JAMES TARANTO: Who’s More Competent? 43 beats 44, 48% to 42%.

This has to hurt: A plurality of respondents in a new Fox News poll “believe the administration of former President George W. Bush was more competent [than] the Obama administration,” the Hill reports. “Forty-eight percent say the Obama administration is less competent, while 42 percent say it is more competent.” Although the question didn’t include the option, 7% volunteered that they rated the two administrations “the same.”

Not surprisingly, partisans favor the president from their party, with 76% of Democrats siding with Obama and 81% of Republicans with Bush. But independents also favor Bush, albeit by a considerably smaller margin: 47% to 34%, with 14% “the same.”

Another way of putting it is that 55% of all respondents and 61% of independents think that Obama is at least as incompetent as Bush–which, given the latter’s reputation toward the end of his term, is quite damning of the current president.

Obama’s legacy will be rehabilitating Bush’s legacy.