Lincoln is nowhere near being one of the best presidents and people only think of him as such due to propaganda that paints him as some kind of hero when he was really the biggest destructor of liberty ever.
Washington. FDR are you joking.
You really said a mouthful!!!!!
Also, be prepared to be flamed by the Lincoln-lovers on this site.
Thanks for making the point about Lincoln. I agree completely.
Washington remains the first in every sense.
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George Washington was the greatest president, without a doubt.
George Washington
The father of our country
A Man of Character, a man of God and possibly the greatest American of them all.
Washington’s greatness is not just that he led the Revolutionary Army to victory in an apparently hopeless seven-year war against the mightiest military power in the world. It’s not just that he presided over the convention that wrote our enduring Constitution which is the fountainhead of our freedom. It’s not just that he was uniquely unanimously elected to two terms as our first President. It’s not just that he made our young republic a reality when he declined a third term as President and transferred the reins of power to our second President.
Washington’s greatness was based on his leadership and character, so acknowledged by the many other great men of his time. Washington is the hero we need today because he is an extraordinary example of a President whose character was above reproach and whom adulation did not corrupt. In Daniel Webster’s words: “America has furnished to the world the character of Washington, and if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.”
When sensational journalists of his and succeeding generations scraped the countryside for revelations, they did not find even one tale of a tryst behind a haystack or a plundering escapade with the boys. Item-by-item scrutiny of his cash-book and ledger, which were the disclosure records of his generation, do not reveal even one entry that hints of a financial or moral impropriety. His spotless reputation has stood the test of time.
No investigative reporter ever discovered any misdeeds of the kinds that tarnished the reputations of later Presidents. Washington did not have any secret life of womanizing, cheating, building a personal fortune through control of government television licenses, talking in profanities, lying to his supporters as well as his enemies, keeping close friendships with traitors or men of deviant behavior, betraying his campaign promises, making secret deals with foreign countries, accepting campaign donations that smelled of bribery, conspiring to involve our country in war, or stuffing the ballot box to win elections.
Washington never would have accepted the popular line that the personal lives of public officials are none of the public’s business. With Washington, what you saw was what you got; the public man and the private man were one and the same. Representative Richard Henry Lee’s eulogy correctly stated: “The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues.”
Washington wanted our nation to be bound by the same rules of honor and honesty that should bind individuals. In his Farewell Address he reminded us: “I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy.”
The famous story about not telling a lie about chopping down the cherry tree has been demoted in modern times to apocryphal status, but we have the record that, as a schoolboy, Washington wrote in his copybook, “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire — conscience.”
With almost no formal education, Washington educated himself by reading. He was not an eloquent speaker, having no special flair with words or his generation’s equivalent of the 20th century sound-bite. Nevertheless, all the college-educated Founding Fathers acknowledged him as their leader.
Washington earned the loyalty of the men who served with him not from stirring their emotions but because of his reliable integrity, incorruptible judgment, and persevering zeal. He certainly didn’t retain their enthusiasm for the American cause because of a succession of military victories — he lost more battles than he won. His leadership and commanding presence enabled him to lead his ragged, ill-clothed, underpaid troops through defeats and retreats toward an improbable victory.
Washington’s total dedication to the duty assigned to him of winning our War of Independence gave him personal peace of mind. His will and self-discipline were his rod and staff; he could persevere in the war against England because he was not at war with himself.
Washington’s code of living was built on the principles of conduct he regarded as the code of gentlemen, laboriously handwritten as a teenager in his 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior. The gentleman’s code was not founded on love and compassion, but on honesty, duty, truth, respect for others, courtesy, and justice, which demanded that he do his utmost and in return receive what he had earned. What he was, he made himself by will, effort, self-discipline, ambition, and perseverance.
There is a sculpture of Washington on horseback at the battle of Monmouth in 1778. It captures a moment during the Revolution when his leadership was put to its severest test. Finding his advance troops in full retreat because of a traitorous officer, Washington galloped through his frightened regiments and saved the day by turning them around and leading them forward to attack the British.
Late in life, Washington himself told an old friend his own explanation of his remarkable success in accomplishing what seemed impossible in the American Revolution. He said he “always had walked on a straight line.” As a youth, he acquired a positive love of the right, and he developed an iron will to do always what is right and honorable.
Today, when there seem to be so few heroes, George Washington is a man for all seasons. He had the strength he needed for the long and dangerous journeys of his incredible life because he always walked that “straight line.”
http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2002/may02/psrmay02.shtml
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