Lincoln, Washington and Roosevelt ranked top three U.S. presidents of all time, Obama in 12th

The immediate past president of the United States, Barrack Obama has been ranked as the top 12th US president of all time, but still far behind Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt who were all ranked as the top three US presidents in history respectively based on a survey of historians.

Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower completed the top five rank of 43 presidents in US history.

The leadership survey released just in time for Presidents Day, was the third such survey on presidents released by the C-SPAN television network.

"Once again the big three are Lincoln, Washington and FDR - as it should be. That Obama came in at number 12 his first time out is quite impressive," said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University, in a statement by C-SPAN.

The survey, which has been held twice before in 2000 and 2009, asked 91 presidential historians to rank the 43 former presidents based on 10 attributes of leadership. 

According to the survey, Obama, who left office in January with favorable approval ratings after eight in office, was ranked 12th for his first time in the survey. Obama was also ranked third in the "pursued equal justice of all" category and 39th in the "relations with congress" category.

George W. Bush moves up from 36 to 33.

C-SPAN’s 2017 Presidential Historians Survey Top 10
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt
4. Theodore Roosevelt
5. Dwight D. Eisenhower
6. Harry S. Truman
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. John F. Kennedy
9. Ronald Reagan
10. Lyndon Baines Johnson See full list
 
Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were ranked as the worst US presidents in history.