Sure-fire argument starter -- "The five most overrated presidents," who are: Abraham Lincoln, Frandklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt and (in a tie) Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama. Check out this paragraph on Lincoln:
Lincoln was called a dictator and a tyrant by many Northerners for his blatant abuse of the Constitution. Among his detractors were former president Franklin Pierce, famous American authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, abolitionist Lysander Spooner and a host of newspapermen and congressmen who viewed his unconstitutional acts — suspending habeas corpus, blockading Southern ports, sending soldiers into battle without a declaration of war — with disdain. And, as African-American historian Lerone Bennett, Jr. has shown, Lincoln was hardly the savior of black America.
Note that all six of these men come from the activist, make-government-grow pool of chief executives, which is why they're so highly rated, and also why those ratings might not be appreciated by everybody.
