Worst. President. Ever.

Ben Quayle has never heard of Warren G. Harding. Or James Buchanan. Or, bless his unlikeable, impeached little heart, Andrew Johnson (the only North Carolinian president that other states don't fight us for).

Or he has, and he's just assuming that the voters in Arizona's 3rd Congressional District have never had a social studies class.

Quayle released an ad last week calling President Obama the "worst president in history." Whether you agree with Quayle or not, you have to admit that it's pretty asinine to give a president an all-time ranking based on his first 18 months in office. And, whether you like Obama's policies or not - worse than any of the string of presidents that let the country degenerate into civil war? Really?

Best/worst president polls are interesting. They're entirely subjective, first of all. Are you measuring likeability? Effectiveness? How do you define "effective," anyway? A small-government type and a the-Executive-Branch-should-lead-the-way type are going to have very different definitions of "effective." Which I suppose is why the 1982 survey (at the link) found that conservative and liberal historians agreed on the top 10 best and worst with the exceptions of LBJ and Eisenhower (best) and Coolidge and Carter (worst).

The color-coded chart on that same Wikipedia page is also revealing... were the "best" presidents (on average) really skewed toward America's founding period, and its "worst" in the years prior to the Civil War? Did they lead historical events, or did those events lead them?

If nothing else, it's a fun exercise. Lincoln wasn't exactly popular during his first term, but now he's universally voted our best president. Truman barely won re-election, and now he's top-10 best. The public ranks JFK higher than historians, but even the experts have him in the top quadrant - and as much as I adore all things Kennedy, I don't think I'd put him that high. Andrew Jackson, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson were strong leaders, but damn, they each did some crappy things. And, sorry, I have to defend Nixon. Yes, his abuses of power were heinous and he deserved every bit of what he got... but the man did do some pretty progressive stuff. He proposed the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the law creating OSHA, for pete's sake.

And, personally, I think there should be a buffer between a presidency and any attempts to assess it long term. you have to be dead 10 years to be considered for a frakking postage stamp, for crying out loud. Is it too much to ask that historians wait until George W. Bush is out of office a full term before declaring him one of history's worst? (For that matter, naming Obama 15th best is just as silly as Quayle calling him the worst.)

And, for what it's worth... Ben Quayle, what if you win? It's January, 2011, and you're the junior-most representative in a Congress that's still probably controlled by Democrats (the House, at least), and if you do somehow manage to get something through committee, you're still the guy who called the president the worst in history. So, you're trying to get the Democrats who control your committee to bring your bill to a floor vote and then vote for it - the same Democrats who are going to be asking the "worst president" to campaign for them a year later. And then, if you're very lucky, you get to ask the "worst president in history" to sign your bill into law.

Get ready for a few years with zero federal appropriations, 3rd Congressional District.