Conservative pundits such as the Wall St. Journal’s Peggy Noonan continue to cite the recent Quinnipiac poll as evidence that Obama is perhaps the worst president to have served during the last seven decades. For reasons I discussed in my previous post, however, I think we need to resist jumping to that conclusion.
First, the Quinnipiac survey asks respondents to choose the best, and the worst, president from among the 12 who have served in the post-World War II era, rather than allowing respondents to rank each of them using the same set of standards. Given the degree of partisan sorting among the general public, (and perhaps the public’s lack of historical memory!) we should not be surprised that the two most recent presidents, Obama and Republican George W. Bush, come in first and second, respectively, in the worst president list, and that in a head-to-head comparison of Bush and Obama, Democrats and Republicans present almost mirror images in their choice of the worst president. CONT.
Matthew Dickinson, Middlebury College