Bush beat out Presidents Fillmore, Harding, William Henry Harrison, Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and Buchanan to place a respectable 36th out of 42.

Ok, let's see. Now remember w was so stupid two people had to dress him every morning.

Now Harding could not only dress himself but have good sex in the closet with the hired help. He could do two things at one time.

Harrison only lived a month and it is so unfair to grade him like this. On the other hand he did refer to himself as Tippecanoe so what is a mother to do?

Like you say, Buchanan is partially responsible for the Civil War and the most recent book on him written last year makes a good case that he was a traitor, actually sending troops to Chile knowing that the country would be at war soon. Which is probably why he gets a rung under Pierce.

Now Johnson was a racist pig, a southern sympathizer but they did shoot him. I think the better argument would be to make w 40. That would make him W40 and we could melt him down and put him in somebody's car. Oh, wait, that's WD 40 but he could be known as WMD 43.

Aw forget it.

Yeah, a bunch of socialist academics. This is as bad as the 'consensus' of socialist climatologists who are the basis of the global warming hoax!!!

Simply put: the current historians are wrong.

They are somewhat GOP-biased. (Reagan in the top ten? Baloney!) "W" WAS the worst. And yes, even worse than Buchanan. Harding might have given "W" a run for the title, but Bush was President for a much longer period of time.

Ineffectual is no match for willful incompetence.

Eventually history will lower "W" to his proper position as Worst.

Looks to me like the C-Span historians don't trust their own opinion about things that still have contemporary bias. Note that Bill Clinton moved from 21 in 2000 to 15 in 2009.

There's been a lot of work on Grant in the last decade, you can call it revisionism if you want, and that's clearly reflected in a jump from 33 to 23.

But lest you think these historian peeps are too affected by pop culture and the media, check it out: James K. Polk still holding steady at 12! They don't care what you all think.....

He did not win the worst prize in any field of expertise but was uniformly bad across all fields, though he did place 39th in economic management, just ahead of Herbert Hoover, and 40th in international relations, narrowly losing to William Henry Harrison.

That's that then.

Except when it isn't.

That.

How did you know my name was Mr. Objective?
Lucky guess? I changed it from Mr. Fair and Balanced when F*x N*ws appropriated my monicker.

"Incompetent but harmless"? Tell that to the millions who've been ravaged by the last 8 years.

I'd like to see him float upwards too ... like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard.

Anyone have an idea why WH Harrison enjoys such low esteem? About all he did while in office was die.

I am kind of perplexed at how Monroe edged out both Clinton and McKinley and I'm one of those who think Jefferson is still way overrated. But, all in all, GWB better than Harding but worse than Hoover? That's a fair call.

OK people, try to stretch your minds into the future just a little bit. Imagine that the Iraq War is ancient history. Let's look at some casualty numbers:

WWI: 15M
WWII: 55M
Korean War: 2.8M
Vietnam War: 1.7M
Iraq War: 100K to 1.3M depending on who you ask

And those are just American conflicts. I'm not justifying the Iraq War or claiming it hasn't been horrible. I'm just saying that unless it gets a lot worse, it will be seen as a minor war in the context of human history once we and everyone else who was directly affected by it are long gone.

seen as a minor war in the context of human history

In places like Africa, China and South America, I imagine it already is viewed that way, and has been for quite some time. It always struck me that it's kind of imperialistic in its own way to have viewed the conflict there as center of what's going on in the world, like everyone cares beyond that it's further evidence that we are always trying to poke our nose into faraway places since Teddy Roosevelt was president. Likewise, most Americans don't even know that India has been fighting a brutal low level war with Maoists within its own borders with 669 dying last year and "spectacular" attacks, nor give a shit about conflict in the Congo causing 5 million deaths over the last decade and still causing 4,500 deaths a month. Iraq is just not that important of a place to much of our world today, even with its oil.

Wikipedia on Franklin D. Pierce:

Abandoned by his party, Pierce was not renominated to run in the 1856 presidential election and was replaced by James Buchanan as the Democratic candidate. After losing the Democratic nomination, Pierce continued his lifelong struggle with alcoholism as his marriage to Jane Means Appleton Pierce fell apart. His reputation was destroyed during the American Civil War when he declared support for the Confederacy, and personal correspondence between Pierce and Confederate President Jefferson Davis was leaked to the press. He died in 1869 from cirrhosis.

Hm

That is pretty bad!

I think I'll accept the argument that Buchanan and Pierce were worse Presidents than George W. Bush. Some of the others I'm not sure about. In particular, I think William Henry Harrison and James Garfield get kinda shafted in this poll. Okay, so neither of them got a lot done, but is that their fault? We should be grading the truncated Presidents on a curve.

By the way, wikipedia on James Buchanan:

On the day before his death, he predicted that "history will vindicate my memory".

It's interesting to look at the ratings from the 20th century economic perspective.

Clinton was 1st in the 20th century followed by T. Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Wilson, Eisenhower, Truman, LBJ, Reagan, Nixon, GHWB, Ford, Carter, GWB and finally Hoover.

The Republicans favorite tax-cutting President is 9th out of 15 in economic management, while one of their most hated is 1st.

Back in September when the House voted to reject the $700B bailout, Rep. Darrel Isa (R-CA) voted no "because it would betray party principles and amount to “a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin.”"

Hopefully, two coffins are enough.

As bush himself has pointed out history is a long time. I imagine by the time a year rolls around they will have him down at least to 43.

In case you ever look at this thread again, there's been a few things in the news the last few days that made me think about it. Just things that struck as examples/possiblities of how things we don't know at the time can make historian's judgment about a president change as time passes and more info. comes out:

1) Today in the New York Times there's this roundup to go with an interview that the reporter got with Greg Craig, trying to argue the narrative that "Obama's War on Terror May Resemble Bush's in Some Areas." Did Obama just learn something the both Bush and Clinton know (Clinton is the one that signed the presidential directive allowing extraordinary rendition, in 1995) that would change what historians think about Bush? Did his famous supposed "flip flop" on FISA have something to do with learning something in pre-presidential briefings that Bush knew, and that would make historians think differently about Bush?

2) On Tuesday, Commander-in-chief Obama ordered a 50% increase in troops to Afghanistan, months before his administration even finishes their review of policy there, and before he has been able to get to any of his campaign promises about Iraq. Did intel made him do that? Intel that, once public, might make historians reassess Bush?

3) What is the story of the refusal to pardon Scooter Libby despite Cheney's begging really all about? What was firing Rumsfeld really all about? CW is that Rumsfeld and Cheney were an arrogant team that thought they had found a nice puppet in W to realize all their dreams about the way things should be done. I don't know if I buy the current story, nor many of the related past ones.

None of this may be anything, they are just examples of the unknown unknowns, to paraphrase Rummy himself. :-)

And a reminder: Truman and Bush have a tie for lowest presidential appproval rating of 22% at the end of office (since polling for approval began.) Truman is now #5 on the historians' list.