Worst. President. Ever.

By Scott Horton

Bush’s Karl Rove-directed legacy tour is over and the votes are in: he leaves office as the most disliked president in American history. The final New York Times-CBS News poll is out, and Bush scores a 22 percent approval rating. Of course this polling process is only seventy-odd years old. Some of his predecessors might have done worse—James Buchanan, for instance, or possibly Warren G. Harding. But Bush has reason for cheer–he beat Dick Cheney, who scored a 13 percent approval rating, still above Cheney’s low-water mark—at least he cracked double digits.

Cheney still has his boosters in the media, however—at least two of them, Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas. They worked on the cover story for the last Newsweek. Like its subject, the story was deceptive and darkly insinuating–truly a missive from the Dark Side.