With the arrival of Presidents Day weekend, a survey of historians ranked the United States’ chief executives from top to bottom. Not surprisingly, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt were rated the top three presidents, while Barack Obama entered the survey at No. 12.
Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower rounded out the top five in the survey, which was released Friday. It polled 91 historians on 10 different categories of leadership for the 43 former presidents. It was the third survey released by the C-SPAN television network. C-SPAN also released surveys in 2000 and 2009.
Obama, who left office in January, was ranked third in the "pursued equal justice of all" category and 39th in the "relations with Congress" category.
"Once again the big three are Lincoln, Washington and FDR — as it should be. That Obama came in at number 12 his first time out is quite impressive," Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University, said in a statement released by C-SPAN.