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Some “scholars” made a list ranking our presidents from best to worst. Apparently, President Zero is already a better president than Ronald Reagan, and predictably, Dubya is ranked one of the worst. Gee, this list sounds objective. Oh, and guess who number one is? FDR!
George W. Bush was no FDR, but Barack Obama could be.
That’s the verdict of 238 of the nation’s leading presidential scholars, who – for a fifth time – rated Franklin Delano Roosevelt the best president ever in the latest Siena College Research Institute poll.
In office for barely two years, Obama entered the survey in the 15th position – two spots behind Bill Clinton and three spots ahead of Ronald Reagan.
Obama got high marks for intelligence, ability to communicate and imagination, but his score was dragged down by his relative lack of experience and family background.
“Most of the presidents came from elite backgrounds, and he certainly did not,” said professor Douglas Lonnstrom, who crunched the numbers. “He grew up without a father.”
By contrast, Bush’s dad was our 41st president, George H.W. Bush, who came in 22nd in the poll.
And yet, the scholars rated Dubya a dud as a president, ranking him in the bottom five at 39th place.
That’s a steep drop from 23rd place, which is where Bush ranked when he entered the survey after his first year in office.
Bush got docked for saddling Obama with two bloody wars and a recession, and he got low marks for “ability to compromise, foreign policy
accomplishments and intelligence,” according to the survey.
Yeah, there’s no liberal bias there at all.
I’m curious: why exactly is a good imagination an important trait for a president to have? I mean, it’s a good thing for a kindergartner to possess, but a president? And intelligence? Sure, being smart is important, but being intelligent does not automatically make one a good leader. And Obama’s intelligence is definitely currently in question. Ability to communicate? Have these idiots ever seen Obama try to string a sentence together without the trusty TOTUS on hand?
Clearly, these people are living in an alternate reality. Our economy is crashing, unemployment keeps climbing, spending is skyrocketing, our national debt is out of control, shoved through one of the most corrupt, unethical, and unwanted bills in United States history with Obamacare, Afghanistan is getting worse and worse under Obama’s lack of leadership and commitment, we’re less respected than ever around the world, we’ve had several terrorist attacks that were only unsuccessful because of the terrorists’ own stupidity, and we have a disaster in the Gulf with no leadership from the federal government whatsoever.
Yeah, he’s a great president all right. Forget all that dumb stuff! Obama sure can read off a teleprompter real good, and that’s all that matters to these librul scholarz.
What. A. Joke.
Smithwick says: I’m glad they tried to pass him off as one of the best. If they had merely rated him highly but not that high people may have been tempted to take the study seriously.
This lets us know that either they are kidding or are morons. Either way it is handy when “researchers” discredit themselves right off the bat to save people the time of disproving their results.
I suspect that the list was designed not so much to puff up the weak resume of President Obama but to try to push President Reagan further down the list.
There is a real effort underway to remove President Grant from the face of the $50 bill and replace him with President Reagan. I prefer Reagan to be on the $10 bill, but I think putting him on the $50 accomplishes something that is sorely missed and that is the proper tribute paid to a President who deserves to be considered in the top ten, if not the top five.
For me, it’s Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan, Washington and then Eisenhower.
Neil says: Barack Obama one of the 15 best presidents??
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahaha!!!!!
Deep breath.
Hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahaha!!!!!!!!!
Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama may be anotherFranklin Roosevelt. The depth of the Obama recesssion is only exceeded by Roosevelt. Remember, must of what Roosevelt tried, did not work. It was only World War Two which interupted Roosevelt’s depression. Is that Dumbol’s plan? No. His only plan is play more golf.
I recently watched Reagan A Time for Choosing Speech, one half hour,without teleprompter, or notes and historically accurate. Dumbo has no capacity to deliver that kind of speech.
aS FOR Dubya, both Bush and Dumbo inherieted a recession. Bush turned his around. Dumbo has only made the problem worse.
Given the fact that he can’t even get his flacks to get the Statue of Liberty poem right, maybe he’s supposed to go down a notch on the intelligence thing.
But this is pretty standard. We were consistently told that we’d never understand how good Jimmy Carter was until long after his presidency was over. We were told the right thing, just not the way they meant it.
RuthenianCowboy says: Lists like this from “scholars” is one reason I’m happy to be out of academia. I knew ONE conservative instructor in ten years, and other faculty members didn’t like him. (I’m a Libertarian, so I got treated as an exotic curiosity when I was teaching.)
Oh, best president? Calvin. Coolidge.
I think it’s way too early to be ranking Obama. However, I’m curious to know what your own top 5 and bottom 5 would be, as well as where you would rank President Bush (W).
