I personally find it difficult to compare one president to another primarily because not all presidencies are equally challenging.
Bill Clinton, in my opinion, was a below average care-taker president. His presidency didn’t face too many challenges, and those he face he mostly muddled through and got by without causing too many problems; and many of the more serious problems were pushed off to the next presidency. I don't think that he is going to be remembered 20 years from now except as the president who was caught fooling around with an intern who was not particularly attractive.
In contrast, I think George W. Bush was elected just before a lot of unhandled issues from the Clinton presidency became a problem. In general, George W. Bush muddled through most of these problems and pushed off many of them to the next presidency. Unfortunately (for George W. Bush) there was an unprecedented focus from the press on making the president look bad, and he faced an unparalleled level of unbalanced criticism. I expect that 20 years from now George W. Bush’s presidency will have very mixed opinions with a combination of being the "Worst President Ever" and "Not as bad as people think"
Unfortunately, Barack Obama is the president who has to deal with (about) 30 years of presidents who have solved problems by creating bigger problems down the line. To a certain extent what scares me the most is that before he has even officially become the president he is making decisions to solve the problems of today by making bigger problems tomorrow.
