[Azred]

It isn't that I missed it; rather, I didn't care. I don't pay attention to polls ranking politicians and neither should anyone else.

Many of those polls rank politicians through the lens of history and events that were happening during that time. Consider Lincoln himself: historically, his original opinion was not of "slaves must be freed" and, in fact, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation only as a way of trying to destabilize the Confederacy. Yes, this tactic worked, but if the Civil War had not taken place he would not have issued it. Many people rank him so highly as a great President because of the Emancipation Proclamation, the fact that the armies under his command defeated the Confederacy and brought all the States back into the Union, and because he was assassinated in such a public manner. I would ask you "without resorting to the Internet, can you name 5 things Lincoln did during his Presidency that did not involve the Civil War?" but I have no way of proving that you didn't perform a search.

Similarly, consider Roosevelt. His sympathetic Congress introduced sweeping legislation and his Administration created Federal agencies that vastly increased the size and power of the Federal Government, some of which could be considered to be unconstitutional (according to strict constructionism). Some of these pieces of legislation and agencies actually helped prolong and worsen the Depression. However, the armies under his command defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan; thus, his legacy is one of total victory and even the people who dislike Roosevelt acknowledge this.

I suspect that W's low ranking is the publicity of the slow disaster that was happening during the last 1.5 years of his second term. As I have noted, I am no great fan of his for a couple of reasons (Patriot Act, stimulus packages, poor use of the military against an enemy that is mostly invisible and non-centralized).