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Abraham Lincoln, hands down.
Thomas Jefferson. No question.
Done nothing compared to Lincoln. Lincoln abolished slavery.
Jefferson was the main driving force behind the Bill of Rights.
Yea but it defies the point if African Americans weren't treated equally when the bill was passed.
Huh? I'm not sure I follow.
Even though the bill and everything was passed through, no one saw African Americans as citizens until Lincoln came around
Okay, yeah. So why is freeing the slaves more important? I'm not dissing Lincoln. But only 15% of the US population is black, or partially so. 85% > 15%
Well, in America, around the time when Jefferson was around and so was Lincoln, blacks were basically the only ones oppressed.
Jefferson made a document saying everyone was equal, and Lincoln actually blew the whistle and stopped inequality from actually happening.
Huh. I must have missed out on Madison writing most of the Constitution or many of those Bill of Rights being copied from Adams' Massachusetts constitution.
Actually they did. What they didn't see as citizens were slaves. If you were already a free African, you could be a citizen.
When I looked for something like objective criteria (measuring economic and foreign policy, civil rights compared against abuses of office, looking at agenda during office, etc) and tried to apply it myself, Lincoln comes out ahead. The four guys carved in stone are pretty much the model (Abe, TR, Washington, and Jefferson would be my own order for those 4). After that Presidents like Grant, Truman, Ike, and Silent Cal coming out as actually pretty good themselves relative to their usual standing with history and the public. The one guy I detest that's always been in higher historical esteem is Jackson.
You're not going terribly wrong if you picked Jefferson, though his embargo solution to the Napoleonic Wars was a complete disaster, both economically and for continuing a policy of neutrality in IR (it more or less forced his successor Madison into the war of 1812). As was the Barbary Pirates foray. Though the Louisiana Purchase, and the funding of Lewis and Clark's exploration of it, was obviously a huge policy success. Lincoln doesn't have too many missteps while actually serving as President relative to Jefferson (he's a far more nimble politician than Jefferson ever was; Jefferson seems to have hated politics and civic life), but doesn't have the track record of other things that he did while not to boost his reputation. If you're going to judge them solely and objectively on their record as Presidents, and not as national and local statesmen, I just don't see where Jefferson gets to be the top dog as a result. Madison suffers from this more than any other President. He was a terrible President but he makes out as "decent" in a subjective assessment because of his roles in Philadelphia and as a Virginia legislator.
"blacks were basically the only ones oppressed." Where did you learn that, because it's certainly not true.
It was the entire anti-Federalist movement that pushed for the Bill of Rights, and Jefferson was very much its figure head. I guess I'd have to give the credit to John Locke if I were forced to go back to the formation of the philosophy underlying it.
I would disagree that such a thing can be determined objectively. And I think people give Lincoln too much credit. Lincoln was very much a racist and his actions seemed motivated more by practicality than any sort of ideological reverence to freedom. Real freedom was not afforded to the greater African American community until the 1960s and he destroyed the principles of states' rights.
Slavery. Who else was there?
Lincoln is the winner. The guy has been through a lot.
George Washington.
Just my not-so-humble opinion.
How about women for starters.
Women didn't have as much rights as white men, I'll agree with that, but they weren't whipped and all of that crap to work on plantations for free and be treated like garbage.
I am pretty sure one reading of the Constitution is that it should apply to any entity within the union. So states' rights, where they are being abused to violate individual civil liberties, doesn't seem all that important a movement to have to give up to guarantee individual liberties. I can agree, in some sort of means, that states having to compete over those individual liberties does help. But states can and still do this over their economic policies, and a wide variety of social rights (some of which I don't think they really should do either). It's not like they were destroyed, but rather expressly limited by the Civil War. If you're really looking for an "end point" on states' rights, then debates over the 17th Amendment and the abolition of the electoral college are probably more useful.
I agree he was more pragmatic than principled (though I think you are dramatically underselling his own personal opinions on slavery). But so what? Is the President supposed to be ideological and bash his head against the wall with people who don't agree with him?
And so far as "real freedom" to blacks, that actually did happen for a time after the Civil War. What stopped it was the end of Reconstruction and the removal of federal troops to guarantee those freedoms (we had to put them back in during the 50s and 60s anyway during the Civil Rights era). If we actually had history classes that covered the post-war period seriously, more people would be aware of this.
