I'm not surprised that historians consider the presidency of George W. Bush a failure. It is too early to tell, particularly in assessing his impact on the judiciary and how the war on terror works out, but my early verdict is that Bush is one of the worst presidents of my lifetime and I am a conservative Republican. I base my view primarily on the profligate spending, empowerment of the central government, and the disastrous Iraq war. What bothers me about the poll of historians is the uniformity, and severity, of opinion. A full 98 percent of historians polled consider the Bush presidency a failure and 61 percent believe him to be the worst president in history. This type of response says more about historians than Bush. It's not just the political conformity that is disturbing, but the obsession with the present by people who are supposed to be monomaniacs about the past.

Why would they ask ‘historians’ to render an opinion for specific relevence? Aren't the presence of historical fact, perspective and future impact the most important elements? So their opinions, at this point in time, are no more valid than Ernie the Barber’s opinion. Unless they can somehow foretell the future.

I agree that the severity and uniformity are more telling about historians as group than about Bush. From what I've witnessed at OAH conferences, saying they "tend to be liberal" is the understatement of the year.

I will say, though, that asking historians this question makes sense because historians have a lot of knowledge and insights about past presidents that we do not all necessarily have. "Worst in history" is a relative distinction that means nothing without a knowledge of history.

Well, I'm old enough to have been alive during the Carter administration. I don't remember it, of course, but from what I've read, Bush would need another term (maybe two) in office and a lot more failure to even be close to matching the pure misery of Jimmy's one term.

Several years ago conservative writer William Lind said Bush was the second worse president in history behind Woodrow Wilson. However he did add a caveat -- if Bush attacks Iran then he'll fall below Wilson and rank as the worst president in history.

While it is difficult to give ordinal rankings to presidents, there's no doubt that he's been terrible for this country.

Historically speaking, I don't think we're going to have to wait long to discover the GW was better than any one of the numbnut$ who could be taking the Oval Office in November.

I would have to say Bush is the one of the last people I would call "conservative."

The phrase that describes him best is "corporate raider." Think of what corporate raiders do to companies, then compare what W has done to ours.

Be well,

Sponge