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Coins and presidents

2005-03-28T18:21:00.000-05:00

How many different U.S. coins have portraits of presidents on them, and who chooses the presidents?

Even though millions of Americans come in daily contact with pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, I suspect that very few of us could list the presidents we routinely "handle."

I'll answer your question in short order, but first some little-known background: Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress "to coin money." The first federal building constructed under the new Constitution was the U.S. Mint, in Philadelphia, which in the 1790s served as the nation's capital. It is said that President George Washington, who lived just a few blocks from the mint, personally donated some of the silver for the new republic's first coins.[1] That's better than providing a portrait!

Since the 1790s, the U.S. Treasury Department has been responsible for minting coins. I am told that no president's portrait appeared on a coin until the Lincoln penny came out in 1909 to commemorate the centennial of the 16th president's birth. (From the 1790s to the 1890s, however, presidential portraits appeared routinely on peace medals that were given to the Indians.) Traditionally Congress has gotten to choose which presidents are on which coins. Presidents are on at least a half-dozen coins in circulation today. They make up the lion's share -- but not all -- of portraits on circulating coins.

OBVERSE PORTRAITS

As the old saying goes, there are two sides to every coin. The portrait is on the front or obverse side, everything else on the reverse side. Following are the presidential portraits on the obverse side of currently circulating U.S. coins:

- penny: Abraham Lincoln, looking right;

- old nickel (before March 2005): Thomas Jefferson, looking left;

- new nickel (after March 2005): Thomas Jefferson, looking right;

- dime: Franklin Roosevelt, looking left;

- quarter: George Washington, looking left;

- half dollar: John F. Kennedy, looking left.

In addition to the circulating coins, listed above, you may encounter commemorative coins that are also minted by the U.S. Treasury Department:

- bicentennial dollar: Dwight Eisenhower, looking left (1976);

- half dollar: George Washington 250th commemorative coin (1982);

- dollar: Eisenhower centennial silver dollar (1990);

- dollar: Thomas Jefferson 250th silver dollar (1993);

- five-dollar coin: Franklin Roosevelt gold commemorative coin (1997);

- there were also commemorative coins of George Washington and Dolley Madison minted in 1999;[2] she is, I believe, the only first lady whose portrait is on a coin.

LEFT- VERSUS RIGHT-FACING

On circulating coins until recently, all the portraits but Lincoln's looked left. (Now Jefferson has joined Lincoln in looking right.) Why was Lincoln virtually alone in looking right? The answer has nothing to do with politics. The portrait of our 16th president was based on a plaque by Victor David Brenner done at the beginning of the 20th century. So taken was President Theodore Roosevelt with Brenner's Lincoln that he asked his Treasury secretary to use the design on a coin that was to be put into circulation in 1909, in celebration of the birth of Lincoln 100 years earlier.[3]

MORE COINS, MORE PRESIDENTS?

Collectors may get a new burst of coins to collect. Congress is currently considering minting dollar coins to commemorate all our past presidents. This follows the Mint's wildly successful state quarter program, which has generated $5 billion in revenue and turned some 140 million Americans into coin collectors. The coins would be minted at a rate of four presidents per year, starting with George Washington. Only sitting presidents would be excluded.[4]

THE STORIES BEHIND THE PORTRAITS

There is a story about the presidential portraits on each of our coins. Following is from the Website of the U.S. Mint:

The presidents that appear on the obverse (front) side of our circulating coins were all selected by Congress in recognition of their service to our country. However, they were chosen under slightly different circumstances.

Designed by Victor Brenner, the Lincoln cent was issued in 1909 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Felix Schlag's portrait of Thomas Jefferson, which began to appear on the obverse side of the nickel in 1938, was chosen in a design competition among some 390 artists.

The death of Franklin Roosevelt prompted many requests to the Treasury Department to honor the late president by placing his portrait on a coin. Less than one year after his death, the dime bearing John R. Sinnock's portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt was released to the public on FDR's birthday, January 30, 1946.

The portrait of George Washington by John Flanagan, which appears on quarters minted from 1932 to today, was selected to commemorate the 200th anniversary of our first president's birth.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy generated such an outpouring of public sentiment that President Lyndon Johnson sent legislation to Congress to authorize the Treasury Department's new 50-cent pieces. Bearing the portrait designed by Gilroy Roberts, the first Kennedy half-dollars were minted on February 11, 1964.[5]

(Question from Lupe M. of Fresno, CA)
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[1] See the U.S. Mint Website at http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/mint_history/

[2] http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/CoinLibrary/index.cfm

[3] http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?action=fun_facts4

[4] Jennifer Brooks, "Presidents May Replace Sacagawea on Some $1 Coins," Lansing State Journal, April 27, 2005, p. 1A.

[5] http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?action=fun_facts3

Franklin Roosevelt as a leader

2005-03-21T17:59:00.000-05:00

Your two-part question goes to the heart of our mission at the Hauenstein Center. Using the presidents as case studies in leadership, we inquire into what makes some chief executives more effective than others in office, and what makes some greater than others to posterity.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt provides rich case studies in executive leadership and presidential rankings. He was a complex, controversial leader; but whatever combination of DNA and experience made him, he was extremely effective while in office, especially during his first and third terms, and posterity has persistently seen him as one of the most powerful leaders in U.S. history.

EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Love him or loathe him, most people admit that FDR was an effective leader. Numerous writers have tried to dissect the qualities that made Roosevelt able to attract followers. Better than most, Stanford historian David Kennedy has tagged several characteristics: the 32nd president, he notes, was a quick study; he could connect with people; he was self confident; he was committed to public service; he developed a strong character; he had a clear vision of the nation and its role in the world; he had the political skills to get his vision off the drawing board; and -- he had luck.[1] Let's examine these various elements.

1. FDR was a quick study. He possessed an insatiable curiosity, a boundless appetite for knowledge that combined with his capacity to absorb a striking range of facts through conversation. Talking was his preferred mode of learning -- there were not many books he had the patience to read from cover to cover -- and he supposedly could talk at length about anything.

2. FDR possessed the charisma to connect with large numbers of the American people. A good looking man, in his prime he stood 6 feet, 2 inches tall, and weighed 190 pounds. His stentorian voice made him one of the powerful orators of the twentieth century. It especially helped that he could project his voice, along with a sunny disposition, by means of that newfangled technology, the radio, to millions of people.

After Roosevelt had been in office a week, he delivered his first fireside chat, on March 12, 1933, to announce that the nation's banks would reopen. The president's performance was stellar -- in David Kennedy's words, cultivated yet familiar, commanding yet avuncular, masterful yet intimate. And the response was unprecedented: almost a half million letters poured into the White House over the ensuing week, written by Americans expressing appreciation for the president's reassurance. (For comparison, consider this: during the Hoover administration, the White House mailroom was staffed by one person; after FDR's first week in office, some 70 individuals were needed to staff the mailroom.) It might be said that FDR, like his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, founded the charismatic presidency. In an age of mass democracy, both leaders self consciously harnessed the power of their personality as an instrument of government.

3. FDR possessed vaulting self confidence. Indeed, he possessed such a high degree of self confidence that his utterly untroubled conception of the presidency conformed to the image he cultivated of himself in it. FDR's confidence would enable the president to disagree with advisors when confronting major decisions; his early support of Britain at the beginning of World War II confounded most of them.

4. FDR possessed noblesse oblige, a sense of patrician duty or responsibility toward others. His sense of service was ingrained by his parents, by his extended family (including TR), and by his headmaster and teachers at Groton. He apparently never contemplated any other career than that of public servant. Uncannily like cousin Theodore, FDR rose through the ranks from New York state senator, to assistant secretary of the Navy, to vice presidential candidate, to New York governor, and finally to the presidency. Virtually all his life was spent in public service.

5. FDR possessed a strong character. Look at the way he dealt with the polio he contracted at 39 years of age, and the resulting paralysis that made him handicapped. All those who knew him agreed: he faced the malady with courage, tenacity, and hopefulness. These same character traits would be communicated when, as commander in chief, he sought to encourage a nation struggling against the Great Depression and then against the Axis powers in the Second World War. As David Kennedy puts it, FDR's "polio proved to be a political and even a national asset."

6. FDR possessed a clear vision of America and her role on the world-historical stage. David Kennedy believes the 32nd president "made a shrewd appraisal of the vectors of development that had brought him and his countrymen to their own moment in time -- a rendezvous with destiny, he once called it; and he made a no less shrewd appraisal of what possibilities for change the great engines of history might now be compelled to yield up, if they were skillfully managed."

Take FDR's handling of the Great Depression. To him the Depression was not just another cyclical downturn, but a long-brewing crisis whose dislocations could wreak permanent economic, political, and social havoc if not managed smartly. Capitalism had been largely unregulated for more than a century. It had produced unprecedented wealth for unprecedented numbers of people but it had also been unstable and unsettling for millions of other people. During rough times, the temptation was to abandon free markets for statist isms. In the pressure cooker of the Great Depression, FDR wanted to steer a middle course between unregulated capitalism and socialism. The crisis-management plan he enacted came to be known as the New Deal, which represented new policies and attitudinal changes about the role of the federal government in American life.

Think of what the New Deal meant in U.S. history: Up to the Great Depression, the storyline of American history had been about freedom. During the 1930s, the storyline changed to security. Through such legislation as the National Industrial Recovery Act, National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), Fair Labor Standards Act, Securities Act, and Social Security Act -- an alphabet soup of programs, as detractors put it -- FDR tried to wrestle industrial capitalism to the ground. His aim was to expand security in American culture and reduce insecurity in modern life. The Depression showed that not enough people felt secure in their homes, secure at their jobs, secure in the marketplace, secure through the life cycle. So in his idiosyncratic, ad hoc way, Roosevelt "tested the Left-most limits of American culture" (David Kennedy's words) to bring about a revolution in security. According to some historians, it is not too much to say that FDR should be credited with saving industrial capitalism in the U.S., for his programs coopted and pre-empted more radical calls for a thoroughgoing revolution. The head of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas, was once asked if FDR had not carried out socialism's aims in the U.S. Thomas answered, "Yes, he has -- on a stretcher."

Roosevelt's vision also led to boldness in the conduct of foreign affairs. Already in the 1920s and '30s, FDR was committed to transform the American people from isolationists to global citizens. He believed it would be fatal for the U.S. to do nothing in the face of militant Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. Long before Pearl Harbor he stubbornly persisted in wanting to help the British resist the Nazis, over the opposition of a majority of the American people as well as senior advisors like his Army chief of staff, George C. Marshall, and his ambassador to the U.K., Joseph Kennedy.

7. FDR possessed the political skills to get his vision communicated and his programs enacted. By the time he became president, he knew how to get things done. He understood the art of consensus building in Washington and the importance of mass communication to the nation.

8. As for reputation, FDR enjoyed an element of luck. He was in the White House during 12 event-packed years that saw huge developments unfold on the world-historical stage. Having to deal with the greatest economic depression of all time in the 1930s, and the worst totalitarian threat the U.S. ever faced in the 1940s, allowed Roosevelt to take center stage and make the best use of his talents. In photographs he cut a strong figure alongside Britain's great leader, Winston Churchill, and the Soviet Union's powerful dictator, Joseph Stalin.

