Barack Obama’s Paragraph

Ten leading historians assess Obama’s rank in the pantheon of American presidents

By POLITICO MAGAZINE
February 16, 2014

Barack Obama knows he’s a man running out of time. Reflecting on his presidential legacy in a long interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick, Obama said, “at the end of the day we’re part of a long-running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.” For Presidents' Day, Politico Magazine asked a panel of distinguished historians to take up the obvious question this raises: How will Obama’s paragraph read? Did he get it right? What will be his place in history? Here’s what they told us, with some smart framing thoughts from Stephen Sestanovich, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and Columbia University:

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The American political system is designed to make presidents seem important. They pick their teams, their goals, their fights—and if they do these things skillfully enough, we say they’ve made history. This is what Barack Obama seems to mean by getting his “paragraph right.”

(More here.)