For many years now, Americans have heard fawning liberal-leaning historians and media pundits laud former President Barack Obama as the greatest thing to ever happen in the United States and rate him as the best president or world leader ever.
Of course, many Americans see things differently, and in a survey of influential conservatives Obama just topped the list as the "most overrated" political figure of the past century, The Washington Times reported.
The Times surmised that the "overrated" outcome for former President Obama among conservative thinkers quite possibly stemmed from the fact that they have borne witness as some historians and pundits have unironically compared the former Democratic president to the likes of "Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela."
On Friday, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity announced the results of a survey it conducted of more than 100 "top conservative minds" and "free market leaders" that asked them to name prominent political figures over the past century that they believed were either over- or underrated by most historians and pundits.
The survey, conducted over the past month, was intended to serve as a sort of conservative counterpoint to the typically left-leaning polls that often favor liberal political figures who've expanded the federal government's size and burden imposed on taxpayers while disfavoring right-leaning figures who espoused conservative ideals.
According to the committee's report, its survey received responses from 120 of the "most influential conservative thought leaders" that included elected officials at the state and national level as well as "think tank scholars, business leaders, and prominent conservative writers and economists."
The respondents were asked to rank who they believed were the most overrated and underrated political figures of the past century, but notably not who they perceived as the best or worst.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, former President Obama topped the list of most overrated, given that his actual accomplishments in office -- at least in the view of conservatives -- fall well short of the way he is heralded and portrayed as a near demi-god by liberal historians and pundits.
The figures who rounded out the top five most overrated among conservative thinkers were also not particularly surprising and included former Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and current President Joe Biden.
As for the top five most underrated political figures of the past century, that list included former Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton.
The committee observed that the political figures who topped the "most overrated" list are often also at the top of the rankings of "most successful" political leaders in the typically biased surveys of predominately left-leaning historians and media pundits.
That is because those figures usually oversaw an expansion in the size and power of the federal government through the creation or growth of various agencies, departments, and programs as well as the imposition of additional and higher taxes on the citizenry.
Conversely, the figures who topped the "most underrated" list are seldom found near the top of the traditional biased rankings, most likely because those figures found some measure of success in reducing the size and scope of government or in lowering the tax burden on citizens.
To be sure, the liberal historians and pundits who frequently fawn over Obama as though he were some sort of messiah will dismiss this particular survey and continue to herald him as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but conservatives know the truth and will no longer be swayed by such biased rankings.
