Quote Obama accurately

In a Jan. 13 letter to the editor titled “Obama too sure of his successes,” Gene Maril derides President Obama for claiming to be the fourth greatest president ever.

His argument is based on an erroneous quote from President Obama given during an interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft on Dec. 9. Here is a transcript of the question posed by Mr. Kroft and part of the President’s response:

KROFT: “Tell me, what do you consider your major accomplishments? If this is your last speech. What have you accomplished?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA (in part): “The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.”

It is apparent to me that the president was not at all claiming to be the fourth greatest president in history, as Mr. Maril asserts. The president was not asked to grade his own presidency, he was responding to a direct question regarding what he would say about his accomplishments during a theoretical final speech, and he freely admits that there is a lot of work left to do.

Maril should review his grade school grammar lessons: If you put quotation marks around something, it should be an honest and exact representation of the speaker’s words.

John Ritchie

Geneva