Overview
Welcome to PoliticalAllStars.com. Over the past many years, I have put together what I believe is the ultimate American political all-star team. I have researched, debated, and considered who would serve in what position if we tried to imagine an all-time all-star team for American political influence and electoral success.
In sports, such teams are debated all the time at bars, in bleacher seats, at bowling alleys, and online. But this may be the first time anyone has ever done this for politics, at least to this level of detail. I have selected an all-time presidential cabinet, 100 senators, 437 congressman, and the six primary elected state government positions for all 50 states. The primary determination for inclusion on this list is influence, not popularity or name recognition. Furthermore—and I can’t stress this enough—this team is more of a puzzle than a list.
I didn’t try to pick the 100 most influential U.S. Senators. I tried to pick the most influential politicians from every state and then fit each one into a position in which they actually served. For example, Massachusetts has had a number of lions of the Senate. Daniel Webster, Teddy Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Charles Sumner all deserve to be listed as senators from Massachusetts, along with several others. But of those four listed, Webster and Lodge also served in the House of Representatives, while Kennedy and Sumner only served in the Senate. So on the team I assembled, Lodge and Webster end up in the House (in Webster’s case from New Hampshire, no less), while Kennedy and Sumner make the Senate team. Remember, it’s a puzzle, not a list.
Everyone who made the team actually served in the position they were assigned, even if it may not have been the position they were best known for. Congressman Lincoln from Illinois, anyone? I have 437 members of the House because that is the highest actual total membership the House ever had. After Alaska and Hawaii became states, shortly before the 1960 Census, the House was briefly at 437 members. The same thing would likely happen if Puerto Rico ever became a state.
This is not a team made exclusively of people I admire, though I admire many of these politicians. There are also many I despise. One can loathe Congressman Jefferson Davis of Mississippi while also acknowledging his influence (negative as it was) on the United States of America.
Groundbreakers, such as Jeanette Rankin, the first female member of congress, are included, because groundbreaking is itself an influential act. The more politically successful third-party politicians are included, as the movements they represent (populism, progressivism, anti-masonry) were very influential in our history.
I have tried very hard to balance this list by party, region, and time. There is no doubt it has a modern bias, which was probably inevitable for a few reasons, but I think overall the balance is fair. The toughest party assignments were those politicians who served during and immediately after the Era of Good Feelings (1820s). Did they serve as Democrat-Republicans because they really believed in the tenets of that party, or were they simply calculating politicians who became DRs when it was the only large party yet switched to the Whig party the first chance they got?
The number of Congressman per state is not random, nor is the fact that the Democrats hold the majority in both houses of Congress. The number of Congressman per state was calculated by figuring out the average percentage of members each state had in every Congress and then adjusting those totals slightly to fit a modern 437. No, I won’t show you my work on that, but trust me, I did it. The Democratic caucus majorities in each House were calculated by totaling up the party membership in every Congress and then trying to create an All-Star team that fit that history. The Democrat-Republican party evolved into the modern Democratic Party, and in their shared history they have had the majority membership in more Congressional sessions, and by larger numbers, than the opposing Federalist / Whig / Republican caucus. As a result, Lyndon Johnson is President of the Senate and Sam Rayburn is Speaker of the House. (Both of them being from Texas was not intentional.) Again, I am not going to show you my work on this—you will just have to trust me. Know that my own political bias is in favor of the F/W/R caucus, so the Democrat caucus majorities are there as a historic fact, not my personal preference.
I hope you enjoy this website and report. I hope you can join us in the weekly debates and discussions we are launching soon about historic members of this list. Please e-mail me at politicalallstars(at)gmail.com and follow me on twitter @DavidCStokes. Much more information will be placed on this website over time, and I hope to do the same type of listing for all 50 state legislatures. (We are going to crowd source that, as I can’t do that by myself. I’ll take Missouri—who wants the others?)