Historians' ranking of US Presidents (#275, Topic P)

Coming to USA as a graduate student, I lacked a good exposure to US history, invariably a required course in the undergraduate curriculum. Thus, it is always a treat when I can read authoritative versions in summary form. In today's Washington Post, its editors invited 5 historians to answer a question: What Will History Say [About George W Bush]? One, a history professor at Columbia, answers it with: He's The Worst Ever. (He ranks Lincoln, Washington, and Roosevelt at the top; Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Richard Nixon as "occupy[ing] the bottom rung, and now President Bush is a leading contender to join them." Another one, a professor at Rutgers, is kinder, with "At Least He's Not Nixon." A third one, a professor at Tulane, made a similar point with "Though Bush may be viewed as a laughingstock, he won't have the zero-integrity factors that have kept Nixon ahd Harding at the bottom of the presidential sweepstakes. Oddly, the president whom Bush most reminds me of is Herbert Hoover, whose name is synonumous with failure to respond to the Great Depression... He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president." A fourth one, a fellow at a think tank, says "He's Only Fifth Worst" -- the worst, Buchanan, whose inaction toward 7 southern states' secession led to the Civil War; next-to-worst, Johnson, who "didn't like blacks" and whose "policies led to his impeachment;" third worst, Nixon, "a criminal in the White House ... the only president to run a criminal gang out of the Oval Office engaging in spying and burglary;" fourth worst, James Madison, for the War of 1812, when "The United States was a minor neutral nation that was frequently harassed by both of the warring empires, Britain and France," for siding "with the more dangerous power [France] against the less dangerous [Britain]" despite Madison's superb reasoning: a grand design "to conquer Spanish Florida and seize British Canada." Bush, ranked fifth worst, mainly because he "has inadvertently destroyed only Baghdad, not Washington ["the British ... torched Washington, D.C., while Madison and first lady Dolley fled to Virginia"], though "he will be remembered for the Iraqi conflict for gnerations." A valuable US history lesson for me.