# Greatest living American elimination game (game thread) **URL:** \ **Category:** Thread Games\ **Created:** [June 16, 2025, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715 "2025-06-16T19:12:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/41 "2025-06-20T15:28:28Z")
Also again for Jose Andres. Same reason as first round…never heard of the guy, and I’m not alone in that sentiment. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/42 "2025-06-20T19:55:26Z")
Our votes this round: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Athlete, writer, activist - 1 vote José Andrés: Humanitarian, chef - 3 votes Craig Ferguson: Polymath, director-writer, comedian - 6 votes Mitt Romney: Senator, impeachment juror - 1 vote Taylor Swift: Musician, songwriter, icon - 1 vote Craig Ferguson gets the boot. Our remaining nominees: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Athlete, writer, activist Buzz Aldrin: Second on Moon José Andrés: Humanitarian, chef Joe Biden: President, uniter, overcomer Simon Biles: GOAT gymnast Judy Blume: Children’s literature icon Warren Buffett: Level-headed billionaire Bob Dylan: Poet of generation Anthony Fauci: Physician, immunologist, scientist Bill Gates: Futurist, philanthropist, billionaire Amanda Gorman: Poet, activist, prodigy Jesse Jackson: Civil rights leader Magic Johnson: Superstar, survivor, inspiration Mark Kelly: Senator, astronaut, aviator Stephen King: Great American writer Spike Lee: Filmmaker, Knicks fan Jim Lovell: Apollo 13 astronaut Amory Lovins: Physicist, energy activist Barack Obama: President, statesman, lawyer Dolly Parton: Artist, humanitarian Mitt Romney: Senator, impeachment juror Bernie Sanders: Democratic Socialist leader MacKenzie Scott: Philanthropist, prize-winning novelist Steven Spielberg: Director, writer, entertainer Bruce Springsteen: Singer, songwriter, activist Taylor Swift: Musician, songwriter, icon Tim Walz: Honorable political messenger Elizabeth Warren: Fighting political foes Janet Yellen: Economist, Treasury secretary **Eliminated** 1. Jim Gaffigan: Comedian, author, commentator 2. Craig Ferguson: Polymath, director-writer, comedian Voting for our second round will end at noon EST on Mon. June 23. My next vote is for Taylor Swift. **Bicycle\_Bill** has persuaded me for this round. Trump saying he hated her wasn’t even enough to lose him the election - just how iconic can she be? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/43 "2025-06-20T20:07:27Z")
My next vote is for Mitt Romney. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/44 "2025-06-20T20:09:58Z")
I’ll go with Mitt Romney as well. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/45 "2025-06-20T20:27:59Z")
Buzz Aldrin. Hard-core Trumper. Everything he did that may have qualified him for this list goes out the window with his support of fascism in America. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/46 "2025-06-20T20:46:01Z")
I’m still going with Mitt Romney, for the reasons I mentioned previously. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/47 "2025-06-20T21:15:53Z")
Mitt Romney repeatedly had chances to step forward, and almost every time he faded back into the bushes like Homer Simpson. He is the opposite of what I look for in being American. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2025, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/48 "2025-06-20T21:29:24Z")
I would have voted for Ferguson in the second round but he was eliminated anyway. My vote in the third round is Taylor Swift. Same reason. I don’t see entertainers as potential greatest living Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/49 "2025-06-21T00:07:26Z")
Of the six elected officials on the list, two have decidedly thinner resumes than the other four. I’ll vote for Romney this round and see how the other fares in future rounds. ---
**Author:** ![Bicycle\_Bill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bicycle_bill/32/6208_2.png) [@Bicycle\_Bill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bicycle_Bill)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/50 "2025-06-21T00:45:40Z")
Yet again, my vote is for (against?) Swift, for the reasons I’ve already outlined. _ **-“BB”-** _ ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/51 "2025-06-21T16:23:25Z")
Amanda Gorman. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/52 "2025-06-21T21:01:56Z")
