AOL Television: Greatest American
have you been watching this show? I watched it last week when I was in Spokane. Bush was in the running at that time, and so was Clinton. It looks like they are out of the race now. It’s down to 5 people:
- Ben Franklin
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Abraham Lincoln
- Ronald Reagan
- George Washington
how Reagan made it to the top five, I don’t know. But it’s sickening. I heard that there is a push in the Neocon blogging community to make Reagan the winner. Ugh. Please go vote. and vote 3 times. For someone, anyone, other than Reagan. All of the other cadidates are deserving to be there, IMHO. But for the record, I voted for good old, George Washington.
Blatherskite 
14 responses to “Greatest American”
I guess we should thank our lucky stars that Bush isn’t up there. I voted for Lincoln, three times. I think I’ll add a link to this in the morning to my blog too. :o)
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That shold be a 🙂 I keep forgetting that your site xfers smilies into actual graphics and I usually use an “o” for a nose so it comes out with 😮 instead of 🙂 LOL
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😆 I watched a little bit of the show last night – we Tivoed it. They had Ann Coulter as a panelist. *shudder*. I could only stomach about 5 minutes before I had to turn it off. I refuse to read or watch anything that that witch has anything to do with. I can’t believe they included her in on the panel.
Anyway, Lauer said that Bush almost made it onto the final list of 5!!!! WTF?!? W made it higher than FDR or Jefferson! That’s just crazy.
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I have to agree with you there. It amazes me that people are so delusional about that man.
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I have to agree with you there. It amazes me that people are so delusional about that man.
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I voted for good old Ben, the literal father of our country. Whoremonger, Inventor, and founding father. What more can you say about the man, sounds like a great American to me.
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I voted for good old Ben, the literal father of our country. Whoremonger, Inventor, and founding father. What more can you say about the man, sounds like a great American to me.
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Actually, my husband voted for Ben, too. And he kind of talked me into wishing I had voted for him. It was a toss-up for me between Ben and Washington. MLK and Lincoln are also good, too.
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Yeah it’s a tough call. Washington beat back the anti-Federalist and convinced a nation to unite. But it was the tireless efforts of Franklin in France to pit the French against the English, that bought us the wiggle room to beat the English. Not to mention his contributions to the Constitution. See that’s what tipped it for me, he was everywhere at the birth of our nation except on the battlefield. But he was worth 20 or 30 armies in the defeats he handed the British.
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No matter WHO we voted for, I think what we ought to be debating is HOW we voted for him/her–that’s where the gray area of this whole poll lies.
If Reagan won with 24 percent, it means 76 percent of voters were against him for first choice; so we can’t be sure that this poll really reflects public opinion. For example, given their respective records on civil rights, Lincoln (the second place candidate) would quite likely have been preferred over Reagan by most supporters of Martin Luther King Jr. So basically if the majority of voters—not a simple plurality—had to come to a consensus about the “Greatest American,” Reagan might very well not have won. We’ll never know of course, but either way we need a better system that captures the true consensus as to who the Greatest American is.
Next year, AOL should use instant runoff voting (IRV), the same system used to decide nominations for the Oscars. Sen. John McCain and DNC Chairman Howard Dean all currently support IRV.
(For more on IRV see: http://www.fairvote.org/irv)
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Hi Lynne, and welcome :). Thanks for the link on IRV. I’ve heard about it but don’t know the details on it. I will go check it out.
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Did not catch the show. Where did Andrew Jackson, Henry Ford and some others end up…is there a list?
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Reagan won as the Greatest American. That’s all I remember about it.
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