For historians, how will history rank George W. Bush's presidency in 100 years?

Question

Putting politics aside, is he likely to be remembered as an effective President? Will his be an important presidency? What will be recalled of him as a man? How will he rank among the Presidents, near the top, near the bottom, in between? Please be as unpartisan and descriptive in your reasoning as possible.

The reason I ask in 100 years is so that the partisanship of this era has had time to dissipate and many generations will have passed to give the world some clarity with which to judge the effects of his time in office.

Answer 1

That is a great question and a have no idea how to answer it, but I can give examples. When Abraham Lincoln was president he was so un-popular that half the country left the union. He was not even very popular in the north. Someone like Andrew Jackson also gets mixed reviews. He was popular in his time, but now people look at his policies of Indian removal as a bad thing. Thomas Jefferson was also popular, but now is less popular because of his hypocritical views on slavery and the fact that it is almost certain that he had children with one of his slaves.

In 100 years people will look at GWB and how well the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan have done in those 100 years. If they are successful countries that have full-fledged democracies than he will be considered good to great. If they are countries ruled by violent despots that have gone way down hill than he will be bad to horrible. Only time will tell.

Answer 2

As a president who was unjustly hated and reviled by both ignorant people who did not appreciate the good he really did accomplish because they jumped on the "hating Bush is cool" bandwagon, and by those who realise that he was a true force in combating terrorism. Unfortunately the leftist propaganda is programming much of today's youth into believing the "ostrich method" is the way the US should work. This being the belief that if we turn our heads and ignore any problems we come up against, they will just go away. This tactic was adopted during the Clinton years which is when we suffered most of our terrorist attacks. Thinking the US had become a country that would not react to provacation the 9/11 attacks were commited. The terrorists were wrong, and Bush should them different. Bush, for whatever reason anyone believes, liberated the people of Iraq from oppresion. I have several Iraqi friends who had suffered under Saddam's regime and were lucky enough to make it out. They literally cried tears of joy when the US went in and removed Saddam. George Bush is not an eloquent speaker, but he is a decisive leader, who has the country's best interests at heart. Sadly the younger generation listens too much to mostly anti-Bush, left-wing media and celebrities instead of truly trying to understand the facts. Bush is helping rid the world of terrorists, and is himself disrespectfully called a terrorist. Some people say he is the worst president ever. This is a rediculous thing to say. It has become "cool" to bash Bush. Many of those I ask why they hate Bush can only repeat to me things they have heard from celebrities or from leftist activists. In closing, I hope President Bush will be remembered for being a man who stood by his principles, and helped rid the world of evil. As far as his ranking I believe he will be in the top 20.

Answer 3

Bush Jr. will be viewed as one of the worst, along with Nixon and Grant.

1. Bush Jr. turned a $300 billion surplus into a deficit of like amount; the most profligate spender in US history.
2. The money was not well spent: some went to Iraq, a colossal failure, and some went to poorly thought-out tax cuts -- which did not noticably improve the economy compared to the Clinton years.
3. No president in history has done more to erode individual rights. Never before in history has a US citizen been imprisoned without even being charged with a crime, for three years. Until now.
4. No president in history has squandered more international goodwill (after 9/11) into international enmity (after Iraq).

Indeed, when we look back on the Bush Jr. presidency, it's difficult to find a single positive accomplishment. The "No Child Left Behind" president? In my home state, a GOP congressman is already running campaign ads boasting that he voted against NCLB. "The Torture President" is his more likely moniker in years to come.

Answer 4

Bush was a remarkably effective President during the first half of his Presidency, at least in terms of getting his agenda passed. He successfully passed massive tax cuts and got America into Iraq. Of course the tax cuts will probably lock in deficits for a very long time (I doubt Congress will have the balls to repeal them/let them expire, especially if the Republicans retain control of at least one chamber of Congress). Iraq will be remembered as an unmitigated disaster, and the negative effects of W's foreign policy on America's standing in the world will probably take quite a while to heal. The Republicans may also eventually be remembered for (at a time when they had complete control over the government) failing to do anything to adress long term problems (such as the deficit). Bush's second term will be remembered primarily for W's uncommonly long period as a lame duck, though he may still have time to further erode his legacy by doing something idiotic about Iran.

