Culbert Olson was an atheist governor of California in the 1930s, but he made only veiled references to his disbelief publicly during his career. After he was retired, he came out of the closet.
Atheist: One who is skeptical about the existence of the supernatural.
Agnostic: One who believes we cannot know anything about the existence of the supernatural.
Krokodil is simply wrong.
This seems pretty complete:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/franklin_steiner/presidents.html#4.1
I’ll be damned (heh) if I’ll read the whole thing. No mention of atheist presidents, though. Washington, Lincoln and Grant seem to come closest.
Edward Tabash is an atheist who ran for the California state legislature in 2000 and came in second. And he wasn’t open about his atheism during the campaign. In a 2001 speech, he claimed:
And he also says that
And
I don’t know how great Tabash’s sources were, but I’d guess he wanted to find some role models. So I’m guessing that the answer to my question is going to be a pretty low office indeed – county council? small-town mayor? dog catcher? It may just be unanswerable.