I would pick Jefferson because Monticello isn’t too far from where I live and he could tell me about what the area was like in his time. Plus we could go tour his house!
And for funding an opposition newspaper while he served in the Washington Cabinet… and for repeatedly lying about it, even to Washington’s face… and for rebuking John Adams’s offer of a partnership during Adams’s Presidency… and for then scheming to undermine and replace him… and for insisting the Federal government had only its enumerated powers, until he made the Louisiana Purchase, an act not provided for in the Constitution… and for badly neglecting the U.S. Navy (Theodore Roosevelt blasts him for this in The Naval War of 1812)… and for keeping some of his own kids in slavery… and for being such a spendthrift that some of them had to be sold down the river to settle his debts after he died…
OK, I’ll stop.