Worst President or Best President

Richard Reeves wrote in Yahoo! News The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

• He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

  Actually we are winning the war; that is why the Dems are trying so hard to fool people into thinking Bush lied to get us into the war, and to force an immediate pullout so we won't win

• He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

  The rich now pay a higher percent of the income taxes paid than they did before the tax cuts, and the tax cuts are responsible for the extremely good economy we are experiencing

• He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

  All he has done is say that faith based organizations should have an equal chance of bidding to do jobs that secular non profit organizations bid to do.

• He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

• He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans)

  It was the Democratic Mayor and the Democratic Governor that were the most incompetent in New Orleans

  and foreign (
  Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

  We are winning the war in Iraq; they elected an interim government, wrote and approved a constitution, and are about to elect a 4 year government under that constitution, and we keep killing al-Qaida leaders, and have not had an attack on our soil since 9/11, while many other countries have been attacked.

• He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

  Unemployment is very low.

• He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

  Baloney. He just does not accept pseudo-scientific claims that have not been proven.

• He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

  The government is cracking down on overcharging, even by Halliburton.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president. That, historically, takes decades, and views change over times as results and impact become more obvious

At which time I suspect he will be found to have been one of the best presidents we have ever had.