Stack the presidents.

A little game. Since nothing goes away on the internet, we can return to look at this on our death beds.

Predicting their reputation in 2035 (or some decent amount of time from now) rate the last 8 presidents by their long term American reputation from best to worst.

Then go back and rate the 1st 8 presidents by their long term American reputation from best to worse. (Those of us that predicted an Obama win will likely to better at this, we feel the pulse).

This is the hard part around here. I am not asking your opinion in this ranking, I am asking what you think the national opinion will be.

Micro example. I personally think that Bush will be remembered near the bottom of the list and Obama at the top if the economy makes a turn in this election, perhaps even if not. I did not want either of them in office, so my prediction does not match my opinion of them. See.

Difficult to predict the way in which perspectives might change in the next 23 years, but I would guess that the progressive movement picks up steam. With that in mind, I would say 1-Obama, 2-Clinton, 3-Reagan, 4-Carter, 5-Johnson, 6-Bush 41, 7-Nixon, 8-Bush 43. Not sure that anyone will care or even remember the founders in that amount of time but 1 -Washington, 2- Jefferson ... I won't go further than that because it won't matter. The country will be fundamentally transformed soon into something that does not even resemble the representative republic that it was given to us as. Happy Veteran's Day!

Like TM says the liberals write the histroy so I expect the Dems to get most of the love 23 years later unless some big scandals come to light years later. And also like TM says, it will be hard to judge what the people 23 years from now will think a big accomplishment. For example, both "W" and Obama have been tough on terrorism spending billions of dollars to keep them down. If they stop threatening the US, this money may be considered wasted, or paranoid.
Or if AQ does make a big damaging attack in the next four years, they may decide it wasn't enough or spent in the wrong ways.

I was looking at some of the defenses erected in Germany for the Cold War including explosives placed to destroy key infrastructure and create tank traps. Billions of dollars and the careers of many people were spent protecting western Europe, but would the Warsaw Pact have attacked if we hadn't done this?

Thanks for posting.

Interesting that we are predicted to be moving into the liberal period.

Would you have felt the same if Romney had won this recent presidential election?

I think the US has been in the liberal period since FDR's New Deal.

Yes. I believe that we are moving towards a European type socialism light.

I don't how you could "stack" Obama since he's only halfway through his two terms.

Well, the last 8 presidents are:

Obama
Bush (II)
Clinton
Bush (I)
Reagan
Carter
Ford
Nixon


In terms of historical prominence a couple decades from now:

Reagan (laid the foundation for crushing the Iron Curtain)
Nixon (ended a very unpopular war, opened doors to China)
Clinton (prosperous economic period, along with significant international success in Europe and the Middle East)
Obama (broke through racial barriers)

I think the remaining individuals will go down as "also ran"

I'd note that I have immense admiration of Jimmy Carter. He's a fantastic humanitarian and arguably one of the better ex-presidents. His administration was a failure. I don't see either Bush as going down in history as great presidents.

Nixon also gave us HMOs and of course Obama gave us national healthcare, joining the other civilized countries.