Buncha Polls: (Mostly Recent) Presidents, Best and Worst

Here, via Atrios.

These are extremely interesting. The funniest thing is the ridiculous now-o-centrism of some of these polls, some of which rank Clinton as a better president than Lincoln and/or Washington. And if that weren't absurd enough, they rank Reagan above them as well. In fact, the second-funniest thing about these polls is how often the Reagan-was-a-great-president myth pops up.

Anyway, there are lots of polls--too many to summarize here--but two other surprising things are (a) how well Bill Clinton comes off in most of them, and (b) how badly Bush '43 comes off. Despite the relentless and well-funded pro-Reagan and anti-Clinton campaigns, the two men often come out more-or-less tied. There's no good news in here for Dubya, though, I'm afraid. No, wait...I think that in one of these polls 1% of the respondents rate him as (note: not making this up) the greatest president of all time. Think about that one.