Indeed, historian Robert Dallek notes that FDR's reputation was saved by World War II. The New Deal stalled out by the late 1930s, and if Roosevelt had been a two-term president, posterity probably would have ranked him in the middle of the pack, near, say, Lyndon Johnson. But the outbreak of war gave FDR a new focus that he handled masterfully. His handling of the war encouraged historians to look more favorably on his handling of domestic crises as well, so he tended to get higher marks all around. Such is the curious way luck works.

It is ironic that presidential rankings work like this, but the presidents who live in the darkest times usually get the greatest spotlight, and thus the highest rankings: Washington during the first unstable years of the republic, Lincoln during the Civil War, FDR during the Great Depression and World War II. Fewer historians and readers are drawn to presidents who kept crisis at bay -- James Monroe, Chester Arthur, Calvin Coolidge. For this reason, historian H. W. Brands jests that presidential historians are the "ambulance chasers" of the profession.

FDR'S FAULTS

Now, Franklin Roosevelt had his faults -- he was no marble statue. His self confidence could slide into hubris, as when he tried in 1937 to pack the U.S. Supreme Court; his overreaching in effect stopped the New Deal dead in its tracks. Likewise, he sought to stay in office -- successfully, we should add, since he was elected a record four times -- long after he should have retired from public life due to failing health. Also, argument has raged over Roosevelt's economic IQ; more than a few economists and historians have questioned whether his policies actually made the Depression worse.[2] Further, FDR was the consummate "party man"; no one questions his patriotism, but there is merit to the charge that his agenda was less about doing what was best for the nation and more about undercutting Republicans and making the Democratic Party the permanent governing majority.

On a personal level also, FDR could be duplicitous, as when he lied to Eleanor about the status of his love affair with Lucy Mercer, which supposedly had ended in 1918; recall that it was Lucy Mercer who was at FDR's side when he passed away on April 12, 1945.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Ultimately most presidents are measured by their achievements. Admirers believe that Franklin Roosevelt resolved the historic tension between two major strains in the Founders' thought -- between the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians -- between those who wanted a strong central government, and those who sought to champion the common man. To his admirers, FDR combined the best qualities of both sides of this very American argument -- he embraced "Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends."[3]

David Kennedy observes that FDR had three significant achievements to his credit. First, he successfully steered the nation through the Great Depression by fighting for lasting reforms that kept revolutionary change at bay. Second, he led a reluctant nation through the most devastating war in human history by actions that would minimize the war's negative effects on the U.S., yet maximize our nation's international leadership; let us recall that the United States was the only nation in the world to come through World War II with a higher standard of living than when we entered the conflict.

This combination -- of bringing about lasting reforms during the Depression, of minimizing the war's negative impact while maximizing the nation's international leadership -- contributed to the third great achievement: more than a half century of relative peace and prosperity. FDR's vision, policies, and style did much to make possible the American Century. As wrong-headed as he could be in his day, as controversial as he remains to this day, FDR's presidency nevertheless brought about structural changes that contributed to the U.S. remaining the most prosperous nation in world history, and avoiding a cataclysmic war with its archrival in the nuclear era. All in all, not a bad contribution. It is telling that his vision and policies, his style and manner of being president, would influence subsequent presidents in both parties (not least of whom was Republican Ronald Reagan). That's why Franklin Roosevelt is widely regarded as one of America's greatest presidents.

(Question from Douglas M. of Atlanta, GA)

[1] From start to finish this answer draws heavily from a lecture by Stanford historian David Kennedy, "The Life of FDR and the Meaning of History," given at the National Conference for History Education, held in Los Angeles, October 16, 2003.

[2] See, for example, Jim Powell, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (New York: Random House/Crown Forum, 2003).

[3] James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, George Washington (New York: Henry Holt/Times Books, 2004), pp. 89-90.

LBJ and the Texas Hill Country

2005-03-15T16:51:00.002-05:00

Question: One of Lyndon Johnson's biographers, Robert Caro, claims that it is impossible to understand LBJ's character without knowing the Texas Hill Country. What exactly is the Texas Hill Country?
From: Vera N. of Los Angeles, CA
Date: March 15, 2005

Gleaves answers: Many Texans believe that the Hill Country is the best part of the Lone Star State. Certainly it is "deep in the heart of Texas." It has a distinctly western feel, a hardscrabble land of scattered cedar, pecan, and oak trees. Geologists call the region the Edwards Plateau, whose raised limestone strata have been incised with canyons and crisscrossed by caves carved by millions of years of erosion. The Hill Country offers scenic entrance points, for it is set off by an escarpment that rises from the plains north of San Antonio and west of Austin. Indeed, if you fly in a westerly direction over central Texas, you can observe the abrupt change in land use from a quiltwork of cropland on the coastal plain to dark green forests alternating with open pasture in the Hill Country. Every April the land bursts into bloom with Indian paint brush, bluebonnets, and other wildflowers.

The Hill Country has not just a vivid natural history, but a fascinating human history. In the mid-19th century, once the Comanche and other Indian tribes were removed from the Hill Country, a variety of ethnic groups of European origin settled there: mostly people whose ancestry was English, Scotish, Irish, German, and Czech. They mixed with people whose ancestry was Mexican (Texas had been a state of Mexico until 1836), and African. During the Civil War, a large number of Hill Country Germans opposed Texas's entry into the Confederate States of America and fought battles on Texas soil on behalf of the Union.

In this independently spirited place, Lyndon Johnson was born on August 27, 1908. His father, a Texas legislator, and his mother, a college-educated teacher, lived in the heart of the Hill Country, near the hamlet of Stonewall, Texas, about an hour west of Austin by car. His ancestors had pioneered the land, and as a child growing up he heard about the hardscrabble existence that they eked from its stoney soils. He also learned of how his ancestors had driven cattle on the Chisholm Trail, which runs past the Hill Country. He knew rural poverty first hand growing up, and worked his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos, at the edge of the Hill Country; his compassion for others in economic distress sharpened when he taught students of Mexican descent in the little town of Cotulla, not far from the Hill Country.

So the Hill Country is the land that formed the man who would grow up as our nation's last pioneer president. During boyhood he would have learned much about the American experience in a land that was part Southern, part Western, and formerly Spanish and Mexican. He would have been steeped in its fiercely independent way of life. He would have heard the colorful lore of the cowboy way. And he would have known rural isolation and poverty.

After 15 years on Capitol Hill, first as a representative then as a senator, Johnson bought what was called "the old Martin place" on March 5, 1951. The 246-acre spread was near his birthplace and from 1963-1969 would serve as the Texas White House. There was some political calculation in the purchase. As civil rights heated up, LBJ wanted to downplay his Southern roots and emphasize his Western sensibilities.[1] But there can be no mistaking that he loved the Hill Country. Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson called their ranch "our heart's home." It was a sacred refuge.

The 36th president explained what the land meant to him:

"I guess every person feels a part of the place where he was born. He wants to go back to the surroundings that he knew as a child. This is my country, the Hill Country of Texas. And through the years, when time would permit, here is where I would always return, to the Pedernales River, the scenes of my childhood. There's something different about this country from any other part of the nation. The climate is generally pleasant. The sun is generally bright. The air seems to be always clean. And the water is pure. The moons are a little fuller here. The stars are a little brighter. And I don't know how to describe the feeling other than I guess we all search at times for serenity, and it's serene here. And there's something about this section that brings new life, and new hope, and really a balanced and better viewpoint after you've been here a few days."[2]

Since you mention Robert Caro, it should be said that he is convinced the Texas Hill Country had an unusually strong influence on Lyndon Johnson the man and politician. He observes that LBJ "came out of the Hill Country formed, shaped -- into a shape so hard it would never change."[3] When Caro writes in his magisterial multi-volume biography of LBJ that knowledge of the Hill Country is crucial to understanding the 36th president, he backs the assertion up. He and his wife Ina are from New York City, but they spend many months at a time in Austin doing research at the Johnson Library, and walking the land that Johnson knew, loved, and identified with as a Texan.
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[1]Hal K. Rothman, LBJ's Texas White House (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), pp. 52-63.

[2]My appreciation to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, and to the National Park Service, Stonewall and Johnson City, Texas, for providing the audio file of LBJ's oral interview.

[3]Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol. 1, The Path to Power (New York: Knopf, 1982), p. 201.

Hot dog!

2005-03-04T15:13:00.000-05:00

Question: Is it true that Queen Elizabeth was once served hot dogs at the White House?
From: Lisa D. of Spring Lake, MI
Date: March 3, 2005

Gleaves Answers: Feeding the Queen hot dogs isn't exactly our idea of the royal treatment, is it? Nevertheless, it is true that during a 1939 royal visit, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt fed King George VI and Queen Elizabeth hot dogs. (The Queen Elizabeth referenced in 1939 was the mother of the current Queen Elizabeth.)

The 1939 six-day visit was historic -- it was the first time a reigning British monarch had ever set foot in the United States. After spending two days in Washington, DC, enjoying the formalities of a typical state visit -- enthusiastic crowds, entertainment, and receptions at the British embassy and the White House -- the royal couple accompanied the Roosevelts to their home in Hyde Park, New York, for a casual evening and a picnic the following afternoon. It was at this picnic, on the porch of the "Top Cottage" hilltop retreat on the Roosevelt estate, that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth dined from a menu that included Virginia ham, smoked turkey, cranberry jelly, green salad, and -- yes -- hot dogs.

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For an account of the entire visit, and for excellent links to related documents, visit the FDR Library and Museum's, "The Royal Visit: June 7-12th, 1939."

How many Johnsons?

2005-02-10T09:57:00.000-05:00

Question: My son-in-law and I are having a friendly argument and have a dinner at Olive Garden and $20 riding on this. He says that the only president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson. He claims that Andrew Johnson was president after Grant. I say that there never was a president named Andrew Johnson. There was a president named Andrew Jackson and a president named Lyndon B. Johnson. Please help straighten this out!! Thank you.
From: Susan G. of Lake Charles, LA
Date: February 10, 2005

Gleaves answers: As in so many arguments, you win on some points, and lose on others.

First: There was a president named Andrew Johnson; he was the 17th president of the United States.

Second: He became president upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, served in the White House from 1865-1869, and was succeeded by U.S. Grant.

Third: Andrew Johnson was one of two U.S. presidents who were impeached. Bill Clinton was the other. (Both were acquitted in the Senate trial.)

Looks like your son-in-law should still buy you dinner at the Olive Garden -- after you've paid him $20!

Missouri and presidents

2005-02-09T13:41:00.000-05:00

Question: Which presidents had ties to the state of Missouri?
From: Victoria M. of St. Louis, MO
Date: February 9, 2005

Gleaves answers: Any proud Missourian could probably think of more than a half dozen presidents with ties to the Show-Me state.[1] You would have to start with Thomas Jefferson. The third president made the Louisiana Purchase possible in 1803, and Missouri would be carved out of Louisiana within two decades. The very name of the state capital, Jefferson City ("Jeff City," as locals call it), is a tribute to the third president. So is the stunning Gateway Arch, located in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Indeed, Missouri has the most significant memorials to Thomas Jefferson outside of Virginia, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

You should also look to our fifth president, James Monroe, since it was during his administration that Missouri's admittance into the Union was fiercely debated; it eventually became a state in 1820, under the terms of the Missouri Compromise.

