A scientific survey can draw conclusions that are incorrect. Much research that is done today is badly skewed, because the folks footing the bill for the research have a vested interest in the outcome, and the researchers may want to continue to get paid.

Heh. Global warming for example... The proposnats of which theory are invested into suppsoed alternatieve energy sources up to their eyeballs, and whose objectivity must be questions by any sane person.

your nasty habit of making stuff up

Please show me what I "made up"

As for citing an "unscientific surveys", well, many things are relative. A scientific survey can draw conclusions that are incorrect. Much research that is done today is badly skewed, because the folks footing the bill for the research have a vested interest in the outcome, and the researchers may want to continue to get paid. We have seen how are current government suppresses scientific conclusions it does not like.

As for history and science, well two qualified historians might look at a presidency and draw completely different conclusions about its success or failure. Who is to judge which is correct?

There is a level of subjectivity in the study of history. We do not really know who shot JFK, one of the seminal events of our time. We do not know how many planes went down in the battle of Britain. There is so much that we don't know.

Are you then, the judge of what is meaningful and what is not? History News Network strikes me as a pretty legit source. I suspect that if you agreed with my political views, you would not have a problem with my sourcing...

I'm not impressed.

Anjin-san, and when you read history you will gain some perspective and realize that trying to place any active president on the best to worst scale while they are still in office is an exercise in futility.

Charles I disagree with most of what you say, but you are obviously a fairly bright guy and you should avoid being pompous. I have read my history.

Your point has some validity, but there are exceptions. Nixon was obviously a complete failure, record bad, while he was still in office (though Nixon, unlike Bush, had a first class mind, and did achieve some lasting positives to go along with the damage he did to the country, some of which may well be permanent).

Carter too, was, Camp David aside, pretty much of a total failure, and this was clear while he was still in office. In Carter's defense, I would say that he inherited a very weak hand from his predecessor.

Bush has been a complete, total, utter across the board failure. Is he the worst ever in an absolute sense? Perhaps not. But a modern President, supported by our great military and economic power, armed with modern communications tools, is in a much stronger position to do harm than his 18th and 19th century counterpoints.

Bush should not hold his breath waiting for the Truman bounce he is hoping for. I think that if Harry Truman were alive today, he would go to the Oval Office, give Bush a sound thrashing, then physically eject him from the White House.

As for your snarky comments, more than a few professional historians feel comfortable rating Bush while he is still in office. Perhaps you should get in touch with them and tell them that they are not equipped to make such judgments and they need to "read history".

Steve

Alex, my concerns with Senator Obama have little to do with his resume and everything to do with apparently being to the left of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter.

Bush liberated Iraq of the Nazi like Baathists.

Yes. Now we have a pro-Iran government instead. Not sure that was worth half a trillion dollars and 4000+ dead Americans.

Alex, you are confusing the concept of candidate and president. James referenced "traditional" qualifications for being considered a presidential candidate. But clearly, not all presidential candidates have met this criteria in the past.

Mostly, I was being snarky.

But I do love that McCain supposedly does have a great resume, by virtue of the fact that he's never held a job for any employer apart from the United States Federal Government. Say what you will about Obama, but he's worked in the private sector, the non-profit sector, the education sector, AND the public sector. That ain't shabby.

“As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”— George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb10, 2008

A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W. Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent.

An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.

Alex, you are confusing the concept of candidate and president. James referenced "traditional" qualifications for being considered a presidential candidate. But clearly, not all presidential candidates have met this criteria in the past. You reference President Lincoln after 4+ years as being president with the additional benefit of hindsight. These are two very different things. In fact, one could argue that about half the country was so appalled by Abraham Lincoln's unfitness to be president that upon his election they left the Union, and only came back after 500,000+ men were dead.