Jackson Free Press

"I don't think there is any Bush baggage at all. I love my brother, I'm proud of his accomplishments."

—Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush March 10 in a Fox News interview, saying President George W. Bush's reputation would not harm his potential run for the U.S. presidency in 2016.

Why it stinks: A 2009 CBS News/New York Times poll showed that President George W. Bush left office with an approval rating of 22 percent, the lowest approval since Gallup began asking the question 70 years earlier. Only Millard Fillmore, Warren Harding, William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan rank lower.

President Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton--a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000--and plunged the nation into a recession from which it has yet to recover. Two weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office projected the deficit to be $1.2 trillion; the estimated 10-year projection was about $3.1 trillion.

"[I]n fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019," states The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Beyond the economics are the human costs of the wars George W. Bush began. In addition to more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers wounded, more than 6,630 U.S. soldiers have died. The Afghanistan War started Oct. 7, 2001, and will be the longest war in American history when it ends in 2014.