I’d buy worst president derivatives on Obama. If he doesn’t make them illegal by then anyway.
Who do you think would be the worst president to never have been? My money is on Hamilton or Clay.
William Henry Harrison - he served only 32 days in office.
Did not have enough time to screw things up.
Considering the fact the two presidents he’s aspiring to be ike are unanimously already on the terribe president list, its a great investment.
Harding is greater than Cal, by far. 
As a side note, everytime someone says Barack Obama is the first black president I remind them that Harding was alleged by the dixiecrats to be part black and likely was.
How has no one mentioned John Adams…?
Alien and Sedition Acts?
Though in no way is he inculpable for that legislation, it was more the federalists in Congress that truly wanted it, Adams was more a less a coward who didn’t want to stand up to his own party.
On that issue yes, but to be fair, in general Adams stood up bravely to his party (most notably concerning their clamoring for war with France) to such an extent that Hamilton wrote a vicious tract against him and the powerful “high Federalists” became utterly exasperated with his presidency.
I recommend McCullough’s book on Adams.
Hard to pick because no one has been truly libertarian in totality yet, but i guess
Best:
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Jefferson - yes, his presidency was by and large mild, but how can any libertarian not like Jefferson. He’s my greatest president mostly because I think he was the greatest of all the founding fathers.
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Coolidge - anyone who can be small government minded is going to be up there, he gets two mostly because he was so laissez faire. Yes, he liked tarriffs, but honestly they aren’t the worst thing that could happen and compared to every president after him he has the best record.
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Van Buren - same reasons, small government, etc
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Harding - managed the 1920 recession excellently, showed the 20th century exactly what should be done in recessions, little bit too much scandal though
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Washington - I only put him here because he voluntarily limited himself to two terms setting he standard until the constitution was amended
Worst:
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Lincoln - duh, set the stage for tyranny in America, a murderer, theif, and all around despot. The antithesis to Jefferson.
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FDR - nearly as tyrannical as Lincoln, stealing gold, guns, and unprecedented amounts of the citizenry’s money. If it wasn’t for this guy then the 20th century would never have embraced government centralization so happily and totally.
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Wilson - Same, suspended habeus corpus, censored free speech, set the stage for the UN, founding father of a one world government
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Lyndon B Johnson - Medicare, Medicaid, Vietnam, i mean, this guy was awful. Plus, he killed Kennedy…jk : )
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G Dubya Jr. - nuff said
Best:
1.Thomas Jefferson - without him there would be no liberty in the whole world
2.Abraham Lincoln - abolished slavery
3.John Kennedy - Silver Certificates to End the FED, Anti-Communist, Ordered the Report from Iron Mountain asking what would be if there would be world wide Peace.
Worst:
1.Woodrow Wilson - FED, Income Tax, Senator Election, World War1 and its consequences
2.Theodore Roosevelt(deviously helped Woodrow Wilson get elected in 1912, called Thomas Paine a “filthy little atheist”, National Parks)
LBJ,
FDR,
GWB,
Obama,
Truman,
Clinton,
many others
Jefferson, Cleveland, Buchanan, Polk, Harding.
It’s a difficult question because there are very clear examples of anti-libertarian action (I mean, they’re obviously statists to begin with).
Least 5 - FDR, Lincoln, GWB, Adams, Wilson, LBJ.
1, Coolidge: Outside of prohibition the man did nothing wrong
2, Cleveland: Cut union benefits, lowered taxes and fought imperialism
3, Jefferson: The embargo pushes him back but outside of that, he embodied libertarian ideas.
4, Clinton: Surprise answer, enacted NAFTA, gave us welfare reform, cut spending, inflation was fairly limited, lowered taxes on a lot of small businesses with the Omnibus Bill in 1993.
5, Madison: He was a weakling at times and he gave into the warhawks but his overall philosophy and early writings gain him enough to make my top 5.
Least Libertarian
1, FDR: New deal was a disaster, did a lot to quicken our entrance to WW2, high taxes prolonged and exacerbated the depression, several unconstitutional policies came under the new deal, strongarmed the Supreme Court into following his agenda whether they believed it constitutional or not.
2, Wilson: Made speech against the government a federal crime. No more need be said.
3, LBJ: Prolonged Vietnam, destroyed the black family and put a dent in overall American morality through entitlements like medicare and medicaid.
4, Lincoln: Granted, once the South seceeded he had to keep them in the Union, but how he did it and what he could have done to prevent war(pay slaveowners for their slaves) would have saved us a large amount of money and lives. Not to mention the war crimes that he comitted like the draft, and then on top of that how he turned the draft into a variance of the good ole boys system.
5, Obama: I don’t know how everyone has put George W. Bush as less libertarian than him, he is worse than Bush on foreign policy (Libya, Afghanastan) and he is 10x worse than Bush on economics. Debt has skyrocketed, it went up under W, but it has skyrocketed under the Bamster. Inflation is going haywire, he is hyperregulating everything, he is pumping money to all of his friends without even vetting them about whether it may or may not be profitable for the taxpayers money(i.e. Solyndra). Not to mention healthcare, the attempted passage of a cap and tax bill, and recently as today, there will be a tax on Christmas trees to promote the use of real ones. We have a President that resorts to the Chicago way of doing things at every possible turn.
Van Buren is in my mind, the most, if not the only ideologically pure of all the ‘libertarian’ US presidents. Other than Van Buren the presidents I am partial to are:
- Jackson - The man killed the bank! But he also killed the indians and favoured expansionist foreign policy.
- Cleveland - He’s and honest man, he’s an honest man, he’s an honest man. (except for being a morgan shill when it came to the ICC)
- Coolidge - As LibertyStudent explained, he was the last of the free market presidents
But obviously Reagan takes the prize as the most libertarian president. As we all know, Reagan was a no nonsense libertarian, cutting taxes & spending, deregulating the entire economy, abolishing IP, ending the wars, ending prohibition, ending the fed, and establishing anarcho-capitalism in 1987!
“Clinton: Surprise answer, enacted NAFTA”
So what is so libertarian about NAFTA?
Why does everyone here shrug off the massacre of indigenous people as if it were an accident, even the poster with native Americans holding guns as their avatar?
Not everyone, BP. Many people mentioned that as one of his bad qualities.
I don’t see him on anyone’s bottom 5 is all I’m saying.
Anyway, as there are about 50 threads like this and I’ve said before, discussing libertarian presidents is like talking about which bird is the most fish-like.
Anyway, as there are about 50 threads like this and I’ve said before, discussing libertarian presidents is like talking about which bird is the most fish-like.
I used to think this way…but these are good introductory posts. And it’s always good to have people work it out and reason things through on their own - it can help open up doors, and it’s part of the interactive nature of a forum.
And for those of us who are a bit more seasoned / educated when we enter these “101” type questions, we should do so with a bit of patience and mostly to help the newer person figure out for themself more “serious” (there are probably better words to use here, “productive” maybe?) inquiries - or help them see why they have the thought in the 1st place .
I’m sure the LL’s have the same types of questions come up all the time.
Penguins are fairly fish like birds.
Everyone’s saying Jefferson is in their top 5. I think you should research and reconside his guys because although he had a very libertarian philosophy, in practice (as president) he did not apply this philosophy. I love his philosophy, just not his execution as president. Also, i wouldn’t include jackson because even houghhe fought the fed he was a warmonger and mass murderer of indians…just sayin. Lastly, i would definetly add Chester A. Arthur to the top 5 list