Will Obama be remembered in the top 10 of Presidents?

[pbrower2a]

Let's start by the toughest standard: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR became President with America severely divided and in great danger; their Presidencies ended with America much more united and with the danger gone or practically gone. At that standard, Obama isn't even close. He is in that league if Americans fully repudiate the anti-Obama agenda of the other Party in 2016. That is asking for the nearly-impossible.

He rightly gets credit for undoing the economic meltdown that began with the bungling of his predecessor without starting an economic bubble. He gets credit for whacking the perpetrator of the worst incidents of terrorism against America.  Terrorism against American citizens has again proved a poor way to get to bask long in personal (if perverse) glory. If Democrats could remind others that "General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead"...  that's good.

America remains politically polarized -- almost as badly as Spain was on the brink of the Spanish Civil War. But such is the choice of tycoons who see that as the second-best choice, the best being that those tycoons have America operating in servile lockstep. President Obama rescued American capitalism by rescuing capitalists -- even if those capitalists would stab him in the back.

He did not solve every problem... but he gets us the Affordable Care Act. Is it perfect? No. But after it has come into effect it seems unassailable.  

There are two peace-time Presidents (I do not consider Tr4uman a peacetime President) who achieved much as President, leaving an indelible mark upon America. Jefferson did one thing that heavily defines America -- the Louisiana Purchase; he also kept America out of a European war that could have brought only harm to America. Theodore Roosevelt is by far the best President between Lincoln and FDR for a series of huge, humanizing reforms that have long been unassailable. Obama got only a short window of opportunity for reforms that he wanted... but he got most of them achieved.

Truman inherited the best possible post-war situation near its end. You cannot argue with his conduct of the last days of World War II in Europe... and even if one questions the use of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki... the Japanese government was not showing any willingness to surrender.  

So -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR --- 1, 2, and 3... take your choice.
Jefferson, TR, and Truman --- 4, 5, and 6... take your choice.  

I'll give Eisenhower #7 for the Interstate Highway System, giving a conservative rationale for desegregation, ending the Korean War without 'losing' South Korea, and letting the dangerous demagogue Joseph McCarthy implode rather than jumping on the bandwagon. I see Obama having much the same virtues as Eisenhower -- caution, integrity, and respect for legal niceties. But ACA can save lives as can expressways that supplant the infamous Blood Alleys of the 1950s.

I fault Ike for letting the CIA make short-term choices to depose Arbenz in Guatemala and Mossadegh in Iran... America would pay for both decisions. But such was not obvious at the time.



#8 through #10 are more difficult. Sure, Jackson redefined American politics forever... but he also gave America the Trail of Tears and the expansion of slavery.  Polk annexed lands between Texas and the Pacific -- but such more reflects the weakness of Mexico than personal greatness.

President Obama can still do something catastrophically wrong that sends him to the bottom of the list. But based upon what he has done so far -- if he were struck by lightning today he would be well above average. Many positives and very few negatives.  

  

[pbrower2a]

No, his accomplishments are far too partisan and he didn't guide America through a crisis like the absolute top tier. In addition, almost all of his accomplishments are heavily dependent on how they look in 10-20 years, and he still stands the chance of being a bottom ten President is he ramrods through a deal with Iran that amounts to complete surrender.

Because the Great Recession never happened

The vast majority of Americans weren't personally affected by the great recession. It is to the Great Depression what Afghanistan/Iraq is to WW2.

By 2008 any American with any brains was scared of a repeat of the Great Depression, and for good reason:



A year and a half after the respective peaks of 2007 and 1929, the squiggly gray and blue lines look much alike. Dubya, like Coolidge, had pushed a capital-devouring speculative boom. I may not agree with Friedrich Hayek often, but I do on the cause of financial panics: it's the bubble that does the damage, and the panic is only the realization of the damage.

To be sure, it was the bank runs that turned a nasty recession into a full-blown Great Depression. But an FDR-Obama comparison is valid: FDR and Obama both saved American capitalism.    

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Long bull market without a speculative boom? I can't imagine better.  

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Even if one hates the President. But just think of what could happen if the economy continued to implode in 2009 and 2010. The world could be a much more dangerous place.

[pbrower2a]

In my opinion he's in the George HW bush category of successful but not great. His legacy will probably be more of a "he (opened) doors" president then as a great president.

Sure, he opened doors -- doors to the assets of America to the worst speculators of the time. He let America dedicates its energies of economic activity to a speculative boom based upon predatory lending. The Bush economic model depended upon hucksters getting rich by hurting their customers.

That is horrible business; such invariably implodes when people lose faith in it.

Dubya will undoubtedly be seen as one of the ten worst Presidents for a very long time. 

[pbrower2a]

I think it depends on how the next 10-15 years go. If the US faces major difficulties that are directly traceable back to his terms, he will likely end up in the bottom quartile. I think Shrub is headed to the same place.

Dubya may still have respect from right-wingers mostly because he isn't Barack Obama... but I see plenty of contempt from just about everyone else. Dubya is very low among Presidents. He was competent at riding cultural trends, but that has at most evanescent or illusory benefits.

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Even one of his harshest critics, Karl Rove, calls him "cautious". He has had one of the cleanest administrations in recent years.

Does the long bull market seem doomed? It seems to have a broader and sounder foundation than the real estate bubble of Dubya.  

[pbrower2a]

I honestly believe he will be. Most of the top Presidents were very divisive in their day, but once they leave office the vitriol dies down tremendously. Obama has impressive accomplishments that eluded other Presidents such as healthcare and gay rights. Also, his historic position as the first African-American to assume the office ensures he will be one of the few Presidents everyone remembers the name of 50 years from now.

You have a point. The standards are higher now than they used to be, and the presence of  hostile media with a programmatic opposition to everything that the President does is not his fault. Within two years of the end of the Obama Administration the successor Democrat as President will not be getting the bulk of the cat-calls from Right-wing media. A Republican successor? When the economy collapses or a War for Profit that that Republican President starts begins to go bad, people not on the Hard Right are going to wax nostalgic about Barack Obama.

No scandals. No pointless wars started. Lots of terrorists whacked. Long bull market without a speculative boom. Obamacare getting respect.