Saturday, July 03, 2010

When Your Qualifications Are Suspect...

Presidential Scholars: Obama Is Our 15th Best President -- Bush Is In The Bottom Five

...You can expect no other results.

From Hot Air:

The One came eighth overall in intelligence, right ahead of Billy Jeff, and sixth overall in the category of, ummm, “imagination.” Reagan finished fifth overall in terms of communication abilities (two spots ahead of Obama) and third in “luck,” which I can only take to be a thinly veiled judgment that the demise of the U.S.S.R. after he left office is more coincidence than cause and effect. He also gets the “amiable dunce” treatment, placing 36 out of 43 in intelligence. But don’t take it to heart. This is obviously a poll of lefty academics, with only one Republican from the 20th century (Eisenhower) appearing in the top 15. How ridiculous is it? Number one in the category of “handling the economy” is … FDR. Somewhere, Amity Shlaes is smiling.


From Jules Crittenden:
Is there nothing he can’t do? Less than 2 years in, the Nobel peace laureate is now the 15th best president, according to historians, who like the Norwegian Nobel Committee apparently haven’t noticed that aside from getting elected, he hasn’t exactly committed much peace or history or anything else yet. Unless you count the record deficit, the haphazard politically driven Rube Goldberg re-ordering of the economy with as-yet unknown consequences, the blithe alienating of key allies and the yawning at Islamic terrorism … and I do. They forgot to note that among the things he inherited was George W. Bush’s war strategy and George W. Bush’s victorious general, with hopes of inheriting some of his success in that department.

I would argue that George W. Bush was the compromiser-in-chief, giving Democrats No Child Left Behind, McCain-Feingold and an amnesty bill. Teh One has given Republicans...nothing. But let's not fool ourselves what this poll was about. There just hasn't been enough Bush-bashing lately.