TTC Video - Great Presidents

Now you can see how well this worked by examining the lives, the achievements, and the legacies of those generally considered our 12 greatest presidents:

George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Andrew Jackson
James K. Polk
Abraham Lincoln
Theodore Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry S Truman
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Ronald Reagan.

Your teacher is Professor Allan J. Lichtman, a widely published and cited authority on American politics and an award-winning teacher. In these lectures you will see why.

Drawing on a wealth of revealing anecdotes and inside stories, he sheds new light on how the individual characters and historic decisions of each president made a major contribution to shaping our developing nation.

Collectively, they played critical roles in:

America's founding years
Westward expansion
The transformation from an agricultural to an industrial society
The struggle over slavery and the Civil War
America's entry into "the war to end all wars" in 1917
The Great Depression
World War II
The civil rights and women's rights movements
The perils of an atomic age
The start and finish of the Cold War.

These 12 leaders can be seen as giants of the most powerful elective office in the world. But through Professor Lichtman's eyes we see them as they really were, contradictions and paradoxes included.

How did early presidents reconcile their slaveholding with their support for democracy and liberty?
How did Thomas Jefferson, the champion of limited government, magnify presidential powers?
Why did Abraham Lincoln believe that he could not be re-elected in 1864?
How did Harry Truman, a onetime Missouri dirt farmer who became "accidental president," transform the modern world?
How did master politician Lyndon Johnson blunder into the Vietnam War?
Why did Ronald Reagan abandon the Christian conservatives who fought for his election as president?

A New Type of Leader for a New World

When the Founding Fathers created it in 1787, the presidency was a radical novelty.

That first president (everybody knew it would be Washington) would be the first head of state in the world whose authority would rest explicitly on the consent of the governed rather than the prerogatives of birth or conquest.

The founders built well. The presidency and its occupants, Professor Lichtman argues, deserve much of the credit for the political stability we have enjoyed for more than 200 years.

We may take for granted the peaceful transfer of power that has been such a hallmark of life in the United States. But it is something that much of the world still tragically lacks, and we did not gain it by accident.

Inside Stories from Our Highest Office

Professor Lichtman shares insights based on his own close study of these 12 leaders, asking:

Is there a single formula for presidential achievement?
What made George Washington so uniquely important to the founding of the American Republic?
How did Andrew Jackson become the first president to be censured by the U.S. Senate?
James K. Polk was the first president who was not a military hero or an experienced elder statesman. What made him the right man in the right place at the right time?
Why did Teddy Roosevelt split his own party to run for president as a third-party candidate?
How did Woodrow Wilson go from obscure academic to U.S. president in a few brief years?
How did FDR's New Deal change the landscape of American politics?
How much of his promise had John F. Kennedy fulfilled before an assassin cut him down in November 1963?
How did Ronald Reagan set the stage for the end of the Cold War?

Many Faces of Leadership, One Thing in Common

Professor Lichtman's lectures reveal 12 leaders of widely differing backgrounds. They had varying styles, personalities, and beliefs; came from disparate roots; and embraced different approaches to governing.

Each had a powerful vision of America and the American promise.

Some, such as Kennedy and the two Roosevelts, were born to wealth and privilege. Others, such as Lincoln, Truman, and Johnson, came from middling or even humble circumstances.

These leaders took many roads to reach the presidency. Some were career politicians; some followed different paths.

Woodrow Wilson was a college professor and administrator.

Besides farming, Truman sold menswear (unsuccessfully).

Ronald Reagan was a movie star.

Some, including Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson, would have been major historical figures even if they had never become president. Others really had not made their mark on the country until after they became president—and then left a significant legacy indeed.

"But," states Professor Lichtman, "they each possessed the qualities that all great presidents seem to share: They had an unsinkable ambition, deep affinity with the American people, and a strong inner core of guiding values and principles."

An Evolving Institution

The formal constitutional authority of the president has changed only modestly since 1787. But presidential practice, congressional legislation, and judicial interpretations have altered the powers and role of the presidency enormously.

However, it is also important to understand, Professor Lichtman stresses, that there have been new restrictions and new limitations on the exercise of presidential power. Thus the presidency is still changing even while remaining one of the pillars of the American Republic.

Perhaps as a schoolchild you had the misfortune to learn of the presidents as boring, godlike figures in a dry textbook. Now you can see at last the human beings who deserve their mantles of greatness, through narratives as compelling as an historical novel.