HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst

[EdwardBaiamonte]

As for FDR, it seem that most Americans were happy with FDR as they elected him four times in a row, that's four times in a row, count em four times.

so maybe if BO can keep this depression going stupid liberals will elect him four times too!!! See why we are positive liberals are brainwashed stupid?? What other explanation is possible??

And those four times may stand up as an American record. Add to that, some historians have now named FDR as America's greatest president, that's greatest. So we end up four times in a row and America's greatest, that must really hurt.

actually FDR's Great Depression and World War hurt more; in fact killed 60 million. See why we say , stupid!!!!!

The sad thing, Republicans are still wondering what to do about FDR, his four times in a row and America's greatest. About the only thing they can do is dream, dream that the depression had gone on for another 20 years and the war lasted ten.

actually that would have been the liberal dream since depression and war was getting FDR elected.

That about says it all, FDR, four times and greatest, and Republican dreams of a disaster that never occurred.

sure Great depression and 60 million dead never occured

 

[regent]

As for FDR, it seem that most Americans were happy with FDR as they elected him four times in a row, that's four times in a row, count em four times.

so maybe if BO can keep this depression going stupid liberals will elect him four times too!!! See why we are positive liberals are brainwashed stupid?? What other explanation is possible??

And those four times may stand up as an American record. Add to that, some historians have now named FDR as America's greatest president, that's greatest. So we end up four times in a row and America's greatest, that must really hurt.

actually FDR's Great Depression and World War hurt more; in fact killed 60 million. See why we say , stupid!!!!!

The sad thing, Republicans are still wondering what to do about FDR, his four times in a row and America's greatest. About the only thing they can do is dream, dream that the depression had gone on for another 20 years and the war lasted ten.

actually that would have been the liberal dream since depression and war was getting FDR elected.

That about says it all, FDR, four times and greatest, and Republican dreams of a disaster that never occurred.

sure Great depression and 60 million dead never occured

Is this a new part of the Republican dream that FDR was responsible for, not only the Great Depression but for 60 million dead? Won't be long until evidence emerges that FDR caused the Civil War.
Four times and the Greatest!

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Is this a new part of the Republican dream that FDR was responsible for, not only the Great Depression but for 60 million dead?

you tell me. BO said if he didn't fix it in 4 years he didn't deserve to be reelected. Do you want to hold the Girl Scouts responsible for it not getting fixed??

If FDR had fixed the Depression there would have been no World War!!

 

[JakeStarkey]

The GD happened because of worldwide fiscal irresponsibility and wild ride capitalism.

Then when Germany, Italy, and Japan went on an armaments spree in the mid 30s on, the die was cast.

FDR and the USA led the world in saving civilization from fascism and militarism.

Responsible Americans are saving civilization from the far right wackery in America that collapse our Republic.

 

[SFC Ollie]

The GD happened because of worldwide fiscal irresponsibility and wild ride capitalism.

Then when Germany, Italy, and Japan went on an armaments spree in the mid 30s on, the die was cast.

FDR and the USA led the world in saving civilization from fascism and militarism.

Responsible Americans are saving civilization from the far right wackery in America that collapse our Republic.

A lot of people in this world disagree with that statement. Especially in GB and Russia.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Responsible Americans are saving civilization from the far right

are you a communist?? Our founders were far right. Why not stick to basketball where thinking is not required??

 

[regent]

Responsible Americans are saving civilization from the far right

are you a communist?? Our founders were far right. Why not stick to basketball where thinking is not required??

Here is another one of your communists:
For the framers of the Contitution were the most liberal thinkers of all the ages and the charter they produced out of that liberal revolution of their time has never been and is not now surpassed in liberal thought."
General Douglas MacArthur

 

[JakeStarkey]

Responsible Americans are saving civilization from the far right

are you a communist?? Our founders were far right. Why not stick to basketball where thinking is not required??

Here is another one of your communists:
For the framers of the Contitution were the most liberal thinkers of all the ages and the charter they produced out of that liberal revolution of their time has never been and is not now surpassed in liberal thought."
General Douglas MacArthur

edward would not know a communist if one bit him on his little dick.

