Historians surveyed about Obama presidency

Obviously, it's way too early to assess President Obama's place in history — but that won't keep people from trying.

New York magazine asked more than 50 historians "to respond to a broad questionnaire about how Obama and his administration will be viewed 20 years from now," and the results are about what you might expect.

The health care law will be long remembered, the respondents said, as will efforts to revive the economy after the financial meltdown of 2008, the year Obama first won election.

Then there's the fact that Obama is the nation's first African-American president. Writes New York:

"Almost every respondent wrote that the fact of his being the first black president will loom large in the historical narrative — though they disagreed in interesting ways.

"Many predict that what will last is the symbolism of a nonwhite First Family; others, the antagonism Obama's blackness provoked; still others, the way his racial self-consciousness constrained him.

"A few suggested that we will care a great deal less about his race generations from now — just as John F. Kennedy's Catholicism hardly matters to current students of history."

This is just a starting point, of course. After all, Obama has two years left in his presidency.

New York 's editors reported the reaction to their Obama survey from historian Gordon Wood:

"It's a fool's errand you're involved in. ... We live in a fog, and historians decades from now will tell their society what was happening in 2014. But we don't know the future. No one in 1952, for example, could have predicted the reputation of Truman a half-century or so later."