[Sherman Logan]

Yup. Of course it all depends on how you define “greatness.”

To my mind it requires facing and defeating enormous obstacles. Coolidge might very well have had the potential to be as great as the other three, but never got the opportunity to demonstrate it, since nothing much happened while he was president.

Washington of course faced the need to literally invent a new nation, of a type that had never existed before. Lincoln faced the greatest of all existential threats to this nation. Reagan faced and defeated an ideology that most assumed was on its way to eventual victory.

I don’t, oddly enough, consider WWII to be a comparable challenge. As Churchill said after Hitler (idiotically) chose to declare war on the USA. “It’s all over but the shouting. (Paraphrasing.)

With the US in the war, the disparity in resources was just too great.

[elkfersupper]

To my mind it requires facing and defeating enormous obstacles. Coolidge might very well have had the potential to be as great as the other three, but never got the opportunity to demonstrate it, since nothing much happened while he was president.

In my mind, "greatness" means not rocking the boat, even if it is your boat to rock.

Washington set the tone. Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and every POTUS during and after were reactionaries.

Coolidge wouldn't react if you hit him with a Taser.

That's pretty close to perfect in my book.

[Defiant]

WW2 was closer than you think. If Hitler had gotten jet planes into production, or missiles that reached the US, or had not stupidly given up on nuclear weapons, the war could have gone the other way. He may not have been able to invade and hold the US, but he could have won the rest of the west, with Japan holding the east. We had a little bit of good fortune.

If you look at it only in terms of industrial production, then victory was inevitable. But the Germans almost got modern weapons before us, and that would have changed things.