Yet another Ebert Response

Chris Bowyers: Its actually a higher number if you count David Rice Atchison.
http://www.answers.com/topic/david-rice-atchison

And Bush I took the oath while Reagan was under anesthesia.

How about if we all collectively agree that Bush was the worst President in 100 years? Will that work? Or how about we all just agree he was a terribly corrupt, pathetic, ignorant boob? A failure, a superlative screwup, an empty suit with an empty mind and leave it at that?
Note that NO ONE here is defending Bush or writing his accomplishments like one might defend the last 100 year's Presidents.

The best thing I've read about him here was that he might not have been as bad as Franklin Pierce. Why would Helen Thomas (covering Presidents since Kennedy) call the Bush II the worst if he wasn't? Why would Mike Lukovich (a harsh critic of Clinton) call Bush II a walking disaster? Why would conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg write a column defending Hoover near the end of Bush's term? Why would Bush's defenders point to his "accomplishment" of keeping the country safe, when 9/11 happened on his watch? Bush made us unsafe by declaring war in Iraq.

Presidents get judged on a lot of things. The Ridings-McIvers book outlines the following criteria:
Leadership Qualities
Uh huh. George W. Bush sat in a classroom reading a book after being informed the nation was under attack. Bush had the most political capital since Truman in 1945, right after FDR died. He could have changed the world. What did Bush do? Told us to keep shopping.
Accomplishments and Crisis Management
Accomplishments: Name one on the scale of Clinton balancing the budget and the Oslo Peace Accords, Bush I adhering to the Powell doctrine when dealing with Iraq and the ADA, Reagan ending the Cold War peacefully, Carter's Camp David accords, etc.. Crisis Management: See "Katrina, Hurricane killing Americans because of mismanagment of..." and "Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, in charge of Iraq..."
Political Skill
We are discussing the man who tried to give an uninvited back massage to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A third of Bush's 11 total vetoes were overridden. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, a colossal disaster, underfunded and ineffective.
Appointments
Pick an exiting Bush II Cabinet member with an accomplishment that doesn't make you ashamed. John Ashcroft? Alberto Gonzales? Michael Brown? How about the fact that Bush opposed Homeland Security under Clinton, then implemented the Department only after 9/11? How about his attempt to appoint Harriet Miers, his own lawyer, to the Supreme Court? (I do like Colin Powell, though. He resigned. Then he endorsed Obama.)
Character and Integrity.
Bush tried to get Congress to pass an Ammendment to the Constitution banning gay marraige.
Bush got us into an unnecessary war based on doctored evidence.
Bush vetoed federal funding of stem cell research, which has the potential to change the world.
Bush did all this not because it was the right thing to do, but because he knew it would gain him political ground.
Let us go ahead, then, and speculate on the future:
I think there are four areas in which the future will be affected by the nightmare that was George W. Bush: Iraq, Gay Marraige, Global Climate Change and Funding for Stem Cell Research.
Has Iraq become (or will it become) a stable democracy? Probably not. And consider the cost. Iraq could have been a shining star of Bush's legacy, but it probably won't be so now.
Will gay Americans be afforded marraige rights? You betcha. Bush's bigotry will read like Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat stump speeches in about 30 years.
Is global warming for real? Yes. Will it be as disastrous as is predicted? Probably. Did Bush do a damned thing about it? Nope.
Will stem cell research cure Parkinson's, spinal cord injury, etc.? Probably. And Bush set us back eight years.

Some of Bush's superlative screwups can be mended by Obama, I hope. I hope Obama can overcome the deregulation that led to the Global Economic Crisis. I hope Obama can change a whole lot, but I fear for the worst.
Face it, Chris. Bush was a failure of a President. We needed a leader and got George W. Bush. A house plant could have managed the country better than Bush did.