Letters.

As anyone who knows me will probably testify, I like to write the occasional letter to newspapers. Not that I believe that I have anything particularly important to say, but I do have difficulty letting something in print that I disagree with go without riposte. As a result when I read the letter below in The Herald today I felt moved to write a response. Here and to the newspaper! At least here I know I'll get published. Still, it won't stop me looking at the Herald letters page tomorrow in anticipation. I think my success rate is about 66% or so at the moment.

‘Bush is the worst President in US history’
YOUR LETTERS January 25 2007
"George Bush looks like a busted flush, destined to be haunted by Iraq" (The Herald, January 24). This judgment is generous alongside views expressed last month in The Washington Post by five distinguished American scholars.

Most overtly scathing were articles by Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University, and Douglas Brinkley, director of the Roosevelt Centre at Tulane University.

"It's safe to bet," writes Brinkley, "that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder he has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be President."

Professor Foner, too, places Bush on "the bottom rung", beside Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

Even in such company, Foner thinks "there is no alternative but to rank (Bush) as the worst President in US history".

Two other historians damn with faint praise. One rates him "the fifth worst", while another asserts that he is at least better than Nixon. Bush's best hope is the last: a fence-sitter, who considers it too early to say.

If that is how leading American historians view the Iraq war's architect, what do their UK peers say of his hod-carrier?

A Google search on "Bush worst ever President" gives 147 hits, while a corresponding one on Blair yields zero. Indeed, around the time of The Washington Post's survey of five historians, two UK counterparts on Radio 4's Today spoke favourably of Blair. Their grounds were that he had won three elections - one more than Ramsay MacDonald but one fewer than Harold Wilson.

That Blair has made the most disastrous political decision in the time of any UK citizen alive did not seem to be factored in.

Why? Could it possibly be due to the greater independence of US universities?
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Now, I don't disagree with the headline, nor most of the sentiment regarding Blair and Bush expressed by the writer, but to use Google as a gauge of academic freedom is frankly ludicrous. That'll be the same Google that tailors its search results in China in relation to the events at Tianenman Square in 1989 to appease the Chinese government's wish to keep a lid on them then, as evidenced here. Now compare it to Google US' search results for the same query here.

Yes I'd use Google as a gauge of academic freedom. Honest.


PS Don't worry, I'm well aware of the irony of me blogging on a website owned by Google and complaining about its suspect search returns. Consider it me chipping away from the inside. Or being too lazy to go find a non-google blogging site. Oh well.