# Which U.S. president had the best life after leaving the White House?

> Leaving the job at fifty-something leaves a long time to fill. A few of them filled it better than they filled the office.

*By YPB Team · Published August 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/which-us-president-had-the-best-life-after-leaving-the-white-house*

---

## Current results (0 votes)

1. **Jimmy Carter**
   Spent four decades monitoring elections, building houses and chasing Guinea worm, and won a Nobel for it in 2002.
2. **Theodore Roosevelt**
   Shot a safari's worth of specimens in Africa, ran again in 1912 and then nearly died mapping an unknown Amazon river.
3. **John Quincy Adams**
   Went back to the House for seventeen years and argued the Amistad case before the Supreme Court.
4. **William Howard Taft**
   The only president to become Chief Justice, a job he wanted far more than the one before it.
5. **Herbert Hoover**
   Ran the postwar famine relief effort in Europe and two commissions that reorganised the federal government.
6. **Ulysses S. Grant**
   Toured the world to enormous crowds, went broke, and wrote a memoir on his deathbed that is still read.
7. **Bill Clinton**
   Built a foundation and a second career as a global fundraiser and disaster envoy.
8. **Thomas Jefferson**
   Founded the University of Virginia and designed its buildings in his seventies.
9. **James Madison**
   Retired to Montpelier, helped Jefferson build his university and edited his own convention notes for publication.
10. **George Washington**
   Went home to Mount Vernon and made the peaceful handover of power the country's founding habit.
11. **Barack Obama**
   Wrote a bestselling memoir, built a production company and stayed a fixture of public life.
12. **John Adams**
   Spent his last years writing an extraordinary correspondence with Jefferson, and died on the same Fourth of July.

Tags: historical-figures, usa, presidents