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The Most Famous

POLITICIANS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Politicians. The pantheon dataset contains 15,577 Politicians, 1,478 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Politicians.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Politicians of all time. This list of famous American Politicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Politicians.

1. Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

With an HPI of 89.78, Thomas Jefferson is the most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 148 different languages on wikipedia.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Among the Committee of Five charged by the Second Continental Congress with authoring the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was the Declaration's primary author, writing it between June 11 and June 28, 1776 at a three-story residence at 700 Market Street in Philadelphia. Following the American Revolutionary War and prior to becoming the nation's third president in 1801, Jefferson was the first United States secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation's second vice president under John Adams. Among the nation's Founding Fathers, Jefferson is considered unmatched in his intellectual depth and breadth. His passionate writings and advocacy for human rights, including freedom of thought, speech, and religion, were a leading inspiration behind the American Revolution, which ultimately gave rise to the American Revolutionary War, American independence, and the United States Constitution. Globally, Jefferson's ideas were influential in shaping and inspiring the Age of Enlightenment, which proved transformational globally in the late 17th and 18th centuries. He was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, and produced formative documents and decisions at state, national, and international levels. During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia in the Second Continental Congress, which adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. As a Virginia legislator, he drafted a state law for religious freedom. He served as the second Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, during the Revolutionary War. In 1785, Jefferson was appointed the United States Minister to France, and subsequently, the nation's first secretary of state under President George Washington from 1790 to 1793. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. With Madison, he anonymously wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799, which sought to strengthen states' rights by nullifying the federal Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became friends as well as political rivals, serving in the Continental Congress and drafting the Declaration of Independence together. In the 1796 presidential election between the two, Jefferson came in second, which according to electoral procedure at the time, made him vice president to Adams. Jefferson challenged Adams again in 1800 and won the presidency. After his term in office, Jefferson eventually reconciled with Adams and they shared a correspondence that lasted fourteen years. As president, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. Starting in 1803, he promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase which doubled the nation's claimed land area. To make room for settlement, Jefferson began the process of Indian tribal removal from the newly acquired territory. As a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. He was re-elected in 1804, but his second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act in response to British threats to U.S. shipping. The same year, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Jefferson was a plantation owner, lawyer, and politician, and mastered many disciplines including surveying, mathematics, horticulture, and mechanics. He was also an architect in the Palladian tradition. Jefferson's keen interest in religion and philosophy led to his appointment as president of the American Philosophical Society. He largely shunned organized religion but was influenced by Christianity, Epicureanism, and deism. Jefferson rejected fundamental Christianity, denying Christ's divinity. A philologist, Jefferson knew several languages. He was a prolific letter writer and corresponded with many prominent people, including Edward Carrington, John Taylor of Caroline, and James Madison. In 1785, Jefferson authored Notes on the State of Virginia, considered perhaps the most important American book published before 1800. Jefferson championed the ideals, values, and teachings of the Enlightenment. Since the 1790s, Jefferson was rumored to have had children by his sister-in-law and slave Sally Hemings, known as the Jefferson-Hemings controversy. A 1998 DNA test concluded that one of Sally Hemings's children, Eston Hemings, was of the Jefferson male line. According to scholarly consensus, based on documentary and statistical evaluation, as well as oral history, Jefferson probably fathered at least six children with Hemings, including four that survived to adulthood.After retiring from public office, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. He and John Adams both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, which was also the 50th anniversary of U.S. independence. Presidential scholars and historians generally praise Jefferson's public achievements, including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in Virginia, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France without war or controversy, and his ambitious and successful Lewis and Clark Expedition. Some modern historians are critical of Jefferson's personal involvement with slavery. Jefferson is consistently ranked among the top ten presidents of American history.

2. Jimmy Carter (1924 - )

With an HPI of 87.46, Jimmy Carter is the 2nd most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 140 different languages.

