Rank every president from most conservative to liberal since 1920

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Reagan
Coolidge
Harding
W Bush
Nixon
Hoover
Trump
H.W. Bush
Eisenhower
Clinton
Ford
Carter
JFK
Obama
Biden (beliefs during actual presidency)
Truman
LBJ
FDR

Economically one could argue for Coolidge or Harding to be to the right of Reagan. Trump would probably shift left in that case (ironically), while socially he's either hard right (esp. for its era) on a number of issues, or surprisingly centrist on other ones, maybe center-right but much to the left of the party average.

At this point i think Trump is for example more to the left economically than Clinton was for example or about the same, Trump is very keynesian and less a balancing budgets type of person, even if fighting inequality wasn't a priority and even if he still lowered taxes for the rich. I mean proposals like the "build the wall" for example show that reducing debt or spending wasn't really what he wanted to do.

Similarly Hoover also really isn't that economically conservative, but that's mostly when you compare him for Coolidge or Harding. Yes, you can blame him for not dealing accurately with the crisis and believing in fairytales, but the crisis wasn't caused exactly by Hoover, but more because of Coolidge and the naive attitude of the 1920s which were in hindsight horrible years. Coolidge also wasn't the type of person that was charismatic, working behind the scenes and being impersonal and asocial when it came to problems the country faced (like hurricane response). The 1920s were also the years with lots of crime, and when alcohol was forbidden, leading to a number of issues and problems, overall a very overrated decade, that led to miserable decades in the 1930s and also 1940s, and only regarded well because there was no war & pandemic and there was no economical crisis before '29.

And for Harding, we unfortunately have little to judge him on, but based on wikipedia entry (i really have no other way), he probably was very conservative too, and similar to Coolidge, but obviously i could be wrong here. But back than, even the Democrats were conservative, often even more socially than the republicans. Social progressives where mostly Republicans from the north, while economical progressives were Dixiecrats (or economical populists), for example Huey Long.

The only thing I know about Harding is that he pardonned Debs, something Wilson refused to do, and strengthens my belief that i'd rather have a beer with Harding than with Wilson or that Harding was the better human being, and we're not even talking about the racism of Wilson or that he is basically "the godfather" of the modern USA's foreign policy.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Why on earth is anybody ranking Biden as most liberal?

His policies and stated ideology are the most liberal, definitely in a vacuum and I’d argue even relative to time. The reason he hasn’t actually enacted as many sweeping changes as FDR or LBJ is he doesn’t have their huge Congressional majorities, not because he’s not as or more liberal than them. Remember those two were at the center of their parties most of their careers prior to becoming president as well.

Those are fair points actually. I believe that FDR was actually perceived as slightly to the right of Hoover fiscally in 1932.

This is part of the reason why I probably would've voted for Hoover without hindsight. While I respect FDR in terms of his New Deal, Hoover seemed like he was trying his best at the time. In some ways he was a proto-FDR but he was afraid of alienating big business. I'm curious on how different things might've turned out had Hoover been more of an interventionist. Perhaps he could've pulled it off or at least keep it close. I used to believe the narrative that Hoover was a more ineffective version of Coolidge but he was fairly progressive for his time.

Hoover was only a year president before the crisis happened, and his right-wing ness on economy is a bit overrated. Of course nobody would return to the economic policies of the 1920s after FDR to some extent. Economically Coolidge is easily the most conservative and it isn't even close here (unless Harding but you can't easily judge that if you were like president for a month only. You have to judge on what he was prior to his presidency).

The only way you'll have a president who will economically be as conservative as Coolidge is by electing a libertarian. And even a Gary Johnson type of person would still not come close to that, you would basically have to elect a widely considered lunatic libertarian for this era in order to get close, or someone like Ted Cruz who even goes further than the Tea Party politics.