History May -- or May Not -- Judge Bush More Kindly

Although George W. Bush's approval ratings have rebounded slightly, as often happens at the end of a president's tenure, he will nevertheless finish his presidency with among the lowest scores since approval ratings came into widespread usage. Gallup pegs Bush's final approval numbers at a -27 net (34 percent approve, 61 percent disapprove), the worst for any outgoing president save Richard Nixon.

Surprisingly, however, there has historically been fairly little relationship between a President's popularity at the end of his term and the way that he has tended to be regarded by history. The following chart compares two things: a president's final net approval rating as measured by Gallup, and the average historical ranking of that president as assigned based on three recent polls of historians. (These were the polls conducted by CSPAN in 1999, by Siena College in 2002, and by the Wall Street Journal in 2005. The chart excludes Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, whose terms ended unnaturally.)