The electoral college is the assembly elected by the voters to perform
the formal duty of electing the President and Vice President of the United States.
The electors of each state, equal in number to its members in Congress, are expected
to cast their votes for the candidates selected by the popular vote in their state
Despite revisionist analysis of his view on slavery or who might have been
the better choice, George Washington kept the Union together and deserves to be
called the Father of the Country.
Although personally against slavery, Lincoln was not a staunch abolitionist at the outset of the Civil War and was more concerned with preserving the Union.
A progressive is a leader who believes in political change—most often social improvement—through the actions of the government. Progressives are the flip side to conservatives and have included both Democrats such as Franklin Roosevelt and Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt.
The New Deal was a collection of experimental programs to lift the country out of the Great Depression and fundamentally changed the role of the federal government.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and wanted a government without centralized power.
Truman made the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force a Japanese surrender without risking American lives in a drawn-out war in the Pacific.
Wilson designed a "Fourteen Point" plan for rebuilding Europe and maintaining peace through a League of Nations. However, the Treaty of Versailles, which contained the Fourteen Points, was never ratified in the United States, and his beloved league was created without the United States.
Adams kept the United States out of a major conflict with France, despite the fact that the XYZ Affair brought the country to the brink of war and that his own Federalist Cabinet was against him.
Reagan's massive defense spending was a part of a peace through strength theory that led to nuclear disarmament treaties with Mikhail Gorbachev, but it also sent the federal deficit soaring.
Nixon resigned before an impeachment trial could begin after his complicity in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in was revealed.
Kennedy steered the United States through its closest brush with nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
George Bush organized a strong coalition in the Gulf War, but couldn't lift the country out of a recession.
Bill Clinton steered the country through its greatest economy on record, but he will always live with the stigma of impeachment.