James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American retired politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 and as a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967. Carter was born and raised in Plains, Georgia, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the U.S. Navy, serving in the submarine service. Afterward he returned home, where he revived his family's peanut-growing business. He then manifested his opposition to racial segregation, supported the growing civil rights movement, and became an activist within the Democratic Party. He served in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967 and was elected governor of Georgia in 1970. As a dark-horse candidate not well known outside of Georgia, Carter won the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination and narrowly defeated incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election. On his second day as president, Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. His administration established the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He also created a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. Carter successfully pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He also confronted stagflation. The end of his presidency was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island accident, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the invasion, he escalated the Cold War by ending détente, imposing a grain embargo against the Soviets, enunciating the Carter Doctrine, and leading the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott. In the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries, Carter defeated U.S. senator Ted Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic National Convention. He lost the general election in a landslide to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan. Carter left office in 1981 as the only American president to serve a full term in office without appointing a justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1982, he established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections and further the eradication of infectious diseases. He is a key figure in the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity and wrote numerous books, ranging from political memoirs to poetry, while continuing to comment on global affairs, including two books on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Polls of historians and political scientists generally rank Carter as a slightly below-average president, although his post-presidential activities are considered exceptional. Carter is both the longest-lived president and the one with the longest post-presidency. He is also the third-oldest living person to have served as a nation's leader.

3. Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

With an HPI of 85.22, Abraham Lincoln is the 3rd most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 191 different languages.

Abraham Lincoln ( LINK-ən; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the Union through the American Civil War to defend the nation as a constitutional union and succeeded in abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy. Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky and was raised on the frontier, primarily in Indiana. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. Congressman from Illinois. In 1849, he returned to his successful law practice in central Illinois. In 1854, he was angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the territories to slavery, and he re-entered politics. He soon became a leader of the new Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln ran for president in 1860, sweeping the North to gain victory. Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the nation. During this time, the newly formed Confederate States of America began seizing federal military bases in the south. Just over one month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, the Confederate States attacked Fort Sumter, a U.S. fort in South Carolina. Following the bombardment, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the union. Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties. His allies, the War Democrats and the Radical Republicans, demanded harsh treatment of the Southern Confederates. Anti-war Democrats (called "Copperheads") despised Lincoln, and irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements plotted his assassination. He managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people. His Gettysburg Address came to be seen as one of the greatest and most influential statements of American national purpose. Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the South's trade. He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere, and averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free. It also directed the Army and Navy to "recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons" and to receive them "into the armed service of the United States." Lincoln also pressured border states to outlaw slavery, and he promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which upon its ratification abolished slavery. Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign. He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation. On April 14, 1865, just five days after the war's end at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Mary, when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. Lincoln is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history.

4. Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)

With an HPI of 84.29, Ulysses S. Grant is the 4th most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 129 different languages.

Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant, HY-rəm yoo-LISS-eez; April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and thereafter briefly served as secretary of war. Later, as president, Grant was an effective civil rights executive who signed the bill that created the Justice Department and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction. Born and raised in Ohio, Grant possessed an exceptional ability with horses. Admitted to West Point, Grant graduated 21st in the class of 1843 and served with distinction in the Mexican–American War. In 1848, he married Julia Dent, and together they had four children. Grant resigned from the army in 1854 and returned to his family but lived in poverty. He joined the Union Army shortly after the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and rose to prominence after winning early Union victories in the western theater. In 1863, he led the Vicksburg campaign, which gained control of the Mississippi River, dealing a serious strategic blow to the Confederacy, splitting it in two. President Abraham Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general after his victory at Chattanooga. For thirteen months, Grant fought Robert E. Lee during the high-casualty Overland Campaign and at Petersburg. After Lee fled Petersburg, Grant surrounded and captured his army at Appomattox. On April 9, 1865, Lee formally surrendered to Grant. A week later, Lincoln was assassinated and was succeeded by Andrew Johnson, who promoted Grant to General of the Army in 1866. Later, Grant openly broke with Johnson over Reconstruction policies; Grant used the Reconstruction Acts, which had been passed over Johnson's veto, to enforce civil rights for recently freed African Americans. A war hero, drawn in by his sense of duty, Grant was unanimously nominated by the Republican Party and was elected president in 1868. As president, Grant stabilized the post-war national economy, supported Congressional Reconstruction and the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, and crushed the Ku Klux Klan. Under Grant, the Union was completely restored. He appointed African Americans and Jewish Americans to prominent federal offices. In 1871, Grant created the first Civil Service Commission, advancing the civil service more than any prior president. The Liberal Republicans and Democrats united behind Grant's opponent in the 1872 presidential election, but Grant was handily reelected. Grant's Native American policy was to assimilate Indians into White culture; the Great Sioux War was fought during his term. Grant's foreign policy was mostly peaceful, without war, the Alabama Claims against Great Britain skillfully resolved. However, his prized Caribbean Dominican Republic annexation was rejected by the Senate. The Grant administration was often remembered primarily for a number of scandals, including the Gold Ring and the Whiskey Ring, but modern scholarship has better appreciated Grant's appointed reformers and prosecutions. Grant appointed John Brooks Henderson and David Dyer, who prosecuted the Whiskey Ring; Benjamin Bristow and Edwards Pierrepont, who served as Grant's anti-corruption team; and Zachariah Chandler, who cleaned up corruption in the Interior. Grant's administration prosecuted Mormon polygamists in 1871, vice crimes such as pornography, and abortion from 1873 to 1877. The Panic of 1873 plunged the nation into a severe economic depression that allowed the Democrats to win the House majority. In the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election, Grant facilitated the approval by Congress of a peaceful compromise. With the tour he took in his retirement, Grant became the first president to circumnavigate the world, dining with Queen Victoria and meeting many other prominent foreign leaders. In 1880, Grant was unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican presidential nomination for a third term. In the final year of his life, facing severe financial reversals and dying of throat cancer, he wrote his memoirs, which proved to be a major critical and financial success. They were published in two volumes in 1885 and 1886 by Mark Twain, shortly after Grant's death. Grant biographer Ronald C. White Jr. called the book "one of the finest memoirs in American letters". At the time of his death, he was memorialized as a symbol of national unity. Grant was a modern general and "a skillful leader who had a natural grasp of tactics and strategy". Historical assessments and rankings of Grant were negative about and his presidency until around the end of the 20th century. Historically, Grant's critics take a negative view of his economic mismanagement, corruption within his cabinet as well as the subsequent political scandals, and his failed Dominican Republic annexation treaty. By contrast, his admirers emphasize Grant's concern for Native Americans and enforcement of civil and voting rights, as well as effectively wiping out the Ku Klux Klan during his lifetime.

5. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)

With an HPI of 83.98, Franklin D. Roosevelt is the 5th most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 164 different languages.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt ( DEL-ə-noh ROH-zə-velt, -⁠vəlt; January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he previously served as the 44th governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920, and a member of the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1913. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York to the Roosevelt family. He attended Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School, going on to practice law in New York City. In 1905, he married his fifth cousin, once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt. Together, the couple had six children. He won election to the New York State Senate in 1910 and then served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under president Woodrow Wilson during World War I. Roosevelt was James M. Cox's running mate on the Democratic Party's ticket in the 1920 United States presidential election, but Cox was defeated by Republican Warren G. Harding. In 1921, Roosevelt contracted a paralytic illness that permanently paralyzed his legs. In spite of his medical condition, he returned to public office by winning the 1928 New York gubernatorial election. He served as governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, promoting programs to combat the Great Depression besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent president Herbert Hoover in a landslide. During his first 100 days as president, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented federal legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the New Deal. He created numerous programs to provide relief to the unemployed and farmers while seeking economic recovery with the National Recovery Administration and other programs. He also instituted major regulatory reforms related to finance, communications, and labor, and presided over the end of Prohibition. The economy having improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, Roosevelt won a landslide reelection in 1936, but the economy relapsed into a deep recession in 1937 and 1938. After the 1936 election, Roosevelt sought passage of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937. The conservative coalition formed in 1937 to prevent passage of the bill and block the implementation of further New Deal programs and reforms. Major surviving programs and legislation implemented under Roosevelt include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Social Security. He ran successfully for reelection in 1940, becoming the only American president to serve for more than two terms. With World War II looming after 1938 in addition to the Japanese invasion of China and the aggression of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China as well as the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union while the United States remained officially neutral. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he obtained a declaration of war on Japan the next day, and a few days later, on Germany and Italy. He worked closely with other national leaders in leading the Allies against the Axis powers. Roosevelt supervised the mobilization of the American economy to support the war effort and implemented a Europe first strategy, making the defeat of Germany a priority over that of Japan. He also initiated the development of the world's first atomic bomb and worked with the other Allied leaders to lay the groundwork for the United Nations and other post-war institutions. He won reelection in 1944 but with his physical health seriously and steadily declining during the war years, he died in 1945. Since his death, several of Roosevelt's actions have come under substantial criticism, such as the Mexican Repatriation and the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps, while his policies during the Great Depression have received more of a mixed response. Nevertheless, as a result of his leadership during the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt is consistently ranked by scholars, political scientists, and historians as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

