Obama 15th-best US president of all time, says poll
02 Jul 2010
Barack Obama has been ranked as the 15th best US president, just below Bill Clinton but ahead of Ronald Reagan, in a new poll of leading presidential scholars.
The Siena College poll, which surveyed 238 presidential scholars at US colleges and universities, rated Obama two places below Clinton, who was 13th best, and three better than Reagan, who is ranked as the 18th best.
The poll had asked scholars to rate the nation's 43 chief executives on 20 attributes ranging from legislative accomplishments to integrity and imagination, a media release said.
Franklin D Roosevelt again earned the top spot, as he has every time since the poll was first conducted in 1982.
Roosevelt and the Mount Rushmore presidents - his father Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson - have consistently been the top five presidents in the poll's findings.
Obama's 15th ranking is slightly higher than other presidents who have taken office since the poll started nearly 30 years ago. Most start out at about number 20, said Siena statistics professor and poll director Douglas Lonnstrom.
