Bush a failure: professor poll

[Robbien]

"While time is needed to fairly and accurately gauge how well any president ranks with his predecessors, George W. Bush starts with a ranking that could hardly be lower," said Thomas Kelly, professor emeritus of American studies at Siena, in the Albany suburbs.

The Bush standing among the college professors has, like his public opinion poll ratings, dropped dramatically since the days immediately following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the problems in the wake of the invasion of Iraq.

In Siena's 2002 ranking of all the nation's 42 presidents, Mr Bush came in mid-pack at No 23, one spot behind his father.

"That was shortly after 9/11," said Douglas Lonnstrom, a statistics professor and director of Siena's research institute. "Clearly, the professors do not think things have gone well for him in the past few years."

Of those professors responding to the survey, which was sent in February to history and political science departments at 2800 colleges and universities, 58 per cent said that if the Bush presidency were to end now, it would rate a failure while 24 per cent said it would rate "below average." Two per cent said it would rate as "great" while another five per cent said "near great." Eleven per cent said the Bush presidency would rate "average."

There was no immediate comment from the White House.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18997954-23109,00.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. On our way to NY this weekend,

we met a guy on the plane who was with Historians Against bush. He was on his way to the march too.

[gatlingforme]

5. "Historians against Bush" I love it.!! Scientists against Bush should

be pretty popular too. All educational facilities should be against Bush

[eppur_se_muova]

9. "Scientists", "against Bush**" a tad redundant.

Scientists are DEEPLY commited to reality.

[formactv]

10. I am a signpainter against Bush.

[leftyladyfrommo]

13. I'm an Unemployed Person Against Bush!

[0007]

14. I'm a retired senior citizen against junior.

I'm sure that junior is the butt of all scientist jokes that are a tad redundant.

[HereSince1628]

2. What do you expect from those damned liberal academicians?

I love it when we get news I actually feel free to believe!!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. The 7% that rated him above "average" should be fired immediately.

They are obviously unfit to teach our children.

[Judi Lynn]

4. They should publish the names of the 2% rating it "great" so we could

warn future students to avoid them, as well as the "near great" 5%, just like posting names of pedophiles being released from jail!

You really wouldn't want them around unsuspecting, healthy students.

[Seabiscuit]

7. The neocons go after *our* professors, we should go after theirs!

[unblock]

6. i believe some of the "great"s were sarcastic

i think they said that the last time they did this (or maybe it was an unrelated, similar poll) some of them said he was "the greatest president since clinton".

[madmark]

8. well its positive that the phd's are not among the retarded

[CTyankee]

11. I hate to say this, but

this only feeds the Repubs wind machine. They like to make fun of "pointy headed" professors and put them in the margins of what "normal" people believe. They've been doing this as long as I can remember, back to Ike vs. Adlai as I recall.

Ditto for movie stars and rock stars. When they embrace Dems the Repubs scream about "immoral Hollywood" etc.

We need more garage mechanic and waitress polls. It's hard for the Repubs to marginalize them.

[kiraboo]

12. True; but the reason they make fun of them is because they

worry that they're inferior. A Freudian reaction if ever there was one.

[CTyankee]

15. You are right but that's the problem

The repubs have been masterful at turning the "average guy or gal" against Democrats because we're snooty and look down on less well educated people. It's a total crock of course, but I think we should keep our own counsel on this. The repubs tear us apart with polls and studies like this one.