84 figures mapped
Political Figures of United States
Leaders, thinkers and campaigners from United States, born between 1706 and 1961, each placed on the 12 axes of the 12 Axes Political Test from their own speeches, writings and record. Sources are on every profile.
Heads of state and government
In order of office
1st President of the United StatesGeorge WashingtonVirginia planter, Continental Army commander and first U.S. president who backed a stronger national government, presidential neutrality abroad and...
2nd President of the United StatesJohn AdamsMassachusetts lawyer, revolutionary leader and second U.S. president who favored a balanced constitution with a strong executive, avoided full war...
3rd President of the United StatesThomas JeffersonAuthor of the Declaration of Independence and third U.S. president who championed limited federal government, states' rights, an agrarian republic...
4th President of the United StatesJames MadisonConstitutional architect, Bill of Rights drafter and fourth U.S. president who designed checks and balances against faction, championed religious...
5th President of the United States (1817-1825)James MonroeFifth U.S. president, last of the Virginia dynasty, who presided over the Era of Good Feelings, the Missouri Compromise, the acquisition of Florida...
6th President of the United States (1825-1829)John Quincy AdamsSixth U.S. president and son of John Adams who proposed an ambitious federal program of roads, canals and science, and later fought the gag rule on...
7th President of the United States (1829-1837)Andrew JacksonSeventh U.S. president and founder of the modern Democratic Party who destroyed the national bank, defeated nullification and enforced the removal of...
8th President of the United States (1837-1841)Martin Van BurenEighth U.S. president and chief organizer of the Democratic Party who faced the Panic of 1837, created the Independent Treasury and oversaw the...
9th President of the United States (1841)William Henry HarrisonNinth U.S. president, a Whig general known for the Battle of Tippecanoe, who died of illness 31 days after delivering the longest inaugural address...
10th President of the United States (1841-1845)John TylerTenth U.S. president, the first vice president to succeed on a president's death, who broke with the Whigs over the national bank, annexed Texas and...
11th President of the United States (1845-1849)James K. PolkEleventh U.S. president who lowered the tariff, restored the Independent Treasury, settled the Oregon border and waged the war with Mexico that added...
12th President of the United States (1849-1850)Zachary TaylorTwelfth U.S. president, a career general and Mexican War hero who, though a slaveholder, pressed for California's admission as a free state and...
13th President of the United States (1850-1853)Millard FillmoreThirteenth U.S. president who signed the Compromise of 1850, enforced its fugitive slave law, sent Commodore Perry to Japan and later ran for...
14th President of the United States (1853-1857)Franklin PierceFourteenth U.S. president, a New Hampshire Democrat whose support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act reopened the fight over slavery in the territories and...
16th President of the United StatesAbraham LincolnIllinois lawyer and first Republican president who opposed the expansion of slavery, led the Union through the Civil War, issued the Emancipation...
15th President of the United States (1857-1861)James BuchananFifteenth U.S. president, a Pennsylvania Democrat whose support for the Dred Scott decision and the Lecompton Constitution, and inaction as Southern...
17th President of the United States (1865-1869)Andrew JohnsonSeventeenth U.S. president, a Tennessee Unionist who succeeded Lincoln, opposed civil rights for freed people during Reconstruction and was the first...
18th President of the United States (1869-1877)Ulysses S. GrantUnion commander in the Civil War and 18th U.S. president who enforced Reconstruction, broke the first Ku Klux Klan and settled disputes with Britain...
19th President of the United States (1877-1881)Rutherford B. HayesNineteenth U.S. president who took office after the disputed 1876 election, withdrew the last federal troops from the South, sent troops into the...
21st President of the United States (1881-1885)Chester A. ArthurTwenty-first U.S. president, a former New York machine politician who after Garfield's assassination signed the Pendleton civil service act, began a...
20th President of the United States (1881)James A. GarfieldTwentieth U.S. president, an Ohio Republican and former Union general whose fight with party bosses over patronage was cut short when he was shot...
22nd and 24th President of the United States (1885-1889, 1893-1897)Grover ClevelandThe only president to serve two non-consecutive terms, a conservative Democrat who championed low tariffs, the gold standard and limited government...
23rd President of the United States (1889-1893)Benjamin HarrisonTwenty-third U.S. president, grandson of William Henry Harrison, who signed the McKinley Tariff, the Sherman Antitrust Act and a large veterans'...
25th President of the United States (1897-1901)William McKinleyTwenty-fifth U.S. president who championed protective tariffs and the gold standard, led the United States into war with Spain and acquired an...
26th President of the United States (1901-1909)Theodore RooseveltRepublican president and later Progressive Party leader who expanded federal regulation of corporations, conserved public lands and pursued an...
27th President of the United States (1909-1913)William Howard TaftTwenty-seventh U.S. president and later chief justice, a Republican who expanded antitrust enforcement and backed the income tax amendment but split...