Our 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant, no doubt had fond memories of a Missouri connection. He married his wife, Julia Boggs Dent, at her home in St. Louis. (Thanks to Web visiter Jack Sauer for this information.)

Democrats held their national conventions in Missouri five times -- on four occasions in St. Louis and once in Kansas City. It proved not to be a fortuitous place for four of the Democratic nominees, as they would go on to lose the following November. Incumbent Grover Cleveland was one of the losers, in 1888. Only once did a Missouri convention launch a successful Democratic candidate, and that was incumbent Woodrow Wilson, in St. Louis, in 1916.

Republicans held their national conventions in Missouri three times, with somewhat more success. In 1896 the Republican National Convention in St. Louis launched William McKinley on his successful bid for the White House. In 1928, the convention in Kansas City sent Herbert Hoover off on his successful race for the White House. However, in 1976, in a particularly dramatic convention (by modern-day standards) that pitted incumbent Gerald R. Ford against Ronald Reagan, Ford came away the wounded victor; he narrowly lost to Jimmy Carter the following November.

That's eight presidents with some tie to the Show-Me state.

Oh -- did I forget to mention Harry S. Truman?
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[1]By the way, the sobriquet "Show-Me state" has political if not exactly presidential origins. The archivist's office in Jefferson City points out that its origins can be found during William McKinley administration, right after Theodore Roosevelt's tenure as assistant secretary of the Navy:
"The slogan is not official, but is common throughout the state and is used on Missouri license plates. The most widely known legend attributes the phrase to Missouri's U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1903. While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, 'I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.' Regardless of whether Vandiver coined the phrase, it is certain that his speech helped to popularize the saying." [Source: http://sos.mo.gov/archives/history/slogan.asp]

Party with the most losses

2005-02-08T11:50:00.000-05:00

Question: Which major party has lost the most presidential elections?
From: Jo V. of Kansas City, MO
Date: February 8, 2005 (revised February 22, 2005)

Gleaves answers: If you define the start of the Democratic party with Andrew Jackson's presidency (1829-1837), then Democrats have been involved in a total of 46 presidential elections, and they have lost 26 of them (57 percent of the time). The two earliest losses were to Whig candidates, in 1840 and 1848, and the 24 subsequent losses were to Republican candidates.

The Republican party was not established until the 1850s, so Democrats and Republicans have only been going head-to-head since 1856 -- that's 39 elections. As noted, the Democratic candidate went down 24 times to the Republican (62 percent of the time).

Of course, the 1912 election was the wildcard that has to be taken into account. It should have been a Republican victory but was not. The Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won that election because Republican candidate William Howard Taft and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, now running on the Progressive or Bull Moose party ticket, split the GOP vote.

The longest losing streak suffered by Democrats was 20 years in duration, from 1860 to 1880. The second longest losing streak Democrats suffered was 12 years in duration, from 1896-1908.
The Republicans had their losing streak, too, during the era of FDR. Their losing ways lasted 16 years, from 1932-1948.

What has the trend been in the last three to four decades? Since Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, Democrats have lost seven of the last ten elections (70 percent of the time).

Nobel Prize winning presidents

2005-02-08T07:53:00.000-05:00

Question: How many presidents have won the Nobel Prize?
From: Susan E. of Washington, DC
Date: February 7, 2005

Gleaves answers: The Nobel Prize has been given in most years since 1901, in the fields of physics, chemisty, medicine, literature, and for promoting peace. Three U.S. presidents and one vice president have won the Peace Prize in particular.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to win the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. He received the honor in 1906 for his efforts in mediating the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), midwifing the Treaty of Portsmouth signed by Russia and Japan on September 5, 1905, at Portsmouth, NH. TR did not attend the award ceremony but dispatched Herbert H. D. Peirce to accept the prize on his behalf. Deputizing Peirce was fitting: in 1905 Peirce, as a member of the U.S. State Department, was in charge of organizing the deliberations at Portsmouth.[1]

Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 "in recognition of his Fourteen Points peace program and his work in achieving inclusion of the Covenant of the League of Nations in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles." Wilson was too sick to attend the award ceremony in person. Albert G. Schmedeman, United States ambassador to Norway, accepted the prize on Wilson's behalf.[2]

Vice President Charles Dawes won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925, along with Sir Austen Chamberlain. Dawes was a member of Warren Harding's administration as well as Calvin Coolidge's. He became a Nobel laureate in recognition of his work as chairman of the Dawes Committee, which tackled the problem of German reparations.[3] He became vice president-elect when Coolidge was elected in 1924. So he was the nation's Veep when he received the Nobel Peace Prize -- the first and only vice president to have achieved that distinction.

Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." He was the first U.S. president to accept the prize in person, in a ceremony in Oslo on December 10, 2002.[4] His efforts at Camp David were instrumental in Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin sharing the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

In addition to these three presidents and a vice president, a handful of secretaries of state also won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Elihu Root won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1912. Root had served as Theodore Roosevelt's second secretary of state. Root agreed to speak in Oslo on September 8, 1914, but was prevented from doing so by the outbreak of World War I. This is what was said about Root in absentia: "In the ten years during which he held office [as secretary of war and secretary of state], he had to settle a number of particularly difficult problems, some of an international character. It was he who was chiefly responsible for organizing affairs in Cuba and in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Even more important was his work in bringing about better understanding between the countries of North and South America. When he visited South America in the summer of 1906, he did a great deal to strengthen the Pan-American movement, and in 1908 he founded the Pan-American Bureau in New York. His strenuous efforts to improve relations between the small Central American countries have borne splendid fruit. The most difficult problem with which Root had to deal while secretary of state, however, was the dispute with Japan over the status of Japanese immigrants. Although a final solution of this dispute eluded him, his work on it was nevertheless of great value.After he had left the government, Root gave himself heart and soul to the cause of peace, and he is now president of the great Carnegie Peace Foundation. [As a senator] Root was one of the most energetic champions of Taft's proposal for an unconditional arbitration treaty between the U.S.A. and Great Britain; and in the dispute concerning tolls for the Panama Canal, he supported the English interpretation of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, opposing special privileges for American shipping. When he spoke on this in the Senate last spring, he gained the admiration of all friends of peace."[5]

Frank Kellogg won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929. He served as Calvin Coolidge's second secretary of state, and Herbert Hoover's too. At the presentation ceremony it was said of him: "The movement in favor of the 'outlawry of war,' to proclaim war illegal and to label it a crime, had gained increasing support in the U.S.A. ever since the end of the World War. Mr. Briand, France's great champion of peace, made a point of choosing a memorable date in the American calendar -- April 6, 1927 -- the tenth anniversary of the entry of the United States into the war, to declare himself a disciple of that movement: 'If there were any need between these two great democracies [the United States and France] to testify more convincingly in favor of peace and to present to the peoples a more solemn example, France would be ready publicly to subscribe, with the United States, to any mutual engagement tending, as between those two countries, to "outlaw war," to use an American expression.' And on June 20, 1927, Briand handed to the American ambassador in Paris a draft of a treaty of perpetual friendship between the two countries. According to the draft, the two parties would solemnly declare that they condemned war and renounced it as an instrument of their national policies. On the other side of the Atlantic, Frank B. Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State, elevated this proposal to the status of the world pact to which we pay tribute today in the person of its author: 'The Government of the United States is prepared, therefore, to concert with the Government of France with a view to the conclusion of a treaty among the principal Powers of the world, open to signature by all nations, condemning war and renouncing it as an instrument of national policy in favor of the pacific settlement of international disputes.' And from this common action emerged the pact that today binds together almost all civilized nations in the world. Article I of the Pact states the following: 'The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.'"[6]

Cordell Hull won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for a career devoted to peace. He was Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of state from 1933-1944, and his reward was sealed when FDR called him the "father of the United Nations."[7]

George C. Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. His packed resume included being general president of the American Red Cross, President Truman's third secretary of state, Truman's third secretary of defense, U.N. delegate, and originator of the Marshall Plan. At the award ceremony, it was said of Marshall: "Less than four months after entering the State Department, he presented his plan for that tremendous aid to Europe which has become inseparably connected with his name. He stated in his famous speech at Harvard University: 'Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative.' Marshall carried out his plan, fighting for it for two years in public and in Congress."[8]

Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Le Duc Tho, in 1973. After negotiations that lasted nearly four years, a ceasefire agreement was concluded between the U.S. and the Vietnamese Democratic Republic on January 23, 1973. The new secretary of state was unable to attend the award ceremony.[9]
________________________
[1]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1906/roosevelt-acceptance.html

[2]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1919/wilson-acceptance.html

[3]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1925/dawes-acceptance.html

[4]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/2002/carter-lecture.html

[5]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1912/press.html

[6]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1929/index.html

[7]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1945/press.html

[8]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1953/press.html

[9]http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1973/press.html

State of the Union message

2005-01-31T17:40:00.000-05:00

Question: Where does the tradition of the president giving State of the Union speeches come from?
From: Ron L. of Independence, MO
Date: January 31, 2005

Gleaves answers: On February 2, 2005, President George W. Bush will give the 216th State of the Union message before a joint session of Congress. It is the 30th wartime State of the Union message.[1]

Where does this long tradition come from? The early modern precedent, well known to America's founders, was the British monarch delivering the Speech from the Throne to open each new session of Parliament. More importantly, the chief executive's report to Congress is required by the Constitution. The president "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient...." This passage from Article II, Section 3, is not particularly specific. But it is the sole legal basis for what has become the annual State of the Union message that the president delivers to a joint session of Congress after it convenes each January.

William Safire, himself a drafter of State of the Union messages in the Nixon administration, observes that these mandatory annual reports to the president "have inclined to be lengthy statements of legislative intent; they are a method by which a president takes the initiative in shaping a legislative program for his administration. An exception was FDR's 1941 message, which became known as the 'Four Freedoms Speech.'"[2]

WASHINGTON-ADAMS

In earlier times, this act of giving information to Congress was not called the "State of the Union message," but the "Annual Message." Indeed, George Washington called his first report to Congress the Annual Message. Aware of the precedent he was setting, he thought it important to deliver the report personally in the form of a speech. So on the morning of January 8, 1790, he stepped into a fancy yellow carriage drawn by six regal horses through the streets of New York. (As one of my favorite historians, John Willson, likes to point out, the first president was a car guy.) Leaving his residence on Cherry Street, he rode to Federal Hall where a joint session of Congress had assembled.

George Washington delivered his First Annual Message to both houses of Congress on January 8, 1790; that speech was the shortest annual message in U.S. history -- less than 1,100 words and needing barely 10 minutes to deliver. As the White House website notes, "The president's focus ... was on the very concept of union itself. Washington and his administration were concerned with the challenges of establishing a nation and maintaining a union. The experiment of American democracy was in its infancy. Aware of the need to prove the success of the 'union of states,' Washington included a significant detail in his speech. Instead of datelining his message with the name of the nation's capital, New York, Washington emphasized unity by writing 'United States' on the speech's dateline."[3]

Another enduring idea from the address was this: "Among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention, that of providing for the common defense will merit particular regard. To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."

