Obama boasts to CBS: I'm 4th best president

By Bob Unruh
Published December 19, 2011 at 12:23pm

Barack Obama

Better than George Washington. Better than James Madison. Better than Theodore Roosevelt. Better than John F. Kennedy. Better than Ronald Reagan.

That's Barack Obama's opinion of his accomplishments during the first couple years of the eight years he plans to be president.

The revelation about Obama's opinion of his own presence in the Oval Office came during an interview for "60 Minutes," where the network reported Obama described himself as a "good captain" of the ship of state.

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But the aired footage of the comments that his own accomplishments surpass those of every president – with only a couple of exceptions – did not reach the airwaves and were available on the online video.

That prompted several pundits, including P.J. Gladnick of NewsBusters to write:

"Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn't see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast. If you want to see Obama engage in this latest bit of over the top braggadocio you can only see it at the online 60 Minutes Overtime which has a video of the entire interview. You can catch Obama's excessive praise of himself at the tail end of the interview starting with Steve Kroft's question just before the 55 minute mark."

The comment also appeared on BigJournalism.com.

The video:

Correspondent Kroft had asked Obama about his own perception of his accomplishments.