Is Franklin Pierce due for a promotion? Pierce, the only New Hampshire man elected to the White House, is a perennial nominee for Worst President Ever. But as that office's current occupant finds his own reputation under attack from many historians and the public, Pierce could move up a notch from the bottom of the presidential rankings - a boost Pierce partisans say is long past due.

"When I speak to groups, somebody always asks, 'How does it feel to know your man is no longer the worst?' " said Peter Wallner, author of a recent two-volume biography of Pierce. "I take a little bit of pleasure in the fact that (President George) Bush is viewed by them as worse than Pierce."

With less than a month left in his presidency, Bush has been getting plenty of on-the-fly assessments from historians, journalists and pundits. A group of political analysts, including former Bush adviser Karl Rove, gathered in a New York City auditorium earlier this month to debate the proposition that "Bush 43 is the worst president of the past 50 years." In an informal poll of professional historians conducted by the online History News Network, two-thirds of participants ranked Bush at the bottom of the presidential list.

Such rankings, of course, are meaningless when set against the long sweep of history, and historians warn against premature judgments. Still, Bush's slide may bring some measure of justice for Pierce advocates who feel their man has been wrongly maligned by history.

"This whole rating presidents is very, very subjective, but I've

always thought it was unfair to put Pierce at the bottom," said Jayme Simoes, chairman of the committee that commemorated Pierce's 200th birthday in 2004.

Pierce, who served as president from 1853 to 1857, has been the object of scorn from the moment he left the White House. Critics dismiss him as an ill-prepared political lightweight. He's been blamed with pushing the nation toward civil war by allowing slavery to expand to the West. Even his official White House biography notes that Pierce, "far from preserving calm, hastened the disruption of the Union." Some people say he was a drunk, too.

But such criticisms pale in comparison to the worst Bush bashing, with accusations of war-mongering, constitutional violations, economic catastrophe and environmental depredation. Some historians predict Bush will find himself with the Worst-Ever title when history is written. Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton University who was one of the first to put Bush at the bottom of the presidential ranking, described his legacy as a "colossal historical disgrace."

Wallner, who serves as library director of the New Hampshire Historical Society, cautions against quick historical assessments - for Bush and for Pierce.

"One of the things I understand as a historian is that there has to be some perspective over time before you can judge a president," he said.

While he acknowledged that Pierce's presidency was far from successful, Wallner said he wrote the biography to put Pierce's failings in context. He said historians rarely credit Pierce for his efforts in ethics reform and his modernization of the military. And accusations that Pierce idled as the country marched toward war fail to recognize that a peaceful solution to the slavery question was likely impossible, Wallner said.

"There's no way he's ever going to be viewed as a successful president, but I don't think he was the worst, either," Wallner said.

"People blame Pierce for making the situation worse, but no historian I've read offers an alternative he could have done to make things better."

Still, Wallner takes a wry pride in Pierce's unflattering legacy.

"In a way, for him to be ranked as the worst gives him some attention that he wouldn't get otherwise," he said. "At least he's in the conversation. If he's resurrected as mediocre or as less than a failure, then he's completely forgotten."

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