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 ...
haha I say basically the same thing in post 15.
“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..”
I’m a Southerner and my family has been in the South since the 1700s. We owned slaves and I had relatives die fighting for the South. I still find though that that argument always brings my chuckles. Which states right were people getting so riled up over again?
“Lincoln over Washington is a joke.”
Hard to say. Washington was the best leader we have had but a lot of his service was as General. You could argue that Lincoln war our best President but that Washington was better than any of them for his country.
Prior to Lincoln, it was “The United States are...”, after Lincoln it was “the United States is...”, goodbye states rights.
FDR as #3?! Didn’t have to read any further. This list is crap.
The ability to leave a union they had voluntarily entered for one.
Oh and it is likely that some of your relatives owned some of mine.
“With every man’s hand against me, I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was honored for? And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew am looked upon as a common cutthroat.”
-John Wilkes Booth, April 1865.
“Abraham Lincoln knew that the slaves were freed by the blood and sweat of the union soldiers.”
Slavery was not banned until the adoption of the 13th Amendment in December, 1865, after the Civil War had ended. If the North was so interested in freeing the slaves, why is it that northern states such as Delaware and New Jersey did not ratify the 13th Amendment until four years later, after having first rejected it?
As for the Alien & Sedition Acts, remember than the young and weak U.S. was close to being a puppet in a world war between two great powers, England and France, and many of the Jeffersonian party were little more than agents of revolutionary France, which was the model for later extremist revolutions like the Russian one. Adams & the other Federalists built the Navy which Jefferson and Madison used against the Muzzie Barbary pirates and the French and British. The Jeffersonians naively thought a bunch of coastal gunboats were all we needed; they were the Ron Pauls of their day.
Harding was a corrupt dope, but Coolidge was one of the greatest Presidents of the 20th century. Read some of his speeches and public statements; Reagan was his only rival.
I almost did. :’)
read paul johnson’s account of harding in “modern times” and you’ll see he was a pretty good president.
Maybe so, but Coolidge was far superior ethically, and as a conservative. Coolidge was the last of the great old New England Republicans. All you hear of him today is that he was some eccentric who never said anything—a sort of joke among the hip modern historians.
JFK and LBJ are ranked much higher than they should be, also Grant, Clinton, Andrew Johnson and Carter. Naturally they put GWB near the bottom. I think a fair rating would have him somewhere in the middle (he had the potential to be in the "near great" group but his lack of communication skills and unwillingness to fight back have hurt his effectiveness). Hoover should be a bit higher, also Van Buren. It's silly to include William Henry Harrison on the list, considering that he died one month after taking the oath of office.
Johnson is a Brit, but he has a great respect for America. His portion of “Modern Times” dealing with Harding and Coolidge is very revealing...I learned a lot, because I also felt like you did about Harding until I read his account.
I respected Coolidge because of what I learned about him after hearing Reagan liked him...but Johnson puts lots of meat on both men.
After that, he does take time to point out some problems both guys had...but all in all, Johnson likes both. He documents how the bashing of Harding, since he wasn’t one of the “elite” started almost immediately...I highly recommend you checking it out...the book is lengthy, but the section on Harding is only a few pages...maybe five or six.
Lincoln: America’s first socialist President
“In my opinion, top billing goes to George Washington, who presided over the birth of our democracy.”
Does the word “democracy” appear in the pledge of allegiance?
Why do we have an electoral college and not a majority vote for President?
Is the Constitution superior to the will of the majority?
We are NOT a democracy.
Stop be ridiculously pedantic. The U.S. IS a representative democracy, in the form of a constitutional republic.
...well, it is a representative democracy, it just happens to be in the form of a constitutional republic. People like to argue about this as if we’re in high school history class and they have their favorite fun fact.
So you think judicial review and an independent judiciary are a bad thing?
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