Where Does Obama Rank In Your List of Best to Worst Presidents

[sofa king]

25. Very, very high.

As a former legislative analyst, I have been amazed at President Obama's ability to get what he wants in the teeth of total opposition. He's outfoxed the Republicans so much and so often that for the past four years they've resorted to a "no to everything" policy, which has actually helped the President, apparently because it makes Republican opposition easier to predict.

Couple of quick examples: Every year now, the Republican Congress refuses to do its primary job, which is to appropriate funds for running the government. Instead, they pass a continuing resolution, year after year, allowing the 2012 budget to remain in effect (with thousands of pages of amendments). But the 2012 budget is really the President's own budget, because despite his talk, Paul Ryan has been unable to craft a functional competing budget proposal. So every year, the Republicans pass some variant of President Obama's 2012 budget request. The 2012 budget was built with some minimal-funding requirements, so Congresscritters can only add to the NASA budget, for example, rather than raid it for pork funds.

Another fine example is the Republican refusal to hold hearings on the President's Supreme Court nominee. Now, President Obama, who should be a lame duck on the outside of this election, gets to campaign against nearly two dozen Republican Senators, making the Senate elections a mandate on his Supreme Court choice. President Obama is so damned good that he's on the verge of making Hillary Clinton a more effective President.

President Obama led Republicans into those traps because his knowledge of policy and process exceeds the wisdom of the entire Republican establishment. He's smarter and more effective than all of them, individually and collectively. He didn't get everything he wanted, but he got something of everything he wanted.

President Obama's policy successes will be studied by future great politicians for decades, if not centuries and millenia. He's the Teddy Roosevelt of our time. But even that comparison does not do President Obama justice, because he is succeeding in a much more complex and dangerous era against total opposition.