Recency bias. People always have wildly exaggeratedly “best ever!” or “worst ever!” views about recent events.
Presidencies can’t be fairly assessed until 1-2 decades afterwards.
It’s questionable whether this is in US interests or not.
Do you think the original START treaty signed by George HW Bush was in the US’ best interest?
That was questionable too.
Of course the corollary isn’t that a leader hated by other countries is necessarily advancing his country’s interests. It’s just true that many a bad leader may be loved by leaders of other countries. They aren’t necessarily related. Sometimes to advance your national interests you can’t really care if it makes other countries dislike you, your job isn’t to be liked in those other countries.
But Bush II is a good example of making enemies abroad for little to no reason, in a way that certainly didn’t advance our interests.
Bingo.
The wikipedia article on Historical rankings of Presidents reveals a lot. It shows that historians are ranking Obama favorably.
Also, in the section about popular opinion it shows that the general public is stupid and can’t remember more than a few presidents back.
Really America?? Bill Clinton beat out JFK and GEORGE WASHINGTON?!
The historians tend to agree on Harding, Pierce, Buchanan, Nixon, Grant, A. Johnson or poor ol’ WHH for worst.
There’s a lot of argument about JFK, actually. I don’t feel qualified to summarize either side, but there are people who feel he got very little done and is overrated because of his popular image and because he was murdered. Putting Clinton over Washington is a good example of the bias you’re talking about, though.
I’m sick of this “It makes us look weak” nonsense. I’m pretty sure part of the disdain (especially from the middle east) other countries have for us is because of our strength. They fucking HATE us because the see us as bullies and they feel helpless to do anything against our military might.
Think about it, how terrified of a country would you be if you had limited access to news and you knew there was this rogue country out there that could send drones anywhere it wanted to in your country and randomly kill people?
They don’t see us as week, they see us as monsters.
And if anybody seriously thinks there was jack shit we could have done to stop Russia is seriously deluded as to what we are capable of as a nation.
Really? I think Washington is overrated as a President. He gets a lot of carryover affection from being General Washington that overshadows President Washington. He also tends to get bonus points for being first rather than being great.
Reagan gets a lot of benefit from Conservatives worshiping “Fantasy” Reagan over “Real” Reagan.
Exactly. They like Obama because he doesn’t actually do anything to advance America’s interests.
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This tacit admission that the entire rest of the world should viewed as enemies is a big part of the problem. Of the irrational criticism aimed at Obama, that is. No serious foreign policy thinker is ever going to take that seriously.
It is hard to take a poll such as this seriously, given that IMHO most people polled cannot even name all 12 of the presidents since WW2.
Interesting that they give Obama low marks for accountability & transparency. I’d think that low scores in those areas would be a warning sign of corruption. Obama might end being one of those leaders where we don’t find out all the skeletons until after he’s out of office.
No, it’s a tacit admission that the leader of a country should advance that country’s interests.
I bet the truth comes out after Obama leaves office. Like when he broke into the IRS building and took a magnet to Lois Lerner’s hard drive?
Gentle reminder that Republicans have spent the last 5 1/2 years desperately trying to trump up any kind of Obama administration scandal.
Rubbish, of course. It’s more that the Obama-worshipers and Reagan-was-the-Great-Satan types that predominate on the SDMB simply refuse to accept that any given Democratic President could be worse than any given Republican President.
Regards,
Shodan
Saying “of course” does not make your statement more definitive, of course. People who say Obama makes the U.S. look weak are long on complaints and short on specifics about how President Strong would have achieved a different outcome. Nobody was going to war with Russia over Ukraine, for instance.
Obama also might be a demon from Neptune.
So better to take the word of a Reagan worshipper who thinks Obama is the Great Satan?
I don’t really have much to say about the OP one way or the other, except to note that it’s kind of hard to judge a president who is still in office, and basically any such judgement, especially today is going to break down along partisan lines. However, this seems a contradiction. On the one hand you are saying we are feared as monsters by the rest of the world, then you turn around and say that, despite that fear there was nothing we could do about Russia’s land grab in the Crimea?? How does this make sense to you? Either we are feared as monsters, in which case Russia would be stupid to cross us (we being so monstrous and all), or we aren’t really feared so much because, actually, most people know we aren’t going to do crazy shit like going to war with Russia over the Crimea. You can’t have it both ways…not and make any sense.
So which is it? Are we feared or not? Seems to me the answer is in the fact that Russia didn’t sweat it over either this or Syria, and Syria didn’t really sweat it over our line drawn in the sand. No?