Re: Obama perceives himself fourth best President...
Well, it's too early to tell yet, after just three years. But if you consider that, like Lincoln, he is presiding over a nation in crisis and saddled with an irrational and rabid opposition, he is not doing bad at all.
If he can just survive his first term without a disaster, he may make the top ten. In fact, if he can lead this country out of this mess, and keep it up in a second term, he may well do even better than that. I think his opposition realizes it, and that explains the ferocity and hatred in their response to him.
They realize that they need to not just defeat him, but destroy him, humiliatre him, discredit everything he stands for, or their philosophy of hatred, greed, ignorance and fear is finished.
But that's just my opinion.