IS GEORGE BUSH THE WORST PRESIDENT -- EVER?

Points against him:

He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Technically, you can't tell until he's actually out of office.  I mean, before he leaves office, he theoretically could become his polar opposite, maybe start efforts to protect the environment, achieving peace in the Middle East, leading us into the post fossil-fuel age by subsidizing research into alternative fuels (also a way to start the pursuit of the former), becoming a vocal proponent of the seperation of church and state and an advocate of tolerance and the pursuit of knowledge.

And, of course, maybe he'll catch Bin Laden.

And maybe it'll snow in Hell, too.

>>48
In that sense, you can't actually answer the question, but when they do such analyses, in which they take a bunch of historians from thoughout the political spectrum, and from all different fields of academics, they usually come to a relatively common consensus.  Unfortunately, GW hasn't been a contender in any of these studies yet, due to the fact stated above.

I still believe that history won't be very kind to George W. Bush, and the next administration, whatever political affiliation it may be, will spend the vast majority of its tenure dealing with the long-term repercussions of the Bush administration's decisions.