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Americans point to the best president of the last 40 years in new poll (335 hits)

Americans point to the best president of the last 40 years in new poll

By Steve Benen

Barack Obama tends to do quite well when scholars rank American presidents, with several surveys from recent years showing the Democrat among the top 10 presidents in the nation's history.

It appears public attitudes are largely in line with scholars' conclusions. The Pew Research Center published an interesting report today on which president from the last 40 years Americans believe did the best. Obama came out on top:

Barack Obama: 35 percent
Ronald Reagan: 23 percent
Donald Trump: 17 percent
Bill Clinton: 12 percent
George W. Bush: 4 percent
George H.W. Bush: 3 percent
Joe Biden: 3 percent
Not surprisingly, the partisan divisions are enormous, with Democratic voters largely split between Obama and Clinton, and Republican voters largely split among Reagan and Trump.

I always like kicking around arbitrary conversation pieces like these, so here are some more-or-less random observations about the rankings:

* Given his record of successes, Obama is the obvious choice among presidents from the last 40 years. In fact, what's striking to me isn't that he finished first, it's that he didn't finish first by a wider margin.

* Including Biden on this list doesn't seem altogether fair, since he hasn't yet been in office for a full year.

* Obviously, Trump's diehard followers helped put him in third place on this list, but historians and scholars realize that he belongs at or near the bottom of lists ranking American presidents.