I started this mess, so now I have to roll in it

I posted a request in Wheeler's blog that our next attempt to "rank" things be something other than a transient pop culture reference. I mentioned (off hand) that ranking presidents might be a good way to jumpstart discussion.

And then by the time I got back, practically everyone had posted their rankings but me. Pathetic!

Just as a refresher, the rules of the game were to choose your 5 favorite presidents in your own party (if you have one) and then rank the best five from the ranks of the *other* political parties. Several others have included George Washington in their own party, which is of course erroneous because the man was stolidly against the idea of political parties and factions in the first place, and certainly never belonged to one. I appreciate that everyone would want to claim him (yeah, he's at the top of my list, too) but unless you're registered as a "no party" voter, you just can't claim him.

But I'll start with the ones the GOP can rightfully claim.

1. Abraham Lincoln
He doesn't have all those monuments and statuary for nothing. The man led a country when it was *actually* at its most divided and reunited it by the force of his faith, will, and intellect. While by no means perfect, he weilded the reins of power with authority, suspending civil liberties at a time when it was probably *actually* a good idea to do so. Most tellingly, when the guns were laid down, he returned things to the way they had been. Born a whig party member, he created the GOP, and the only reason it's "grand" and not just "old" is because of him. Not many presidents are folkloric heroes anymore, and that's quite simply because so few can measure up to the man that presided over the Civil War.

2. Teddy Roosevelt
He was a gutsy leader who tried desperately to pull the US out of its self-imposed isolationism, and gave her the first taste of a roll as a real world power. Hard to imagine that less than a century later the United States would be leading the free world, but Teddy could and did. He was a friend to competition, and to big business - a man who believed in conserving the natural world for the sake of man, not for the trees.
Of course, he was also tough as hell and a mean son of a bitch when he wanted to be. He had personality and charisma and didn't do too bad with that whole "policy" thing when it comes down to it.

3. Ronald Reagan
The Cold Warrior, the Great Communicator. I admit it - I'm practically a Reagan sycophant, at least in part because he was President for all of my most formative years. Like Teddy, he took a bullet and kept on ticking. Like Lincoln, he took his greatest enemy and made peace. He's had his fair share of blunders (Iran-Contra, SDI) but even they demonstrated a keen understanding of the geopolitical landscape, if not always the technical underpinnings thereof.
Blunders aside he was a great man, and despite what the DNC wants us to think, it wasn't all a hollow stageplay at the presidency. It doesn't take much to see why so many people want to name so many buildings after him.

4. George Herbert Walker Bush
He led the country when the world changed, and conspiracy theories nonwithstanding, did ensure that the US would be the leader of the New World Order for at least the forseeable future. A World War II Vet and former Director of Central Intelligence led by his convictions and experience (and not by the lure of foreign oil), he set the monetary policy that led to Clinton's much vaunted prosperity, and positioned his nation as a "Hyperpower" as its competitor slipped into political oblivion. He repositioned the entire foreign policy apparatus of the United States to deal with new problems (like terror) and removed support for a number of petty dictators and abusive regimes - and then he prepared for the aftermath. A decade before the world would change again, he and his people saw what was coming, and started preparing.
Unfortunately, he was also totally lacked personal charisma, and the leader that followed him was markedly less concerned with terror on US soil. Nonetheless, Bush I deserves many more kudos than he recieves.

5. Dwight D. Eisenhower
I Like Ike. I really do - he ran a tight ship domestically, and made containment of the communist threat something real. He was barely partisan, and led the nation like a president ought. And he won WWII.

6. (for potential future inclusion) George W. Bush - as time passes, I think much of his presidency will be lionized. Time will tell, but I think the history books will have a lot more good than bad to say about his presidency. At the very least, they'll have something to say. He's no William Henry Harrison.

And now, the other guys.

1. George Washington
The nearly literal father of our nation. A man whose simple personal morality shaped a democratic nation. Now, admittedly, one of the main reasons he's not remembered as the first of a line of monarchs is because...ahem...his boys don't swim upstream, but he was nonetheless personally opposed to the idea of anything other than a Republic in this nations formative years.
He forsaw the problems his nation would have with slavery, and acted quietly and personally to alleviate its effects in his own household, rather than divide the nation with a demogoguic decree.

2. Andrew Jackson
The craziest badass to ever sit in the white house, and the only man to personally threaten the lives of an entire state senate and be taken seriously. Despite being fiercely opposed to a national bank (whose abolition caused a major economic slump) he's easily one of the most colorful figures in american history, and thus deserves inclusion.

3. John Adams
Usually overshadowed by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams is the real guy that deserves your adoration. He's the only reason we have a standing military at all, and he saw the value in projecting american power oversees a century before Roosevelt got the idea. Jefferson would purposefully dismantle nearly everything he accomplished at the beginning of his own term, and then put it all back together by the end. He was ahead of his time, and someone who can be credited with helping create the kind of democracy we actually have, rather than one we pretend we do.

4. Harry S Truman
He made the war end, and carried on faithfully with the policies of the most popular president since Washington. Nonetheless, his political acumen and brutal honesty combined in later years to make him something of a folk hero, himself. The buck stopped at Harry's desk, and that was the literal truth. He ran the rapidly growing federal government almost alone, and was arguably the most hands on president of the 20th century. He'll always be remembered for the Bomb, but there was a lot more of value in the man. He deserves our adoration, and he certainly had mine.

5. Thomas Jefferson
He gave up on every one of his ideals throughout his presidency. That may seem ridiculous, but the shift from idealism to realism is the reason that the french don't still own my home state. He was willing to compromise what he believed to be true for what would be the best for the nation. We don't have a jeffersonian democracy - even Jefferson gave up on that before he'd been president more than a year. He dismantled the Army, replaced it with a core of yeoman-engineer-militia, and then put it back by the time he figured out that his idea was retarded. That takes guts, and he deserves to be commended for that. He's also a pretty good writer, but that was before he was president, so it doesn't count.