The founders were classical liberals, thinkers influenced mightily by the Enlightenment. They would be horrified by what is passing for our far right conservatism and or libertarianism. They would be even more horrifed to learn that some of the fools today are labeling them as proto-libertarians or far right wacks of today.

 

[Katzndogz]

Real historians rather than liberal hacks, do not judge history until after at a minimum 50 years has passed. Sometimes a historical perspective requires much more than that. Abraham Lincoln was not judged a good president when he served. It took over 100 years for Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents.

 

[regent]

Real historians rather than liberal hacks, do not judge history until after at a minimum 50 years has passed. Sometimes a historical perspective requires much more than that. Abraham Lincoln was not judged a good president when he served. It took over 100 years for Lincoln to be one of our greatest presidents.

Who are we to decide, or where is it written, that historians cannot judge history until fifty years have passed? The 2010 Siena poll asked 238 noted historians (real?) and presidential experts to rate the presidents including Obama, to date.
Historical perspectives do change as time passes and new information surfaces and we can expect the ratings to change over time.
There are two basic polls, those that ask people and those that ask historians or others. The polls of citizens can be different than those of historians. Most people cannot even name all the presidents. Lincoln has always been rated in the top three presidents by historian-polls.
Historians, as a polled group, did not begin rating presidents until 1948, the Schlesinger poll. Today there are about ten groups that rate the presidents, and some are better than others.

 

[JakeStarkey]

katzndogz is the SUPREMEST JUDGEST OF ALL HISTORIANS WHO HAVE EVER LIVED BEFORE, EVER LIVE NOW, OR EVER LIVE IN THE FUTURE! katz is an idiot.

 

[hortysir]

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

 

[Katzndogz]

You can't judge the effects of various policies until years after those policies have had an effect for better or for worse. We know now that affirmative action has been a failure, and it's been about 50 years. How long did it take to eventually realize that the programs designed to end the depression actually prolonged it?

No one can get a historical perspective until the acts and omissions become part of history. Right now, there is no historical perspective of Bush's presidency. There is just a continuation of the hysteria present during his presidency.

It is generally accepted that there is an average of 50 years to develop a historical perspective. Partly explained here.

Assessing Historic Integrity - Oregon Online Architectural Guide

The age of a historic resource is also an important consideration in the survey process. The National Register usually excludes resources that are less than 50 years old. The 50 year mark is a general estimate or the time needed to develop historical perspective and to evaluate significance. The 50 year mark guards against listing resources of passing contemporary interest

There is no way the effect of the Bush administration can presently be calculated from a historical perspective and it is dishonest for historians to claim that it can be. There is no historial basis to find today that Bush was a good president or a bad president.

From your own citation

http://hnn.us/articles/48941.html

All of these comments are perfectly legitimate political commentary, but they are not historical assessments. They are politics, pure and simple. (A poll which McElvaine hoped would be taken into account in the 2006 elections, and a new poll in the election year of 2008—can anyone seriously doubt this is, in large part, about politics?) Also, notice what sort of list McElvaine provided with his commentary on the 2004 poll. He listed 13 reasons why the Bush presidency should be rated as a failed presidency, and which he used to help him place this failure at the proper place in the list of failed presidencies. Where is the list of “pros” to go with this list of “cons?” Isn’t the presentation of both sides of the case the minimum that a real historical assessment requires? McElvaine was not providing an historical assessment (even a tentative one), he was making a case—which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but it is not historical scholarship, it is politics.

In his essay on the 2004 poll, McElvaine noted some of the objections I am making here—including the general notion that this kind of polling is premature, a notion which he simply dismisses. He also rebuffed the argument that the poll tells us more about the politics of the respondents than the subject of the poll, with this bit of reasoning: “. . . it seems clear that a similar survey taken during the presidency of Bush’s father would not have yielded results nearly as condemnatory. And, for all the distaste liberal historians had for Ronald Reagan, relatively few would have rated his administration as worse than that of Richard Nixon. Yet today 57 percent of all the historians who participated in the survey (and 70 percent of those who see the Bush presidency as a failure) . . . rate it as worse than the two presidencies in the past half century that liberals have most loved to hate, those of Nixon and Reagan.”

