New Historian poll of presidents: I'm surprised the Chimp is as high as he is

[book_worm]

36 out of 42. Good grief that means that six presidents are considered worse than he is!

[book_worm]

1. Here are the six considered worse than Chimpy:

Millard Fillmore
Warren G. Harding
William Henry Harrison
Franklin D. Pierce
Andrew Johnson
James Buchanan

If you think of it William Henry Harrison shouldn't even count since he died one month after taking office. So in reality there are only five president's lower than Bush--and even that is five too many.

[Mabus]

2. I think Pierce gets docked for being related to Ma Bush

So Barbara PIERCE Bush 1925- is a fourth cousin four times removed (4C4R) of President Franklin PIERCE 1804-1869, and not a third great grandniece as reported by Don Merrill. http://merrill.olm.net/family/cousin/barbara.html

[book_worm]

4. Yes, and Fillmore, Pierce and especially Buchanan are docked because they were weak in the 1850's

in trying to kiss the South's ass. Harding, despite his affairs, was actually somewhat progressive and I don't believe in substance worse than Bush.

[RoyGBiv]

7. How do you figure?

Harding ran his "Return to Normalcy" campaign, which was a commentary critical of Wilson's progressivism. Of course "progressive" meant something different back then than it generally does today, but substantively, Harding's term of office was centered on furthering the same kind of conservative ideals that Coolidge and Hoover later promoted.

About the most progressive thing he did was actually just something he said in calling for an end to lynching. However, he never did a thing to bring that about.

And, I don't think one can really cast aside his personal affairs because they influenced how poorly his administration ran. His government was filled with cronies who were parts of some of the worst scandals of the era. Some of them even got convicted.

Worse than Bush? Six of one, half dozen of the other. They both sucked.

[Occam Bandage]

14. Bush did not cause a civil war. I give him credit for that. nt

[TahitiNut]

16. If Harrison was rated low due to only serving a month in office, it's difficult to see how JFK ...

... was rated that high after serving less than 3 years. While I am a fan of JFK, I have a great deal of ambivalence regarding his administration due to the Latin American policies and events surrounnding the Cuban Missile Crisis. I would have rated him a few places lower. (I would have rated Reagan a LOT lower.)

:shrug:

[Bleacher Creature]

3. Even though he's out of office, calling him a Chimp is disrespectful.

To chimps, that is.

[Bobbieo]

5. We lived on Buchanan Dr. in Maryland and I loved the place!

[Graybeard]

6. W.H. Harrison should have been given a bye.

Because the poor shmuck died on day 32 in office he's rated lower than W? That is cold...jeez.

[SteelPenguin]

11. Yeah, that's unreasonable

He never had time to do anything one way or another. You're gonna rate a guy down because he caught a cold and died? That's low.

[Occam Bandage]

15. I agree. He brought no benefit but did no harm (better than you can say of some on that list),

and should at least be given some credit for the extent to which he advanced the art of campaigning.

[catnhatnh]

8. 42 out of 42 historians

were not politically involved during the 6 administrations they considered worse than GWs....now SOME percentage of these historians were at least initial supporters of Bush if not still among the backwash few...

Anyone care to bet what went on here. We need to see the scorecards. I'm betting a small group rated GW highly while slamming the 6 now "worse" than him to sooth their own egos. And yes, rating a guy with less time in office than Obama worse than 8 years of the hell we faced for 8 years under Bush is a pretty good hint of what went on.

[RoyGBiv]

9. I'll take that bet ...

I know some of the people who have been included in these surveys, and your assumptions aren't correct.

Historians are, by and large, a leftward leaning bunch. There are notable exceptions, especially among those in the military history and international relations fields, but they don't tend to be the kind of individuals who dominate the list of those surveyed for this sort of thing.

