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02/16/2009

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William Henry Harrison. His timely death after only 32 days in office meant that his presidency did the least harm. His death also led to the more sensible John Tyler to follow a path quite different than Henry Clay's Whig party had hoped for. This meant that Henry clay would die unfulfilled and that the Whigs/Republicans would not see their mercantilist dreams come true for another 20 years. It's still a mystery how the Whig party could have imploded only to be reborn so quickly as Republicans. You've gotta hand it to the rich and powerful. Not only did they regroup, but they managed to shred the constitution under the ruse of ending slavery. Brilliant!

I would say Andrew Jackson, for killing the bank, but I can't put him too close to the top because of what he did to the indian nations (actually not much different than any other president of the era).
So I would say it's a tie between Coolidge and Cleveland who both knew not to meddle in the economy and had a non-interventionist foreign policy.
The worst (excluding GW Bush - not enough time has passed): Woodrow Wilson. He gave us the Federal Reserve, the income tax, the war on drugs, meddling in the economny as well as overseas (Mexico, Nicaragua, etc.) one world war and the foundations for another. Not to mention some really scary sedition laws.

My favorites...

Before my lifetime: Thomas Jefferson (for more-or-less obvious reasons--his heart was sure in the right place, even if he had the tendency to overstep on occasion). In second place--Calvin Coolidge, who, as Robertolibre pointed out--was perfectly content with a small government and doing almost nothing other than performing ceremonial tasks.

In my lifetime (I was born during the Kennedy Administration): only Ronald Reagan is worth mentioning. Yes, he had his flaws, but there is a limit to what a President can do without a cooperating Congress (unfortunately, I'm afraid in the next 4-8 years we're going to see that there is little limit to what a President can do WITH a cooperating Congress), but as much as anyone in the last 50 years, Reagan articulated the ideas of freedom and limited government in a way that resonated. If the Republican Party is to become the Party of Liberty again, it will become that because of the middle aged men and women who were inspired as teenagers and college students by the Reagan rhetoric, and who have risen to a point of prominence in the Party. Besides, I prefer good humor to bad; positive talk to negative, and Reagan had those things in abundance. Even in times of national despair, he had the capacity to make us feel better rather than wallowing in the bad.

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