This is fairly appalling:
Only nine percent of the 662 people polled picked Bush as their favorite among the last 10 presidents. John F. Kennedy topped that part of the survey, with 26 percent, closely followed by Bill Clinton (25 percent) and Ronald Reagan (23 percent).
Bush was also viewed as the most warlike president (43 percent), the worst for the economy (42 percent) and the least effective (33 percent). But he was rated most highly in response to a question on who would do the right thing even if it were unpopular.
Bush is not the most warlike president, not by a long shot. Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, and a large spectrum of others were much more likely to invade foreign lands than Bush. If 9/11 had happened on their watches, we would have exploded the goddamn earth.
Similarly, Bush hasn't even been that bad for the economy, much less the worst ever. I tend to think Herbert Hoover is unfairly maligned, but he, and, for that matter, George H.W Bush, certainly proved more ineffective before significantly scarier economic dips than the present bungler. Bush is a mediocre-to-poor president during a moment that demands greatness, but he's only awful because of the period's great, and missed, opportunities. He's not the worst president ever, not by a longshot.
That said, George W. Bush does not do the right thing regardless of popularity. The guy has never vetoed a bill. He's signed acres of legislation that he strongly disagreed with. McCain-Feingold, Sarbanes-Oxley, and McCain's torture bill being only a few examples. When Bush's position proves unpopular, Bush invariably changes course, refusing to offer even a token veto and leave himself vulnerable to honest critique. If he can't lie and elide enough to make Americans think they support his wildly bad policies, he flips to sign bills he thinks are awful. And then he brags about them, as he did with all the legislation he opposed and then instituted above.
To see him attracting this reputation for courageous support of unpopular positions is galling. The guy's an ideological mush with no courage of conviction. He's terrified to wield a veto pen. He, much more than his father, is a wimp. And the only reason we don't know that is the media thinks he looks hot in a bomber's jacket.
Update: I misunderstood the poll, which took us back only 10 presidents. Of them, I would still say that Reagan was worse for the economy (though he eventually changed course and passed some important legislation) and Bush 41 presided over a worse economy while Kennedy and maybe Johnson could at least compete in the warlike department. Different contexts, sure, but nevertheless. And I shudder to think what some of those folks would've done if freed by a 9/11.
The larger point here is that Bush is not a uniquely bad president. He's a bad president, but there's a long and distinguished line of them. Abrogation of civil liberties, lying to popularize wars, shortsighted fiscal management, and all the rest have been around since far before George. That Americans think he's uniquely awful yet astonishingly resilient before popular opinion is a complete reversal of the actual situation.
