Any top 100 list is intended to be a conversation piece. It’s an entirely subjective exercise to name the top 100 best movies, or football teams, or albums, so when some magazine pulls a list together, it’s supposed to spur debate.<\/p>\n
With this in mind, The Atlantic has a cover story ranking the top 100 “most influential figures<\/a>” in American history, compiled by 10 prominent historians<\/a>. The magazine explained that the instructions were intentionally vague: “[W]e intentionally defined influence<\/i> loosely — as a person’s impact, for good or ill, both on his or her own era and on the way we live now. This allowed for a certain creativity in the selection process, and it had the advantage of leaving the harder work of definition to the historians themselves.”<\/p>\n It’s kind of fun to explore various angles<\/a> — the power of pop culture, the problem of value judgments, the question of identity politics — and I think the top 10<\/a> are solid choices.<\/p>\n 1 Abraham Lincoln: He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding.<\/p>\n 2 George Washington: He made the United States possible — not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.<\/p>\n 3 Thomas Jefferson: The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.”<\/p>\n 4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt: He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it.<\/p>\n 5 Alexander Hamilton: Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.<\/p>\n 6 Benjamin Franklin: The Founder-of-all-trades — scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.<\/p>\n 7 John Marshall: The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.<\/p>\n 8. Martin Luther King Jr.: His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.<\/p>\n 9 Thomas Edison: It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.<\/p>\n 10 Woodrow Wilson: He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From there, however, the list offers some questionable choices. For that matter, Dwight Eisenhower was number 28. On a list of military generals, sure, but more influential Americans of all time? Nearly 20 places higher than Lyndon Johnson, whose influence — on civil rights, Great Society, Vietnam — still reverberates today?<\/p>\n There’s plenty to chew on here.<\/p>\n * Bill Gates was number 53, and was one of only three living people to make the list.<\/p>\n * Jackie Robinson was one of two athletes to make the list (number 35) — Babe Ruth as the other (number 75).<\/p>\n * There were two musicians on the list, Elvis Presley (66) and Louis Armstrong (79).<\/p>\n * Mark Twain, at number 16, was the highest ranking writer.<\/p>\n * Ralph Nader, who gave us seatbelts and President George W. Bush, came in at number 96.<\/p>\n
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\nChief among them, Ronald Reagan came in at number 17. I’m not entirely sure if I’d put him in the top 100 at all, but 17th? Above Thomas Paine, Alexander Graham Bell, and Earl Warren? How’s that exactly? Given the reasoning — Reagan, The Atlantic said, led a “conservative realignment” — Barry Goldwater should have been on the list but wasn’t.<\/p>\n