Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Demographics Won't Help Bush

To Jonathan Bernstein's list of reasons why George W. Bush's reputation won't improve in the next few decades, I think we might add demographics. The historians who will be judging him then are young right now, and they're in a strongly Democratic age group. So as time passes, you'll get a larger and larger share of influential historians whose formative political memories are of Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq and other terrible things he did (the response to Katrina, civil liberties violations). I'd be surprised if his reputation rose as that age group started getting full professorships.

1 comment:

Nick Beaudrot said...

I wish I could find post-presidency approval or favorable ratings. The trajectory of every non-Ford President is really fascinating.