FOCUS: THE BUSH LEGACY George Bush’s place in history

Al Jazeera asks how future generations will view the 43rd US president [GALLO/GETTY]

As part of its special series on the legacy of George Bush, Al Jazeera spoke to two historians with very different views on the US president.

Here is what they had to say.

Robert S. McElvaine, chair of history at Millsaps College, Mississippi

I have carried out two very unscientific polls of historians on this very issue, the first in 2004 and the second this year and it seems pretty clear at the moment that historians are of the view that his is a failed presidency.

The most recent poll showed that the overwhelming majority thought his presidency was the worst in history.

This poll was done before the financial collapse that simply adds another failure to ones that were already there.

The disasters of the Bush administration are not the worst in history - the American civil war was the worst.

When I did the poll in 2004, I rated James Buchanan, who was president when the union dissolved and the civil war was on the verge of happening, as the worst.

On the other hand, Buchanan was certainly not as personally responsible for all that as Bush and his administration seem to responsible for the problems happening now.

The biggest failing is that he had an enormous amount of goodwill dropped in his lap from around the world following the 9/11 attacks and he has squandered that by going into an unnecessary war in Iraq which turned most of the world against the US.

His initial response to the attacks was to be befuddled but he seems to have done a better job as time went on and you could argue that the most positive part of his administration was that there have been no more attacks on the US.

But how much his policies were responsible for that is difficult to say.

As far as domestic policies he seemed to have followed the policies of Calvin Coolidge in the 1920’s by drastically cutting taxes for high-income earners.

He also took a budget surplus and turned it into the largest deficit in American history.

Some have said Bush’s reputation will improve, as Harry Truman’s did [GALLO/GETTY] But there is never a final verdict of history and the more information we have, in terms of documents about what was actually going on, so any historian’s judgement is subject to change in terms of consequences of actions that were taken.

You can see some measure of the feelings about Bush from abroad in the reaction to Barack Obama’s overwhelming election victory around the world.

There was an enormous outpouring of support, the feeling the US was being restored to its idealistic role as a champion of genuine international co-operation in support of democracy around the world instead of at the barrel of a gun.

Bush has been compared to Harry Truman but while he did some good things, he is the only world leader who has used atomic bombs and it is hard for some of us to forgive him for that.

But Truman is a convenient person for Bush and his supporters to make parallels to as he left office as a very unpopular president but his stock has risen somewhat since.

A big part of Bush’s legacy will ultimately revolve around what will happen in Iraq and in the Middle East.

The war in Iraq may not be seen as so much of a disaster if a stable democracy emerges there, although that remains to be seen.