So far as the "objectivity", I agree it is roughly impossible. I stated it as "somewhat objective". The principle idea would be to use the SAME criteria to evaluate each President's term. In other words, you can't just decide that Bush was terrible and Clinton was great because you happen to be a Democrat. You'd have to examine each one's record with a level of intellectual honesty to each one's flaws and benefits. Naturally, the ability to measure flaws or benefits will still be an inherently subjective exercise. Even with something as empirical as economic policy, one could choose to subjectively value deficit controls, inflation, economic opportunity, income inequality, infrastructural development, and raw economic growth in differing levels (or not at all). But so long as they are applied in the same manner to each, it's at least a level of objectivity that is superior to the normal method of Presidential rankings, wherein people don't use any methodology at all and simply say things like: Truman good, Bush bad. People can then quibble with the subjective importance of each criteria involved rather than the utterly meaningless or ignored criteria now. Grant gets a bad rap for corruption but Truman gets a pass, things like this.
The argument against Jefferson is more that he is a better statesman or, better still, political philosopher than he ever was as a President. I think that can be "objectively" defined based on the number of pure blunders he had as an executive. He was not nearly so bad as others like Madison, Adams, or Monroe, but he's just not that great as a President. Which is I think the question. We could speculate that someone like Einstein would have made a great President, but his achievements elsewhere shouldn't weigh into evaluating his success or failure in that one role. Some people are better at different things than governance.
Lincoln abolished slavery for the wrong reasons, he wasn't the saint that we all think he was.
That doesn't make sense. There is no positive side for slavery. Slavery brought in a lot of free labor for the country, and abolishing it was bad for the economy, but necessary for human rights.
There are lots of studies on its economic impact. It was actually bad (ie, not that profitable) because there are large infrastructural costs involved in keeping people as property against their will, particularly in substandard conditions. There are reasons why we had organized labour movements that were really strong around the dawn of the 20th century. Most of them weren't that different from the problems that slavery was causing.
By "we" are you by chance referring to Tolstoy's "voice of thunder" story?
I see, so while if limiting the actions of Jefferson to only those acts he made within the Presidency (and not simply comparing the each individual throughout their life who was also at some point a President) that would have an impact on the outcome of the question.
I suppose the question can be read in two ways: which is the greatest American ever to be President, and which is the greatest American President. Usually this question is looking for the second one when it is asked.
Looking at it now, I suppose the question isn't limited to American Presidents either. But other than maybe Hu Jintao, I'm not sure anybody else who has been a President somewhere else actually has had much of an (positive) impact on world or even regional events. There's a plethora of incompetent dictators who use the title as well.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Not only did he helm the country during one of it's darkest times he enacted so many public works programs to create jobs during the depression. I know most people feel the WPA programs were useless, but honestly talk to any grandparent who had food on their table because their dad had a public works job thanks to FDR and I'm sure you'll find some good in it. Likewise, during WW2 the man was like a rock with his decisions, he was the American Churchill for sure. He did the job that needed doing and he did it to the best ability the American people would allow him.
TOTALLY
Best 5 Presidents:
5) John F. Kennedy
He New Frontier reflected his vision of a government which was limited, but at the same time able to assist the people. He was a man of the people who opposed bureaucracy and had good values. He was an opponent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. His only mistakes were trusting Eisenhower's advice on Bay Of Pigs and the early stages of the Vietnam War.
4) George Washington
Elected unanimously, he was the first man in history to hand over his power voluntarily. As first president, he set many precedents for the country such as term limits. He warned the country in his farewell speech about the danger of political parties and entangling alliances.
3) Theodore Roosevelt
Too belligerent, but he was president at the right time. He shined in almost every aspect. Preserving the environment, trustbusting, regulating food/drug industry, and mediating peace between countries. He also strengthen the United States military enough for it to handle threats such as fascism and communism in the future.
2) Franklin Roosevelt
Roosevelt faced the greatest challenges out of any president. During the Great Depression, he created many reforms to stop another depression from happening again and he successfully led the country through World War Two.
1) Abraham Lincoln
He was naturally a non-conformist and a pragmatist, who opposed the idealistic cries of comprimise regarding the slavery issue. After decades of pent up and irritated slavery issue, the exploding powderkeg was handed to him. He lead the country through the civil war, repaired the union, and opened up a path for reconstruction.
Two words: Embargo Act