6. Martin Van Buren (1782 - 1862)

With an HPI of 83.59, Martin Van Buren is the 6th most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 128 different languages.

Martin Van Buren ( van BYURE-ən; Dutch: Maarten van Buren; Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmaːrtə(n) vɑn ˈbyːrə(n)] ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he served as New York's attorney general, U.S. senator, then briefly as the ninth governor of New York before joining Andrew Jackson's administration as the tenth United States secretary of state, minister to the United Kingdom, and ultimately the eighth vice president when named Jackson's running mate for the 1832 election. Van Buren won the presidency in 1836, lost re-election in 1840, and failed to win the Democratic nomination in 1844. Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an elder statesman and an important anti-slavery leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the 1848 presidential election. Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York, where most residents were of Dutch descent and spoke Dutch as their primary language. He was the first president to have been born after the American Revolution — in which his father served as a patriot — and is the only president to have spoken English as a second language. Trained as a lawyer, he entered politics as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, won a seat in the New York State Senate, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1821. As the leader of the Bucktails faction, Van Buren emerged as the most influential politician from New York in the 1820s and established a political machine known as the Albany Regency. Following the 1824 presidential election, Van Buren sought to re-establish a two-party system with partisan differences based on ideology rather than personalities or sectional differences; he supported Andrew Jackson's candidacy in the 1828 presidential election with this goal in mind. He ran successfully for governor of New York to support Jackson's campaign but resigned shortly after Jackson was inaugurated so he could accept appointment as Jackson's secretary of state. In the cabinet, Van Buren was a key Jackson advisor and built the organizational structure for the coalescing Democratic Party. He ultimately resigned to help resolve the Petticoat affair and briefly served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. At Jackson's behest, the 1832 Democratic National Convention nominated Van Buren for vice president, and he took office after the Democratic ticket won the 1832 presidential election. With Jackson's strong support and the organizational strength of the Democratic Party, Van Buren successfully ran for president in the 1836 presidential election, defeating several Whig opponents. However, his popularity soon eroded because of his response to the Panic of 1837, which centered on his Independent Treasury system, a plan under which the federal government of the United States would store its funds in vaults rather than in banks; more conservative Democrats and Whigs in Congress ultimately delayed his plan from being implemented until 1840. His presidency was further marred by the costly Second Seminole War (a result of continuing Jackson's Indian removal policy); and his refusal to admit Texas to the Union as a slave state as an attempt to avoid heightened sectional tensions. In 1840, Van Buren lost his re-election bid to William Henry Harrison, the nominee of the anti-Jacksonian Whig Party. Van Buren was initially the leading candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination again in 1844, but his continued opposition to the annexation of Texas angered Southern Democrats, leading to the nomination of James K. Polk. Van Buren was the newly formed Free Soil Party's presidential nominee in 1848, and his candidacy helped Whig nominee Zachary Taylor defeat Democrat Lewis Cass. Van Buren returned to the Democratic Party after 1848, but grew increasingly opposed to slavery, and became one of the party's outspoken abolitionists. He supported the policies of President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, during the American Civil War. He died of asthma at his home in Kinderhook, New York, on Thursday, July 24, 1862, aged 79. While Van Buren is praised for anti-slavery stances, in historical rankings, historians and political scientists often rank Van Buren as an average or below-average U.S. president, due to his handling of the Panic of 1837.

7. Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

With an HPI of 83.56, Benjamin Franklin is the 7th most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 125 different languages.

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, forger and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the first United States Postmaster General.As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his studies of electricity, and for charting and naming the Gulf Stream current. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among others. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, and as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." Franklin has been called "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper that was known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown.He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected president in 1769. Franklin became a national hero in America as an agent for several colonies when he spearheaded an effort in London to have the Parliament of Great Britain repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco–American relations. His efforts proved vital for the American Revolution in securing French aid. He was promoted to deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies on August 10, 1753, having been Philadelphia postmaster for many years, and this enabled him to set up the first national communications network. He was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, as well as national and international affairs. From 1785 to 1788, he served as governor of Pennsylvania. He initially owned and dealt in slaves but, by the late 1750s, he began arguing against slavery, became an abolitionist, and promoted education and the integration of African Americans into U.S. society. His life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honored more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill, warships, and the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, and corporations, as well as numerous cultural references and with a portrait in the Oval Office. Over his lifetime, Franklin wrote or received more than 30,000 letters and other documents, which since the 1950s have been collected in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, published by both the American Philosophical Society, and Yale University.

8. John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

With an HPI of 83.22, John F. Kennedy is the 8th most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 160 different languages.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election and the youngest president at the end of his tenure. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to his presidency. Born into the prominent Kennedy family in Brookline, Massachusetts, Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940 before joining the U.S. Naval Reserve the following year. During World War II, he commanded a series of PT boats in the Pacific theater. Kennedy's survival following the sinking of PT-109 and his rescue of his fellow sailors made him a war hero and earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, but left him with serious injuries. After a brief stint in journalism, Kennedy represented a working-class Boston district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953. He was subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate and served as the junior senator for Massachusetts from 1953 to 1960. While in the Senate, Kennedy published his book, Profiles in Courage, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Kennedy ran in the 1960 presidential election. His campaign gained momentum after the first televised presidential debates in American history, and he was elected president, narrowly defeating Republican opponent Richard Nixon, who was the incumbent vice president. He was the first Catholic elected president. Kennedy's administration included high tensions with communist states in the Cold War. He increased the number of American military advisors in South Vietnam. He authorized numerous operations to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro, including the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961. The following October, U.S. spy planes discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba; the resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly resulted in the breakout of a global thermonuclear conflict. He also signed the first nuclear weapons treaty in October 1963. Kennedy presided over the establishment of the Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress with Latin America, and the continuation of the Apollo program with the goal of landing a man on the Moon. He also supported the civil rights movement but was only somewhat successful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. His vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, assumed the presidency upon Kennedy's death. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested for the assassination, but he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later. The FBI and the Warren Commission both concluded Oswald had acted alone, but conspiracy theories about the assassination exist. After Kennedy's death, Congress enacted many of his proposals, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Revenue Act of 1964. Kennedy ranks highly in polls of U.S. presidents with historians and the general public. His personal life has also been the focus of considerable sustained interest following public revelations in the 1970s of his chronic health ailments and extramarital affairs. Kennedy is the most recent U.S. president to have died in office.

9. James K. Polk (1795 - 1849)

With an HPI of 83.04, James K. Polk is the 9th most famous American Politician. His biography has been translated into 124 different languages.

