A couple of times during that last post, I mentioned how well things were going in this country until the presidential election of 2016. At every point before then, while one party or the other might have been bitterly or even childishly disappointed (like the Democrats in 2000, or the Trumpistas in 2020), our system had worked wonderfully, for the nation and the world.

That got me thinking. Yes, things worked well for those first 56 national elections. But which were the elections when it all worked out best?

Which seemed to me like a situation that called for a Top Five List. So here goes. Note that this time, I’m not ranking the five, but putting them in chronological order:

• 1800 — This is the one that proved our system could survive, that one party actually could peacefully relinquish power and step aside, and the nation would continue. We all know that my man John Adams lost this one, but we don’t talk much about the fact that it remained tied between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, which was a real crisis. But the backup plan worked (barely), as Jefferson won in the House of Representatives, thus protecting the nation — if not poor Alexander Hamilton — from the execrable Burr.
• 1824 — This is another that went to the House (although under the new rules of the 12th Amendment), which protected the nation from the awful Andrew Jackson, and gave us the last of that string of extraordinary founding presidents, John Quincy Adams. But this did not last. We got stuck with Jackson in 1828, and this lowered expectations almost to Trumpian levels, and Old Hickory was followed by a string of mediocre-to-bad presidents that most of us would be hard-pressed to name in order. And who would want to, anyway? This one was not lasting in its effect — much like the election of 2020, which gave me such joy and hope for the nation at the time, before we learned that madness still gripped our country. But I include it so that we remember John Quincy, perhaps our most-qualified presidential candidate ever.
• 1860 — The one that elected our greatest president, and launched our bloodiest war — the one against each other. This was the pivotal moment in our history. Abraham Lincoln was the only man in our history who could have gotten us through what was to come, and with the right outcome. No one else in our history ever possessed such eloquence, such brilliance as a leader, such high ideals, and such an exquisite political skill, which guided him to do the right thing at the right moment at every critical step.
• 1864 — In its way, just as critical as 1860. The threat from the useless McClellan and the Democrats, the Copperheads and people who were simply sick of our bloodiest war ever, was created a real possibility that we would not complete the task that all this bloodshed was about, and therefore fail to live up to the promise of this country. But Lincoln won re-election, delivered the best inaugural speech ever, rammed the 13th Amendment through the House, thereby ensuring the actual end of slavery (even though most Americans think the Emancipation Proclamation did that, Lincoln knew it did not). And he got it all done before he was uselessly martyred. If only he could have still been around to lead us into the Reconstruction.
• 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944 — Yes, every election in which FDR was elected. I couldn’t make up my mind which was most important. The year he was first elected, with the country in its worst economic mess ever? Or 1940, with the war having started in Europe and the Pacific and our country’s ability to act crippled by isolationism? Or 1944, when it would have been crazy to change captains with a war still to be won? I don’t know enough about 1936 to assess it, except that this group of four seems a critical series to me.

Those are my picks — sorry about cheating a bit on that last one, but I really don’t think one of them would have done without the other three. Franklin Roosevelt was our second-greatest president, and we needed him throughout that period.

We’ve had other good ones, and a couple that gave me great joy in my lifetime, but none with the same positive impact.

What are your picks, and your justifications for them? And more importantly, when will we ever have such great elections again?