Obama is right

In a post on PowerLine, John Hinderaker started a firestorm on conservative blogs this morning by pointing to (and dismantling) Obama's claim that he "would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln".

I must say, Obama is right. The standard consistently used to judge Presidents in rankings is something along the lines of how much lasting change they have made to the structure of the Union. This is completely consistent with Obama's worldview (which you would expect, because those rankings are put together by progressive intellectuals). So the economy may have been much worse when Reagan took office and much better at this point in his Presidency, but that's immaterial. Harding took a deflationary depression and turned it completely around within 3 years but consistently appears in the bottom of Presidential rankings. FDR managed to keep the Great Depression going for a decade, but always appears at the top. If you listen to a progressive academic, and Obama has spent his life listening to progressive academics, Presidents aren't measured by how well the economy does.