Your top 10 Presidents.

[Rob Wick]

My list in made with the idea that it would be historically wrong to consider anyone who has been president from 1992 on, given that more time needs to elapse before a competent historical assessment can be made. That said, I believe eventually Obama will make the list.

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt
3. George Washington
4. Woodrow Wilson
5. Harry Truman
6. Theodore Roosevelt
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. John Adams
9. John Quincy Adams
10. Lyndon Johnson

The most difficult one for me to place on the list was Johnson. His record on Vietnam is abhorrent, but the results of the Great Society did far more to move America forward second only to FDR. Neither Reagan nor Kennedy made it as both lack any real accomplishments other than in the minds of their supporters. Some might point to the Cuban Missile Crisis, although I would argue that had Kruschev not believed Kennedy to be weak (especially after the Bay of Pigs), he never would have placed missiles in Cuba to begin with, so in reality it's a Kennedy failure. I placed FDR ahead of Washington because the sheer volume of that which would have been lost if Washington had failed would not have been as great as it would have been if Roosevelt had lost World War II.

My criteria for presidential greatness has always been how well they performed in crisis, or in the aftermath of one. While not all of those on my list faced as serious a crisis as others, most still showed something that other leaders lacked.

Best
Rob