Ranking the Presidents #31

GEORGE W. BUSH (R) - 2001-2009

I'm sure it's too soon to say where he'll ultimately rank. I know some believe he's the worst president we've ever had; others believe he'll be vindicated like Truman. I have a hard time ranking him too high when I look at the state of the country in 2008. He would have had a better legacy had he only served one term.

Bush won a hard-fought campaign by electoral votes but not by popular votes. It wasn't the first time such had happened in US history, but never has an election come down to less than 1000 in one state. As such, Bush did not get a honeymoon phase, with millions in the country crying he stole the election. Then 9/11 happened. In the weeks after that terrorist attack, his popularity hit 90%. The country was behind him. He authorized an attack on Afghanistan, and later, on Iraq. It was a reversal of US foreign policy to pre-emptively strike against Iraq, and it wound up being on largely false intelligence.

While presidents usually raise taxes to fund wars, Bush decided to cut them. He passed the largest tax cut in history. He also passed the biggest budgets and largest deficits in US history (history that would be broken by Obama, but still...)

It was his second term where everything fell apart. The Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts had no end in sight, and were still going after his eight years were up. The Abu Ghraib scandal hurt the US's reputation around the world and started debates between what is torture and what are merely "enhanced interrogation techniques." Bush's slow response to Hurricane Katrina made him seem insensitive to the sufferings of the common folk, and the real nail in his coffin came with the financial collapse in 2008. The government bailed out banks and financial institutions, fearing that to not do so would cause the worst economic depression in US history. The national debt had doubled on his watch, and in the final year of his presidency the US lost an estimated 2.6 million jobs. His approval rating at one point hit 22%, the lowest in history since approval ratings have been recorded, breakign the record set by Truman.

Now with the wave of democratic protests in the Middle East, maybe Bush's legacy will improve, or maybe it'll look better against Obama's if the economy doesn't improve soon. I think it raising to Truman levels is a real stretch. Bush campaigned as a conservative but grew the government with increased spending, and suspended many civil liberties in the name of security. He inherited a recession when he came into office, and after some years of success, he left an even worse recession to the next guy.