Franklin D. Roosevelt has retained his top ranking among the greatest presidents of the modern era, a new nationwide Zogby International telephone poll shows. Roosevelt has dominated Zogby's Presidential Greatness survey since 1997 - only losing out to John F. Kennedy in 2006 and 2002.

Roosevelt was rated "great" or "near great" by 69% of those surveyed, while 67% said they feel the same way about Kennedy. Both Roosevelt and Kennedy experienced slightly lower greatness rankings in this year's poll - 78% ranked Roosevelt as great or near great last year compared to 74% who felt the same about Kennedy. The Zogby survey of 1,026 likely voters was conducted February 22-23, 2008, and contains a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

President George W. Bush - who hit all-time low job-performance numbers last year - experienced a slight boost on the greatness scale in the final year of his presidency. The current president moves up to ninth place out of the last twelve presidents in this year's survey from a ranking of 10th in 2007 - 22% rate Bush as great or near great this year, up from 21% last year. His recent rankings are still far shy of his all-time high greatness rating of 63% in 2002, following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Fewer than half of Republicans (40%) view Bush as a great or near great president.

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Bush has also surpassed Richard Nixon as the modern president with the highest negative rating - 52% of those surveyed place the current president at the bottom end of the scale as either "below average" or a "failure", compared to 50% who said the same about Nixon. Bush also beats out Nixon on the failure scale - one in three Americans (33%) say Bush is a failure as a president, up from 30% who said the same last year. Most Democrats (60%) view Bush as a failure, but half as many independents (29%) feel the same, compared to just 7% of Republicans. This year's survey finds 21% view Nixon as a failed president.

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