Historians: Bush the Worst President Ever? C'mon!

Polled Americans Want Different Type of President Next Time
Americans Want Different Type of President Next Time, Poll Says
Dec. 3, 2005
Bloomberg News

Three in five Americans want the next U.S. president to be completely different from incumbent George W. Bush, according to a poll by Time magazine.

Bush's policies in Iraq and high gasoline and energy prices had a ``very negative'' effect on his overall job rating for 45 percent of respondents, according to the poll, conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1. The results showed 36 percent would like the next president to have policies similar to those of Bush, compared with 60 percent who want a different type of leader.

The findings indicate Bush is failing to reverse flagging approval ratings after laying out his strategy for Iraq in a Nov. 30 speech. The poll showed 41 percent approve of the job Bush is doing while 53 percent disapprove, little changed from results in September after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. Of those who disapprove, 76 percent said they were unlikely to change their opinion of Bush.

Bush said in the Nov. 30 speech that he would set no timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Training and equipping Iraqi forces to take over their country's security is crucial to U.S. success in the conflict and will strike a blow against terrorism, Bush said in the speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

In the Time poll, 47 percent of respondents said the U.S. should withdraw most troops from Iraq in the next 12 months, while 40 percent said they should stay until the Iraqi government is stable. A majority, 56 percent, said it was very likely or somewhat likely the Iraqi government would build a stable democracy, compared with 37 percent who said it was not very likely or not at all likely.

Handling of Iraq

Bush won approval for his handling of Iraq from 38 percent of those surveyed compared with 60 percent who disapproved. The respondents were nearly split on Bush's handling of the war on terrorism, with 49 percent saying they approve and 48 percent saying they disapprove.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have assailed critics who accused the administration of misleading Americans on pre-war intelligence. In the poll, 48 percent said they think Bush deliberately misled to build the case for war while 45 percent said he was truthful.

Half of those polled said the U.S. was wrong to go to war, and 51 percent said the country's actions in Iraq have worsened the danger of terrorist attacks against the U.S. Forty four percent say going to war was right, and 41 percent said the U.S. is safer. The poll also showed that a majority of Americans, 60 percent, think the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's earned the highest approval rating, 53 percent, of anyone in the Bush administration.

The poll is based on telephone interviews with a national sample of 1,004 adults, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

It's hard to get worse than Hoover and some of the others, but Bush has excelled.

GWTW = Gone With The Wind
GWB = Gone With Breeze, Bombs, Blow-jobs, Blood
GWB = George Will Blow-up

The ONLY President worse than Dubya would have to be..



But it is still a hard choice - at least old 'Jeff' here was ACTUALLY elected....

Well, I guess that settles it. I had thought that he's a good president, but I see that I was wrong.

This is obviously based upon emotion and probably on a single issue.

Any objective thinking adult, knows that only time will tell if the policies put forward by any President have a material impact. Thus, you can not grade a Presidents "job" until years after they leave office.

If, by chance, in the years to come,as a result of the Iraq war, stability resides in the Middle East, will their opinions change?

Some day Bush will be regarded as our greatest president.
And they're coming to take me away ha-haaa
They're coming to take me away ho ho hee hee ha haaa
To the funny farm
Where life is beautiful all the time
And I'll be happy to see those nice young men
In their clean white coats
And they're coming to take me away ha haaa

You thought it was a joke
And so you laughed
You laughed when I said


Right? You know you laughed
I heard you laugh. You laughed
You laughed and laughed and then you left
But now you know I'm utterly mad

And they're coming to take me away ha haaa
They're coming to take me away ho ho hee hee ha haaa
To the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds
And basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes
And they're coming to take me away ha haaa

The problem with doing these rating things while the President is still in office is that they are based upon an incomplete record. If tomorrow or next week or even 5 years from now it turned out that his sending forces to Iraq was the cornerstone of bringing about world peace the tune would be changed quite a bit. I would also like to see this evaluation done in another 3 years, and then again in 10 years...guarantee you that he will no longer be viewed so negatively. He may not make it to the best President ever (that of course was Chester A. Arthur ); however, I do feel Mr.Bush will be in the top 20 in the not too distant future.

Think back on how Reagan was viewed in around 1986 or Clinton in 1997...sure we can focus on one or 2 missteps but that does not erase all the good that Mr.Bush has done.

Who knew it would take so little for Brandon to see the light?

I don't see why one should so readily drop Warren Harding and his charming wife from the running . . .

Health care...take a few steps back and look at previous administrations including Clinton who swore he would not rest until a national health care plan was in place...wonder what happened to it.


One of the worst things about George Bush is he didn't teach coluber how to friggin spell CRISIS.

Is it too late to nominate Jimmy Carter?

Chester A. Arthur, my foot! You know that the best ever was Franklin Pierce. Why? He was the only one from New Hampshire, that's why. (I admit that Millard Fillmore ran a close second.)

But that's a good thing! (IMHO)

My nomination goes to Ford.


What's your input on the No Child Left Behind Act that needed to be implimented because schools appear to be doing a poor job and he would like to see our kids excell. Who knows how many may become smarter than him.

Smartereer then who raplhe? I done goned to the bestest publick skoools thered wuz.

Clinton's health care plans were destroyed by the Republicans and their insurance industry buddies.

When Edmund Brown was governor of California, he once said that he lets the insurance industry run their government and he runs the rest. Until the insurance industry is defanged, health care for everyone is in peril.

BBB

The Emperor Will Take No Questions
The Emperor Will Take No Questions
Gary Hart
12/8/05

The first U.S. president I ever saw was Dwight Eisenhower during the presidential campaign in 1956. I was in the top most balcony of the Oklahoma City civic center auditorium and there were probably two or three thousand people between me and the president.

But it was a great thrill to be there with a cross section of citizens of Oklahoma City.

The event was open to all and, except for the big-wigs, we were admitted on a first-come, first-served basis. The event did not lend itself to questions and answers, but my recollection was that, in those days, presidents did have a give and take with ordinary citizens.

If anyone then had told me that, in my lifetime, U.S. presidents would appear only in select audiences of their hand-picked partisan supporters, before patriotic tableau carefully designed by their "communications directors," and take questions only from pre-screened, adoring fans, I would have scoffed at the idea of such quasi-authoritarian practices ever becoming commonplace in the republic of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison.

But, in the early 21st century here we are. I cannot recall an event since the early Republican primaries in 2000 when George W. Bush has gotten anywhere near a cross-section of the American people he has been elected to represent and to govern. Here in Denver a few months back, some local Republican hack who got himself up to appear to be a Secret Service agent (a federal crime) hustled three local people out of the hall where the president was to speak simply because they had some kind of "no more war for oil" bumper strip on their car. The White House still claims they had nothing to do with it.

Even today, President Bush used the august platform of the Council on Foreign Relations, most recently granted to that great fraud and pretender Ahmad Chalabi (who should have been held to account for the deaths of 2100 Americans but was not), but only on the condition that the president would not take questions from the kind of knowledgable, informed leaders the Council seeks to attract.

How can a president govern who is so isolated, so cocooned away from the American public, so protected from any question, let alone voice of dissent? And how can the press, not only protected by the First Amendment, but also heavily obligated by that protection, not regularly report that the president has not seen a variety of real Americans for FIVE YEARS?

This kind of unAmerican behavior destroys the very core of democracy. It is more characteristic of a Latin American dictatorship than the American republic. Of even deeper concern, this is the behavior of frightened people. What is the Bush administration frightened of? Are they really convinced the president is incapable of handling himself in the give-and-take of democracy? Or are they simply afraid of the American people?

They may be afraid of me. But I'm even more afraid of them.