Bush's presidency will be remembered as important, but almost certainly not in a favorable light. I can't think of a President in living memory who has handled the office more poorly than W, and if you go back farther into history the people who held the Oval Office were far less powerful (and therefore relativelty less important to the country.)

Answer 5

I think the last good president was Abe Lincoln.

Bush will be remembered for everything he has done.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind with pride and loves nothing but the dying earth that is being killed by a president who guesses wrong every day and likes to talk tough and is a egotist and an idiot in the eyes of the rest of the world and to most of our own country.

The evidence is right there we are controlled by a elected dictator. How else could such an unpopular war go on or have begun.

He controls us with fear: yellow alerts, orange alerts. Take off your shoes at the airport because one mad man put a bomb in there and we need to remind you that we are fighting a billion dollar war against mad men.

He has successfully stolen each election we "won."

He distracts us with agendas like banning gay marriage, school vouchers, and family values. Meanwhile our poor remain poor, our rich get even fatter. Like the French before their revolution we will soon have 99 percent of the population paying 100 percent of the taxes.

He sat and watched as New Orleans was turned into an anarchy because the people who where left weren't his voters. And he did it while on vacation.

Knowing nothing about religion or geography he claimed that we must go to war against a people who clearly have nothing to do with Al-Qeada.

Civil war will break out in Iraq no matter what we do and we will be sitting on the sidelines watching as perhaps an even larger evil than Saddam emerges out of the ashes.

But go ahead bash me and label me as a liberal. But I'm not con or lib I'm human. I have eyes. A heart. And a conscious that works quite well. I can see when things aren't going well. And they haven't been going well at all.

Answer 6

Glad you asked (axxed)!

As they say, time will tell, but I thought about this and I think he will be remembered well...as you say..the partisanship will be gone, but as a tax cutter, honesty, and doing what he said he would do, he will be remembered at least as one of the better.

I know all the libs will scream, but they never put a thought to anything. The Bush "lied" thing as been forgotten and Bush ushered us through 9/11 which he will get credit for.

Unless Iraq turns into a disaster, though I don't think it will, It will be seen as a good thing as far as standing up to the UN, the liberal Europeans, the do nothing French, the hostage Spain and protecting the free world from another nut...see WW2, WW1, need I say more?

History will grant the fact that Saddam was working on WMD, nuclear power and all that...because he was. Saddam will be judged by Kuwait and mass murder. He will never be seen as a victim of the BUSH-CHENEY-HALIBURTON Cabal! What a joke. Bush will be seen as the one who dealt with him.

Iraq may take 10 years to get out of...but Bush warned us of thatr, too! Didn't he!!???

he also will be remembered as thwe one who promoted equal rights by seeing the talents of Condi Rice, and that Latino judge whose name slips my mind. Never has race meant so little. He never used it as a tool to gain with this group or that group...as it should be.

Also, his admission as being "saved" or "born again" is something others are too small minded to recognize.

Answer 7

President Bush isn't the worst President this country has had. He has made mistakes as have his predecesors. As with other Presidents history will try to be subjective and look at the over all picture....those things he did well as opposed to those he did not.
I don't necessarily agree with much of what he's done, but I can say this....when push came to shove, President Bush stood up to the UN and other nations and said more or less, either you'r with us or your not with us....but we're not going to sit by and allow our citizens to be murdered. In some ways I think he's a no nonsense sort of individual.

Answer 8

well, he has made his mistakes, but many of the "mistakes" that people complain about were based on a very real problem that the Clinton administration didn't take care of.

In all honesty, I believe he will be very well remembered, maybe not as one of the best presidents, but definately as one of the ones ready to make a difference.
No president is perfect...and even some of the seemingly perfect ones will be remembered only for the negative things that woke people up.

Perhaps one day we will all forget about Bill Clinton and the fiasco that was his 8 year term......but probably not.

Answer 9

Why wait - here's how historians rank him now:
"Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians.

A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure.

Of the 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success. "

To read the rest, go to the link below, please.

Answer 10

If the USA is still here by then people will say "What the h_l_ were they thinking?. Was something wrong with the water? Or if possible there will be historical analysis of when the USA stopped being a Democracy?? Others will say "Did they learn nothing from Vietnam" Did pollution contribute to obesity, excessive amounts of autism and asthma? Maybe the people then were already so damaged they stopped voting for a government they don't believe and instead chose to vote for American Idol????