The Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell offers Calvin Coolidge as a best bet, as would I.
Dan also cites passages from Thomas Jefferson, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Regan as examples of the thinking of good American presidents. And Dan suggests that we not forget the principled words of Presidents Madison, Pierce and Cleveland.
On the opposite track, Mr. Mitchell asks, “What is it that our statist friends want? At the risk of oversimplifying, they think the government should use redistribution to provide basic needs for everyone.”
Well, as Dan notes here, Eisenhower had a good quote on a group of two million Americans who do have all their basic needs provided by government “In these times when we hear so much of security, security, security for everything we do—when so many of us want to be sure that we shall never be cold, or hungry or out in the rain, or have a leaky roof—I should think that the best example of it would be a man serving a lifetime in a federal prison.”
See Coolidge here in the first video of a U.S. president.
