As the presidency of Barack Obama comes to a close, the political class will inevitably begin talking about his "legacy," and pundits will try and predict how future generations will view Obama through the lens of history.
Of course, the long-term implications of any president's actions are difficult to gauge so soon after a president leaves office. However, a president's approval rating can give us some indication as to how history book writers will narrate the country's reaction to a president's decisions and leadership. As you can see from the chart, President Obama currently has a rating above 50 percent -- the highest his approval rating has been in several years.
Former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton left office with extraordinarily high approval ratings. Today, a majority of Americans hold a positive view of the time that those presidents spent in the White House. By contrast, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter had extremely low approval ratings upon leaving office. But these low ratings don't necessarily mean that history will view them in a negative light. Like Bush, President Harry Truman was incredibly unpopular by the end of his term. Today, however, his presidency is viewed by historians much more positively.
Polls that track presidents' approval ratings are a relatively modern phenomenon. For example, we really have no scientific way of telling what Americans thought of Calvin Coolidge by the end of his term in 1929. But the Gallup website has a very cool interactive chart that allows you to compare the approval ratings of our modern presidents from the time they took office until the end of their presidencies.
If you're a student of history--or just a weirdo like me who enjoys looking at polls--you should definitely check it out.