Since two of my nominees are looking like probable eliminations on this round, I feel compelled to step up and put forth a defense of both of them. First, Taylor Swift. Bob Dylan is here in the list as “Poet of generation”, and has yet to record a single elimination vote. Ms. Swift is taking plenty of flak, yet I would venture that for millions of largely young women here in the U.S. and around the world, she is more a poet of their generation than Dylan was for his, and their relative ratings in this game say more about the demographics of the Dope than about their relative impact. Swift, like Dylan, started out in a musical subculture - she, the Nashville country scene; he, folk music. Both had memorable breaks with their previous identity - _1989_ and the electric controversy - and both have continued to move between genres as their muse takes them. Despite her shorter career, Swift has sold over twice as many records as Dylan. Her last concert tour was the largest grossing one in history. ISIS tried to attack one of the shows in Vienna, a good indicator of how those outside of the U.S. consider her cultural impact. Swift struck a blow for artist’s rights by rerecording four of her first six albums, forcing the private equity firm that held the rights to them to blink. There are millions of young women and girls who take a look at Swift’s success and are and will be encouraged to stand up for themselves and their ideas. That’s a great deal of impact. While Swift doesn’t have the Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning cred of Dylan, she also hasn’t advanced her career into the “elder statesperson” phase yet where such accolades could be expected. For all these reasons, I think Taylor Swift is at least as deserving of the title of “greatest living American” as Dylan is. Next is Mitt Romney, who has the good fortune to be on the master list just in front of Bernie Sanders. Let’s look at their resumes, shall we? Romney started out working on his father’s political campaigns, then went into management consulting and subsequently private equity. (That’s a strike against him; last thing we need is more PE guys.) He didn’t shy away from a challenge - ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994, and lost. But when the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics needed someone to turn their organization around, Romney answered the call and got the games to go off without a hitch and under budget. Most importantly, he showed that a first-world city in a liberal democracy could feasibly and affordably put on an Olympic games without it becoming as commercialized as Atlanta had in 1996. From then, he won election for governor of Massachusetts, and spearheaded a health care reform law that became the model for the Affordable Care Act. National Republicans probably hate him as much for this as for any of his heresies against MAGA. He ran twice for the Republican nomination, winning it once, and subsequently moved to Utah where he became a U.S. Senator. As Wikipedia says: > He marched alongside [Black Lives Matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter) protestors, voted to [confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketanji_Brown_Jackson_Supreme_Court_nomination) to the [Supreme Court](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States), supported [gun control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipartisan_Safer_Communities_Act) measures, and did not vote for Trump in the [2016](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election), [2020](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election), and [2024](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election) presidential elections. This is not the resume of a guy who “faded into the bushes” - and I haven’t even gotten to the point where he votes to convict Donald Trump, his party’s leader and president, not once but _twice_ (as I alluded to in his description as “impeachment juror”). Like his political stances or not, he’s been part of the anti-Trump coalition for a while now, and he’s the kind of Republican that such a coalition needs to make it a success. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, has taken plenty of principled stands that are popular with the Doper demographic, but what has it all come to? He’s the amendment king of Congress (h/t Matt Taibbi) but has he managed to get a significant piece of legislation passed in his career? (He’s no Elizabeth Warren, who has the CFPB to her credit.) He’s tilted at windmills and talks a good game, but has he managed to stave off the rise of Trumpism? Has he given the Democratic Party a legitimate path forward for the future? If he could put together a viable political program that would work in larger, more industrialized, more urban and more diverse states, then I would vault him into the first rank of greatest living Americans. But until then, I don’t see him being any better than ol’ Willard Mitt. I hadn’t known of Aldrin’s MAGA tendencies, but as far as I’m concerned, that puts him well below any of the folks I’ve described above. So Buzz Aldrin gets my vote this round. ---
