Today, Obama is virtually tied for first place in a new poll of the greatest modern president.
The Quinnipiac University poll indicates 29 percent say Obama is the greatest president since World War II — just shy of the 30 percent who cite Ronald Reagan, the long-standing titleholder.
No knock on Obama, but it is certainly a knock on the American people that they don’t realize that Ronald Reagan is the Fountainhead, so to speak, of all of their woes. He ushered in the age of inequality. He was a terrible president, and one of Obama’s mistakes was speaking respectfully about him. The Republicans have browbeaten many Democrats into acknowledging Reagan’s “greatness”. If you call delivering for the .01% great, then he was great. By any other measure, he was a disaster.
Obama is also improving in the “worst president” category, where he barely leads Nixon and G.W. Bush. We have a lot of stupid people in this country.
“Modern” presidents are defined as post World War II presidents. Of course, as the population ages, and the definition remains static, presidents drop out of contention as fewer people remember them. I have to say I’d have a hard time making the case that there were any great presidents after World War II. The Republicans were all horrible, some worse than others, of course. Measured by accomplishments, I’d have to give the palm to Johnson. Without him, we might not have gotten the civil rights acts, Medicare or Medicaid. Those were great accomplishments. No one else comes close.
So far as worst presidents are concerned, it’s far easier. The four worst, in order of worseness: Trump (already), Bush the Younger, Nixon, Reagan. It’s a sad thing that in that time period Reagan only comes in number four. We have the electoral college to blame for that.
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