| It's important to keep in mind that this is just the bottom half of the presidents, it doesn't mean that Grant, Taft, Coolidge, etc. we're AWFUL, just slightly below average.
And @markyb, if you look into the process for this survey, they had a 10 categories that they rated Presidents on, including Performance Within the Context of the Times, so they tried to control for 'boring' years. Other categories were Relations with Congress, Vision and Agenda Setting, Economic Management, and more. It was pretty thorough.
They did another survey in 2000 that didn't include GWB and the ratings really didn't change much, aside from Bush Sr. and Clinton both improving a little, and Buchanan being judged even more harshly.
There are some interesting numbers in the survey, I recommend it to any Presidents buff: http://www.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/presidential-leadership-survey.aspx |
Who was President? 
Major 3rd Party Candidates 
100 Worst Movies