Washington's subsequent annual messages were delivered each autumn.

As in so much else concerning the American presidency, Washington started the precedent. The "from time to time" became an annual fall event. Indeed, Washington delivered eight annual messages in all; his successor John Adams delivered four annual messages in all, also in the autumn months.

JEFFERSON-TAFT

Most people assume that all annual messages were speeches. In fact, the majority were not. Beginning with Thomas Jefferson in 1801, the annual message was not delivered as a speech but was submitted to Congress in writing. That's because our third president (1) was a superb writer, (2) disliked public speaking, and (3) rationalized the change on the grounds that a presidential speech before Congress was unbecomingly similar to the British monarch's annual Speech from the Throne; such monarchical trappings were unseemly in a republic. Jefferson's habit of submitting a written message to Congress rather than delivering a speech to a joint session became an unbroken tradition in its own right, lasting from 1801 through the end of William Taft's administration in 1912. Several presidents after Taft, especially those favoring a strict construction of the Constitution (Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, for example), preferred written annual messages.

The timing became routinized as well. From James Monroe's presidency forward, the messages were submitted in December, almost without exception during the first week of the month. Any only oral reading of them was performed by clerks in Congress.

WILSON-BUSH

Not until Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913 was the earlier tradition of giving an annual speech to Congress revived. Although it was somewhat controversial, Wilson revived the oratorical State of the Union message because he was a superb rhetorician who liked to strut his stuff; also, by that point the president did not have to worry about being compared to the British monarch. Wilson, following long-established precedent, delivered his annual addresses during the first week of December.

Which brings up a point about the change in timing, since States of the Union are nowadays delivered in January or February. Recall that for many decades only George Washington had delivered a State of the Union message in January; and that, his first. Remarkably, the second time the message would be delivered in the month of January would not occur until 144 years later, when Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the annual address in 1934. The reason for the change is that passage of the Twentieth Amendment moved the inauguration date from March to January, so FDR thought a January message would be more timely. Almost every year he was in office he gave the speech during the first week of the new year. FDR is also the president who began referring to the speech as the "State of the Union message,"[4] words that were lifted straight from the Constitution and stuck in popular discourse.

SOME MEMORABLE STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGES

While a number of annual messages read like laundry lists since they are given over to the president's legislative agenda, several have endured in Americans' collective memory because of their eloquence and the power of their ideas.

In 1823, James Monroe used his Seventh Annual Message to spell out his foreign policy, the Monroe Doctrine, warning European powers to cease entertaining designs to colonize the Western hemisphere.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln used his Second Annual Message to say that the time had come to emancipate the slaves.

In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt used his Ninth State of the Union message to proclaim the famous "Four Freedoms."

In 2002, just four months after the deadliest single attack against the U.S. on these shores, George W. Bush used his State of the Union message to declare that an Axis of Evil threatened the nation; the Axis consisted of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

SOME FIRSTS

1st Annual Message: George Washington's on January 8, 1790, in New York City, which then served as the provisional capital of the U.S.

1st Annual Message not delivered as a speech: Thomas Jefferson's, in the new capital of Washington, DC, on December 8, 1801.

1st Annual Message broadcast over the radio: Calvin Coolidge's on December 6, 1923.

1st popular use of the term "State of the Union" to refer to the message: with Franklin Roosevelt's message of 1935.

1st State of the Union message broadcast on television: Harry S. Truman's during the day on January 6, 1947.

1st State of the Union message broadcast live during primetime: Lyndon B. Johnson's on the evening of January 4, 1965.

1st State of the Union message streamed live on the world wide web: George W. Bush's in 2002.

1st broadcast rebuttal to the State of the Union message: in 1966, Republicans countered President Lyndon Johnson's speech. Ever since, it has been the tradition of the party out of the White House to give a response on radio and/or television.

1st State of the Union message delivered in February: Dwight D. Eisenhower on February 2, 1953, appeared before Congress to flesh out the vision he had outlined in his inaugural address two weeks earlier. It was a wartime address delivered during the closing months of the Korean War. The State of the Union message has been given in February only five times since (by Nixon in 1973, Reagan in 1985 and 1986, and Clinton in 1993 and 1997). George W. Bush's message on February 2, 2005, will be the seventh such February message.

OTHER NOTABLE FACTS

Virtually every modern president has used the words "state of the Union" in his message, trailed by some such adjective as "good," "better," or "strong." Since you hail from Independence, Missouri, let's turn to Harry S. Truman. In his 1949 State of the Union message, Truman declared, "I am happy to report to this 81st Congress that the state of the Union is good [emphasis added]. Our Nation is better able than ever before to meet the needs of the American people, and to give them their fair chance in the pursuit of happiness. This great Republic is foremost among the nations of the world in the search for peace."

But as William Safire points out, the tendency toward optimism has not been universal. The first president to say outright that "the state of the Union is not good," was Gerald R. Ford on January 15, 1975. He explained, "Millions of Americans are out of work. Recession and inflation are eroding the money of millions more. Prices are too high, and sales are too slow."

Two presidents did not give an Annual Message -- and they both had a good excuse: William Henry Harrison died one month after his inauguration in 1841, and James A. Garfield died 200 days into his administration in 1881 -- the shortest and second shortest administrations in U.S. history.

After 1789, there was only one calendar year -- 1933 -- in which no Annual Message was given; Hoover had given his last written Annual Message to Congress in December of 1932, and FDR would deliver his first State of the Union message in January of 1934; only 13 months separated the two messages.

In three calendar years there have been two State of the Union messages given to Congress. (1) In 1790, Washington gave his First Annual Message in January, and his second in December. (2) In 1953, outgoing President Harry S. Truman and incoming President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave dueling State of the Union messages within a month of each other. (3) In 1961, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower and incoming President John F. Kennedy gave dueling State of the Union messages within three weeks of each other.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan postponed his State of the Union message because of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

On January 19, 1999, President Bill Clinton delivered his Seventh State of the Union message in an unusually tense atmosphere. Exactly one month earlier -- on December 19th -- he had been impeached by the House of Representatives. Then on January 7th the Senate had opened the trial and the president found himself in the midst of heated political and constitutional debate. The Senate did not vote to dismiss the articles of impeachment against the president until February 12, 1999.

On February 2nd, when President George W. Bush enters the House of Representatives to deliver his 2005 State of the Union Message, he will be applauded by members of both parties. Even Democrats will applaud because they are acknowledging the office, not (necessarily) the person who occupies it. Indeed, following long-established tradition, the president will not be introduced by name.

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[1]Wartime here includes the five declared wars the U.S. has waged -- War of 1812, Mexican War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II -- and seven additional significant conflicts -- Quasi-War against France, Tripolitan War against the Barbary Pirates, Civil War, Korean War, Vietnam War, Desert Storm, and the Iraq War.

[2]William Safire, Safire's New Political Dictionary (New York: Random House, 1993), s.v. "State of the Union," p. 755.

[3]Visit the White House website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/history.html.

[4]Word maven William Safire prefers the word "message" to "speech," "address," or "report" when referring to the State of the Union message. [Safire, Political Dictionary, s.v. "State of the Union," p. 755.]

Bible passages at inaugurations

2005-01-25T07:11:00.000-05:00

Question: Is it customary for presidents to swear the oath of office on a Bible? Which passages do they use?
From: Barbara C. of Colorado Springs, CO
Date: January 25, 2005

Gleaves answers: Yes, it is customary. At the beginning of a president's term in office, there are two situations in which Bibles are ceremonially used: (1) at a private swearing in, which several presidents have taken part in, among them Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, and Dwight Eisenhower; and (2) at the public swearing in that is integral to the inaugural ceremony. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires that presidents swear on the Bible or otherwise use the book as part of their inauguration, but our first president, George Washington, started the precedent. At his first inauguration in 1789, he used a Masonic Bible that had been printed in 1767. It was opened to an Old Testament passage. At least three later presidents used Washington's Masonic Bible at their own inaugurations, all of them Republicans: Warren Harding (1921), Dwight Eisenhower (1953), and George H. W. Bush (1989). George W. Bush wanted to use Washington's Bible in 2001, but bad weather kept him from doing so.

Following George Washington's precedent, our nation's chief executives have used the Bible in most if not all inaugurations, as well as in several private swearing in ceremonies. On at least 30 formal occasions, we know that the Bible was opened to Old Testament passages. On at least 10 formal occasions, we know that the Bible was opened to New Testament passages. Following is the breakdown.

OLD TESTAMENT PASSAGES

The following presidents had the book opened to a specific Old Testament passage:
- Van Buren's inauguration (1837): Proverbs 3:17.
- Andrew Johnson's swearing in (1865): Proverbs 21.
- Grant's second inaugural (1873): Isaiah 11:1-3.
- Hayes's inauguration (1877): Psalm 118:11-13.
- Garfield's inaugural (1881): Proverbs 21:1.
- Arthur's swearing in (1881): Psalm 31:1-3.
- Harrison's inaugural (1889): Psalm 121: 1-6.
- Cleveland's second inaugural (1893): Psalm 91:12-16.
- McKinley's Bible during the first inaugural (1897) was opened to II Chronicles 1:10, and in his second inaugural (1901) it was opened to Proverbs 16.
- Taft (1909): I Kings 3:9-11.
- Wilson's first inaugural (1913): Psalm 119; Wilson's second inaugural (1917): Psalm 46.
- Harding (1921) used Washington's Masonic Bible, opened to Micah 6:8.
- Hoover's Bible at the inauguration (1929) was open to Proverbs 29:18.
- Truman's Bible at his inauguration (1949) was open to Exodus 20:3-17 (the Bible was also opened to a New Testament passage).
- Eisenhower's first inauguration (1953) incorporated George Washington's Masonic Bible opened to Psalm 127:1, plus a West Point Bible opened to II Chronicles 7:14; his second inauguration (1957) had the West Point Bible opened to Psalm 33:12.
- Nixon used two family Bibles, both opened to the same passage during both the first (1969) and second (1973) inaugurals: Isaiah 2:4
- Ford's swearing in (1974): Proverbs 3:5-6
- Carter (1977) used a family Bible opened to Micah 6:8.
- Reagan used the Bible given to him by his mother at both the first (1981) and second (1985) inaugurals, as well as in the private swearing in in 1985. On all these occasions the Bible was opened to II Chronicles 7:14.
- Clinton's second inaugural (1997) featured the King James Bible given to him by his grandmother, opened to Isaiah 58:12
- George W. Bush's second inaugural

The following presidents had the Bible opened at random, and because the Old Testament is so much larger than the New Testament, the book would inevitably be opened to an Old Testament passage:
- The Masonic Bible used in Washington's first inaugural was opened to the page containing Genesis 49:13.
- Lincoln's first inaugural.
- At Cleveland's first inaugural the chief justice who presided over the swearing in opened the Bible at random to Psalm 112:4-10.
- George H. W. Bush had Washington's Masonic Bible opened at random in the middle; also had the family Bible opened to a New Testament passage.

