Matt Yglesias

Worst President Ever

Is George W. Bush the worst President ever? New polling looks at the issue: “41% said he would go down in history as the worst, the survey of 1,000 people reported. (The poll did not report on the competition for that title among the president’s predecessors).”

The good news for Bush’s reputation is that fully half the population says he’s not the worst. And I think I’ll have to throw in with the “not worst” camp. Conventional wisdom has traditionally put James Buchanan at the bottom of the rankings, and I think it still holds up — nothing Bush has don’t has really tended toward plunging the country into destructive civil war nor has his policy agenda included anything as reprehensible as efforts to defend people’s rights to own other human beings. Buchanan is tough competition and I don’t think anyone will be beating him for some time.