I think Halsey could certainly be said to be the best IF he had not made some very obvious errors during his career: poor planning and worse execution of the New Georgia campaign, twice steaming through typhoons (with a high cost in men, ships and planes) that might have been avoided by less aggressive commanders, and most notably his errors in deployment off Luzon and Samar on 10/24 that led to his debacle the next morning. On 10/24 the four groups of TF38 were operating independently, too far apart to provide mutual support. TG 38.1 was actually leaving the area, heading towards Ulithi for replenishment. TG 38.3 was far to the north, busy conducting attacks on Luzon (during the course of which Princeton was lost). TG 38.4 had contacted Nishimura in the Sulu sea and had strikes on the way. Only TG 38.2 was initially available to carry out air strikes against Kurita's center force in the Sibuyan Sea. This division of force meant that the attacks launched vs Kurita were insufficiently strong to stop him. Halsey and his staff were far too ready to believe that Kurita's temporary retirement during the late afternoon meant that he was finished. Mitscher and his staff had put together a more accurate picture of what was going on, but Halsey's staff wasn't listening to Mitscher. That Halsey, on New Jersey, was running the carrier battle, while Mitscher, the veteran carrier commander on Lexington, was reduced to offering advice which was unwanted by Halsey and ignored by him, seems incredible. This situation led directly to Halsey swallowing Ozawa's bait and heading north with all available ships, exactly per the Japanese plan. An additional factor contributing to this blunder was Halsey's aggressive nature together with the fact that he personally was on New Jersey. He had always wanted to fight a carrier battle, this was his chance, and no way was he going to sit on a battlewagon off San Bernardino Strait, as he would have had to do had TF 34 been formed, while Mitscher got all the glory up north vs Ozawa.
This would never have happened to Spruance. He would most likely have conducted operations in support of the Leyte landings much as he had at Saipan: keeping his groups concentrated, forming the surface battle force early on, staying close to the landings, letting his subordinate commanders fight the battle while restricting his own staff's involvement to analyzing the overall situation and making the big decisions. This was the true role of a commander in this post. Halsey failed (or refused) to understand this. One can say that Halsey was in an impossible situation, being caught on the horns of the dilemma of supporting an invasion while fighting a naval battle. In fact he created this dilemma himself, having insisted on the inclusion in his orders the sentence, "If opportunity exists or can be created to destroy major portions of enemy fleet this becomes primary task." Halsey proved that he belonged on a shorter leash than the one that Nimitz let him run with.
