Happy Un-Presidents’ Day!

At least Lady Gaga looks good here, although she also resembles a handler of hitmen…

The actually good presidents of the United States–that state designed to be the smallest and most limited ever created which has become instead, the largest and most ubiquitous in history–are not found on the top of the consensus “presidential” historians’ lists. They are nowhere among the top 10 of the public’s vision of the best chief executives.

The best of the best are at the bottom of these rankings. They were Jeffersonian practitioners of limited and restrained, i.e. Constitutional government. This is not to say that as an an-cap and super-fan of Lysander Spooner, I’m making the un-Spooneresque mistake of interpreting the Constitution as the end-all-be-all elixir to the danger of government. However, at least these guys were zealous about preserving, you know, LIBERTY, by reigning in over the greatest threat designed to extinguish it; namely, the STATE.

1. Grover Cleveland (Simply the best president, and it’s not really even close. Scholar. Veto mayor and then president who reversed course on counter-productive and criminal tariffs. Great mustache. Dreamy blue eyes…)
2. Calvin Coolidge (“Silent Cal” truly roared against the larceny-state established by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.)
3. John Tyler (The Democratic wolf in Whig clothing actually saw the peril of the welfare-warfare state emerging in the 1840’s.)
4. Martin van Buren (Not mean at all, Van Buren vowed to operate within the proscribed limitations for the executive outlined in the Constitution.)
5. James Garfield (Real rags-to-riches story; Garfield did rein in the rampant spoils system for which both parties contended for control in the Gilded Age–and he got shot for it.)

Note: That’s about it for the good ones; indeed, Jefferson himself failed to be truly Jeffersonian while at the helm.

Now, the worst of the worst…

1. Woodrow Wilson (Every time his name is mentioned, there should be ominous sound effects played and a moment of silence for the good of humanity, which he aimed to destroy. Maniacal plotter. Super progressive. Actual racist–sorry for redundancy. By and large caused World War II.)
2. Abraham Lincoln (I know–the shock leading to awe–ABRAHAM LINCOLN! Caused and presided over an unnecessary war which aimed to preserve the Union while defiling the Constitution which created it (WTF?!). Uber-nationalist. 700,000 plus dead in his own “shock and awe” campaigns.)
3. Theodore Roosevelt (Megalomaniac, Harvard grad–I can stop there, right? War hawk and creator of the modern American empire and imperial presidency.)
4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Deceiver-in-Chief. What kind of magical spell did he place upon the country to have, even today, people believing that A) The New Deal did anything but CAUSE the Great Depression, and B) He successfully led the United States to victory in World War II?! What a victory too, with one evil, genocidal socialist maniac taking over half the world as opposed to the previous one?!)
5. George W. Bush and Barack Obama (For all of the supposed vitriol existing between the two modern parties, these two were surprisingly similar. Inaugurated unjustified, imperial wars which, as absolute boondoggles, are accomplishing in a gradual way that which Bin Laden hoped to see: the bankruptcy of the United States. Domestic statism of both just intensified the precipitous decline of individual liberties. I mean, the Patriot Act, Obamacare, NSA, Presidential Kill Lists, rubber-stamp FISA courts–come on!)

Oh, for the days of Cleveland!