This must have hurt!

It just struck me that I forgot to watch the final episode of the Discovery Channel's series meant to determine, by poll, who the greatest American in history was.

The winner: Ronald Reagan!

While I would have reversed the order of the first two, and put Abraham Lincoln first and Reagan second, that part of the poll doesn't really cause me much of a problem- though it must have made the show's staffers wince!

On the other hand, by listing Bill Clinton seventh, Elvis Presley eighth and Oprah Winfrey ninth. the participants in the poll saved me from any temptation to regard it as anything but a joke.

When it comes to ranking the great Americans of history, the rank-and-file American seems no better informed or competent than in picking an All-Star team in baseball.

Comments

ghp said…
The problem with putting Lincoln #1 is that you have to overlook the fact that, by saving the union at all costs, he effectively neutered the concept of States' Rights, and altered the country from being a federation of soverign states to one where a central gov't rules supreme.

IMO, that makes Abe perhaps the most significant, but not the "best" -- I will still have to give that honor to George Washington.

-ghp
Sorry, don't buy it. First,f we were still a federation of "sovereign states," we would be an insignificant, balkanized corner of the world with nowhere near the economic or political position we have now. And since there never *was* a right to secede (don't get me going on that subject unless you want the longest post in blogging history), we also would have lost the Constitution and the rule of law in the process.

That "federation" would never have survived if the Confederacy had won- or even been allowed to go its own way.