[Protagoras]

Only Washington and Lincoln were better

What would you say were the things they did that made them great?

[LS]

Washington was phenomenal because everything he did, he did with his eye hundreds of years into the future. Every act he took, every move he made, he did knowing that every subsequent administration would be using his as a model. W was tremendously HATED by the Jeffersonians, but he still kept Jefferson in the coalition.

Lincoln elevated the issue of slavery to the place where it needed to be, namely to the moral plane. He got it out of "practical politics" and forced people to make the hard choice that they had ducked for 80 years. Moreover, to keep the "war coalition" together was a tremendous feat---he was far more of a "minority president" than Bush was. Talk about red and blue states---Lincoln didn't get a vote below the Mason-Dixon line.