, despite numerous examples to the contrary, such as whenFranklin D. Roosevelt compared his Republican opponents to fascists in 1944.

And:

Not to be outdone, in December of that year Columbia history professor Eric Foner proclaimed Bush “the worst president in U.S. history” and argued that Bush sought to “strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta.” According to Foner, Warren Harding of Teapot Dome fame was something of a paragon of virtue next to Bush, whose administration was characterized by “even worse cronyism, corruption, and pro-business bias.”

Knott is not so much interested in giving the Bush presidency a sterling review, but he is instead calling out those historians who do not practice what they preach.

In their hasty, partisan-tinged assessments of Bush, far too many scholars breached their professional obligations, engaging in a form of scholarly malpractice, by failing to do what historians are trained to do before pronouncing judgment on a presidency: conduct tedious archival research, undertake oral history interviews, plow through memoirs, interview foreign leaders and wait for the release of classified information.

[...] 

George W. Bush’s low standing among academics reflects, in part, the rise of partisan scholarship: the use of history as ideology and as a political weapon, which means the corruption of history as history. Bush may not have been a great president; he may even be considered an average or below-average president, but he and — more important — the nation deserve better than this partisan rush to judgment.

Even more than the Marxists roots that most historians today share, they also tend to see history with a capital H--History that encapsulates men and their times in amber--much like dinosaur fossils.  Instead of right and wrong being always true no matter the time and place, historians tend to see right and wrong as bowing down to History (the phrase in politics of "being on the right side of history" comes to mind).  They reject the Lincolnian teaching that the principle that all men are created equal is a truth applicable to all men and all times.  Instead, we are marching towards something, but (with the influences of post-modernism) we are no longer sure of just what that place is.