Posted on 09/13/2005 6:11:52 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
How's He Doing? George W. Bush is "average," but far from ordinary. BY JAMES TARANTO Monday, September 12, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT Ask someone to describe the presidency of George W. Bush, and "average" is not a word you're likely to hear. Mr. Bush's detractors treat him with a level of vituperation unseen since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt; some even blame him for bad weather. His admirers don't go so far as to credit him when the sun shines, but their affection for him is palpable. So it may come as a surprise that in a new survey of scholars ranking the presidents, Mr. Bush finishes almost exactly in the middle of the pack. He ranks No. 19 out of 40, and he rates 3.01 on a 5-point scale, just a hair's breadth above the middlemost possible figure. But this is no gentleman's C. Mr. Bush's rating is average because it is an average, of rankings given by 85 professors of history, politics, law and economics. Most such scholarly polls have a strong liberal bias, reflecting academia's far-left tilt. But this survey--conducted by James Lindgren of Northwestern University Law School for the Federalist Society and The Wall Street Journal--aimed at ideological balance. The scholars were chosen with an eye toward balancing liberals and conservatives, and Mr. Lindgren asked each participant about his political orientation, then adjusted the average to give Democratic- and Republican-leaning scholars equal weight. (To see the rankings, click here.) Mr. Bush's rating thus reflects the same sharp partisan divide that gave him a shade under 51% of the popular vote last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The most successful wartime president in US history [when measuring mathematically: land taken, people liberated, speed, and measured against losses], Bush's weak point would be economics, and there's not much to complain about there. As things stand currently, how could Bush possibly be ranked so low?
While Bush was not my first choice for president [and I'm proud to say that], while he's terrible at safer borders and spending restraint, for example, while he's slow on ideas like school choice and the Fair Tax, while he wretchedly continued NEA funding increases, I'll give credit where it's due. He's way up there in success stories.
FRegards.....
George W. Bush majored in history at Yale.
What was his biggest accomplishment? Signing the Nebraska-Kansas act?
I'd be interested in your opinion of this.
Sorry, Linksalot, that prev. post was meant for LS.
Every President needs to have a strong understanding of history.
I would place the current Bush as in the average range also - but above LBJ who was noted in Texas, like Bill, where political adversaries commited odd types of suicide.
Everyone has an opinion -- The current President Bush I do rate higher than Daddy Bush though.
Then GWB got a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard.
What a great combo that turned out to be.
Too bad he wasn't as accomplished a student as Gore was. /sarcasm
Well, be specific.
If you rate GWB as average, name the 20 Presidents you think did a better job.
I'd say that was a pretty good description of JFK as well. However, my personal vote for worst is that peanut farmer guy.
The real disappointment is Calvin Coolidge; the man was an awesome President who served less then (6) years and thus could've run for another term (he served out less than the two remaining years of Harding's terms). Reagan loved him and had a portrait of Harry Truman removed and a portrait of Coolidge put up in its place.
He was a true conservative; he was against almost all federal transfer of funds from one state to another. In fact, in irony to the events in New Orleans, I believe that there was a major natural disaster in Texas when he was President and he REFUSED to send federal money to help rebuild; since it was wrong for someone in another state to fund operations in another state (Texas).
Can you imagine Bush saying that these days?
If George W. Bush is doing this well, at the "low point" of his Presidency, consider how well subsequent history, fifty years or more from now, shall have further elevated him.
So far, Dubya has overcome what appeared to be an overwhelming economic disaster, a bloody attack on American soil, carried the comflict to the enemy's doorstep and has mostly driven them down to relatively ineffectual and limited scope in their ability to wage armed combat. There have been several natural disasters, all of which but for one in a relatively limited area, which have been addressed and mitigated with astonishing speed. The one failure on response to a natural disaster had other causes than lack of effort on the part of the Bush Administration. The combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has been prosecuted with what is, in any objective sense, a singularly effective expenditure of manpower and a very low relative number of casualties. And the overall effect has been nothing less than a dramatic shift in the thinking in the Middle East. The chess game there is not yet over, by any means. But it is proceeding well.
I think Teddy Roosevelt is overrated. His run for a third term (actually second term to be elected) was what prompted Pres. Taft to run against him. Taft hated being president and knew he probably wouldn't win. But Roosevelt had become such a liability that he believed his greatest service to his country was to insure that his former friend would not be elected. Of course, we got Woodrow Wilson instead, but Roosevelt had gotten dangerous.
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I'd be interested in your opinion of this.
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Some thoughts :
1) Rankings are not STATIC. As people realize the importance of policies made to meet a specific need or crisis IN HINDSIGHT, and as they begin to see the RESULTS of such policies, a president's legacy goes up or down.
2) Bush's ultimate legacy cannot be determined at this time.
Iraq and Afghanistan are still in transition and Osama Bin Ladin and the war on terror is still on-going. We don't know what the results of the Mid-East roadmap will be yet.
This current number 19 is simply a temporary place-holder. That he ranks higher than 4 of his 5 predecessors inspite of the daily attacks against him is a good sign IMHO.
Good summary. I believe that George Bush the Second will go down as one of the greats--in the second tier of greats after Washington, etc.
I have some old Ridings-McIver ranking from early 90s.
1. Lincoln
2. FDR
3. Washington
4. Jefferson
5. Teddy
6. Wilson
and then:
12. LBJ
15. JFK
19. Carter
26. Reagan
32. Nixon
33. Coolidge
Don't you love such rankings? :-)
BTW, Harding is last.
When I was in a bookstore recently I saw a book on Presidential ratings and this sounds like it is the same study. The "average" rating for GWB (just a couple of places higher than Clinton) hides the very sharp divergence in how he is rated--number 6 (IIRC) out of all the Presidents in the view of the Republicans answering the survey, and something like 35th in the view of the Democrats.
The way the MSM is reporting things you'd think Bush was facing reelection next month.
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