Presidents Day

Who was the greatest president of the United States? If you take the totality of the question, and what the individual president did for this country, here is Common Sense's top five:

1. George Washington. Hard to argue against the guy who fought for and "fathered" this country. What's even more remarkable is the fact that he could have coronated himself "King George" as president for life, but choose, rather, to limit himself to two terms instead. Fast forward two hundred years and Washington is still relevant. If that doesn't put you at the top of the list, I'm not sure what does.

2. Abraham Lincoln. This is a tuffy considering the way he went about "winning the war of Northern aggression" for all of your southerners, but you cannot argue with the results! What could have been had he lived to complete his second term?

3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This one's also a tuffy considering I'm right in the middle of Jonah Goldberg's book, _Liberal Fascism_. There's some very disturbing facts about FDR, Wilson, and TR that come to light in Goldberg's tour fe dorce. However, having successfully prosecuted the second world war has got to count for something!

4. Ronald Reagan. This is an easy one. As Margaret Thatcher eloquently commented back in 1991, "Reagan won the Cold War without ever firing a shot", which is no small task considering both sides were armed with nuclear weapons. It also helped to have the "Iron Lady" as an ally. Right man/woman, right place, right time in history.

5. George W. Bush. I preach to my classes that W. will go down as a near great DESPITE his liberal tendencies. Don't get me started. Writing contemporary history is a mortal sin to pure historians, which I am not. But the more I think about it in the times we live, suffice it to say 10-20 years down the line we'll look back at this President's courage to take on Islamic fascism as the first step in defeating it (much like we do Truman as the first island barrier against communism).

Honorable mention: 6. Harry Truman (two A-bombs saves milions of American lives, including my father's, in the Pacific); 7. Teddy Roosevelt (established US Navy as second best in the world; establishes US as major player on world stage); 8. Andrew Jackson (pick an accomplishment); 9. James Polk (surprised? Go read his history. Democrats did not realize what they had); and 10. Dwight Eisenhower (is only now getting the props he deserves).

Happy President's Day!