(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Few adults in the United States provide a positive assessment of their outgoing head of state, according to a poll by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 31 per cent of respondents think George W. Bush was a good or very good president.
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Few adults in the United States provide a positive assessment of their outgoing head of state, according to a poll by Opinion Research Corporation released by CNN. 31 per cent of respondents think George W. Bush was a good or very good president.
Conversely, 40 per cent of respondents rate Bush’s performance as poor or very poor, and 28 per cent believe he is the worst president the U.S. has ever had.
Bush—a Republican—earned a second four-year term in the November 2004 presidential election. Bush’s tenure was marked by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which led to the start of the war on terrorism against al-Qaeda fighters and members of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan; and the invasion of Iraq to topple the government of Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
In American elections, candidates require 270 votes in the Electoral College to win the White House. On Nov. 4, Democratic nominee Barack Obama secured a majority of electoral votes, defeating Republican candidate John McCain. Obama will become the first African American president in U.S. history when he takes over from Bush on Jan. 20.
On Jan. 12, in his last press conference as president, Bush defended some of his decisions, saying, "In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. (…) There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq] was a significant disappointment. I don’t know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were—things didn’t go according to plan, let’s put it that way."
Polling Data
How would you rate George W. Bush in comparison to other presidents in U.S. history? Would you say he is the best president the U.S. has ever had, very good, good, poor, very poor, or would you say he is the worst president the U.S. has ever had?
|
Dec. 2008 |
Aug. 2008 |
Nov. 2007 |
|
|
The best |
– |
– |
1% |
|
Very good |
5% |
9% |
8% |
|
Good |
26% |
29% |
32% |
|
Poor |
23% |
22% |
20% |
|
Very poor |
17% |
14% |
15% |
|
The worst |
28% |
26% |
23% |
Source: Opinion Research Corporation / CNN
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,013 American adults, conducted from Dec. 19 to Dec. 21, 2008. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
