Last week, a Pew Research Center poll had George Bush at a 28 percent approval rating, the worst of his presidency. According to the History News Network, an unscientific poll of historians conducted the same week has 61 percent saying that his presidency is the worst in the history of the United States.
Another 31 percent had him in the bottom 10, while only four of the 109 historians polled had him in the top 30.
Ninety-eight percent of the respondents judged W's presidency a "failure," while less than 2 percent said it was a "success." But you know what?
That 2 percent were the ones who were right.
By any objective standard, the Bush Administration has been an unqualified success. Aside from the unintended consequence of destroying the Republican Party, the Bush Administration succeeded in all the goals it set for itself in 2000.
It invaded a country that had oil.
It further enriched the already fabulously wealthy.
It rolled back decades of environmental progress.
It eroded the civil rights and liberties of Americans.
So, if you look at it that way, those historians couldn't be more wrong.
The full story is here: http://hnn.us/... Here's what one of the historians had to say:
No individual president can compare to the second Bush. Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.
The survey was a followup to a similar survey taken four years ago. In that survey, 19 percent of the respondents deemed Bush's presidency a success, while only 11.6 percent put him dead last. [See www.hnn.us/articles/5019.html]
More quotes from survey respondents:
George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States.
Bush does only two things well. He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.
Prior to Bush, historians had pretty much determined that the three worst presidents in history were James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding and Franklin Pierce.
Buchanan was president when the South seceded from the Union. He did nothing, all the while saying, "They can't do that, can they?"
Harding's was the presidency most like Bush's. Corporate American ran the show, and graft and corruption were endemic. Harding was president when the Teapot Dome Scandal occurred.
Pierce was president during the run-up to the secession of the Southern states, signing into law the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which split the Democratic Party and led indirectly to the Civil War.
Of course, my list would include Reagan and probably Andrew Jackson (Trail of Tears). But they would only make the top five or so.
Bush has this one all to himself. Out of 43 total presidents, we are living under the worst. Think about that.