The 100 most influential Americans

[One_more_turn]

Originally posted by Aeson
Where is Sid Meier?

He should displace that person who wrote Moby Dick.

[Impaler[WrG]]

The rankings look more like name recognition then actual "influence" men like Jhon Adams who should be in the top 10 are pitifuly low on the list and all kinds of very passive observers of history and producers of pulp entertainment are way too high. Mark Twain was a great author but not one major historical event would have transpired differently if he had not lived, Harriet Beecher Stowe's writing helped start the Civil war. Influence in my book is meashured in how different the world would be had the person made different desisions or had not existed.

In that line of though Washington should be 1st, Lincoln did save the Union but Washington both created it on the battlefield and by not monopolizing power afterwards he allowed the nation to become a democracy. If Washington had been a power-hungry man he could have been to the American Revolution what Stalin was for the Russian Revolution.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
Mark Twain was a great author but not one major historical event would have transpired differently if he had not lived, Harriet Beecher Stowe's writing helped start the Civil war. Influence in my book is meashured in how different the world would be had the person made different desisions or had not existed.

Historical influence means more than historical events or making stuff happen. It also means shaping the culture in ways that cannot be neatly traced to isolated events.

Ernest Hemingway once said that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." What he meant by that is that a uniquely American literature -- one that was steeped in Americanness, rather than just being an imitation of European lit -- took off from Twain. This seems an overly broad claim, because it slights Whitman, but it also seems mostly on the money.

[BeBMan]

How was Reagan the architect of the cold war's end? Wasn't that rather Gorbachev's thing?

[MRT144]

Originally posted by BeBro
How was Reagan the architect of the cold war's end? Wasn't that rather Gorbachev's thing?

even if the other team makes mistakes the winning team still gets credit

[Winston]

A few who could also have been included in the list,

Henry Kissinger
Thomas Watson, Sr. of IBM
Alan Greenspan
J. Edgar Hoover - being director of the FBI from 1924-72, the way he practiced it, has to count for something

and I'd say a fellow like John Wayne was highly influential as a cultural icon

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Not a bad list. Franklin's a bit too high, and Dr. Spock is way, way too low.

But my big quibble is with Wilson even being on the list, let alone in the top ten. The ideological justification for an interventionist US foreign policy was developed by the powerful circle of friends and colleagues that included Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, and Alfred Mahan, who then got the chance to put it into practice during the Spanish-American War and the Phillipine-American War. Their thinking can be found all over US 20th-century foreign policy. Wilson's mushheaded idealism, on the other hand, had little impact in his own time and less on US foreign policy since -- except recently, in certain quarters of the Bush administration.

Wilson

Otherwise, the list

Wilson made interventionism safe for folks who werent hot headed expansionist types - and in particular left a foreign policy legacy to new dealers, post WW2 liberals, etc. As for his mushy headedness, thats pretty exageratted - at least thats my take away from reading "Paris 1919".

Of course he ALSO had a domestic legacy that included the FTC, and the Federal Reserve Bank.

[lord of the mark]

I also think i might put Madison a bit higher, and I think in the long run Frederick Douglass may be seen as more important than MLK. OTOH thats the problem with recent people, too soon to see how their influence actually plays out.

[Lul Thyme]

About a year ago, I was in Japan visiting a friend, and there was the 2005 World's Fair in Nagoya so we went.
We were considering wheter or not to go to the U.S. booth as there was quite a line-up.
We asked one of the Americans working there whether it was worth it.
He explained that the theme was Ben franklin's 300th birthday and it was great.
Then went on to say how Ben was a great American, having invented flippers.
So we didn't go.

[Winston]

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
I dunno. He lead the attack on America's middle-class, starting its long road to decline. He popularized giving huge tax-breaks to billionaires, racking up a staggering debt that we'll be paying off for generations. His miopic economic policies are key to the U.S.'s declining standard of living--we're now IIRC, No. 8 in the world.

He's had a tremendous influence.

I thought that it was Wal-Mart that is responsible for

Destroying the American middle class.

Do you just attribute the "decline of the middle class," whatever the hell that means, to whatever thing you're trying to insult at the moment?

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
I dunno. He lead the attack on America's middle-class, starting its long road to decline. He popularized giving huge tax-breaks to billionaires, racking up a staggering debt that we'll be paying off for generations. His miopic economic policies are key to the U.S.'s declining standard of living--we're now IIRC, No. 8 in the world.

He's had a tremendous influence.

wages started declining in 1972, and he was actually one of the few presidents to try and fight these one way trade deals. As far as "military" debt, if we cut non-discretionary spending we'd be in the black in ~10 years.

[Dauphin]

I am pleasantly surprised John Lennon isn't on that list.

[Harry Tuttle]

Yeah, considering he was a British citizen.

[Jaguar]

Whoosh.