Washington, Lincoln, TR, and Reagan are my top 4...
Jefferson, perhaps surprisingly, was a very good president. He might be the best of them. I used to say Washington was best, until I learned that the Federalists wrecked what was best about the United States. Madison was an awful president. So was Adams.
If you take ideology out of it, the correct answers are Washington, Lincoln, FDR. These three were the most consequential presidents by far.
Surprised that TR gets so many picks on a conservative forum. Not exactly the conservative gold standard.
Washington. He held the states together and he resisted temptation. He could have been KING!
You're expected to vote for Lincoln, of course, because O'Reilly has a new book out about Honest Abe.
BO'R is absolutely shameless in using his show as a vehicle for endless shilling for the product de jour he's selling. Whether it's his books or tee shirts or his Abbot and Costello road shows, he never stops promoting via every form of media his latest schticks for personal enrichment.
Sure, some charities get a cut of his proceeds, but if it weren't for this carefully-contrived cover, his program would be laughed off the tube as one big infomercial aired primarily for his personal benefit and for the benefit of his multi-tentacled business empire.
I never become involved in any of his call-in polls, his surveys, his promotions, his products, his web-sites or anything with his imprematur on it.
Participating in his flurry of promotions this past week helps him hawk his book. Does anyone think he CARES about who we think is the best president? What he cares about is his book's ranking on Amazon's or the NYT's best-seller lists.
According to his own estimation, and referring to himself, O'Reilly stated he has "more power than anybody other than the president of the United States" (Newsweek 9/20/11).
One may add to his "power" the further attributes of arrogance, gall, self-promotion plus conspicuous misuse of the public air waves for unbounded hucksterism on his own behalf.
Besides, if the capitalist O'Reilly were to participate in his own presidential-favorite poll he'd undoubtedly vote for his pal, the socialist O'bama, just to promote himself as being supremely "fair and balanced".
Leni
Next four:
Jefferson
Madison
Lincoln
Polk - He replaced a bad president in Tyler, was a strong leader, and did exactly what he said he was going to do. He served one term. He wasn't anybody's tool and was the last "national" president acceptable in both the North and South before the war. He was replaced by disasters Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan.
Coolidge is the most overrated benefiting from the Roaring 20's. He's more good than bad, but the depression started right after he left. Harding was better and set up that economy, although he was corrupt as hell.
Best by century
18th - Washington
19th - Jefferson, Madison, Lincon, Polk, Cleveland
20th/21st - McKinley, Reagan, Harding, Ike, large gap - Teddy Roosevelt.
Worst by century
18th - Adams (Sedition acts)
19th - Pierce, Buchanan, Fillmore, Grant, Johnson
20th/21st - Carter, Wilson, Hoover, LBJ, Obama
Lincoln. He was a born warrior when one was needed. Like Churchill.
Washington best, LBJ worst.
Instead of relying on our own measure, however, let us consider the opinion of the son of President John Adams, who himself also served as President. His tracing of the history of the Republic for its first 50 years should be required reading for all citizens and is available for reading online today.
The following powerful words are excerpted from John Quincy Adams' "Jubilee" Address, delivered in New York City in April 1830, celebrating the Inauguration of Washington and the 50th Anniversary under the Constitution. Of the founding generation and Washington, Adams declared:
"They had resolved for themselves and their posterity, never again to be ruled by thrones. The Declaration of Independence had promulgated principles of government, subversive of all unlimited sovereignty and all hereditary power. Principles, in consistency with which no conqueror could establish by violence a throne to be trodden by himself and by his posterity, for a space of eight hundred years. The foundations of government laid by those who had burnt by fire and scattered to the winds of Heaven, the ashes of this conqueror's throne, were human rights, responsibility to God, and the consent of the people. Upon these principles, the Constitution of the United States had been formed, was now organized, and about to be carried into execution, to abide the test of time. The first element of its longevity was undoubtedly to be found in itself - but we may, without superstition or fanaticism, believe that a superintending Providence had adapted to the character and principles of this institution, those of the man by whom it was to be first administered. To fill a throne was neither his ambition nor his vocation. He had no descendants to whom a throne could have been transmitted, had it existed. He was placed by the unanimous voice of his country, at the head of that government which they had substituted for a throne, and his eye looking to futurity, was intent upon securing to after ages, not a throne for a seat to his own descendants, but an immoveable seat upon which the descendants of his country might sit in peace, and freedom, and happiness, if so it please Heaven, to the end of time.
"That to the accomplishment of this task he looked forward with a searching eye, and even an over-anxious heart, will not be surprising to any who understands his character, or is capable of comprehending the magnitude and difficulty of the task itself.
"There are incidental to the character of man two qualities, both developed by his intercourse with his fellow-creatures, and both belonging to the immortal part of his nature; of elements apparently so opposed and inconsistent with each other, as to be irreconcilable together; but yet indispensable in their union to constitute the highest excellence of the human character. They are the spirit of command, and the spirit of meekness. They have been exemplified in the purity of ideal perfection, only once in the history of mankind, and that was in the mortal life of the Savior of the world. It would seem to have been exhibited on earth by his supernatural character, as a model to teach mortal man, to what sublime elevation his nature is capable of ascending. They had been displayed, though not in the same perfection by the preceding legislator of the children of Israel; -
"That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning, how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos;" but so little were they known, or conceived of in the antiquity of profane history, that in the poems of Homer, that unrivalled delineator of human character in the heroic ages, there is no attempt to introduce them in the person of any one of his performers, human or divine. In the poem of his Roman imitator and rival, a feeble exemplification of them is shadowed forth in the inconsistent composition of the pious Æneas; but history, ancient or modem, had never exhibited in the real life of man, an example in which those two properties were so happily blended together, as they were in the person of George Washington. These properties belong rather to the moral than the intellectual nature of man. They are not infrequently found in minds little cultivated by science, but they require for the exercise of that mutual control which guards them from degenerating into arrogance or weakness, the guidance of a sound judgment, and the regulation of a profound sense of responsibility to a higher Power. It was this adaptation of the character of Washington to that of the institution over the composition of which he had presided, as he was now called to preside over its administration, which constituted one of the most favorable omens of it: eventful stability and success.
