Out of curiosity, who does Mises.org think are the 5 most libertarian presidents the US has ever had?
Obviously, none of them were 100%, but if you had to choose, who would they be?
EDIT: Also, who do you feel are the top 5 least libertarian?
Cool Cal.
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland would probably be the top three. However, I’m not sure about who would be the other two.
Include FDR in this list.
I’d go for George Washington on that one. He might have been a heroic fighter in the War of Independence, but he paved the way for (or at least did nothing to prevent) central government with an iron fist, corporate fascism and government-enforced puritanism, all with one measure: the “tax on distilled spirits and carriages”.
Even if he himself seems to have played a minor role in instituting the tax, he ordered the very troops that were assigned to crush the tax resistance. He set the precedent. All the tyranny thereafter could point to “libertarian Washington” for justification.
What I have for the best are: Calvin Coolidge, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland, but I can’t think of a fifth one offhand.
For the worst I have: Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Abraham Lincoln so far.
Good point.
2nd. I’m considering on studying Coolidge further to see if he stands up to scrutiny.
He was by no means perfect, but he did expose Hoover for the idiot he was prior to Hoover ramping up the Depression, by all accouts Coolidge was a modest and humble, hard working man, and the last laissez-faire President.
The knocks on him that I can see are that he he presided over the Roaring 20s, and thus a massive inflationary period, but really one pretty much presides over inflation or deflation under a central bank, the seeds for such are usually sown earlier than any one or two terms served.
The top LEAST libertarian are easy.
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Lincoln - Classic authoritarian.
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FDR - Again, very authoritarian.
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Wilson - Again, authoritarian.
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Theodore Roosevelt - authoritarian
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George W. Bush - authoritarian
It should be no great suprise that these 5 also make my list of worst Presidents, with 1, 2, 3 and 4 being the same on both lists. Bush being tied for 7th. 
While none were truly libertarian, the closest to libertarians were likely:
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Jefferson
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Madison
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van Buren
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Cleveland
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Coolidge
Obviously, these men all had their faults, but were the closest we have had to true libertarians.
It would be interesting to hypothetize was might have happened had Coolidge run for reelection in 1928. He would likely have handled the Panic of 1928 properly as Harding handled the Panic of 1921. No Hoover New Deal. No FDR, thus no FDR New Deals. Without a world wide depression, Hitler may never have come to power, thus no World War II.
Coolidge once said of Hoover, “That man has offered me unsolicited advice for six years, all of it bad.”
IMHO, Wilson has to be the worst. Federal Reserve. WWI, anti-civil liberty crackdown, centralization, progressivism. Also the impact of WWI is the Versailles treaty which in turn set the stage for FDR in WWII. Also the Fed created the Panic of 1928 which brought FDR to power and birthed the final welfare state as we now know it. Lincoln’s war was equally horrible but atleast he did have the good consequence of eliminating slavery and there was still room for laissez-fairists post-Lincoln. After the crash by WILSON’s Fed, no such room was left. A combination of his War and his Fed’s depression brought communis, fascism and Nazism into power. Wilson is the worst. He is the father, or “fuhrer” if you will, of the 20th Century, the Century when the world turned away from a gradual move towards the individual with some exceptions to a gradaul move towards the economic and social collective.
I would change it as such:
Cleveland
Jefferson
Van Buren
Harding-He was the one who actually handled the 21 panic so well, brought the troops home from Haiti and cut Wilson’s huge income taxes. In addition, he let the socialist slime Debs go free after Wilson held the old man in a cage for his thought crime.
Coolidge
I don’t necessarily see how Jackson can be on this list. Sure, he had a couple of good things, the bank, hard money, and some state rights. But he was a huge expansionist in terms of presidential power. If it wasn’t for the bank he would be a bad president for me. He just gets average because of that IMO.
Van Buren was the real laissez faire guy.
I think Jackson wasn’t very nice to the Indians either.
I just wanted to make sure Cal got on the list. I’m a big fan. [:)]
You are right, Jackson certainly wasn’t perfect (the way he treated the Indians was pretty terrible), but he had many policies that we Austrians would certainly support.
I agree. Wilson was absolutely awful. Worse than Lincoln. Participated in the final snuffing out of the classical liberal order in Europe. Think the US would be stomping around all over the globe telling everybody what their economic policy should be if Europe hadn’t eviscerated itself in two world wars?
Of all US presidents, he really started the boulder rolling downhill for the total welfare-warfare state.
Some other crown jewels of his reign: Prohibition, direct election of Senators, income tax.
Perhaps my memory doesn’t serve as well as it used to, but I recall at least three other threads with “best/worst US presidents” as a topic in this forum.
One more: Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Vietnam: pointless, stupid war that wiped out a whole cohort of young men and gave the Marxists their cause celebre.
Great Society: absolutely destroyed the black family, unprecedented usurpation of private property rights.
I agree he was a terrible president, but I’m curious: How did the Great Society destroy the black family?
It substituted the State for black fathers. It culled the higher percentile blacks from their communities, and it disincentivized assimilation into the majority culture.
After some thought, here are mine and some thoughts on some of the others:
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Thomas Jefferson - a no brainer. Sure, some times he was talk and no action (his critique of the social contract, but taking it nowhere), but he is so central to classical liberal (and by extension - libertarian) thought that he would also be included in my top 10 American libertarians. Amusingly, during the 30s he was re-imagined as a proto-New Dealer of all things, and thats probably why he was put on the nickel in 1938.
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Grover Cleveland - Probably by and large the best a president will ever get in post-War Between the States days. Vetoed the GOP’s porky pension extensions to Union veterans (meanwhile, Confederate veterans had to pay the taxes to fund the pensions, but got no pensions themselves), denounced the Hawaiian imperialism, and strengthened the Gold Standard.
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James Monroe - A surprise to some, considering the so called Monroe Doctrine, but I credit him with the wise course taken during the Panic of 1819 that helped it end quickly.
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John Tyler - The often-forgotten Virginian called ‘his accidency’ due to the death of his running mate WH Harrison. Although a Whig, he stopped the recharter of the Bank of the United States dead in its tracks. His rather free market policies caused the Whig Party to expel him. During his elder years, he entered politics again as a Confederate States Representative for Virginia.
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Calvin Coolidge - Although a protectionist, during his presidency the GOP began to adopt a more free market stance. He completed the Washington Naval Treaty pursued by Harding, a great ‘isolationist’ peace treaty. However, even though he opposed Prohibition, it was still enforced brutally.
Some of you mentioned Andrew Jackson. While he had some good qualities, one shant forget the ‘Force Bill’ that was used to threaten his own Vice President, John Calhoun. Calhoun and the South Carolina state house wisely nullified the Tariff of Abominations that would crush the South economically. Even though Jackson himself was a Southerner, he denounced what was basically the Southern position on free trade.
And my own ‘worst list’ looks much like everyone elses:
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Lincoln - A war criminal, rank protectionist, and corporatist, now used as disgusting symbol for state worship at his own pagan temple.
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FDR - In my opinion, after the New Deal the US government will never get smaller again. Also the father of gun control (National Firearm Act of 1934) Thanks Roosevelt.
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Wilson - need I say more?
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LBJ - Helping to destroy the black family and making the welfare state permanent. Also gave us the Gun Control Act of 1968.
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GWB.