Barney Stinson?
You give him too much credit, that guy is the icon of awesome. For Balton to achieve that sort of status there needs to be general consensus of said status and I highly doubt that will ever become fact. In his mind however, that's a different story. Hell, he probably even compares himself with Caesar or Augustus.
Anyhow, to me Balton was never anything but a poor attempt. However I'll give him one thing, he was good at getting attention.