presidents must be rated with those that come immediately before and after as the situations dictate why they were elected or not... and correlate it with how the country faired in certain aspects.
comparing obama’s middle eastern diplomacy with gwbush’s gains on the ground, and now having to retake most of that territory would show obama doesn’t stack up... and he won’t when it comes to true history.
And I think its too soon to put Obama into some historical context. We need to see further evidence and results of his policies.
For example, When Reagan departed the White House on 1-20-89, the Berlin Wall was still there, and the Soviet Union was likewise still in existence. Nobody could say when Reagan left office that his policies led to the fall of communism in Europe and the USSR. But as time went on, we saw in retrospect that Reagan had set in motion the policies which would help cause that outcome.
So let’s wait a few years to see the longer term results of Obama before we place him high on the list of historic presidents.