The passage from II Chronicles 7:14 was used in three swearing-in ceremonies. It is a verse of repentence: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

NEW TESTAMENT PASSAGES

The following presidents had the Bible opened to a New Testament passage:
- Lincoln's second inaugural (1865) incorporated three passages: Matthew 7:1 and 18:7, and Revelation 16:7.
- Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural (1905): James 1:22-23
- Coolidge: John 1
- Franklin Roosevelt's four inaugurals (1933, 1937, 1941, 1945): I Corinthians 13
- Truman's inaugural: Matthew 5:3-11 (the Bible was also opened to an OT passage)
- George H. W. Bush featured the family Bible opened to Matthew 5. He also had Washington's Masonic Bible opened at random in the middle;
- Clinton's first inaugural (1993) featured the King James Bible given to him by his grandmother, opened to Galatians 6:8.

CLOSED BIBLES

The following presidents had a Bible with them to mark the beginning of their term but kept it closed, in George W. Bush's case due to bad weather:
- Truman's 1945 swearing in.
- Kennedy's 1961 inaugural.
- Johnson's 1965 inaugural.
- George W. Bush's family Bible was kept closed during the 2001 inaugural, due to bad weather; he had wanted to use Washington's Masonic Bible.

Two additional pieces of information. Pierce had a Bible at the inauguration, but we do not have enough historical information to know whether it was closed or open to a particular passage. We do know that he did not "solemnly swear," but "solemnly affirmed" the oath of office.

And Lyndon Johnson used not a Bible but a missal when he was privately sworn in aboard Air Force I on November 22, 1963, shortly after Kennedy was assassinated.

NO BIBLE USED

The three cases in which historians know that no Bible was used (in all three instances Republicans):
- Hayes's private swearing in (1877);
- Arthur's private swearing in (1881);
- Theodore Roosevelt's swearing in at Buffalo, New York, (1901) upon McKinley's death.

NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION

While there are eye-witness accounts of every presidential swearing-in and inauguration, we do not have all the details about the use of a Bible at these events. According to the Office of the Curator and Architect of the Capitol, there is not enough information for the following events:
- Washington's second inaugural
- Adams's inaugural
- Jefferson's first and second inaugurals
- Madison's first and second inaugurals
- Monroe's first and second inaugurals
- Quincy Adams's inaugural
- Harrison's inaugural
- Tyler's swearing in (upon Harrison's death)
- Polk's inaugural
- Taylor's inaugural
- Fillmore's swearing in (upon Taylor's death)
- Buchanan's inaugural
- Grant's first inaugural
- Wilson's private swearing in before his second inaugural
- Coolidge's private swearing in by his father at his boyhood home (upon Harding's death)
- Eisenhower's private swearing in before his second inaugural.

Regarding the above, historians cannot say that no Bible was used; they do not know if or which edition was used, or to which passage it may have been opened.

OTHER RELIGIOUS WORDS AND GESTURES AT INAUGURATIONS

Finally, George Washington not only began the precedent of using a Bible at his inauguration; he also began two related precedents -- (1) adding the words "so help me God" to the constitutionally mandated oath of office, and (2) kissing the Bible after taking the oath. Not all presidents have kissed the Bible as Washington did, but many have.

___________________________________

Source: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pibible.html

Numbers of presidents, inaugurations, etc.

2005-01-24T13:58:00.000-05:00

Question: Can you explain why there have been 55 inaugurations but only 43 presidents?
From: Susie O. (hometown unknown)
Date: January 24, 2005

Gleaves answers: I do not know your age, but you ask a question that is a favorite among school children and history buffs.

Let's first tackle the number of presidents. George W. Bush is our nation's 43rd president, as your question notes. But -- he is only the 42nd person to serve as president. That is because Grover Cleveland’s two terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897) were not consecutive, but interrupted by Benjamin Harrison's term (1889-1893), so Cleveland is referred to as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States.

So there have been 43 presidents but 55 inaugurations. Why?
- Exactly 21 presidents have been inaugurated once (Adams, Quincy Adams, Van Buren, Harrison, Polk, Taylor, Pierce, Buchanan, Hayes, Garfield, B. Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Truman, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Carter, and Bush).
- Exactly 16 presidents have been inaugurated twice (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, McKinley,Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush). That adds up to 32 inaugurations.
- Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated a third and fourth time.

That's how you get to 55 inaugurations in U.S. history.

Not to complicate the picture, but five presidents (Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Arthur, and Ford) were not formally inaugurated. That is because they were vice presidents who finished the term of a president who died or resigned. Even though these five did not go through an inauguration, they were, in accordance with Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution, sworn in.

Cost of Inaugurations

2005-01-21T18:23:00.000-05:00

Question: Can we get a comparison of presidential inauguration costs for the last 6 to 10 presidents?
From: Bob S. of Albuquerqui, New Mexico
Date: January 21, 2005

Gleaves answers: Many visitors to http://www.allpresidents.org/ have been asking this question or some variation of it. There are two primary costs of inaugurations. One is the cost of the swearing-in ceremony, which is paid for by taxpayers; the funds are appropriated by Congress; in 2001, George W. Bush's swearing-in ceremony cost $1 million. Second is the cost of the balls, the candlelight dinners, the parties, the concerts -- all the festivities that surround the swearing-in ceremony, which are paid for by private donations.

If there is criticism of how much a modern inaugural costs, it is usually directed at this latter cost, the parties and festivities, even though the burden is not borne by taxpayers. Going backward in time, from the most recent to the most distant inaugurals, here are the private-sector costs of the festivities surrounding some inaugurations:

George W. Bush's 2nd inaugural will cost in the neighborhood of $40 million. That's what the Presidential Inaugural Committee is trying to raise through private donations and ticket sales to the nine balls and three candlelight dinners.

George W. Bush's 1st inaugural in 2001 also cost nearly $40 million.

Bill Clinton's 2nd inaugural in 1997 was comparatively lean by the inaugural standards of the times, $23.6 million.

Bill Clinton's 1st inaugural in 1993 cost approximately $33 million.

George H. W. Bush's inaugural in 1989 cost approximately $30 million.

Ronald Reagan's 2nd inaugural in 1985 cost in the neighborhood of the 1981 inaugural, around $20 million.

Ronald Reagan's 1st inaugural in 1981 cost $19.4 million, significantly more than his predecessors. One reason is that inflation had been sky-high between Carter's and Reagan's inaugurations. A second reason is that several balls were added to the festivities. A third is that the swearing-in ceremony was moved to the west front of the Capitol. Because of topography, that aspect of the building is much more dramatic than the east front; it was also symbolic of Ronald Reagan's western roots.

Jimmy Carter's inaugural in 1977 cost $3.5 million. Elected in the wake of the Watergate scandal, he deliberately downplayed anything that appeared to aggrandize the presidency.

Richard Nixon's 2nd inaugural in 1973 cost $4 million. Bob Hope, a Nixon supporter, joked that the three-day extravaganza commemorated "the time when Richard I becomes Richard II."

Lyndon Johnson's inaugural in 1965 cost $1.5 million.

Woodrow Wilson's inaugural was relatively lean since on his orders there would be no ball. He disliked dances. Congress appropriated $30,000 for the event.

James Madison's inaugural ceremony in 1809 cost more than previous inaugurals in part because it was the first to include a ball. Dolley Madison, the federalist era's social maven, had also served as hostess for President Jefferson.

Inaugurations in American history

2005-01-20T07:03:00.000-05:00

Question: Which inaugurations have been the most memorable?
From: Brenda T. of Colorado Springs
Date: January 19, 2005

Gleaves answers: The president is the one individual upon whom all the American people can cast their cares. So the formal installation of a president is a major event, the American equivalent of a coronation.

The most significant inauguration in U.S. history was arguably the first. Aware of the importance that this national ritual would take on, George Washington established several precedents during his first inauguration. The swearing-in took place outside. The oath was taken upon an open Bible. Washington added the words "so help me God" to the constitutionally prescribed oath of office. Immediately after the oath, he bent over to kiss the Bible.[1] An inaugural address was given to the Congress assembled inside Federal Hall, the building in New York City that served as the Capitol in those days. The contents of that first inaugural address served as a model for subsequent addresses. Also festivities accompanied the inauguration, including a church service, a parade, and fireworks.[2]

Although inaugurations are like coronations, it's no guarantee that inaugural addresses will be great or even good orations. There have been 55 inaugural addresses, but only a half dozen or so are truly memorable. Many people wonder why this is. Robert Dallek explains that these orations reflect the broadest consensus in American culture. In trying to reach out to as many citizens as possible, presidents do not attempt to be innovative but massage the tried-and-true themes of freedom, unity, American exceptionalism, and the goodness of the American people.

SEVEN MEMORABLE INAUGURAL ADDRESSES

George Washington's first Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789, put the new nation in world historical context: "the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

Thomas Jefferson's first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801. After a bitter election that resulted in the first transfer of power from one party to another, he tried to unify the young nation, exclaiming, "We are all Federalists; we are all Republicans."

Abraham Lincoln's second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865, during the closing days of the Civil War, called for "malice toward none," and "charity for all."

Franklin Roosevelt's first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression, proclaimed, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Franklin Roosevelt's third Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1941, was a paean to the idea and reality of American democracy when Europe and Asia were being ripped asunder by the Axis juggernaut.

John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961, challenged fellow citizens: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Ronald Reagan's first Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981, pressed a new idea to reverse the growth of big government: "In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem."

OTHER FACTS AND HIGHLIGHTS

The longest inaugural address was William Henry Harrison's in 1841. He delivered the 1 hour 45 minute oration without wearing a hat or coat in a howling snow storm, came down with pneumonia, and died one month later. His was the shortest tenure in the White House.

The shortest inaugural address was George Washington's second, in 1793. Yet he had the most important administration in American history. So the longest inaugural address was followed by the shortest administration in U.S. history, and the shortest inaugural address occurred at the midpoint of the most important administration in U.S. history.

Most meaningful ad libbed line and gesture: George Washington added the words "so help me God" to the oath of office (the original text of which is prescribed by the U.S. Constitution), then bent forward to kiss the Bible. How did these words and this gesture come about? Supposedly the chief justice of New York's Supreme Court admonished Washington and others that an oath that was not sworn on the Bible would lack legitimacy. As no Bible could be found in Federal Hall, where the swearing in was to be held, one was borrowed from a Masonic lodge a few blocks away.

First president inaugurated in Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson, on March 4, 1801. George Washington had been inaugurated in New York City (1789) and in Philadelphia (1793), and John Adams had been inaugurated in Philadelphia (1797).

First president to eschew his successor's inauguration: John Adams, on March 4, 1801. The campaign of 1800 between the sitting president, Adams, and his vice president, Jefferson, had left deep wounds. Adams was in no mood to celebrate and left town.

Tradition of attending a religious service on the way to the Inauguration: began with Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. George W. Bush is attending St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House.

Striking moment from today's perspective: when Dwight D. Eisenhower asked listeners to bow their heads: "...[W]ould you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own?" Some reference to God, or asking for God's blessings on the United States, has been a part of all 55 inaugural addresses. But Ike's gesture was a first.

