My favorite president? Probably Calvin Coolidge. About a decade ago, I wrote on Cool Cal for Reason:

He is America’s most underappreciated president, a tax-cutting, budget-slashing politician whose very name became synonymous with the fast-growing 1920s economy: “Coolidge Prosperity,” they called it. Coolidge stood defiantly as an anti-Progressive between two activist eras, the first led by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the second by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That’s the real reason so many modern academics dislike him: Coolidge didn’t participate in the onward march of an ever-growing government. In fact, he actively resisted it. “The people cannot look to legislation generally for success,” he said in one of his most famous speeches. “Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act of resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil.”