President Bush: Not as bad as you thought, Part 2

 

We all know what happens when pollsters ask Americans whether they think President Bush is doing a good job: While somewhere around 30% have said for month after month that they approve of the job he is doing, a majority respond with thumbs down.

But what happens when they are asked whether he is the worst president ever?

Rasmussen Reports did just that and found some good news for the president.

Half said he was not the worst.

The bad news: 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 survey was the polling corollary to a Newsweek essay, on which Countdown to Crawford reported Tuesday, that made the case that in its second term, the administration has corrected many of the errors it made during its first four years.

The Rasmussen report noted:

Given the partisan emotions running high in the Bush years and the ongoing presidential campaign, it's not surprising to find that the results are heavily weighted by the respondents' political affiliations. For example, 9% of Republicans rate Bush the worst president ever compared to 69% of Democrats.

By contrast, it found, 85% of Republicans said he was not the worst; 21% of Democrats agreed.

It also found that among Republicans, 28% say he has been bad for the party.

The poll's sampling error is plus/minus 3 percentage points.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Ron Edmonds / Associated Press

Comments

[Maggie Knowles]

I saw Bush on television in China at the games, a reporter asked him what he thought about the problems Americans are facing today; declining home values, rising unemployment, rising debt, no pay raises.

Bush said that he didn't think Americans were experiencing those problems.

He's in his own little world.

[Sarah]

W stand for Wretch!

[DB]

Interesting results, but I suspect that if the question were broadened to "do you think President George W. Bush will be regarded as one of the three worst (or five worst, or whatever number you choose) Presidents in US history", we would see a much much larger percentage believe he will be regarded (justly) as one of our very worst Presidents, if not the very worst.
For my money, he'll always be #1 on the list of Worst Presidents.
DB

[Gregory A, Lyles]

Jimmy Carter is the worst by far! Double digit inflation and interest rates were the marks of his Presidency. You do the math.

[Phil]

I never understood how someone who seems a dumb as Bush
ever went to Harvard and Yale.
I found an article in "The Economist" magazine about nepotism
and Ivey League schools. He is what is called a legacy admission.
I found the article online.
Bush only got ito those schools because
of his family wealth and connections. He was supposed to have graduated
in the bottom fourth of his high school class.
He graduated from Yale with a B.S. in history with a "C" average.
He was supposed to have made the minimum passing score on the test to get into pilot training in the Air Force and only got in because his father was
a congressman. He doesn't seem to have been good at anything.
You could have predicated that he would be a mediocre president
just by looking at his past.