Professor Paul Krugman gives the President an A-; says he's the most consequential since...

[Hekate]

153. If you listen to the interview (the link is in this thread) and read columns by Krugman you will see

...that the comparison to Reagan (nowhere is Nixon mentioned) is NOT for purposes of approval. Krugman is no fan of Reagan's, but simply acknowledges what many others who detest St Ronnie acknowledge: he transformed the scene and we are still living with the consequences. There is a difference between seeing and approving.

As to Obama -- again, I recommend seeing the interview, which was not overlong -- Krugman gives a two-part "grade," one part on what he actually has accomplished so far ("How many answers did you complete correctly on this test?&quot and the other on the difficulty of the task (insanely hard). Thus if it were only part 1, Obama would get a B-; but given the insane difficulty of the test, he gets an A-.

To reiterate: Nowhere is Nixon mentioned; he was not relevant to this discussion. Reagan is relevant, so he was mentioned. Krugman (a liberal through and through) does not approve of RR, but transform the scene he most certainly did.

Krugman's assessment of Obama is that he is definitely a "consequential president," and although Krugman in the past (in both his writing and his interviews) has articulated his issues with the President's individual proposals and actions, he's intelligent enough to not let that color every single other thing about Obama, like so many here.