Just in time for Presidents Day, C-Span has surveyed 65 historians for their opinion of American presidents. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt top the list at #1, 2 and 3 respectively. James Buchanan ranks last. Predictably enough, George W. Bush is among the ten worst, coming in at # 36. That makes him the seventh worst president to date. But I feel that it is still too high a position for such a dangerous and clueless man. I am convinced that Bush will slide down the list as his misdeeds and missteps are evaluated more objectively in the proper historical perspective of time and distance from his disastrous reign.
Further analysis of the survey here.
Accidental Blogger 
One response to “Still Overrated”
I don’t get why Lincoln always winds up ranked so highly. The Civil War was a really bad war, unless you count as intended the incidental end of slavery (and I don’t think it’s historically accurate to do so, or even to consider it to have been a particularly foreseeable consequence at the time). We give him credit for accidentally being forced to end slavery (but not apartheid), but don’t blame him for the country literally falling apart and for the bloodiest war in American history? I’m not saying he was another George W. Bush (who, I agree, is still ranked too high), but I think it bizarre to call him our greatest president, or even to count him among the few best — and this is based on a survey of historians, not just the public.
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