A Pew Research Center poll released last week found only 28% of the American public approves of President George W. Bush–a new low in the polling done by this respected source. In an informal survey of 109 professional historians History News Network reports that 98.2% rated the Bush presidency a “failure” while 1.8% classified it as a “success.”

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians ranked the GWB presidency the worst in our history. Another 35 percent placed the Bush presidency in the lower half category.

While conceding the limitations of results from self-selected respondents, HNN provides some comments which accompanied the low assessments:

“an ideologue who got the nation into a totally unnecessary war, and has broken the Constitution more often than even Nixon. * * *. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer,* * *. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”