Posted on 10/31/2008 4:51:21 PM PDT by BGHater
Who is the greatest of them all? While Barack Obama and John McCain battle to become the 44th President of the United States, we asked a panel of experts from The Times to rank the previous Commanders-in-Chief in order of greatness.
1. Abraham Lincoln
1861-65 (Republican, National Union)
The No 1: our panel chose the radical Republican who kept the fledgling nation alive when it could have collapsed altogether.
The first Republican President, Lincoln led the defeat of the Confederate states in the American Civil War and freed around four million slaves by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. The formal abolition of slavery in the US was ratified soon after his death.
He succeeded in unifying the nation militarily as well as laying out a moral imperative for its governance in his Gettysburg address. During the final days of the civil war he was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth.
"Fought and won a just war, kept the United States united and created the ground for a country which could live up to its constitution." Camilla Cavendish, columnist.
"Had the coolest-sounding presidential name of all time." Chris Ayres, Los Angeles correspondent.
2. George Washington
1789-97 (No party)
Washington led the army that vanquished the British during the American Revolutionary War before presiding over the drafting of the Constitution. When it came to elect the first US President he was chosen unanimously by electors representing the 11 states of the Union.
He was celebrated as the Father of the Nation after expanding the Union and overseeing the creation of a taxation system, a national bank and the first Supreme Court judges. His Farewell Address also became one of the cornerstones of American democracy but he still missed out on top spot in our rankings.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
The historians will never allow Bush to be a great, but I have not doubt that he will be judged far more kindly by history than by his contemporaries.
The boom of the 20’s was mostly due to the increase in the money supply that the fed oversaw. It was artificial and came to end painfully (but necessarily) as the Depression.
Don’t forget that after his loss to Jefferson he packed the federal courts, one of his appointees was Marbury of “Marbury v. Madison” which emasculated the Constitution by leaving its interpretation to the “Men in Black”, the supreme court.
...representative democracy.
George W. Bush fought the terrorists and saved the world. The future is brighter because of what he has done.
Best president of our lifetime.
Adams was irreplaceable during the Revolution but an awful President, the first liberal President.
His no-defense actions cost the Republican and conservative movements. As a defacto leader of the two, he let the MSM and other enemy of the US to define conservatism and Republicanism. This resulted in the possibility of Americans staying away from conservatism and Republicans, and open the way for a possible most leftist candidate in US history.
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Carter's *above* Bush Jr and Nixon? FTM, Carter is in the 30s? What a crock! What a joke! Thanks BGHater. |
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Representative Democracy does not adequately describe our system of government. The founding fathers feared the idea of democracy and set up a Constitutional Republic, “...guarantee[ing] to every State in this Union a Republican Form of government...”.
Democracies tend to devolve into whatever the crowd feels at the given moment. There are no protections of rights unlike a Constitutional Republic. Our government is limited in what it can do by the Constitution. As originally set up, the government had built in checks and balances both within the federal system (executive, legislative, and judicial), by the states through senators being selected by the states (changed by the 17th Amendment) and the electoral college, and by the people themselves either by ballot initiative or their elected representatives (in the House).
This explains it pretty well:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html
Abraham Lincoln knew that the slaves were freed by the blood and sweat of the union soldiers.
Obama will thank their descendants with a bill for reparations.
Washington #2. Got thinking about it, this may be a duplicate topic. But anyway, may be pingworthy.
Plus he spent like a drunken sailor.
Few were more incompetent than Carter, but Wilson and FDR did far more damage to our founding principles.
Thomas Jefferson.
The war was not fought about slavery and the issue of slavery as believed by Lee and other Confederate generals was a dying cause anyway. It was completely about States’ rights. The North’s brutal campaign against the South is inexcusable with such atrocities as Sherman’s march.
It really does take 2 generations to get perspective on that sort of thing. By then the blinkered haters will be long gone. My guess is Bush II goes up significantly over time. In 50 years Iraq will be studied as the gold standard in dealing with an asymmetric enemy.
The worst is probably Grant or Carter.
Lol. Not gonna go on a limb and fill in 44?
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