Poll: Barack Obama Was the Greatest President of Our Lifetime

[DonViejo]

By Jonathan Chait
@jonathanchait

July 11, 2018
1:13 pm

Which president in your lifetime, asks a new Pew survey, has done the best job? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the clear winner is Barack Obama, who was chosen by 31 percent of adults. Partisanship tends to rule the responses to this question, as it does most public questions these days. But what is most striking about this survey is the lack of a broadly popular Republican leader from the present era.

The most popular Republican ex-president is Ronald Reagan, who left office nearly 30 years ago. The current president, Donald Trump, fares poorly, as do both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. For all the damage Bill Clinton has suffered among Democratic Party activists in the fallout of the #MeToo revolution, his record still holds up well in the public mind. As Americans see it, the last two Democratic presidencies have been rousing successes, while the previous two Republican ones have been miserable failures.

The question this raises is, why haven’t Democrats capitalized on their success? Why have three decades of failed Republican presidencies and successful Democratic ones not left a deeper impression on the public?

The split is especially stark when you break it down by age. For voters under the age of 38, Obama is the runaway choice as best president of their lifetime. As many of these voters name him as pick the next five presidents combined:



No doubt much of this reflects not only the liberal leanings of younger voters but also the gap in experience: Only the oldest millennials remember much from Reagan’s era. Still, this illustrates the problem that the model of a perceived successful Republican president is increasingly ancient history.

more
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/poll-barack-obama-the-greatest-president-of-our-lifetime.html

[AlexSFCA]

1. by a MILE

he is in his own league. Even if trump undoes most of his legacy, his biggest legacy - impact on millenials may save our nation.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Don't understand why anyone, of any age, would rank Reagan

over Obama or Kennedy or even Clinton.

[NCTraveler]

4. Deregulation is like porn to many righties. nt

[RKP5637]

6. Me neither. Reagan was one who started this country on a downward spiral. I have

absolutely no use for the man. His outrageous trickle down economics served the few and screwed the many.

[Snellius]

10. Reagan's popularity was well below 50% until after he got shot.

and then he was miraculously raised from the dead as a conservative god.

[braddy]

13. Reagan's popularity was above 50% before the shooting.

[Snellius]

14. Depends on how you gauge it, but the assassination attempt was a huge change in his presidency

especially among Democrats and independents. His numbers fluctuated but he remained enshrined as the "teflon president" after that.

Despite an electoral landslide over Jimmy Carter with a 44-state win in 1980, Reagan won with a narrow popular margin of 50.7%. Moreover, Gallup's valuable presidential poll tracker shows that Reagan's approval ratings were significantly split along partisan lines after his 1981 inauguration, with 74% Republican support and 53% from independents but 38% from Democrats.

In the wake of the assassination attempt, Reagan's approval ratings jumped -- providing a new baseline that propelled his legislative agenda forward and helped translate to his broad-based re-election. By the 100th day of his administration, 51% of Democrats supported him and 70% of independents in addition to 92% of Republicans.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/03/30/avlon.reagan.shooting/index.html

[braddy]

15. The correction was his approval ratings before the shooting, they were above 50%, not "well below".

[genxlib]

3. That is interesting

But the form of the question is strange and creates an imbalanced poll. The language for "in your lifetime" skews the results because the respondents are not choosing from the same pool.

I have often wondered about the question posed here; Why the fuck do we keep losing if we are widely considered better at this?

I have a theory that Dems are like Parents and Republicans are like loser friends. As long as things are going well, you go out partying with your friends. When things go badly, you run home to your parents. So we are in this constant yoyo of letting the GOP have power only to see them fuck everything up so that we have to come back to fix it.

I would also like to add... what the fuck is wrong with 5% of the silent generation that thought Nixon was the best of their lifetime?? Methinks they might be suffering from cognitive decline.

[Renew Deal]

5. That's fairly obvious

Clinton is disqualified from this. It doesn't leave much else.

[OilemFirchen]

16. What does that mean?

[Tarheel_Dem]

7. This gives me comfort when I still hear Obama being trashed on this very board about things that....

he had absolutely no control over. The revisionism coming from certain quarters is not only pukeworthy, but it's dishonest as well.

[procon]

8. "why haven't Democrats capitalized on their success?"

Any answers here?

Dems suck at even the simplest marketing tactics while Republicans are out there lying their asses off and stealing our lunch. We've done good things for people. We do governing better. So why are we so passive and submissive when it come to bragging rights and comparing our accomplishments to theirs???

[CarlosDem]

11. Huh?

"We do governing better"?

[procon]

12. Just joined today, huh? And you come to DU thinking Republicans are better at governing?

Any real Dem would know.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. Enjoy your stay. I see you also posted in support of the WalkAwayFromTheDemocrats movement.

If you have any doubts about the fact that Democrats have demonstrated better abilities to govern than Republican and especially than the Republicans of the last 8 years, then you had better air them in detail now and get them straightened out.

[LakeArenal]

9. Didn't need a poll to tell me this....

and god do I miss him....