Historians Already Nominating George W. Bush as the Worst President in U.S. History

OK, not all historians and not every one thinks Bush is the absolute worst president, but his legacy isn't looking good. There's a surprising number of historians who are passing some pretty harsh judgment without even waiting for Dubya to finish his second term:

HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst
4-01-08
By Robert S. McElvaine

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

hnn.us...

The Worst President in History?
One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush

SEAN WILENTZ

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

Even worse for the president, the general public, having once given Bush the highest approval ratings ever recorded, now appears to be coming around to the dismal view held by most historians. To be sure, the president retains a considerable base of supporters who believe in and adore him, and who reject all criticism with a mixture of disbelief and fierce contempt -- about a quarter of the electorate. (When the columnist Richard Reeves publicized the historians' poll last year and suggested it might have merit, he drew thousands of abusive replies that called him an idiot and that praised Bush as, in one writer's words, "a Christian who actually acts on his deeply held beliefs.") Yet the ranks of the true believers have thinned dramatically. A majority of voters in forty-three states now disapprove of Bush's handling of his job. No two-term president since polling began has fallen from such a height of popularity as Bush's (in the neighborhood of ninety percent, during the patriotic upswell following the 2001 attacks) to such a low (now in the high twenties). No president, including Harry Truman (whose ratings sometimes dipped below Nixonian levels), has experienced such a virtually unrelieved decline as Bush has since his high point. Apart from sharp but temporary upticks that followed the commencement of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and a recovery during the weeks just before and after his re-election, the Bush trend has been a profile in fairly steady disillusionment.

No previous president appears to have squandered the public's trust more than Bush has. In the 1840s, President James Polk gained a reputation for deviousness over his alleged manufacturing of the war with Mexico and his supposedly covert pro-slavery views. Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois congressman, virtually labeled Polk a liar when he called him, from the floor of the House, "a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man" and denounced the war as "from beginning to end, the sheerest deception." But the swift American victory in the war, Polk's decision to stick by his pledge to serve only one term and his sudden death shortly after leaving office spared him the ignominy over slavery that befell his successors in the 1850s. With no swift victory in sight, Bush's reputation will probably have no such reprieve.

www.rollingstone.com...

Why Bush Will Become the Textbooks' Worst President

by Gary North

As a Ph.D. in American history, I think it is safe to say that George W. Bush will go into the history books as the worst President in American history.

Because Bush has combined his remarkable military strategy with his Medicare prescription legislation, which will bankrupt Medicare at least a decade sooner than otherwise, he gets my grudging respect.

Furthermore, any President who can run budget deficits in the $400 billion range, year after year, thereby speeding up the bankruptcy of the Federal government, deserves credit – unlike the U.S. Treasury.

That this President singlehandedly has undermined the American public's trust in the Federal government's ability to establish and enforce both American foreign policy and domestic welfare policy – well, Bush's performance is simply breathtaking. Taft conservatives and libertarians have been dreaming of someone like George W. Bush for four decades.

All this was accomplished by a man who visibly represents America's elite: a graduate of the Harvard Business School and a member of Yale's Skull & Bones. In terms of his credentials, George W. Bush is one of the best and the brightest. If you are thinking, "The elite has clearly lost its ability to screen itself," I can only concur.

That scraping sound you hear is the bottom of the barrel.

www.lewrockwell.com...

What Will History Say? He's The Worst Ever
By Eric Foner
The Washington Post

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from "great" to "failure," such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.

More often, however, the rankings display a remarkable year-to-year uniformity. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt always figure in the "great" category. Most presidents are ranked "average" or, to put it less charitably, mediocre. Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon occupy the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them. A look at history, as well as Bush's policies, explains why.

Harding and Coolidge are best remembered for the corruption of their years in office (1921-23 and 1923-29, respectively) and for channeling money and favors to big business. They slashed income and corporate taxes and supported employers' campaigns to eliminate unions. Members of their administrations received kickbacks and bribes from lobbyists and businessmen. "Never before, here or anywhere else," declared the Wall Street Journal, "has a government been so completely fused with business." The Journal could hardly have anticipated the even worse cronyism, corruption and pro-business bias of the Bush administration.