"But this institution was republican, and even democratic. And here not to be misunderstood, I mean by democratic, a government, the administration of which must always be rendered comfortable to that predominating public opinion, which even in the ages of heathen antiquity, was denominated the queen of the world: and by republican I mean a government reposing, not upon the virtues or the powers of any one man - not upon that honor, which Montesquieu lays down as the fundamental principle of monarchy - far less upon that fear which he pronounces the basis of despotism; but upon that virtue which he, a noble of aristocratic peerage, and the subject of an absolute monarch, boldly proclaims as a fundamental principle of republican government. The Constitution of the United States was republican and democratic - but the experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived; and it was obvious that if virtue - the virtue of the people, was the foundation of republican government, the stability and duration of the government must depend upon the stability and duration of the virtue by which it is sustained.
"Now the virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United States, and was to give to its vital existence, the stability and duration to which it was destined, was no other than the concretion of those abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence - namely, the self-evident truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man, of the indefeasible constituent and dissolvent sovereignty of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sovereign, constituent, and dissolvent power.
"This was the platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected. Its VIRTUES, its republican character, consisted in its conformity to the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and as its administration must necessarily be always pliable to the fluctuating varieties of public opinion; its stability and duration by a Re overruling and irresistible necessity, was to depend upon the stability and duration in the hearts and minds of the people of that virtue, or in other words, of those principles, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, and embodied in the Constitution of the United States.
"With these considerations, we shall be better able to comprehend the feelings of repugnance, of pain, of anguish, of fearful forebodings, with which Washington had consented to be placed at the head of this new and untried experiment to consolidate the people of the thirteen then disunited states into one confederated and permanent happy Union. For his own integrity and firmness he could answer; and these were sufficient to redeem his own personal responsibility - but he was embarking on this ocean of difficulty a good name already achieved by toils, and dangers, and services unparalleled in human history - surpassing in actual value the richest diadem upon earth, and more precious in his estimation than the throne of the universal globe, had it been offered as an alternative to his choice.
"He knew the result would not depend upon him. His reliance was upon the good providence of Heaven. He foresaw that he might be deserted by all mankind. The Constitution itself had been extorted from the grinding necessity of a reluctant nation. The people only of eleven of the thirteen primitive states had sanctioned it by their adoption. A stubborn, unyielding resistance against its adoption had manifested itself in some of the most powerful states in the Union, and when overpowered by small majorities in their conventions, had struggled in some instances successfully, to recover their ascendancy by electing to both Houses of Congress members who had signalized themselves in opposition to the adoption of the Constitution. A sullen, embittered, exasperated spirit was boiling in the bosoms of the defeated, then styled anti-Federal party, whose rallying cry was state rights - state sovereignty - state independence. To this standard no small number even of the ardent and distinguished patriots of the Revolution had attached themselves with partial affection. State sovereignty - unlimited state sovereignty, amenable not to the authority of the Union, but only to the people of the disunited state itself, had, with the left-handed wisdom characteristic of faction, assumed the mask of liberty, pranked herself out in the garb of patriotism, and courted the popular favor in each state by appeals to their separate independence - affecting to style themselves exclusively Republicans, and stigmatizing the Federalists, and even Washington himself their head, as monarchists and tories.
"On the other hand, no small number of the Federalists, sickened by the wretched and ignominious failure of the Articles of Confederation to fulfil the promise of the Revolution; provoked at once and discouraged by the violence and rancor of the opposition against their strenuous and toilsome endeavors to raise their country from her state of prostration; chafed and goaded by the misrepresentations of their motives, and the reproaches of their adversaries, and imputing to them in turn, deliberate and settled purposes to dissolve the Union, and resort to anarchy for the repair of ruined fortunes - distrusted even the efficacy of the Constitution itself, and with a weakened confidence in the virtue of the people, were inclining to the opinion, that the only practicable substitute for it would be a government of greater energy than that presented by the Convention. There were among them numerous warm and sincere admirers of the British Constitution; disposed to confide rather to the inherent strength of the government than to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of independence, for the preservation of the rights of property and perhaps of persons - and with these discordant feelings and antagonizing opinions, were intermingled on both sides individual interests and ambitions, counteracting each other as in the conduct and management of human affairs they always have and always will - not without a silent and secret mixture of collateral motives and impulses, from the domestic intercourse of society, for which the legislator is not competent to provide, and the effect of which not intuition itself can foresee.
"The same calm, but anxious and even distrusting contemplation of the prospect before him, and of the difficulties and dangers which he was destined to encounter in his new career, followed him after he received the enunciation of his election, and the summons to repair to his post. The moment of his departure from the residence of his retirement, was thus recorded in his diary: 'About ten o'clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity; and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations, than I have words to express, set out for New York - with the best disposition to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations.'"