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Two years ago Ronald Reagan died. Charmaine and I watched the funeral with other Reaganites in Washington, DC. And watched the big black Cadillac carry RR away. Cross Post from Reasoned Audacity from last year. It’s nice to be pleasantly…

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Sad as it may be for some, it’s just hard to find a serious contender for a top-10 woman. Not because there aren’t great women in our country, but there’s a sampling error problem: most of the biggies are obviously men.

The Discovery Channel beauty contest was for amusement purposes only. Did Hamilton even make it on the TV list of top 25? (In deference to your aforementioned top 20 post, Rick - don’t know enough to argue, though without him where would our economic system be?) Yearights: Oprah? Elvis? And, that devil messing on the blue dress, Clinton? I don’t imagine that they had any true scholars assemble the original top 100 list, do you? Maybe it was all Matt’s idea? He’s not so good on psychiatry (according to Tom Cruise), but ya’d think… Surprised we didn’t see George C. Scott on the list, one or two notches above Patton. LOL

For what it’s worth, I agree - Tom Paine off the list. I’d probably drop Ben Franklin too. Personally, I like Madison ahead of Jefferson…T.J. may have been the theoretician, but Madison was the operational engineer. He did all the heavy lifting while Jefferson was in France then followed it up with the Federalist.

Washington gets a lot of credit and rightly so, but I always think about the decision to preserve the Union by force, even in the face of tremendous and unparalled loss of life - and I rank Lincoln #1.

Not necessarily of the same caliber, but the decision to unleash the world’s most powerful weapon and destroy more human life in a single instance to avoid what could have been years of war and bloodshed must have weighed pretty heavily on the mind of a Missouri hat salesman.

For my money, no doubt, the single hardest decision a President ever had to make. It may not have been a lifetime of greatness, but certainly a moment.

2) I agree that George Washington is our greatest. He set the standards by which we still live today:
- a civil government that controls our military
- the concept of term limits to prevent a dictatorship
- many of the bsic freedoms we take for granted these days

I agree Tom Paine doesn’t belong on the list. I’m also not sure about Teddy. He was an economic fool and had some very strange progressive beliefs. Still, he did create the National Park system and for anyone who has visited Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Sequoias or the Grand Canyon, I suppose that’s worth a mention.

Of course, if the French were compiling the same list, the top pick would be Jerry Lewis.

It’s nice to be pleasantly surprised for a change. The Discovery Channel has chosen Ronald Reagan as its “Greatest American.” I blogged earlier about my skepticism about a list that included Michael Moore and Madonna. But the final list is…