Lets make fun of Obama while he is still relevant.

[pbrower2a]

Another response to "Galen", who has gone elsewhere but deserves a taste of his own medicine:



The canonical five greatest Presidents include the fellows above and FDR. It's obviously impossible to put Obama in this category, but nobody else could be except for unusual circumstances. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...ited-1.jpg

To make a long story short, rankings of President Obama have bounced between the first and second quartiles of the rankings. This is far from consistent. If you want consistency, then look at Donald Trump, who rates 44th, 42nd, 41st, and 43rd. Presidents rating lower than he include Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson. Trump goes below Warren G. Harding, the most personally-reprobate of Presidents before him, and Herbert Hoover, who presided over the severest and most dangerous meltdown ever of the American (and ultimately) the world economy. 

(Really, I would give more fault to Coolidge for the speculative boom of the 1920's going awry, but that economic meltdown led to the rise of you-know-who).

I give much credit to President Obama for as daring measures as possible to put an end to an economic meltdown which after a year and a half was as severe as the one over which Hoover presided. 




The peaks relevant to the two nastiest meltdowns were in the autumns of 1929 and 2007. Maybe the difference is that the destructive bank runs portending the full nastiness of the Great Depression simply did not happen in 2009 and 2010 as they did in 1931 and 1932  due to FDIC insurance of bank balances since the 1930's. Don't forget that deposit insurance was in effect in 2007 and 2008, so that suggests that causes of the meltdown of 2007-2009 were at least as severe, such as major corruption in financial institutions. Obama did not do that alone, but he certainly made it possible. He deserves much credit for the strength, solidity, and duration of the recovery. Nothing is clownish about that.  

It's safe to assume that Osama bin Laden wasn't laughing about President Obama when Seal Team 6 raked him with machine gun fire. Obama arranged that after letting the Armed Forces use the intelligence that the CIA collected on the perpetrator of the most horrific act of terrorism by a non-state actor in history. This is Realpolitik at its best, something that a clown does not do. The world is no longer as safe a place for terrorism as it once was. 

Then we get to the personal life and Presidency: two divorces, marriage to someone with connections to a totalitarian secret police, the Czechoslovak Státní bezpečnost (StB). subservient to the Soviet Union, an incessant fornication until he was unable to do it, probably some nasty STD's (tertiary syphilis or gonorrhea could explain much of his cruelty and eccentric behavior, and it usually inflicts its damage on inveterate fornicators), connections to multiple syndicates of organized crime, a series of business failures including a casino with his name attached, people connected to him being indicted and convicted -- even his attorneys!) contempt for handicapped people, disrespect for democratic leaders when he could instead kiss up to despots, and religious bigotry.   

Whoops! That's Obama's successor! Obama's family life fits every mainstream standard of Christian behavior. He had a scandal-free administration. He has had but one wife who is 100% American. Maybe he couldn't get away with much and knew it. His administration had a predictable do-the-crime-and-do-the-time attitude. He made no obvious blunders of foreign policy. He may have co-opted much that has been the best of conservative ideals.  That's one way for a liberal on much to synthesize new expectations of a desirable norm.