One other thing: I’d like to know if you think it’s possible, or fair, to rate a president based on factors other than his political ideology (liberal vs. conservative). For example, how should we rank FDR, aside from the question of whether you think the New Deal was a good idea or a bad idea? I think it’s worth taking into consideration the fact that he led America through most of World War II and the Great Depression. It’s not that I think that makes him better than Lincoln or Washington–just that I wouldn’t put him toward the bottom just because he was liberal.
Pretty good list for a comedy bit.
Obama has shown nothing as far as intellegence or ability is concerned and Cassy hits the nail on the head with her discription of him here.
I get tired of a lot of the bogus bias statements used to describe Bush. Was he the best pres ever? Far from it. But to slam him with slanted facts… First, he didn’t saddle Obama with two wars, one was for the largest part over, done, and won. Afghanistan is a continuization of the aftermath of 9/11 which somehow keeps getting forgotten by those on the left. The fight against terrorism, if to be won, will take years and years into the future (which Bush mentioned many more times than once).
Second, President Bush holds a MBA from Harvard no less. Many of his critics couldn’t come close to getting into Harvard, much less Yale where he started his college years. Few Presidents ever held an advanced degree. PLUS President Bush was a fighter pilot in the Guard, where he earned high marks from his superiors, flying more hours than required. Our country doesn’t let dummies fly its fighter planes no matter who their daddy is. And to slam his Guard service is to slam the service of thousands of people that served honorably in the National Guard (which by the way was no exemption for being sent to Vietnam, as many were).
Third, few if any Presidents faced the challenges that Bush did. From terror attacks that nearly brought the country to its knees to multiple hurricanes and an economy brought down dispite warnings from practically day one telling us it was coming, not many have faced as many challenges that did as much damage to our country as he did. Even the political challenge (with accompanying lies and character assassination) he faced was unprecidented. Without those challenges and with the state of the economy left him by a republican controlled congress (which many wrongly give credit to Clinton for) his Presidency could well have been one of the greatest.
Sadly Jimmy Carters legacy is still living amoung us and we still to this day suffer the mistakes of his administration.
I’ll give FDR his due as a President that faced and overcame some mighty big challences, but some of those challenges even helped him get through some of the others. We forget about the ineptness and unpreparedness of our military before WW2 which was on the horizon for years prior to Japan and Pearl Harbor. FDR gathers a lot of his greatness off the backs of a great American People who rose to fight those challenges the country faced. Some of it dispite FDR, not because of him.
I’m assuming that many of the so called scholars here are some of the same ones that preach and push anti-Americanism and socialism in our Universities today, which speaks voluums about this “list”.
Well, let’s see: Barack Obama has been President of the United States for slightly under 1½ years, 1.447 years to be precise, or, at noon today, 528 days. The economy is in the tank, and while our 44th President wants to blame it on our 43rd, there’s little evidence of improvement under 44. If the esteemed scholars didn’t like the war in Iraq under President Bush, it’s still going on under President Obama; it was winding down toward victory while Mr Bush was still commander-in-chief, and is still winding down under our current CinC. If the scholars didn’t like the war in Afghanistan, while that war has been more in the news recently, it hasn’t been all that successful news. Iran is apparently going to build atomic bombs, and the Obama Administration isn’t going to do anything about it, other than speak loudly. Our friends on the left want to blame the huge deficits on President 43, but they have increased and are going to stay at trillion-dollar levels under 44. He did get his unfortunate health care reform bill passed, but even if you are a supporter of that, you have to admit that we simply do not know if it will work or be a fiasco yet. He got his big stimulus plan passed, but even if you think it was a great idea and desperately needed, it hasn’t shown anywhere near the results the President predicted for it. At best, a reasonable person would give President Obama a grade of I — incomplete — at this point in his presidency, and that tells you just how reasonable the “238 Presidential Scholars, Historians, and Political Scientists” are. It’s kind of difficult to rate President Obama as our 15th best President or our 30th best or our anything best or worst at this point.
epic vissicitudes says: I agree with hahaahaahaa. Which President let his wife do all of the walking? Sad commentaries emerge, too painful to let loose!!
Brit says: He isn’t one of the best. He is the best!! In just year and a half he has done more good for this country and the American people than all the Republican presidents combined. He is focused only on doing good things and serving the people. He is a great leader and patriot, in spite of the fraudulent patriots who supported Bush and Tea nuts and do what they can to lie and mislead people to the think otherwise.
JonJonzz says: I get so sick of hearing low-information, low intellect voters and tea baggers talking about how bad the country is under obama. Give me a break! where were you crybabies when bush was doing his thing? We had a terrible economy and two wars, but these closet republicans said nothing. and now they want to slam one of our best presidents? Obama staved off a depression, he is winding up the Iraq war, and will shortly end the Afghanistan war. He made health care affordable, and will lower the budget deficit. The economy is recovering. He passed financial regulation reform. And signed a 600 million dollar bill into law to secure the borders.
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