I am bound to say that this argument strikes me as little more than saying that it is okay to be biased against a current politician just so long as we have a relative measuring stick which we can use to show that we are relatively less biased against others. Might I also point out, that both Nixon and Reagan were no longer in office in 2004, and so our political passions have had time to cool regarding our disapproval of their politics, while our disapproval of Bush’s politics are still fresh and pressing concerns—which tends to impair our efforts at objective judgment.


Instant history. Untrue, but satisfying an impatient public.

Valid historical judgments are ensured by those very processes of historical research and scholarship that are being short-circuited here. These processes must be engaged before we have any valid justification to claim that the results are a professional assessment. We literally do not have any historical knowledge until we have engaged the procedures of archival research, publication, peer review, etc., that are the hallmarks of historical knowledge. We have lots of speculations, and guesses, and opinions, but no actual historical knowledge. At this point, what we have before us is basically the journalists’ view of the Bush presidency. But there is a reason we do not award the Bancroft Prize to Keith Olbermann. The “informed opinion” of the community of historians, in advance of actual historical research, is just a report on the political views of this community, not the findings of history.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Architecture is equivalent to History?

Really?

katzndogz is full of crap, for sure.

 

[Katzndogz]

Architecture is equivalent to History?

Really?

katzndogz is full of crap, for sure.

The principle stands whether it is architecture or anything else.

Historians that purport to play politics today to judge a perspective that won't happen for decades are being dishonest.

 

[JakeStarkey]

The principle stands because . . . you say so?

(Laughter breaks throughout the universe)

You are being dishonest to say that you can judge historiography is the point here.

Go to, little fellow, go to.

 

[regent]

There is a place for contemprary history as Churchill, Thucydides and other proved, but history is history be it today or yesterday. I think one of the great losses of history is the historian's inability to create the feelings of the people's of the time. Try as an historian might, can he or she ever convey the feeling of people at the time of the event? I think one of the real losses say in the Great Depression is that most can no longer appreciate how people felt and how those feeling affected certain decisions.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

I think one of the real losses say in the Great Depression is that most can no longer appreciate how people felt and how those feeling affected certain decisions.

The real loss is that most history is written by liberals who distort it in order to promote liberalism. This means they aren't historians at all buy rather more like brainwashers. For example, they don't mention that America was founded by those who wanted freedom from big liberal government and that, accordingly, Democrats don't belong here. THey don't tell us that liberals spied for Stalin and took the 5th in front of Joe McCarthy as if to prove where they belonged.

 

[Staidhup]

So in addition to fairness, war on women, gay rights, racism, your adding Bushed sucked and this is all his fault to the campaign slogan and we need another 4 years to further screw up the country? Nothing has changed has it. Now as it regards academia and their interpretation as to Baby Bush's presidency, the key here is academia, and if you have ever attended college, or a union meeting, for that mater, you most likely understand the political leanings of these esteemed representatives. The book on Baby Bush has yet to be written, not enough time has passed, the documents remain sealed, same can be said the same about Billy Bob, but who cares, this country is like a boat floundering at sea without a rudder and competent captain at the helm of state.

A few final thoughts, how many times did FDR blame Hoover for the great depression, secondly, where did FDR get the blue print of his first recovery plan, and last but not least, did FDR blame his family and friends, the filthy rich?

 

[Peach]

So in addition to fairness, war on women, gay rights, racism, your adding Bushed sucked and this is all his fault to the campaign slogan and we need another 4 years to further screw up the country? Nothing has changed has it. Now as it regards academia and their interpretation as to Baby Bush's presidency, the key here is academia, and if you have ever attended college, or a union meeting, for that mater, you most likely understand the political leanings of these esteemed representatives. The book on Baby Bush has yet to be written, not enough time has passed, the documents remain sealed, same can be said the same about Billy Bob, but who cares, this country is like a boat floundering at sea without a rudder and competent captain at the helm of state.

A few final thoughts, how many times did FDR blame Hoover for the great depression, secondly, where did FDR get the blue print of his first recovery plan, and last but not least, did FDR blame his family and friends, the filthy rich?

Wall Street speculators were not usually very wealthy, they wanted to be wealthy. The 1920's over expansion led to the 1929 crash. Conservative policies exacerbated the collapse.