April 09, 2008
Bush at 61% in recent poll -- In a Pew Research Center poll of professional historians, Bush earned an approval rating of 61%, inasmuch as 61% approved of certifying him the "worst president ever". Another 35% withheld their full approval, choosing only to place him in the bottom ten, aside Buchanan (shattered the union, financial panics), Pierce (Bleeding Kansas) and Harding (Teapot Dome corruption, sex scandals).
“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “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.”
Yeah, pretty much everything he said is true, certainly at the poll level. It's only a problem, though, if our disgracefully innumerate fourth estate takes it at face value.
But you can make a careful *provisional* judgement based on what we know now. If you look at the failures in common among the bottom ten, you can tick them off one by one as in the quote above. Buchanan and Pierce managed to actually shatter the union, but Bush's damage has global reach. I see that as the only open question here.
(Also: since it's the way of the internet to take something thoughtful and well-crafted, then shit on its lexical veneer: When the next round of word-rage questionnaires goes around, please put me down for "qua". The word itself just sounds terrible (qua. kwAAAA. QUAaaa!), and if you set off a screeching pretentiousness alarm in /my/ head, then brother your word is too pretentious.)
There's been a germane addition to the sidebar. Also, the AE calendar's been turned back on.
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From that website we have a counter-opinion not of the results (the author has a "countdown clock" on his desk) but of the gall of historians to make this pronouncement without having done any actual historical research. He does make a good point, even if I agree with the survey wholeheartedly.
posted by natedogg at 01:13PM CST on April 09