It will be hard for George W. Bush — should he care about such things — to find anything positive in C-Span’s just released second Presidential Leadership Survey. In short, Bush ranks as number 36 among the 42 U.S. presidents surveyed, with just five even worse presidents behind him. In international relations, he’s second to last, just a fraction ahead of William Henry Harrison.
On the other hand, Bush can congratulate himself for apparently emerging as one of the winners from Tom Ricks’s new Iraq book The Gamble, according to Abu Muqawama, who has been ill and has managed to finish the opus.
Since Ricks is even more pessimistic about Iraq than I am, I find this bit of news a little surprising. But we’ll see — I’m hoping to get my own copy any day now.
