Also again for Jose Andres. Same reason as first round…never heard of the guy, and I’m not alone in that sentiment.
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
- Jim Gaffigan: Comedian, author, commentator
- 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? 
My next vote is for Mitt Romney.
I’ll go with Mitt Romney as well.
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.
I’m still going with Mitt Romney, for the reasons I mentioned previously.
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.
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.
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.
Yet again, my vote is for (against?) Swift, for the reasons I’ve already outlined.
-“BB”-
Amanda Gorman.
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 protestors, voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, supported gun control measures, and did not vote for Trump in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 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.
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.
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.
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.
Looks like I missed the deadline too. I would have voted out Romney.
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.
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
- Jim Gaffigan: Comedian, author, commentator
- Craig Ferguson: Polymath, director-writer, comedian
- 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.
Joe Biden again.
Buzz Aldrin