Obama said he would put his legislative and foreign policy accomplishments up against any other president except LBJ, FDR, and Abraham Lincoln. Is that a way of calling himself the fourth-best president of all-time? I suppose you can construe it that way. There’s more to being president than legislation and foreign policy. There’s executive action and governance. There’s moral leadership. But, it’s hard to argue that Obama is wrong in putting his accomplishments in the top four. If we limit ourselves to the 20th-Century, we can compare him to Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. If we look at just the first three years of each of these administrations, who can make a claim to bigger achievements than Obama?
It’s a serious question.
