Americans Rank Lincoln as Top President

(Feb. 17) - Far and away, Abraham Lincoln is ranked by Americans as the nation's greatest president, according to a poll conducted by Harris Interactive and released this week, just ahead of Presidents Day. What's surprising is that President George W. Bush, whose approval rating has plunged to just 30 percent, also sneaks into the top ten list.

The Harris poll points out that recent presidents tend to be listed more often as both the best and the worst. In a separate poll asking Americans to name the worst commander-in-chief since World War II, Bush won in a landslide, netting 34 percent of the vote.

The online survey posed this question to 2,302 adults in the U.S.: Which one of the following presidents do you think was the best overall president in our history?

The list of options people could choose from included all presidents since Franklin Roosevelt, along with some of the more famous from earlier in American history – George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge.

Scores were tallied by adding the percentage of those who answered “best” and “second best” for each president. Among modern leaders, Ronald Reagan ranked highest, but even his cache could not compete with the mighty Abe Lincoln, who was named the top president by 20 percent of those surveyed.

The man who saw the nation through the Civil War is still driving headlines too. In the last year, rare and historic photographs have emerged of Lincoln’s inauguration and his famous Gettysburg Address. A study also revealed why his face is so unique. Click through the photos below to learn more about recent Lincoln discoveries.