THE WORST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY? Gothamist reports that there was a huge turnout at today's March for Peace, Justice & Democracy. Gothamist's coverage opens with an AP photo that gives prominence to a placard that announces "BUSH IS MORE EVIL THAN BIN LADEN." Some Gothamist commenters responded by judging the demonstration as if that one statement were the official message of the event, but that's not so. The website for the march states the following:

End the war in Iraq
Bring all our troops home now!

No war on Iran!
Stand up for immigrant and women's rights!

Unite for change -- let's turn our country around!
The times are urgent and we must act.

Too much is too wrong in this country. We have a foreign policy that is foreign to our core values, and domestic policies wreaking havoc at home. It's time for a change.

Are any of those positions really controversial at this point, as more and more Americans realize how "questionable" the federal government's policies and tactics have been?

As for President Bush, I don't see much point in discussing his performance in terms of relative evil. But I do note that Princeton University professor and New Republic contributor Sean Wilentz recently voiced serious concerns about Bush in a Rolling Stone article entitled "The Worst President in History?"

Sample passages:

Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

No previous president appears to have squandered the public's trust more than Bush has.

No other president -- Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War -- faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle.

The heart of Bush's domestic policy has turned out to be nothing more than a series of massively regressive tax cuts -- a return, with a vengeance, to the discredited Reagan-era supply-side faith that Bush's father once ridiculed as "voodoo economics."

While wiping out the solid Clinton-era federal surplus and raising federal deficits to staggering record levels, Bush's tax policies have necessitated hikes in federal fees, state and local taxes, and co-payment charges to needy veterans and families who rely on Medicaid, along with cuts in loan programs to small businesses and college students, and in a wide range of state services.

Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science -- dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to "the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."

History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution.

Thanks to Reignforest for the lead to the Rolling Stone article.