Ranking the Presidents - GW comes out average

The Wall St. Journal publishes the results of a survey to rank the US presidents here. GW comes out at number 19 out of 40 (Harrison and Garfield were excluded). Considering the usual left-leaning academia, he's ranked higher than I would have expected. But the split tells it all: conservatives ranked him 6th best, while liberals ranked him 6th worst. Still, this comes out ahead of Clinton, and way ahead of Carter (number 34/40), who ranks near the bottom. I'm not sure if he deserves the 6th best ranking just yet, but the challenges he's tackled during his tenure would certainly rank among the 5 most challenging and he's responded to both challenges (attack on US soil, worst recession in a generation) as well as could be expected. It's on lesser issues, that I would disagree with his methods (like runaway governement spending, prescription drug bill). Still, if he can pull off a further democratization of the middle east, history will put him in the top 5. Even if he can't, his efforts should land him in the top quartile.