Lincoln Ranked First Among Presidents By Panel of Sixty Five Historians

Although not surprising that they picked Abraham Lincoln, frankly they got it dead wrong.

There is one single president that transcends the office even while defining it. No president faced the kinds of challenges overcome by this man. No other president comes close to him when one considers leadership ability, long term effect of his presidency, or any other standard of leadership.

It may be unfashionable to speak the obvious, but George Washington is and will always be the greatest president in United States history.

Before Washington there was no office of the president. The Constitution offered some vague details, but little in the way of guidance. Washington's generation had no contemporary examples to serve as models either. King George III? Thanks, but no thanks. The office of Prime Minister was too tied to the legislative branch for Washington's taste (Congress tended to grate on the Father of our Country's nerves.) Washington looked somewhat to the consuls of the Roman Republic, who held many of the same powers. Most of all he looked to his own common sense.

Washington strove to create balance. He needed balance in foreign affairs. A vulnerable infant nation in a world of rapacious Great Powers could not succumb to any one side, but needed to maintain a dignified neutrality. A nation with no economic growth in 1789 needed to balance the agricultural interest with his own vision of America growing into a commercial empire. He had to balance his attention between his two friends and colleagues Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Most importantly he balanced the need to enhance the respect of the people for the office of president while maintaining an air of republican simplicity.

In short, Washington had to define the office of president and also went a long way towards defining what the United States would be in its distant future. Lincoln was a great president, but no one has ever overcome the kinds of challenges faced by Washington so successfully.

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Predictably the list of presidents rated George W. Bush very low, even below Carter (who actually dropped since the last ranking.) Seven years of prosperity and security combined with a new respect for the United States around the world did not impress the historians. Of course none of them brought a sliver of bias to the table.

Surprisingly, Ronald Reagan, who used to be placed in the middle or near the bottom, reached number ten. George H. W. Bush, once criticized and ranked poorly because he left Saddam Hussein in place in 1991, rose to number 18.

Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, James Madison, William McKinley, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower are my top ten.

Why is Theodore Roosevelt as low as he is? The more I read about his domestic policies, the more squeamish I get. Yes the government needed to expand some regulatory powers, but his tended to follow his own whim rather than the rule of law. Were it not for a wildly successful foreign policy, I'd send him lower. I prefer McKinley who had a strong foreign policy and a more limited ideal of government power. Truman goes before Reagan by a hair because he recognized the Soviet threat before many others and challenged it almost from the beginning. James Madison was flexible enough to alter his position during the War of 1812, casting ideology aside in the greater effort to beat the British. I left out Jefferson because his foreign policy led directly to economic disaster. He also used the authority of his office to financially crush political rivals.

George W. Bush to me is definitely in the top 20. You cannot lay the current financial crisis at his feet since he tried to get both Republican and Democratic congresses to address the various issues that caused the problems. It would be like blaming Isaiah for the Babylonians conquering Judah. It's not his fault that nobody listened. The second Bush will climb as we get further from his presidency.