A number of organizations conduct such surveys. The latest was conducted by CSPAN. Siena Research Institute of Siena College will conduct one eventually, and that is generally considered the standard. Depending on the nature of the survey, the historians queried either have their own model they use in their answer, or the survey organizers present them with a model to use. Different models include elements such as "delivered campaign promises" or "effectively responded to crisis" while others focus on foreign policy or domestic policy or an average of both. The former can result in widely varying results, to wit a President who promises to cut taxes on the wealthy and start a war would rank highly if he did those things even if those policies positively sucked by most other measurements. The latter often results in people like Nixon's ranking being all over the place. Simply due to Watergate, many rank him among the worst. Others, however, look at his domestic and foreign policy agendas and find mixed results with some stunning successes along with abysmal failures, and in the end, he ends up with a higher ranking than he might have if judged solely on the fact he was forced to resign in disgrace.

To my knowledge, this CSPAN poll is the only one conducted that includes Bush since Obama took office, and historians haven't actually had a great deal of time to measure the lingering effects of his administration. Had such surveys existed at the time, Pierce, for example, might not have come across too poorly with some who saw him doing a lot of the things he said he would do. How bad a President he was became more apparent as time passed, and it is now clear that his administration handed Buchanan the problems the latter failed utterly to try to address, the end result of all that being the Civil War.

In any case, our modern sense of exceptionalism is on clear display in reactions to surveys like these. Most agree that Dubya was a horrible President, but, so far, we cannot link him directly to our nation dissolving in a civil war (Pierce) nor can we yet charge him with shifting government resources to the very elements within the nation that would build up armies and seek to rend it in two (Buchanan).

I find it a little strange that we seem compelled to split hairs over this to the point of damning almost the entire history profession. What the survey shows, beyond all the arguments about placement as dead worst or almost the worst, is that historians rank him among the worst ever, along with people who at the very least unknowingly brought us to civil war or at worst actively aided that result. That's a fairly damning judgment.

[SteelPenguin]

13. The Harrison inclusion was odd

But I wouldn't necessarily argue with where Bush is. Buchanan I think wins hands down, but Bush belongs in the company of the others there (sans Harrison). A grouping of incompetent, corrupt, and just outright bad Presidents.

On paper though I'd vote Buchanan the worst. He made the Dred Scott decision come about through his direct actions, and deliberate inactions. He openly offered political appointments and cash bribes to get Kansas admitted as a slave state. He was an active anti-abolitionist. He financially mismanaged the economy into the ground by lowering taxes and introducing deficit spending. Tried to go to war with the Utah Territory because it might revolt, but had no problems letting the southern states secede and did absolutely nothing about it, even encouraging them to do so by his public statement of non-action. Vetoed nearly every bill that came across his desk for 4 years.

Things were on a bad path when he took office but Buchanan in four years held the government in gridlock, wrecked the nation finacially, split his political party in two, and let the nation itself literally break into combative pieces.

[ThomWV]

10. I would suggest that if the poll is done again next year Bush will fare much worse

There are certain to be revelations in hearings over the next year that will drive him to the very bottom.

[autorank]

12. It's an outlier;)

[leftofthedial]

17. I'm amazed at that (although two of those below him shouldn't even count)

But I am utterly astonished at the ranking of ronnie raygun, who in my estimation is the third-worst President in history (and who, historians should know, was nothing but a figure-head wind-up doll for 90% of his reign).

[Occam Bandage]

19. Assuming one is WHH, who is the other below Bush whom you believe shouldn't count?

[alsame]

20. Reagan was a disaster. I think his current ranking is largely due to the

myth that he single handedly defeated communism and ended the Cold War. I think that over time he will be seen more negatively, especially regarding his domestic policies, Iran Contra and a truly objective look at what happened in the Soviet Union.

[Time for change]

18. Do you have a link to the poll?

I believe I've seen it, and it's bullshit. I believe that this "poll" involved only a small handful of cherry picked bigwigs, most who weren't even historians. I believe that any large poll of historians who weren't cherry picked would rate Bush last.

[Individualist]

21. Chimp and Nixon were both ranked too high

Chimp should have been last and Nixon next to last.

[Occam Bandage]

22. I disagree; Nixon was ranked too low. nt