Charles Haynes wrote, [on 4/11/2008 8:33 PM]:
My wife
and kids live in a relatively rural area of California that is very
conservative politically, and my son didn't make himself popular when
he would argue that the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake and that
George Bush was an idiot.
It appears that a majority of historians agree:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002804
<quote>
Now in all fairness, historians should wait a while before passing
judgment on a president’s who served recently, much less one still in
office. But the current incumbent is a special case. After all, 81
percent of Americans, according to a recent New York Times poll, believe
he’s taken the country on the wrong track. That’s the highest number
ever registered. The same poll also says 28 percent have a favorable
view of his performance in office, which is also in
Nixon-in-the-darkest-days-of-Watergate territory.
But, as George Mason University’s History News Network reports, the
historians have a different measure. They want to stack him up against
his forty-two predecessors as the nation’s chief executive. Among
historians, there is no doubt into which echelon he falls–his
competitors are Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and
Franklin Pierce, the worst of the presidential worst. But does Bush
actually come in dead last?
Yes. History News Network’s poll of 109 historians found that 61 percent
of them rank Bush as “worst ever” among U.S. presidents. Bush’s key
competition comes from Buchanan, apparently, and a further 2 percent of
the sample puts Bush right behind Buchanan as runner-up for “worst
ever.” 96 percent of the respondents place the Bush presidency in the
bottom tier of American presidencies. And was his presidency (it’s a bit
wishful to speak of his presidency in the past tense–after all there are
several more months left to go) a success or failure? On that score the
numbers are still more resounding: 98 percent label it a “failure.”
</quote>
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((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