28th President of the United States (1913-1921)Woodrow WilsonDemocratic president who enacted the New Freedom reforms, led the United States into World War I and proposed the League of Nations.
29th President of the United States (1921-1923)Warren G. HardingTwenty-ninth U.S. president who promised a return to normalcy after World War I, cut taxes, raised tariffs and restricted immigration, and whose...
30th President of the United States (1923-1929)Calvin CoolidgeRepublican president of the 1920s known for tax cuts, budget surpluses and a limited view of the federal government's economic role.
31st President of the United States (1929-1933)Herbert HooverThirty-first U.S. president, an engineer and humanitarian who was in office when the Great Depression began and whose reliance on voluntary action...
32nd President of the United States (1933-1945)Franklin D. RooseveltDemocratic president who led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II, creating the New Deal and helping plan the United...
33rd President of the United States (1945-1953)Harry S. TrumanThirty-third U.S. president who ordered the atomic bombings of Japan, launched the containment policy, the Marshall Plan and NATO, proposed the Fair...
34th President of the United States (1953-1961)Dwight D. EisenhowerRepublican president and World War II commander who accepted the New Deal framework, built the Interstate Highway System and pursued Cold War...
35th President of the United States (1961-1963)John F. KennedyDemocratic president whose New Frontier agenda, Cold War crises, space program and 1963 civil rights proposal defined the early 1960s.
36th President of the United States (1963-1969)Lyndon B. JohnsonDemocratic president who enacted the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and Medicare while escalating the Vietnam War.
37th President of the United States (1969-1974)Richard NixonRepublican president who opened relations with China, pursued detente and created the EPA, and the only president to resign, over the Watergate...
38th President of the United States (1974-1977)Gerald FordThirty-eighth U.S. president, the only one never elected president or vice president, who took office after Nixon's resignation, pardoned him and...
39th President of the United States (1977-1981)Jimmy CarterDemocratic president who emphasized human rights, brokered the Camp David Accords and deregulated transportation, later known for decades of...
40th President of the United States (1981-1989)Ronald ReaganRepublican president who cut income tax rates, pursued deregulation and a defense buildup, and negotiated nuclear arms reductions with the Soviet...
41st President of the United States (1989-1993)George H. W. BushForty-first U.S. president who managed the end of the Cold War, led the Gulf War coalition, invaded Panama, signed the Americans with Disabilities...
42nd President of the United States (1993-2001)Bill ClintonArkansas governor and centrist Democrat who, as president, turned the deficit into a surplus, passed NAFTA, signed welfare reform and led NATO...
43rd President of the United States (2001-2009)George W. BushTexas governor and Republican president who cut taxes, led the response to the September 11 attacks, launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and...
44th President of the United States (2009-2017)Barack ObamaIllinois senator who became the first African American president, passed the Affordable Care Act and financial reform after the 2008 crisis, and...
46th President of the United States (2021-2025)Joe BidenDelaware senator for 36 years and Obama's vice president who, as president, passed major infrastructure, industrial and climate laws and led Western...
Legislators and politicians
In order of birth
1706-1790Benjamin FranklinPhiladelphia printer, scientist and diplomat who proposed early colonial union, helped draft the Declaration, urged compromise at the 1787 Convention...
1737-1809Thomas PaineEnglish-born pamphleteer whose Common Sense urged American independence and whose Rights of Man and Agrarian Justice argued for democratic republics,...
1755-1804Alexander HamiltonFirst U.S. Treasury Secretary and leading Federalist who argued for a strong central government, an energetic executive, a national bank and active...
1782-1850John C. CalhounSouth Carolina statesman who developed the doctrine of nullification and the concurrent majority and became the leading defender of slavery in the...
1839-1897Henry GeorgeAmerican economist and journalist whose Progress and Poverty (1879) proposed a single tax on land values, alongside free trade and public ownership...
1855-1926Eugene V. DebsLabor organizer and five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate who was imprisoned for opposing U.S. participation in World War I.
1860-1925William Jennings BryanThree-time Democratic presidential nominee who championed free silver, an income tax and anti-imperialism, and later led the campaign against...
1893-1935Huey LongLouisiana governor and senator who built roads and schools, proposed capping private fortunes to fund a guaranteed income, and ruled his state with...
1909-1998Barry GoldwaterArizona Republican senator and 1964 presidential nominee whose limited-government, anticommunist platform helped shape the modern American...
1919-1998George WallaceFour-term Alabama governor who became the national face of resistance to desegregation, ran for president on states' rights and law and order, and...
1925-1968Robert F. KennedyAttorney general and New York senator who prosecuted organized crime and enforced civil rights, then ran for president in 1968 against the Vietnam...
Born 1934Ralph NaderConsumer advocate whose campaigns on auto safety and corporate power shaped federal regulation, and who ran for president four times outside the two...
Born 1935Ron PaulTexas congressman and libertarian presidential candidate known for opposing the Federal Reserve, foreign military intervention and most federal...
