Barack Obama is Not the Fourth Best President or Even the 40th

COMMENTARY | According to Politico, during a recent interview on "60 Minutes" President Barack Obama made the remarkable claim that his accomplishments as president rank behind only Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Obama may not have a self-esteem problem, but he certainly has a history deficit.

While Lincoln is rightly regarded as one of the greatest presidents in American history, second only to George Washington, Roosevelt and Johnson fall somewhat short.

FDR is touted for his management of the Great Depression and the enactment of the New Deal. Some more recent scholarship suggests that Roosevelt's policies actually lengthened and worsened the Great Depression. Social Security, one of FDR's achievements, is now headed for a demographic train wreck thanks to an aging population.

Johnson's greatest achievements took place in the early years of his administration, when the passage of civil rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow in the South and made African Americans, at last, equal citizens under the law. But LBJ is also known as the architect of the Vietnam War and of the Great Society, disasters the blight the United States to this day.

Obama, whose economic record is dismal and his foreign policy at best mixed, touts himself as better than Washington, the father of our country, Ronald Reagan, who won the Cold War and ended stagflation, and Thomas Jefferson, who expanded the United States to a continental power with the Louisiana Purchase. This does not even pass the laugh test. Obama could not even honestly call himself a better president than Bill Clinton. Clinton was entertaining with his personal scandals, but his tenure was marked by relative peace and prosperity, especially after Newt Gingrich became House Speaker and provided some adult supervision.

While Obama does resemble FDR and LBJ in his abysmal economic record, he most resembles another horrible president, Jimmy Carter. Carter presided over multiple disasters at home and abroad while dourly lecturing the American people about their deficiencies. The difference between Carter and Obama is one of style. Carter came across as a disapproving Baptist preacher. Obama comes across as the college professor that you hope you don't get because he is such a judgmental bore.

Obama might, therefore, want to rethink his self-assessment. A man with his record could do with a little humility. His arrogance sets him at disadvantage to George W. Bush, whose memoirs recounted an honest appraisal of his decisions, including an analysis of his mistakes. One can never imagine Obama writing such an appraisal of his own presidency and more's the pity.

Source: Blogs bash Obama's historic claim, M.J. Lee, Politico, Dec 20, 2011

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes, Harper Perennial, 2008