Joel Achenbach has The Greatest American in his sites. Go read his whole entry, but here’s the jist:
But now there are only 25 left on the list, and we see that Dubya made the cut, as did Bill Clinton, Lance Armstrong, and Oprah. Bob Hope makes the Final 25 but not Alexander Hamilton. Bill Gates is a finalist, but not Teddy Roosevelt. Elvis in, Frederick Douglass out. [Oops; for a second I had a hankering for some umbrage.]
The Final 25: Ali, N. Armstrong, L. Armstrong, Dubya, Bubba, Disney, Edison, Einstein, Ford, Franklin, Gates, Graham, Hope, Jefferson, Kennedy, King, Lincoln, Parks, Presley, Reagan, E. Roosevelt, F.D. Roosevelt, Washington, Winfrey, and Wright Bros.
That’s a horrifying number of Armstrongs just for starters, and makes you wonder how the public missed nominating George Armstrong Custer, Armstrong Williams and Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy. As for Einstein, I was under the distinct impression that he was pretty much a German.
Among the more formidable names that shouldn’t make it to the final round, Franklin gets demerits for being the 18th century equivalent of a blogger (too much self-promotion and intellectual vagrancy), and Jefferson is disqualified for being a raving states-rights lunatic and unrepentant slaveowner who lived high on the hog and then, in death, left a community of African Americans to face the auction block.
It should be obvious that only four people could be considered the Greatest American: Washington, Lincoln, FDR, or King. You could make a persuasive case for any of the four: Washington for being the indispensable figure in the creation of the country, Lincoln for saving it, Roosevelt for seeing us through our greatest economic crisis and for helping save the world from fascism, and King for leading the most important social movement in our nation’s history.