Presidential Rankings

Anyone read the latest presidential rankings on C-Span? Yahoo reported on Feb. 16 that C-Span had ranked our 43 presidents 'til now. No surprise that George W. Bush ended up near the bottom (his dad did much better). But W's highest mark came under the heading of justice, and some of the lowest for crisis management. I guess C-Span ignored the controversies over Git-Mo and the fact that the younger Bush did galvanize the country after 9/11 (albeit a short-lived accomplishment overshadowed by WMD's and his "Mission Accomplished"speech).

The real travesty about this list was that Jimmy Carter came somewhere in the mid 20's or average for presidents. It makes me wonder if anyone who participated in these rankings was alive when Carter was POTUS? Don't get me wrong, Mr. Carter was our president and did take advantage of his position to forge the basis of any peace in the Middle East. But his economic policies led to double digit credit card-like interest rates for home lending and gas shortages (these he inherited from Gerald Ford). It took 8 years of Ronald Reagan (ranked no. 10) to undo what President Carter did. Watch the movie Miracle and listen for the speech Jimmy Carter makes where he admits that that American generation was the first to say the future would be worse than better. This was the inspiration to the country under his leadership.

Further, one of the knocks on President Bush was his foreign poclicy and President Obama tried to undo that image when reaching out to the Muslim world in his inaugural address. But understand that President Carter was HATED by the Muslim world for his dealings between (especially) Israel and Egypt.

I nominate President Jimmy Carter as the next to the last worst president. Harrison was worse because he died a month in from not wearing a hat.