‘I like to make people laugh and think,” said James Taranto, 38, founding editor of Opinionjournal.com, the free Web site of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Mr. Taranto’s first book, “Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House” (Wall Street Journal Books) was released on June 10.

He is also the author of a pointed, edgy, and – in a word – opinionated column called “Best of the Web Today,” a selection of which appears in The New York Sun. Originally begun in 1990 as a collection of interesting items found on the Internet, “Best of the Web” has increasingly involved reader interaction.

“As it turns out, I don’t have to do that much scouring of the Internet, since I have these wonderful readers” who forward information to him, said Mr. Taranto.

On weekdays, Mr. Taranto wakes up around 9 a.m. and spends most of the morning on his couch sorting through the 200 to 400 reader emails he received the previous night and making a list of articles and links that catch his eye. Listening to jazz and 1970s and ’80s rock (he favors “The Cars” and “Rush”), he looks for interesting connections between items, and writes his own incisive commentary.

He said that he ran a computer bulletin board as a hobby at age 17 and now gets paid to do basically the same thing. “It’s the sort of thing I might be doing even if they didn’t pay me.”

Attracting 1.2 million unique visitors eachmonth,OpinionJournal.comfeatures original editorial content and columnists including Peggy Noonan as well selected articles from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

He said he could be considered a “hawkish free market conservative” on the political spectrum, as it exists. “But I think of myself as being eminently reasonable and middle of the road.”

OpinionJournal’s biggest splash – no pun intended – occurred when the Web site Slate published a story about a pharmaceutical company raising wild monkeys for medical research. The writer of the piece described “fishing” for monkeys with pieces of fruit.

“My [B.S.] detector went so far off the charts,” Mr. Taranto said. The New York Times expose uncovering the story’s fabricated elements creditedOpinionJournal.com.

One of Mr. Taranto’s recent Best of the Web musings came on the tail of Senator Kerry’s joking regarding the coiffeurs of his running mate, John Edwards and himself. We have “better hair,” Mr. Kerry said, than President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The comment drew Mr. Taranto to pun on Whigs and the tortoise and the hare. He described Mr. Kerry as “the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who, by the way, served in Vietnam for four months.”

Now, Mr. Taranto’s book is generating the kind of publicity once reserved for his outspoken column. “Presidential Leadership” was co-edited with the executive vice president of the Federal Society, Leonard Leo, and ranks past presidents. Ratings are based on a national survey, which was balanced evenly between conservative and liberal law professors, historians, and political scientists.

Is the book popular? “What I keep hearing is ‘guys really like lists.'” Mr. Taranto said.

“Presidential Leadership” contains succinct profiles of presidents written by a range of distinguished contributors including Richard Brookhiser on George Washington, Forrest McDonald on Thomas Jefferson, Douglas Brinkley on James Polk, and Peggy Noonan on John F. Kennedy.

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt are ranked in the “great” category. Of the eight presidents in the “near great” category, Mr. Taranto said, most presided during times of war.

Some of the survey results were unexpected: “Many readers would be surprised that Polk did so well,” Mr. Taranto said of the one-term president who secured Texas as a state and also acquired the land that is now the state of California.

Democrats, Mr. Taranto said, did slightly better, but not enough to be statistically significant. “But the difference vanishes if you count Andrew Johnson as a Democrat rather than a Republican.”

Mr. Taranto developed a taste for controversy at a young age.He was even born in the same upstate New York hospital as the contrarian Camille Paglia. While an undergraduate studying journalism at Califor nia State University at Northridge, he served as news editor of the college newspaper, the Daily Sundial.

What Mr.Taranto called a “reported opinion piece” about double standards in censorship landed him in trouble. It led to his suspension as news editor, but an undeterred Mr. Taranto filed suit, represented by the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The case was settled out of court to Mr. Taranto’s satisfaction: Among other things, the Sundial rewrote its policy statement to make clear that the paper was a forum for student expression.

The lawsuit hardly hindered his career. He held summer stints at UPI, CBS’s KNX Newsradio in Los Angeles, Reason, a libertarian magazine, and in public relations at the Heritage Foundation. He was also briefly at “Street News.” Mr. Taranto eventually became deputy culture editor at the New York City Tribune, which he said “was a fun job except nobody read the paper.” It has since been shut down. He was senior editor at the Manhattan Institute’s “City Journal” before joining the Wall Street Journal in 1996.

Had circumstances been different, Mr. Taranto may have opted to influence public opinion in another way: He once considered becoming a lawyer. But scoring 179 out of a possible 180 on the LSAT, he thought, “If I can’t be perfect, why bother?”

“It would be cool to be a Supreme Court Justice, but you really have to pay your dues,” he said.

Mr. Taranto will be part of the Wall Street Journal team covering the political conventions. He expects to be doing more reporting and less blogging.