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Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower rounded out the top
five of 43 presidents in U.S. history, a survey of historians'
rankings of presidential leadership found.
It was the third such survey released by the C-SPAN television
network ahead of the Presidents Day weekend.
"Once again the big three are Lincoln, Washington and FDR - as
it should be. That Obama came in at number 12 his first time out
is quite impressive," said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor
at Rice University, in a statement by C-SPAN.
The survey, which was held twice before in 2000 and 2009, asked
91 presidential historians to rank the 43 former presidents
based on 10 attributes of leadership.
Obama, who left office in January with favorable approval
ratings after serving eight years, was ranked third in the
"pursued equal justice of all" category and 39th in the
"relations with congress" category.
"One would have thought that former President Obama’s favorable
rating when he left office would have translated into a higher
ranking," said Edna Greene Medford, a history professor at
Howard University. "But, of course, historians prefer to view
the past from a distance, and only time will reveal his legacy."
Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were ranked
as the worst presidents in U.S. history, even lower than William
Henry Harrison, who served for only one month.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Eric
Meijer)
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