What Makes a Good President?

This last spring semester I remember having an interesting conversation in my U.S. history class about how we evaluate history. My professor pointed out specifically that many historians do not consider something as "historical" until about 50 years later because of the bias of people living through those events. I have been considering this point lately in terms of how we evaluate American presidents. Whether you or I like or dislike President Obama, can we be objective in evaluating his current performance and his positive or negative impact on the country?

This point can be demonstrated with several examples of past presidents. I remember my professor mentioning Ronald Reagan in one of our lectures. Historians are still divided over how much influence he had on the country. From interviewing someone who lived during his time for an assignment, it seems to me that Reagan took a lot of credit for the economic recovery in the 1980's and for the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union. Still, how much of that credit does he deserve?

American history is rife with examples of presidents who people now consider to be the greatest, yet during their own time or shortly after, they were criticized and derided. Much of their impact on history is now deemed as positive by the public. Some specific examples are:

• Abraham Lincoln - Lincoln was severely mocked and criticized during his presidency. Yet, we consider him to be the greatest president in American history according to C-SPAN's 2009 Survey of Presidential Leadership.
  
  
• John F. Kennedy - President Kennedy came under fire for his extramarital affairs, the Bay of Pigs disaster, and his inability to get civil rights legislation passed though Congress. If he had not been assassinated, would he still be listed among the greats?
  
  
• Harry Truman - Truman was seen as failure after his time in office. Yet, historians have taken a second look at his presidency and reevaluated his contribution to American history as being mostly positive.
  

So what makes a good president? Is their personal qualities, or how history evaluates them? Politics aside, it is difficult to theorize how history (and the public) will judge a president's actions 50 or even 100 years after their terms. Presidents are largely victims of what events take place during their presidencies. However, there are personal qualities that many of the greatest have had in common. In any case, time always has a way of telling how our presidents will be remembered.

What do you think makes a good president? How do you think our current president will rank among the presidents? Please leave a comment!