Funniest line in a first inaugural address: Presidential historian Paul Boller has read every inaugural address (for which, he says, he deserves a medal), and he claims that there is not a single funny line in the official texts. However, our eighth president, Martin Van Buren inadvertantly made the audience laugh when he said, "Unlike all who have preceded me, the [American] Revolution that gave us existence as one people was achieved at the period of my birth; and whilst I contemplate with grateful reverence that memorable event...." Van Buren meant that he revered the American Revolution, but to the audience it sounded as if he revered his own birth.

Most surprising moment at an inaugural ceremony: on January 20, 1953, when Texas-born Dwight Eisenhower, in the reviewing stand, was lassoed by a cowboy who rode up to him on a horse.

Rowdiest inaugural celebration: at Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, the crowd grew so rambunctious that the police had to be called in.

Dumbest thing a president did at his inauguration: in March of 1841, William Henry Harrison gave his Inaugural Address -- the longest in presidential history, nearly two hours in length -- in a snow storm without wearing a hat or overcoat. He came down with a bad cold that developed into a major respiratory infection (probably pneumonia), and was dead within the month. (Of course, many other presidents have acted similarly in extremely cold temperatures during their inauguration. The night before John Kennedy was sworn in, a cold front hammered the East Coast, leaving snow and frigid temperatures in its wake. Watch the film clip: JFK removed his overcoat before standing up to receive the oath of office and deliver his address.)

Warmest inauguration: Ronald Reagan's first, on January 20th, 1981, when the temperature at the swearing in was 55 degrees.

Coldest inauguration: Ronald Reagan's second, on January 20th, 1985, when the temperature at noon was 7 degrees. The events were moved inside the Capitol. By the way, Congress had to pass a last-minute resolution to give permission to use the Rotunda for the event.

Best book about inaugurations: Presidential historian Paul F. Boller Jr. of Texas Christian University has written the best historical overview titled Presidential Inaugurations.

As a rule, second inaugural addresses are not as long as first ones. As in so much else, George Washington set the example, with an extremely brief second inaugural address that would endure as the shortest in American history. Abraham Lincoln explained why brevity was called for the second time around: "At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented." And then Lincoln went on to deliver arguably the most memorable Inaugural Address in U.S. history, contemplating an inscrutable God's just punishment on the North and South because of the existence of slavery.
_______________________

[1]Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Inaugurations: From Washington's Election to George W. Bush's Gala (San Diego: Harcourt, 2001), p. 13.

[2]From the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/inaugural-exhibit.html.

Second inaugurations

2005-01-18T07:36:00.000-05:00

Question: Later this week George W. Bush will be inaugurated for the second time. How many presidents have had the opportunity to be inaugurated twice? What about second Inaugurations when our nation has been at war?
From: Charles M. of Grand Blanc, MI
Date: January 18, 2005

Gleaves answers: Socially the second inauguration of George W. Bush starts today, January 18. Constitutionally his second term begins at midday Thursday, January 20th. This, in accordance with the 20th Amendment: "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January...." (It's easy to remember that the 20th Amendment puts Inauguration Day on the 20th of January.)

The week's festivities include nine balls, three candle-light dinners, two church services, a concert, and a parade, not to mention the inauguration itself on the west front of the Capitol. The events are not just the last hurrah of a successful campaign for re-election; they're not just about who is on the "A" lists to attend the balls. While there is celebration aplenty in presidential inaugurations, they are more than victory parties. They are among the key events in America's civil religion, anticipated like a coronation or a feast day in the liturgical calendar. These quadrennial benchmarks of the American experience give citizens the opportunity to unify by reaffirming their faith in our nation's promise, as well as their faith in the wisdom of the founders who created our constitutional republic.

That is why it is important for the president to be gracious during his Inaugural Address, whether his first or second. It is why the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, after the bitter campaign of 1800 against the Federalist John Adams, tried to bury the hatchet on Inauguration Day, saying, "We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists."

The theme for this week's inauguration of President George W. Bush is "Celebrating Freedom and Honoring Service." While January 20 is the constitutionally mandated day for swearing in the president, various inaugural events will stretch from Tuesday, January 18, till Friday, January 21. Because of 9/11, security will be tighter for this inauguration than for any previous one. It is also estimated that all the music, parades, balls, and services will cost more than any previous inauguration in U.S. history, between $30 million to $40 million. The money to pay for the extravaganza is being raised through private donations and ticket sales by a specially appointed inaugural committee.

THE SWEET 16

Forty-two men have served as president of the United States. Only 37 of them gave one or more inaugural addresses. George W. Bush's inauguration on January 20th will be the 55th inauguration in U.S. history. Bush will be the sixteenth president who will have been inaugurated twice. The pattern at this moment in history is symmetrical. The initial second inauguration was in the eighteenth century:
- George Washington.

Seven second inaugurals occurred in the nineteenth century:
- Jefferson
- Madison
- Monroe
- Jackson
- Lincoln
- Grant
- Cleveland (the only president whose second term was not continuous with the first).

Seven second inaugurals took place in the twentieth century:
- McKinley
- Wilson
- Franklin Roosevelt (who would have two additional inaugurations)
- Eisenhower
- Nixon
- Reagan
- Clinton

One second inaugural occurred in the twenty-first century:
- George W. Bush.

Reinforcing the symmetry is the fact that presidents with the first name "George" form bookends to the 16 second inaugurations that have taken place.

SIX SECOND INAUGURATIONS DURING WARTIME

To the question of war, six presidents who were kept for another term went through their Inauguration when the nation was in a significant struggle:
- Jefferson's second Inauguration was in March of 1805, when the U.S. naval blockade in the Mediterranean Sea was winding down the Tripolitan War against the Barbary pirates. (The peace treaty would be signed on June 4, 1805.)
- Madison's second Inaugural Address was devoted to the topic of war. This was a first. No previous inaugural address was so dominated by war talk. Because his second inauguration took place in March of 1813, several months after the outbreak of the War of 1812, he was preoccupied with a conflict that was going badly for the Americans. If fact, his language almost grew strident as he listed the depradations of the British and their Indian allies in the conduct of the war.
- Lincoln's second Inauguration took place in March of 1865, five weeks before the end of the Civil War. His speech is arguably the greatest Inaugural Address, first or second, ever given.
- Franklin Roosevelt's fourth Inauguration was in January of 1945, when the Allies could see light at the end of a totalitarian tunnel.
- Nixon's second Inauguration took place in January of 1973, as the Vietnam War was wrapping up for U.S. sailors, flyers, and troops.
- George W. Bush's second Inauguration is happening as the U.S. is desperate to quell the relentless pounding of terrorist attacks before upcoming elections in Iraq.

Two other inaugurations are worth noting. Dwight Eisenhower's first inauguration took place during the Korean War. And while John Adams did not deliver his Inaugural Address during wartime (March 4, 1797), his oration has thoughtful passages about the meaning of George Washington and the Revolutionary War to American history.

Some people critical of fancy inaugurations assert (especially if their side lost) that wartime inaugurations should be relatively subdued affairs. They cite Franklin D. Roosevelt's example in 1945. It is true that FDR's fourth inauguration limited celebration to a cold luncheon at the White House. In part this was due to all the sacrifices that were required of the American people after four years of total war -- the rationing, the limited consumer items, the limited hotel space; in part, it was because FDR was in no shape for an extravaganza; at death's doorstep, he would pass from this earth within five weeks.

FDR's austerity on that occasion has hardly been the rule historically. For instance, James Madison was a wartime president, and his wife Dolley a social maven. They began the custom of holding balls at the president's inauguration; their first -- the nation's first, too -- was held in peacetime in March of 1809. It was such a hit that he and the first lady were not about to let the War of 1812 stop future celebration. For Madison's second inauguration the lead couple put on a lively ball.

The Veep's last words

2005-01-12T14:50:00.000-05:00

Question: What were Vice President Alben Barkley's last words before he died? I think it was a reference to serving God before doing something wrong.
From: Lenn Kornfeld of Amagansett, NY
Date: January 12, 2005

Gleaves answers: You almost hit the bull's eye. Alben W. Barkley, most remembered as Harry S. Truman's vice president (1949-1953), died of a heart attack on April 30, 1956, in Lexington, Virginia. He was addressing a mock Democratic Convention at Washington and Lee University, and his last words were: "I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit in the seats of the mighty."[1]

The former vice president was a U.S. senator from Kentucky when he died at the age of 78. Indeed, Barkley had spent most of his remarkable career on Capitol Hill, where he served from 1913 to 1949 -- 36 years -- as a representative and senator. As it is the vice president's constitutional duty to preside over the Senate, it was logical for the Democratic party to pick him to be Truman's running mate. After four years as vice president, he wanted to return to Capitol Hill. He sought and won a Senate seat in 1954, and had been in office little more than a year when he was struck down by heart disease.

Three additional facts of note: First, Barkley was the last vice president born in a log cabin (in 1877, in Kentucky). Also, he was first vice president called "the Veep," a moniker given to him by his ten-year-old grandson. Finally, in 1948 Barkley became the first vice president to get hitched while in office; at the age of 71, he married Jane Hadley, who was 38.
________________

[1]If you have the chance, try to visit Barkley's gravesite outside of Paducah, Kentucky. An historical marker off Lone Oak Road (at the entrance of Mt. Kenton Cemetery) cites the last words. Also see the Commonwealth of Kentucky website for its historical markers at http://kentucky.gov/kyhs/hmdb/MarkerSearch.aspx?mode=Subject&subject=13.

Second-term mandates

2005-01-06T15:07:00.000-05:00

Question: How is a mandate for an elected or re-elected president determined, and how much claim does President Bush have to govern with a mandate in his second term?
From: Michelle W., of Cambridge, MA
Date: January 6, 2005

Gleaves answers: Your question is apt considering what is happening in Washington, DC, today: Congress has gathered to certify the votes of the Electoral College. (And you thought the election was over?)

"MANDATE" DEFINED

Does President George W. Bush enjoy a mandate, as he and his supporters claim? First, let's look at the definition: "mandate" comes from the Latin words mandatum or mandare, literally "to put hands on" as if to send someone on a mission, or "to order" someone who has been dubbed to do something.[1] The way you are using the word refers to the strong measure of approval or support that voters give to their representatives when elected by a sizeable majority. Political scientist Thomas Dye defines a mandate even more specifically, as the "perception of popular support for a program or policy based on the [large] margin of electoral victory won by a candidate who proposed it during a campaign." Frequently the winner in even close elections will claim the voters' overwhelming support -- i.e., a mandate -- for their policies and programs. "But," as Dye notes, "for elections to serve as policy mandates, four conditions have to be met:

1. Competing candidates have to offer clear policy alternatives.

2. The voters have to cast their ballots on the basis of these policy alternatives alone.

3. The election results have to clearly indicate the voters' policy preferences.

4. Elected officials have to be bound by their campaign promises."[2]

PRESIDENT BUSH'S RE-ELECTION IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Using Thomas Dye's criteria, we see that true mandates rarely exist. To the question of whether President Bush's re-election represents a mandate in some meaningful sense of the word, it might be argued that being re-elected is almost by definition a mandate, since the voters are confirming what they already know and sending the signal that they want more of that person's leadership. In addition, there are two other facts that encourage Bush and his followers. First, he got the largest percentage of the popular vote in decades. Second, his coattails helped GOP candidates build leads in both houses of Congress.

