Posted on 09/28/2012 8:11:49 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Obama at No.10 – really?
Despite having failed to stop let alone reverse the rising of the seas, Barack Obama has made Newsweek’s newest ten best presidents list, which gives readers a top ten of the chief executives since 1900. Newsweek, whose list unsurprisingly is dominated by liberal Democrats, gave this justification for selecting Obama in a caption in a photo slide:
"Picking a sitting president in a tally of the best is tricky – history hasn’t had time to put things in a more sober context. But the historic election of America’s first black president cannot be ignored. That a man whose ancestors included a slave could become the leader of a nation founded to some extent in slavery is as much an achievement for the country as it is a marker for Obama himself. Whether Obama stays or goes, his standing, as a fundamentally groundbreaking president will remain."
So, Obama deserves to be on the list simply because he’s black?! Has affirmative action percolated into historical analysis? After all, such an honorable mention needs “a more sober context” with the passage of time to make an accurate and honest assessment. Historians often talk about “what could have been” if a former head of state had lived. You see this a lot with JFK, who is also on the list, and his 1000 daylong administration.
Of course, JFK steered the world away from nuclear disaster in October of 1962, proposed an across the board tax cut, and pushed our scientific community to engineer a mission to the moon. By contrast, Barack Obama’s increased the national debt by $5 trillion, kept unemployment above 8 percent for over 40 consecutive months, and presided over the demise of the U.S. space shuttle program.
Newsweek staffers are making the rounds to promote the list. Contributing editor Sir Harold Evans — he’s also the husband for Newsweek’s editor Tina Brown – appeared on yesterday’s Jansing & Co. program on MSNBC, where he said that the historians who formulated the list were looking for “active and effective” presidents who “enhanced” the ideal of what it is to be American.
Not surprisingly, government-increasing liberal Democrats like FDR and LBJ, as well as slightly more moderate big government Democrats like Truman and Clinton dominate the list.
Asked about why the list is predominantly Democratic in nature, Evans insisted that the Republicans in the 20th century were by and large uninspiring if not corrupt. In the process, he trashed free-market conservative Calvin Coolidge — who presided over an economic boom, low unemployment, and the reduction of the national debt — as unimaginative.
If by lacking imagination, Evans means a mind that dreamed up new bureaucracies and larger federal government, he’s correct. But the results speak for themselves, even if they don’t excite historians.
Originally posted on Newsbusters.
There really aren’t, which was why it was sold for one dollar a few years ago. And I don’t mean $1 for an issue of the magazine, I mean the ENTIRE COMPANY was sold for one dollar!!
You forgot the barf alert.
Only 3 on the list are Republicans! What about Jefferson? Washington? and Lincoln? No Obama will be a footnote in this history books.
Teddy doesn’t go that far back.
Whoever puts Teddy Roosevelts name with Obama should be tried and imprisoned.
The poll was for 20th and 21st century presidents only.
“Barack Obama has made Newsweek’s newest ten best presidents list, which gives readers a top ten of the chief executives since 1900.”
The buyers of Newsweek who paid one dollar for the magazine should ask for their dollar back. They paid an inflated price.
The selections were made by the Nobel Prize Committee.
It's interesting that of the 8 Democrat Presidents in the period 1901-2012, only one does not make their list (Carter), whereas only 3 of the 11 Republican Presidents are included.
Nixon, despite his failings, was a more consequential President than JFK and probably would have done a better job handling the problems of the early 1960s than Kennedy did. Kennedy was good at making inspiring speeches but not much else--and we can't know if Nixon would have adopted the goal of putting a man on the moon if he had been President instead of Kennedy. Given the rivalry with the Soviets in space, he might have.
Truman was eligible to run again in 1952 but decided not to because he was so unpopular.
Gee, thanks, Sir Harold. I wouldn't know what it is to be Amurrican without your kind advice.
I saw the magazine at the drugstore. It only covers the presidents since TR -- kind of disappointing, but I guess Newsweek readers can only handle so much information.
Top Ten Worst Newsweek Covers
10. The decline and fall of Christian America
9: Obama as a six-armed God
8: Is Your Baby Racist?
7: Mitt Romney is a dancing Mormon
6: Pulling the plug on Grandma
5: Photoshopping Princess Di
4: We’re all socialists now
3: Sarah Palin in running shorts
2. Michelle Bachmann’s “crazy eyes”
1: Obama as our first gay president.
1.FDR
2.Teddy Roosevelt
3.LBJ
4.Wilson
5.Truman
6.JFK
7.Ike
8.Clinton
9.Reagan
10.Obama
It's all pretty unsubtle. The standard liberal line and not really reflective of recent ratings by historians, who put Reagan higher than JFK or LBJ. I'd say you need to rate earlier presidents as well to get some kind of baseline for judgement.
Woodrow Wilson was a despot who Joseph Goebbels emulated as far as propaganda was concerned (seriously!) and FDR and LBJ brought us many of the problems we have today. Teddy was a progressive and doesn’t nelong on Mt. Rushmore. JFK, other than proposing tax cuts didn’t really get much done. Bill Clinton is ahead of Ronald Reagan?! WTF?!!
I know. I can’t believe they actually included the worst president in the top ten!!!
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