Yeah, i think historically Grant is considered right above William Henry Harrison, but he's considered the worst president to not be as bad as someone who died before doing anything.  Maybe "didn't give a damn" was unfair, but I think it was a very low priority to him, and if it wasn't deemed advantageous he wouldn't of freed them.

Ruthoford B Hayes was actually ranked in the middle of the pack i believe.  Probably because he tried all he could to prevent the rollback of Civil Rights enforcement and eventually was forced to compromise.

Other then that i can't really think of anything too positive or negative he did.  Their was the Union thing, but there were riots going on, anyone could of made the same mistake. 

How do Bill and Hillary Clinton sleep at night?

Answer: Separate beds

Here's my opinion: Bush isn't the greatest president ever by a long shot, but he IS a hell of a lot better than Al Gore would have been, and don't even MENTION what John Kerry would been like as President... *shudder* Also, like it or not, more than 59000000 people voted for Bush in '04, so it's not like he stole that election, the Dems just failed to provide a better alternative.

IMO, the worst president ever is a tie: James Buchanan and Lyndon Johnson. Buchanan (term:1856-1860) stood by and let the southern states secede without any problems. Johnson (term:1963-1968) failed to pull out of Vietnam when it became apparent that we were going to lose and he did other crappy stuff like initiate the Social Security debacle by allowing people who didn't pay into it to receive checks from it and allowing the federal government to take money from it for other stuff (what FDR envisioned when he founded SS in the '30s was like a 401k that was guarenteed by the federal government. The purpose was to get people to save money for retirement after many were not as a result of the Great Depression wiping out their savings)
Also, at least a few books I've read have said that JFK was planning on pulling out of Vietnam because he realized the war was unwinable. (I'm not sure if that's accurate or not.)
So, regardless of how bad Bush may be, he's not as bad as the alternatives in both elections would have been and he's not even close to the worst president ever.

oh yeah, check out this vid: it's hilarious

Yeah. I've got some bad news for you, since you seem to be a very rightest republican. Historically Lyndon Johnson is ranked higher as a president then Ronald Reagan.

Ever hear of Civil Rights legislation? He passed a LOT of them. Including the main one and ones that provided stuff like Fair Housing and ESL classes.

Also he did try and pull out of vietnam. He stopped fighting and offered peacetalks with Hanoi.

My favorite president is Roosevelt personally.(the only one I own a portrait of)

Teddy Roosevelt.   I'd be much happier if the Republican party moved back towards Teddy's core values.(Not that they were always right their due to the Bull-Moose debacle.)

^^dude, I've got nothing against his civil rights legislation, but the stuff I mentioned is why I think he's so bad. (there's a reson he didn't run for a second term in '68) also, where have you seen LBJ ranked higher than Ronald Reagan? Just curious. (I'm assuming there was a reason Reagan got 528 electoral votes in 1984)

Yeah. His health. He had heart problems due to his health. Besides it's not like voting always matters. I mean sometimes the president has to go against popular opinion to do the right thing.(civil rights bills were unpopular at that time to my knowledge.) That's the biggest problem with democracies. People start voting for what they want instead of what they need.

He left the Office in 1969. He died in 1973.

Reagan got 528 electoral votes in 1984 because of who he was up against.

As for the Poll, The Siena Research Institute's 2002. It polls historical scholars.  They're the best because they seem to get the most historical scholars to do a poll.

Lyndon Johnson ranks ahead of him.

While Reagan "won the cold war"... pretty much anyone could have as it was already crumbling, Reagan was just smart (or foolhardy) enough to seal his legacy by making the big speech people told him was a bad idea.)

There was also the giant raising of the national debt and the Iran Contra. Which started the strain on our economy and the discrediting of our country to other nations.

(FYI early polling seems to suggest that Bush is going to drop pretty far from his 2002 numbers where he was ranked in the top half of the presidents... right after 9/11. The whole Iraq thing really screwed up his legacy.)

It's all about what you care about. If you care about civil rights, balanced budgets and an isolationist foreign policy, it's very hard to like Bush. In those areas, no other candidate could really do worse.

Now, if instead of that you think that a president with a lot of power makes a lot of sense, think that trusting the government to spy on americans is a small price to pay for feeling safer, and think that the country doesn't support the troops enough, Bush might be a good thing.

I for one don't like many things he's done:

-I didn't think that invading Irak made any sense.
-I think the PATRIOT act is unpatriotic.
-I don't think that No Child Left Behind is the right approach to education.
-I think the judges he appointed to the supreme court have sent the country back 100 years.
-I think his excessive spending cannot be considered reasonable by economic conservatives.

So in the end, I think we'll have to live with his mistakes for many years. Oh well, at least he didn't extend copyrights or signed the DMCA into law. Those are Clinton's sins.

If it makes you feel better though. Johnson is only ranked 1 ahead of Reagan. In previous years he was many down from Johnson and in the 20's. Seems the farther away you get from reagans actually presidency the better think of him. (Go figure)

Anyways it went

1. FDR
2. Lincoln (gets 1 in a lot of other polls, mostly done before regans presidency)
3. Theodore Roosevelt (my boy)
4. George Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Woodrow Wilson
7. Truman
8. Monroe
9. Madison
10. Eisenhower
11. Polk
12. Adams
13. Andrew Jackson (Jacksonian democracy apparently way more important than native american's lives and the banking system)
14. John F Kennedy (Yeah I know, that probablly hurts you too.)
15. Lyndon B Johnson
16. Ronald Reagan (Up from 26 big jump)
17. John Quincy Adams.

Pause here... cause this next one is going to piss off people who are too far right republicans.

18. William Jefferson Clinton (That's right... in the top half. Was 23 last time the poll was conducted... so atleast reagan jumped ahead of him.)
19. William Mckinley
20. Grover Cleveland
21. Taft
22. George W Bush (Post 9/11-Pre Iraq. He's gonna drop hard)
23. Martin Van Buren.
24. Jimmy Carter. ("He's history's greatest monster!" - character from the critic)
25. Richard Nixon (Good president aside from the illegal wire tapping.)
26. Rutheford B Hayes
27. Gerald Ford
28. Coolidge
29. Chester A. Arhtur
30. Hebert Hoover
31. Benjamin Harrison (The president I always forget.)
32. James Garfield
33. Zachary Taylor
34. Grant (The last guy before the guy who did nothig.)
35. William Henry Harrison
36. John Tyler
37. Millard Fillmore
38. Franklyn Pierce
39. Warren G Harding
40. James Buchanon
41. Andrew Johnson (I think they're being tough on Andy. He couldn't go through with lincoln's plans cause the north wanted blood)

* Note, there are only 41 presidents on this list despite bush being the 42nd. The reason is that Grover Cleveland was both are 22nd and 24th president.

Hm usually I see Harding as the worst President in most of these polls. Looks like good list though.