And yet, President Bush's re-election was by the smallest margin since 1824, when the popular vote began to be counted. The following analysis, written by Dr. Sheldon Stern (who was the historian at the JFK Library from 1977-1999), appeared in the Boston Globe after the election:

"In their victory statements on November 3, President Bush and Vice
President Cheney tried to spin the election outcome as a 'historic' and
'broad' mandate for their administration. The media largely swallowed this
interpretation. Television, newspaper and Internet commentary proliferated
declaring that the GOP had triumphed on a red tide of votes.

"In fact, the historical record proves precisely the opposite.
President Bush won the popular vote by 2.7% -- the smallest winning
percentage by a second term president since popular vote statistics were
first recorded in 1824:
- Jackson won by 16.8% in 1832;
- Lincoln by 10.1% in 1864;
- Grant by 11.8% in 1872;
- Cleveland by 3.1% in 1892;
- McKinley by 6.2% in 1900;
- TR by 18.8% in 1904;
- Wilson by 3.1% in 1916;
- Coolidge by 25.2% in 1924;
- FDR by 24.3% in 1936;
- Truman by 4.4% in 1948;
- Eisenhower by 15.4% in 1956;
- LBJ by 22.6% in 1964;
- Nixon by 23.2% in 1972;
- Reagan by 18.2% in 1984;
- Clinton by 8.5% in 1996.

"Similarly, Bush won by only 34 electoral votes, with 53.2% of the
total electoral vote. Wilson is the only president to win a second
term with a smaller electoral vote margin (23 votes) and percentage (52.2%).
Second term presidents between 1804 and 1996 have, on average, won 78.7%
of the electoral vote. History would clearly trump spin if media commentators
knew more history."[3]

Although President George W. Bush was re-elected, which in itself reflects a kind of mandate, he does not enjoy the overwhelming support many of his predecessors have, especially with regard to domestic issues. This is not to say that he cannot govern effectively or increase the approval ratings for his policies and programs. But it is to urge caution before waxing enthusiastic about a mandate from the voters.
____________________

[1]American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. (2000) and Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law (1996), s.v. "mandate."

[2]Thomas R. Dye, Politics in America, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001), pp. 229-30.

[3]Sheldon M. Stern, letter to the Boston Globe, December 21, 2004.

Landslide Lyndon

2005-01-04T16:08:00.000-05:00

Question: Where did the moniker "Landslide Lyndon" come from, referring to Lyndon B. Johnson?
From: Pat O. of Gainsville, FL
Date: January 4, 2005

Gleaves answers: Lyndon Johnson did win the 1964 presidential race in a landslide over the hapless senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, but that's not when LBJ got his famous nickname. The bigger-than-life Texan picked up "Landslide Lyndon" in 1948, in a runoff race for the U.S. Senate, and it was meant ironically.

When the votes were counted on election day (Saturday, August 28, 1948), it seemed that Johnson had been narrowly defeated by one of the most popular governors in Texas history, Coke Stevenson. LBJ, no pushover, had served for 11 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and developed the reputation of being a "Texas wunderkind."[1] Nevertheless, the result looked bad for Johnson. Presidential historian Robert Dallek writes:

"According to the Texas Election Bureau, an unofficial election agency run by Texas newspapers, Stevenson led at midnight by 2,119 votes out of 939,468 counted. 'Well, it looks like we've lost,' Lady Bird told Dorothy Nichols on the phone."[2]

Or so it seemed. The votes kept coming in and the results went back and forth; victory was now declared for Stevenson, now for Johnson, now for Stevenson. After most of the tallies, the governor held a slight advantage. Then, six days after the election, a funny thing happened: 203 votes turned up in Box 13 from the pint-sized town of Alice, Texas. Even funnier: 202 of those votes were for Lyndon Johnson. The Stevenson campaign smelled a rat when it was discovered that the votes had been cast at the last minute and in alphabetical order. Charges of election fraud ensued, and the disputed contest went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Justice Hugo Black upheld Johnson's 11th-hour win. He was declared the winner by 87 votes.

It would take almost three decades for the truth to out. As Thomas Woods reports, in 1977 "the election judge in Alice admitted that he had helped rig the election."[3] "Landslide Lyndon" always found a way to win.

_________________________

[1]Robert J. Dallek, "Lyndon B. Johnson," in The American Presidency, ed. Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2004), p. 411.

[2]Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 327.

[3]Thomas E. Woods Jr., The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004), p. 216.

Person of the Year

2004-12-31T13:56:00.000-05:00

Question: President George W. Bush was just selected by Time magazine as the Person of the Year in 2003. How often have presidents been awarded this distinction?
From: Diane N. of Charleston, SC
Date: December 31, 2004

Gleaves answers: Time magazine began naming a Man or Person of the Year 77 years ago, in 1927. In 19 of those years, the sitting president or president-elect was dubbed. Another way of looking at it: Of the 14 presidents since 1927, 11 were selected Person of the Year when they were either the sitting president or president-elect. An interesting assemblage of chief executives they make: one was assassinated; one had a physical disability; one felt totally unprepared for the job; one was impeached; one would be driven from the White House in disgrace. (Remember, the Person of the Year is not always a saint. Time's list, after all, includes Hitler, Stalin, and the Ayatolluh Khomeini.)

These are the 11 U.S. presidents whom Time has named Person of the Year.
1932 -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1934 -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1941 -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1945 -- Harry S. Truman
1948 -- Harry S. Truman
1959 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
1961 -- John F. Kennedy
1964 -- Lyndon B. Johnson
1967 -- Lyndon B. Johnson
1971 -- Richard M. Nixon
1972 -- Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger
1976 -- Jimmy Carter
1980 -- Ronald Reagan
1983 -- Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov
1990 -- George H. W. Bush
1992 -- Bill Clinton
1998 -- Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr
2000 -- George W. Bush
2004 -- George W. Bush

As the above list shows, one president earned the distinction of being named Man of the Year three times: Franklin D. Roosevelt, in fact, holds the all-time record.

Six presidents have been named Person of the Year a total of two times. (But note this caveat: while Dwight Eisenhower received the distinction twice, the first time was in 1944, when he was supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, eight years before he was elected president.)

Four presidents have been named Person of the Year once.

Timing is important. Of the 11 presidents who achieved Person-of-the-Year status, 8 did so in their first year in office.

The only president named Man of the Year two years in a row was Richard Nixon, in 1971 and 1972; he shared the second time around with his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger. The only administration that received the nomination three years in a row was FDR's, from 1932-1934; in 1933 the administrator of the National Recovery Administration, Hugh Johnson, got the nod.

All four presidents with a Texas connection -- Eisenhower, LBJ, and the two Bushes -- have been named Person of the Year.

Since 1927 three presidents never made it onto Time magazine's cover as Man of the Year: Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald R. Ford.

Yet ten additional individuals who were never themselves president were named Man of the Year because of their close association to the White House:
1929 -- Owen Young was a famous financier associated with the Hoover administration.
1933 -- Hugh Johnson was head of FDR's National Recovery Administration.
1943 -- General George Marshall oversaw the commander in chief's war effort.
1944 -- General Dwight D. Eisenhower took the offensive against Hitler's Third Reich.
1946 -- Secretary of State James F. Byrnes served under Truman.
1947 -- Secretary of State George C. Marshall also served under Truman.
1954 -- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles served under Eisenhower.
1965 -- General William Westmoreland served under Lyndon Johnson.
1972 -- Henry Kissinger was Richard Nixon's national security advisor.
1973 -- Judge John Sirica presided over the Watergate scandal proceedings.
1998 -- Kenneth Starr led the investigations against Bill Clinton.

Adding these names to the presidents, you see that our chief executives or individuals closely associated with them made Time's list on 30 occasions during the past 77 years.

For the complete list of Time magazine's Man or Person of the Year from 1927-2003, see
http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/archive/stories/index.html

Christmas at the White House

2004-12-18T22:39:00.000-05:00

Question: How have the holidays been celebrated by our presidents?
From: Hauenstein Center staff and friends, Grand Rapids, MI
Date: December 18, 2004

Gleaves answers: To our visitors, holiday greetings from the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies! Around Grand Valley I have run into several people who have asked if there would be something on the website talking about how our presidents have traditionally celebrated the holidays.

It surprises many Americans to learn that Christmas was not celebrated by every community in the early years of the United States. Some descendents of the New England Puritans, for example, avoided placing special emphasis on the Yuletide season. But in states like Virginia, Christmas enjoyed more popularity. At Mount Vernon on Christmas morning, the festivities organized by George and Martha Washington began at daybreak with a fox hunt. A hearty midday feast followed in a celebration that included Christmas pie, music, dancing, and visits with friends and relatives that sometimes continued for a week.

One of the most unusual Christmas celebrations was hosted by James Buchanan, our nation’s lone bachelor president. In 1857 he threw a party for 30 American Indians representing the Ponca, Pawnee, and Pottawatomie tribes. An eyewitness account reported that while the Pottawatomie arrived in “citizen’s dress,” the Pawnee and Ponca “were in their grandest attire, and more than profuse of paint and feathers.”

Half a century later, Theodore Roosevelt almost forbade bringing a Christmas tree into the White House. A staunch conservationist, TR didn’t believe in cutting down conifers for decoration. Two of his boys, Theodore Jr. and Kermit, got into a bit of trouble when their father caught them dragging two small trees into their rooms. After the incident, Roosevelt spoke with Gifford Pinchot, the famous forester, who persuaded TR that selectively cutting down trees helped forests thrive. That was enough for TR, and the first family kept the trees Theodore Jr. and Kermit had dragged in, and every year thereafter brought a Christmas tree into the White House.

In 1923 First Lady Grace Coolidge accepted the gift of a large Christmas tree given by the District of Columbia Public Schools, and it became the first cut tree ever displayed on the grounds outside the White House. The balsam fir was decorated and displayed on the South Lawn. To dazzle citizens with new technology, President and Mrs. Coolidge were able to light the tree by merely pushing a button – a feat that we take for granted today but that caused wonderment then!

The idea of having themes for official White House Christmas trees was championed by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961. A tree decorated with ornaments reminiscent of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite stood in the Blue Room. Some of the ornaments were reused on the next year’s tree and included brightly wrapped packages, candy canes, gingerbread cookies, and straw ornaments crafted by disabled persons and older citizens from all over the United States.

With the growth of the environmental movement in the late 1960s and early ’70s, President Richard Nixon took an environmentally friendly step. In 1972 he planted a Colorado blue spruce on the Ellipse south of the White House. By 1978 the spruce was large enough and sturdy enough to be designated the National Christmas Tree. It is lit up every year in early December and tended by the National Park Service.

Back in the residence, topping the official White House Christmas tree has become another holiday tradition, and that feat has been accomplished by former First Lady Barbara Bush a record twelve times. She had the honor from 1981 to 1992, during President Reagan’s and her husband’s combined three terms.

