Polarization Over History: Reagan, Obama Beat Lincoln and Washington in List of ‘Best Presidents’

Political polarization may be blotting out Americans' understanding of their own history, a new poll suggests. More Americans identified former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama as the best president in U.S. history rather than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

When asked who was the best president in U.S. history, 16 percent of Americans selected Reagan and another 16 percent selected Obama, according to a recent YouGov survey. Lincoln took third place with 15 percent, and Washington followed with 10 percent.

The grand totals miss the larger story, however. Among Republicans, 36 percent chose Reagan, while only two percent of Democrats agreed. Obama enjoyed a similar disparity — 33 percent of Democrats said he was the best president, while only two percent of Republicans agreed.

Lincoln received even support from both parties, at 15 percent. Tragically, only 14 percent of Republicans chose Washington, and only six percent of Democrats did likewise.

While a strong case could be made for Reagan, Lincoln and Washington should beat him and Obama easily on the merits. Ronald Reagan led the final drive to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and Obama did represent a symbolic victory as the first black president (even though he followed the same destructive Progressivism of some of America's worst presidents).

Even so, Abraham Lincoln held the Union together, defeating the Confederacy and fighting in order to save the Constitution, which included no secession clause. Lincoln's stance against slavery mattered less to him than preserving the Union, but he eventually led the effort to pass the 13th Amendment, eradicating the scourge of slavery once and for all.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has gone down in the hearts and minds of Americans for generations, but his second inaugural address is arguably the best speech he ever gave. This speech gave a religious interpretation of the Civil War unmatched in its humility and interpretation of American history.

"Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes," Lincoln declared.

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He rooted the need for the war in Matthew 18:7:

Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!' If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?

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