Bush has taken this disdain for law even further. He has sought to strip people accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in Anglo-American jurisprudence: trial by impartial jury, access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence against them. In dozens of statements when signing legislation, he has asserted the right to ignore the parts of laws with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that have disgraced the nation and alienated virtually the entire world. Usually, during wartime, the Supreme Court has refrained from passing judgment on presidential actions related to national defense. The court's unprecedented rebukes of Bush's policies on detainees indicate how far the administration has strayed from the rule of law.

www.washingtonpost.com...



[edit on 14-8-2008 by GoldenFleece]

Why is it that every leader , be it President or Prime Minister feel that they have to at least one war in their term?.
Can't they try to be a leader without warring with a neighbour.?
And that the future historians have put Bush down in the bottom of the barrel is a sign that he did a dire job , before you all start I'm not an American nor am I bashing Bush for running or is that ruining the US , well actually I am , the guy did a pisspoor job and put corporations and profits ahead of people lives. all in the name of 'national security' of course.
Why can't any leader see that we all inhabit one world and all deserve to be treated humanly and with respect for each other.
That he's bottom of the pile proves he was just a puppet president but hey, who cares?
he's now minted anyway.....
The first leader to put people ahead of profits will be remembered as the greatest but theyre all too busy lining their own pockets.

Originally posted by DataWraith
Why is it that every leader , be it President or Prime Minister feel that they have to at least one war in their term?.
Can't they try to be a leader without warring with a neighbour.?
And that the future historians have put Bush down in the bottom of the barrel is a sign that he did a dire job , before you all start I'm not an American nor am I bashing Bush for running or is that ruining the US , well actually I am , the guy did a pisspoor job and put corporations and profits ahead of people lives. all in the name of 'national security' of course.
Why can't any leader see that we all inhabit one world and all deserve to be treated humanly and with respect for each other.
That he's bottom of the pile proves he was just a puppet president but hey, who cares?
he's now minted anyway.....
The first leader to put people ahead of profits will be remembered as the greatest but theyre all too busy lining their own pockets.

This is so because these leaders are NOT selected from the people. They are selected from (metaphorically speaking) an inbred community of well-connected ideologues and business men, otherwise known as 'the elite'.

Like in ancient history, we see a reaffirmation that when the pool of 'candidates' for such positions is exclusive in nature and centralized in purpose, the national policy becomes a 'plaything' to support their 'schemes' and personal agendas.

What we need is a 'draft' for such leadership positions. Disqualifying factors can be regulated via the people. The days of citizens allowing their 'political' organizations to 'decide' who is best for government needs to end. Game theory is NOT a reason to pick a candidate.

Originally posted by DataWraith
Why is it that every leader , be it President or Prime Minister feel that they have to at least one war in their term?.

Well, not every president or prime minister has to have illegal, immoral wars, but I think Americans are very brainwashed with "patriotism."

Iraq is a prime example. Even though it's generally accepted that the Iraq war is a total fraud, people are still brainwashed into thinking that U.S. troops have to remain there to "win" or "keep the peace" or other such BS. It's like no one learned anything from Vietnam.

You are the worst President ever. They is nothing left for you to screw up - we have no 401k, no home value, no privacy, innocent men and woman killed becuase you lied them into the war. People died in Katrina because of your incompetence. You bought down then entire financial world. $4 Dollar Gas. You are an idiot. Go bankrupt the rest of father's companies and leave us alone.

and take the McCains and Palins with you.

Originally posted by DataWraith
Why is it that every leader , be it President or Prime Minister feel that they have to at least one war in their term?.
Can't they try to be a leader without warring with a neighbour.?
And that the future historians have put Bush down in the bottom of the barrel is a sign that he did a dire job , before you all start I'm not an American nor am I bashing Bush for running or is that ruining the US , well actually I am , the guy did a pisspoor job and put corporations and profits ahead of people lives. all in the name of 'national security' of course.
Why can't any leader see that we all inhabit one world and all deserve to be treated humanly and with respect for each other.
That he's bottom of the pile proves he was just a puppet president but hey, who cares?
he's now minted anyway.....
The first leader to put people ahead of profits will be remembered as the greatest but theyre all too busy lining their own pockets.

It's all about the money. Have a war...make money. Follow the money...see why there are wars.

Are they truly speaking as historians or as Bush haters? I personally feel it is just two early to judge. There are still two wars that have yet to have an ending. If those two places end up as democratic societies and help change the region around them, then Bush legacy would have to be revisited.

For the person who mentioned Vietnam, keep an eye on what happens in Afghanistan. That is the place where there could be a possible Vietnam, not Iraq.