James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and ninth governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). A protégé of Andrew Jackson, he was a member of the Democratic Party and an advocate of Jacksonian democracy. Polk is chiefly known for extending the territory of the United States through the Mexican–American War; during his presidency, the United States expanded significantly with the annexation of the Republic of Texas, the Oregon Territory, and the Mexican Cession following American victory in the Mexican–American War. After building a successful law practice in Tennessee, Polk was elected to its state legislature in 1823 and then to the United States House of Representatives in 1825, becoming a strong supporter of Andrew Jackson. After serving as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he became Speaker of the House in 1835, the only person to have served both as Speaker and U.S. president. Polk left Congress to run for governor of Tennessee, winning in 1839 but losing in 1841 and 1843. He was a dark horse candidate in the 1844 presidential election as the Democratic Party nominee; he entered his party's convention as a potential nominee for vice president but emerged as a compromise to head the ticket when no presidential candidate could secure the necessary two-thirds majority. In the general election, Polk defeated Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party. After a negotiation fraught with the risk of war, he reached a settlement with Great Britain over the disputed Oregon Country, the territory, for the most part, being divided along the 49th parallel. Polk achieved victory in the Mexican–American War, which resulted in Mexico's cession of the entire American Southwest. He secured a substantial reduction of tariff rates with the Walker tariff of 1846. The same year, he achieved his other major goal, re-establishment of the Independent Treasury system. True to his campaign pledge to serve only one term, Polk left office in 1849 and returned to Tennessee, where he died three months after leaving the White House. Though he is relatively obscure today, scholars have ranked Polk favorably for his ability to promote and achieve the major items on his presidential agenda in his single term. He has also been criticized for leading the country into a war with Mexico that exacerbated sectional divides. A property owner who used slave labor, he kept a plantation in Mississippi and increased his slave ownership during his presidency. Polk's policy of territorial expansion saw the nation reach the Pacific coast and reach almost all its contiguous borders. He made the United States a nation poised to become a world power, but with divisions between free and slave states gravely exacerbated, setting the stage for the Civil War.

10. Hillary Clinton (1947 - )

With an HPI of 82.95, Hillary Clinton is the 10th most famous American Politician. Her biography has been translated into 134 different languages.

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 67th United States secretary of state under president Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the first lady of the United States as the wife of President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election, becoming the first woman to win a presidential nomination by a major U.S. political party; Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College vote, thereby losing the election to Donald Trump. Raised in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Rodham graduated from Wellesley College in 1969 and earned a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1973. After serving as a congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas and married future president Bill Clinton in 1975; the two had met at Yale. In 1977, Clinton co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She was appointed the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978 and became the first female partner at Little Rock's Rose Law Firm the following year. The National Law Journal twice listed her as one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America. Clinton was the first lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992. As the first lady of the United States, Clinton advocated for healthcare reform. In 1994, her major initiative—the Clinton health care plan—failed to gain approval from Congress. In 1997 and 1999, Clinton played a leading role in advocating the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act. Clinton advocated for gender equality at the 1995 UN conference on women. Her marital relationship came under public scrutiny during the Lewinsky scandal, which led her to issue a statement that reaffirmed her commitment to the marriage. In 2000, Clinton was elected as the first female senator from New York and became the first First lady to simultaneously hold elected office, and then the first former First lady to serve in the Senate. She was re-elected in 2006 and chaired the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee from 2003 to 2007. During her Senate tenure, Clinton advocated for medical benefits for September 11 first responders. She supported the resolution authorizing the Iraq War in 2002, but opposed the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. In 2008, Clinton ran for president but was defeated by eventual winner Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. Clinton was U.S. Secretary of State in the first term of the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013. During her tenure, Clinton established the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. She responded to the Arab Spring by advocating military intervention in Libya but was harshly criticized by Republicans for the failure to prevent or adequately respond to the 2012 Benghazi attack. Clinton helped to organize a diplomatic isolation and a regime of international sanctions against Iran in an effort to force it to curtail its nuclear program; this effort eventually led to the multinational JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2015. Her use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State was the subject of intense scrutiny; while no charges were filed against Clinton, the email controversy was the single most covered topic during the 2016 presidential election. Clinton made a second presidential run in 2016, winning the Democratic nomination, and ran in the general election with Virginia senator Tim Kaine as her running mate. Clinton lost the presidential election to Republican opponent Donald Trump in the Electoral College, despite winning the popular vote by close to 3 million votes. Following her loss, she wrote her third memoir, What Happened, and launched Onward Together, a political action organization dedicated to fundraising for progressive political groups. Since February 2023, she has served on the faculty of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

People

Pantheon has 1,478 people classified as politicians born between 1639 and 2021. Of these 1,478, 753 (50.95%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living politicians include Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump. The most famous deceased politicians include Thomas Jefferson, Jimmy Carter, and Abraham Lincoln. As of April 2022, 272 new politicians have been added to Pantheon including Chief Seattle, Antony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin.