Shocking Poll Results: Only 98% of Professional Historians Rate Bush Administration a Failure

The Pew Research Center released a new poll last week that contained a truly shocking assertion: only 98.2% of the 109 professional historians interviewed ranked the administration of President George W. Bush’s as a failure. As unfathomable as it may seem, these numbers indicate that nearly 2% of professional historians polled by Pew — or two actual, living historians who presumably can read and write and are capable of higher brain functions — rated the Bush administration a success.

More shocking still, only a miniscule 61% of professional historians ranked Bush as the worst president ever, while another 35% of respondents opted for a ‘Gentlemen’s D-’ by ranking him among the bottom ten (some ranked him as the second worst, behind James Buchanan). These numbers indicate that there are four living historians out there who do not rank the Bush administration as one of the ten worst of all time. The mind reels.

Many of the historians polled had surprisingly kind words for the current administration:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

What’s all this nonsense about ‘turned a blind eye to torture and corruption’? Sir, this president proudly advanced torture and corruption. Don’t you dare belittle one of his most enduring legacies!

Anyway, the poll isn’t fair, because it judges Bush only on, you know, presidential-type criteria. If you included a humor category, I’m confident this administration would rank right up there with the best of ‘em.