**Author:** ![Southern\_Yankee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/southern_yankee/32/2800_2.png) [@Southern\_Yankee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southern_Yankee)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2025, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/53 "2025-06-21T21:26:32Z")
I’ll go with Tim Walz. Nothing against him, but I’d never heard of him before the election. Seems like a nice guy, but the greatest living American? Not a chance. ---
**Author:** ![colinfred](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colinfred/32/21338_2.png) [@colinfred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colinfred)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2025, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/54 "2025-06-23T14:13:23Z")
Joe Biden: His pulling out of Afghanistan turned the entire area to shit and his carrying on the race well after being clearly mentally unfit lost the Democrats credibility and ultimately the 2024 election. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2025, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/55 "2025-06-23T16:11:33Z")
I think I just missed the deadline, but I’ll vote for Simone Biles. If winning Olympic medals is all it takes to be great, then Michael Phelps should be ahead of her. Seems like a very nice person and an amazing gymnast, but unlike the other athletes on the list, she has no significant non-athletic accomplishments as far as I can tell. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2025, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/56 "2025-06-23T17:04:52Z")
Looks like I missed the deadline too. I would have voted out Romney. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2025, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/57 "2025-06-23T17:30:11Z")
Another point about Biles: I think the greatest American should be great in some uniquely _American_ way. So I’m disinclined to support people like Olympians and astronauts, whose talents, though impressive, are of a sort that would have been equally celebrated had they been born in totalitarian dictatorships. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2025, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/58 "2025-06-23T17:47:57Z")
Yes, sorry, **Thing.Fish** and **gkster** were too late to vote. Our votes this round: Buzz Aldrin: Second on Moon - 2 votes Joe Biden: President, uniter, overcomer - 1 vote Amanda Gorman: Poet, activist, prodigy - 1 vote Mitt Romney: Senator, impeachment juror - 5 votes Taylor Swift: Musician, songwriter, icon - 3 votes Tim Walz: Honorable political messenger - 1 vote Mitt Romney, politically courageous now and then, leaves the list and heads back to Utah. Our remaining nominees: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Athlete, writer, activist Buzz Aldrin: Second on Moon José Andrés: Humanitarian, chef Joe Biden: President, uniter, overcomer Simon Biles: GOAT gymnast Judy Blume: Children’s literature icon Warren Buffett: Level-headed billionaire Bob Dylan: Poet of generation Anthony Fauci: Physician, immunologist, scientist Bill Gates: Futurist, philanthropist, billionaire Amanda Gorman: Poet, activist, prodigy Jesse Jackson: Civil rights leader Magic Johnson: Superstar, survivor, inspiration Mark Kelly: Senator, astronaut, aviator Stephen King: Great American writer Spike Lee: Filmmaker, Knicks fan Jim Lovell: Apollo 13 astronaut Amory Lovins: Physicist, energy activist Barack Obama: President, statesman, lawyer Dolly Parton: Artist, humanitarian Bernie Sanders: Democratic Socialist leader MacKenzie Scott: Philanthropist, prize-winning novelist Steven Spielberg: Director, writer, entertainer Bruce Springsteen: Singer, songwriter, activist Taylor Swift: Musician, songwriter, icon Tim Walz: Honorable political messenger Elizabeth Warren: Fighting political foes Janet Yellen: Economist, Treasury secretary **Eliminated** 1. Jim Gaffigan: Comedian, author, commentator 2. Craig Ferguson: Polymath, director-writer, comedian 3. Mitt Romney: Senator, impeachment juror Voting for our second round will end at noon EST on Weds. June 25. I will vote again for Taylor Swift. I like some of her songs, and in pop culture I’d say she’s a force for good, but she’s just not in the same league as many of the other people on this list. ---
**Author:** ![colinfred](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colinfred/32/21338_2.png) [@colinfred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colinfred)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/59 "2025-06-23T17:50:42Z")
Joe Biden again. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2025, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715/60 "2025-06-23T17:52:42Z")
Buzz Aldrin [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-game-thread/1019715.md?page=4)