1936-2018John McCainNavy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war who became a six-term Arizona senator, a defense hawk and the Republican presidential nominee in 2008.
Born 1938Pat BuchananConservative commentator and three-time presidential candidate whose mix of immigration restriction, trade protectionism, non-intervention and social...
Judges
In order of birth
1933-2020Ruth Bader GinsburgWomen's rights litigator and Supreme Court justice who argued landmark sex-discrimination cases in the 1970s and later led the Court's liberal wing.
1936-2016Antonin ScaliaSupreme Court justice for nearly 30 years and the leading judicial voice for originalism and textualism, known for sharply worded dissents.
Activists and reformers
In order of birth
1815-1902Elizabeth Cady StantonWriter and reformer who drafted the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls in 1848 and spent half a century pressing for women's suffrage, divorce...
1817-1862Henry David ThoreauTranscendentalist writer who refused to pay taxes to a government that waged the Mexican War and protected slavery, and whose Civil Disobedience...
1818-1895Frederick DouglassFormerly enslaved abolitionist, writer and statesman who argued for the end of slavery, equal citizenship and voting rights, women's suffrage and a...
1820-1906Susan B. AnthonyQuaker-raised reformer who worked against slavery and for temperance, then led the American campaign for a federal women's suffrage amendment and was...
1860-1935Jane AddamsChicago settlement-house founder and Progressive reformer who campaigned for labor laws, women's suffrage and civil liberties, and became the first...
1868-1963W. E. B. Du BoisSociologist, editor and co-founder of the NAACP who challenged Booker T. Washington's accommodationism, led the Pan-African movement and ended his...
1869-1940Emma GoldmanLithuanian-born anarchist who became America's best known radical speaker, campaigned for free speech, birth control and against conscription, and...
1884-1962Eleanor RooseveltFirst Lady, columnist and UN delegate who championed New Deal programs, civil rights and labor, and led the drafting of the Universal Declaration of...
1924-2016Phyllis SchlaflyConservative activist and author who led the successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment and founded Eagle Forum.
1925-1965Malcolm XNation of Islam minister and Black nationalist who rejected nonviolence and integration, then broke with the Nation in 1964 and recast the struggle...
1927-1993Cesar ChavezMexican American labor leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers and used strikes, boycotts and fasts to win union contracts for California...
Born 1928Noam ChomskyLinguist and leading left-libertarian critic of U.S. foreign policy, corporate power and the mass media, who describes himself as an anarchist in the...
1929-1968Martin Luther King Jr.American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who used nonviolent protest to challenge racial segregation and later campaigned against poverty...
Thinkers and philosophers
In order of birth
1899-1973Leo StraussGerman-born American political philosopher who defended classical natural right against modern relativism and taught generations of students at the...
1905-1982Ayn RandRussian-born American novelist and philosopher who founded Objectivism and defended laissez-faire capitalism, individual rights and rational...
1918-1994Russell KirkAmerican writer whose The Conservative Mind traced an Anglo-American tradition from Edmund Burke and helped shape postwar traditionalist conservatism.
1920-2009Irving KristolWriter and editor often called the godfather of neoconservatism, who moved from Trotskyism to a defense of capitalism, traditional values and a...
1921-2002John RawlsAmerican philosopher whose theory of justice as fairness defended equal basic liberties and allowing inequalities only when they benefit the least...
1925-2008William F. Buckley Jr.Conservative author, editor and television host who founded National Review and helped unite traditionalists, libertarians and anticommunists into...
1926-1995Murray RothbardAmerican economist and libertarian theorist who argued for replacing the state with voluntary market institutions, a position known as...
Born 1930Thomas SowellFree-market economist and social theorist at the Hoover Institution, known for critiques of minimum wages, affirmative action and the welfare state.
1938-2002Robert NozickAmerican philosopher whose Anarchy, State, and Utopia argued that only a minimal state limited to protecting rights is justified, challenging...
Economists
In order of birth
Quick quiz
Which US President Are You?
Answer 12 statements and see whose recorded views sit closest to yours. Free, about two minutes.
FAQ
United States: questions
Which political figures from United States are on PoliticalTests?
84 figures from United States, born between 1706 and 1961, including 44 heads of state or government. Each has a profile with sources. Leaders still active in politics are not included.
Where do figures from United States sit on the political compass?
On the economic axis, 21 sit on the left, 19 near the centre and 44 on the right. Up and down the compass, 24 are on the authority side, 33 near the middle and 27 on the liberty side.
How are these positions worked out?
Each person is placed on the 12 axes of the 12 Axes Political Test from their own speeches, writings, votes and record in office, with sources on every profile page. The compass shows two of those measures: economic views across, and the mean of the civil and society axes up and down. The placements describe stated positions, not character or success in office.
Where can I compare all US presidents?
The page Political Views of Every US President puts every one of them on one compass and lists them in order of office.
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