Increasingly, American presidents have been sensitive to the fact that the holiday season is not just celebrated by Christians, but by believers of other faiths and people from other traditions. For instance, several presidents – among them Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – have participated in Hanukkah celebrations. In 1998 President Clinton joined Israel’s President Weizman in Jerusalem to light the first candle of Hanukkah. And this year a 100-year old menorah, borrowed from the collection of the Jewish Museum in New York, was lit in the White House residence for the first time. President and Mrs. George W. Bush celebrated the holiday with staff members and their families by lighting the second candle on December 10th.

As Americans, we have much to celebrate this holiday season among our family, friends, and colleagues, and we at the Hauenstein Center wish you a happy holiday and productive 2005.

Jefferson Bible and the Christmas story

2004-12-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

Question: Does the Jefferson Bible include the Christmas story?
From: P. Roberts of Lexington, KY
Date: December 16, 2004

Gleaves answers: Thomas Jefferson's Bible -- which more strictly speaking is our third president's redaction of the four Gospels -- begins with the birth of Jesus, to be sure, but it is considerably abbreviated compared to the New Testament. Only the "natural life" of Jesus is presented -- in the world of Thomas Jefferson, there are no angels, miracles, or voices from Heaven.

The Jefferson Bible begins by extracting exclusively from Chapter Two of the Gospel of Luke:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David),
To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS.
And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.
And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom.[1]

In Jefferson's account, the first 120 verses in the Gospel of Luke are pared to 10.

Jefferson probably worked most intensively on his Bible in 1819-1820, when he was 76 or 77 years old and living in retirement at Montecello.[2] There was nothing mysterious about his method: he laid out the New Testament in four different languages -- Greek, Latin, French, and English -- and literally cut corresponding passages out of those volumes and pasted them into his own edition. Jefferson wrote that his life and morals of Jesus were "extracted textually from the Gospels."[3]

Jefferson had long been laying the groundwork for such a project. We know from the copious paper trail he left behind that he was studying Jesus' philosophy at one of the most stressful times of his life -- during his first term in the White House. Jefferson was ordering different editions of the Bible and annotating them. He later wrote to John Adams that this early project, which he titled The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, aimed to gather "diamonds in a dunghill." As he explained, "There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."[4]

(Does this idea of the philosophy of Jesus remind us of something more recent? During the 2000 presidential campaign, then-Governor George W. Bush was asked by a reporter who his favorite philosopher was. Bush answered, "Jesus Christ.")

Precisely what was Jefferson's attitude toward Christ? In an 1820 letter to his good friend William Short, he wrote of his belief that Jesus was "a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion," and that "It is the innocence of His character, the purity and sublimity of His moral precepts, the eloquence of His inculcations, the beauty of the apologues in which He conveys them, that I so much admire." But, Jefferson hastened to add, "it is not to be understood that I am with Him in all His doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require counterpoise of good works to redeem it...."[5]

So what prompted Jefferson to edit the Gospel accounts of Jesus? In the same letter to Short, he said: "Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Him by His biographers, I find many passages ... of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same Being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of His doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart."[6]

This explains why Jefferson purged the New Testament of all supernatural words, actions, and events. His Jesus was strictly a man, not God. Good man of the Enlightenment that he was, Jefferson aimed to distill the teachings of Jesus to a universal moral code to which all reasonable human beings could assent.

Since 1904, it has been the custom of the U.S. Senate to present a copy of The Jefferson Bible to each freshman senator at the swearing in ceremony.

______________________________

[1]Thomas Jefferson, The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Introduction by Forrest Church, Afterword by Jaroslav Pelikan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), pp. 37-38.

[2]Forrest Church, "The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson," in Jefferson, Bible, pp. 25-30.

[3]Facsimile of Jefferson's original, handwritten title page, in Jefferson, Bible, after p. 32.

[4]TJ to John Adams, October 13, 1813; quoted in Church, "Gospel," in Jefferson, Bible, p. 17.

[3]TJ to William Short, April 13, 1820; at http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbsyl.html

[4]TJ to Short; at http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/jeffbsyl.html

Nixon and the Christmas bombing

2004-12-14T22:09:00.000-05:00

Question: I recall that President Richard Nixon was associated with Christmas bombings during the Vietnam War. What led the president to do that, and was it something he did to the North Vietnamese more than once?
From: Daryl P. of New York City
Date: December 14, 2004

Gleaves answers: The so-called Christmas bombing refers to a one-time event: the massive eleven-day air campaign in December 1972 that President Richard Nixon unleashed to make the South and North Vietnamese sit down at the bargaining table to negotiate the end of the Vietnam War.

As an act of realpolitik, the Christmas bombing helped achieve the short-term objective of forcing South and North Vietnamese negotiators to reach an agreement, thereby giving the U.S. a face-saving escape from Southeast Asia. Earlier that autumn all parties involved had become extremely frustrated. A seemingly workable agreement had almost been concluded in October 1972. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger even announced, "Peace is at hand." Both the U.S. and North Vietnamese had come to terms. But Saigon balked and the agreement was scuttled. After hopes had been raised so high only to be dashed, Nixon became piqued with Saigon. Much to the chagrin of South Vietnamese leaders, he threatened to conclude a separate peace with the North Vietnamese. The war, after all, was already the most protracted in U.S. history and had become a national nightmare that was exacting terrible costs in American blood, treasure, and morale:
- some 58,000 U.S. servicemen had been sacrificed to resist the communist takeover of South Vietnam;
- the cost to American taxpayers was topping $150 billion -- in what ultimately was a futile cause.

Alas, as the end game was being played out, American leaders knew that Vietnam was a futile cause and wanted to get out as quickly but with as much dignity as possible.

President Nixon had his own reasons to quit Vietnam. In November 1972, he was still highly popular among the "silent majority," as evidenced by his landslide re-election over the hapless George McGovern. The Republican president did not want his second term or his legacy to be burdened by the Vietnam albatross. In the weeks between his re-election and his second Inauguration, Nixon decided to bring the conflict to a climax. To force both sides in Vietnam to conclude an agreement, the commander in chief ordered a massive bombing campaign against the North.

In fact, it was 32 years ago today, on December 14, that Nixon issued the command for sustained bombardment of the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong, as well as heavily populated areas between them. More than 200 B-52s were mustered for a round-the-clock assault from December 18-28. On the day after Christmas alone, Nixon personally ordered 116 B-52 sorties against the North's largest cities.[1]

In essence, there were three objectives in the Christmas bombing: (1) to pummel the communist North Vietnamese back to the bargaining table, (2) to get the South Vietnamese back to the bargaining table by reassuring them that the U.S. was capable of enforcing any agreement that Saigon signed with Hanoi, and (3) to get the U.S. out of Vietnam as expeditiously as possible.

At one level Nixon's campaign worked. The Christmas bombing inflicted up to 1,600 North Vietnamese deaths and brought psychological pressure to bear against leaders in Hanoi.[2] First on December 22 and again on December 28, the communist regime agreed to resume talks. Within a week of the Christmas bombing, South and North Vietnamese negotiators were back in Paris preparing to talk to each other. Within a month of the Christmas bombing (January 27), an agreement was concluded and signed. Within three months of the Christmas bombing (March 29, 1973), the last American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. The U.S. achieved a major foreign policy objective: to get out of Vietnam expeditiously and in a face-saving way -- "peace with honor," at Nixon often put it.

The cost of the 11-day Christmas bombing to the U.S. military: 15 B-52s shot down and 93 airmen officially listed as missing.[3] The cost to Nixon politically: that's harder to assess. Some Democrats, frustrated by the president's recent landslide re-election, overreacted. "The only thing I can compare with it," railed Democratic Sen. Harold Hughes, "is the savagery at Hiroshima and Nagasaki."[4]

Yet the Christmas bombing was seized upon in an increasingly divisive political culture. Nixon made a serious error in judgment when he chose not to give the American people or the media much of a rationale for the air campaign. That sin of omission caused Nixon to be further alienated from American opinion-makers; in the New York Times, columnist James Reston called the Christmas bombing "war by tantrum."[5]

Indeed, the growing culture of distrust helps explain the media reaction to another storm gathering on the horizon in 1972, Watergate. By August 1974, Nixon, despite stubborn pockets of popular support, would be forced to resign from the presidency.

But that was almost two years in the future. In December of 1972, a newly re-elected president was looking to secure his legacy. He could not do so without finding a face-saving way out of Vietnam. It would take diplomatic alchemy. The U.S. did not cotton to the idea that all its military might had failed to bend a Third-World country to its will. Some 7.8 million tons of bombs were dropped during the conflict, more than all the belligerents of World War II dropped on each other; but bombs had not broken the will of the North Vietnamese to resist. Further, more than two million North and South Vietnamese had been killed; it has been estimated that, "In its proportional impact on Vietnamese society, the Vietnam War, 1955–75, was the fourth most severe in the world since 1816."[6] Still, a nation of peasants had successfully resisted America's will. It was a humiliating impasse for the U.S. to find itself in.

Both the U.S. and North Vietnam concluded that it was more important to achieve short-term objectives than to bring about lasting peace. Historian Steven Wagner in a review article observed: "Since 1968 the war had settled into a stalemate that neither side could break. With both sides facing domestic difficulties, by 1972 they had come to the conclusion that finalizing an agreement that served their immediate objectives was more important than actual peace. For Washington, those objectives included the release of American POWs and the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam without capitulation. For Hanoi, they included the withdrawal of American forces, preservation of the revolution in the North, and improving the chances for reunification with the South. Once these objectives were achieved, the other terms of the agreement could be ignored. Actual peace, therefore, was doomed."[7]

___________

[1]Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 608.

[2]Wicker, One of Us, p. 608.

[3]Wicker, One of Us, p. 608.

[4]

[5]Reston quoted by Wicker, One of Us, p. 609.

[6]"International Relations," Encyclopedia Britannica, 2004; at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=32972.

[7]Steven Wagner, review of Pierre Asselin, A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); on H-net.org at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=312191079074581.

Who was a King before he was a President?

2004-12-02T16:26:00.000-05:00

Question: Let me ask you a riddle. Who is the only American who was a King before he was a President?
From: A Rotarian in Grand Rapids, MI
Date: December 2, 2004

Answer: That's a riddle that originates in Grand Rapids, Michigan, since the answer has to do with one of its own.

The story starts with a man named Leslie Lynch King, a wool merchant in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1912 he married Dorothy Gardner. It was an unhappy marriage, and Dorothy was physically abused. Despite the miserable relationship, the couple had a son on July 14, 1913, whom they named Leslie Lynch King Jr.

Fed up with her abusive husband, Dorothy escaped from Omaha with her infant son and found refuge in her parents' home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She got a divorce in 1915 and met a kind man who owned a paint store in town. His name was Gerald Rudolf Ford Sr. -- and now you know the rest of the story: Dorothy and Gerald got married in 1916. He adopted her only child and renamed the lad Gerald R. Ford Jr. Fifty-eight years later he would earn the distinction of being the only American who was a King before he was a President.

Vice president against president

2004-12-01T20:05:00.000-05:00

Question: Has a vice president ever seriously opposed a president, and were the consequences important for the nation?
From: Andrea L. of Nashville, TN
Date: December 1, 2004

Gleaves answers: At least twice a vice president seriously opposed the president with whom he served. The first and most dramatic instance occurred when Vice President Thomas Jefferson, totally at odds with President John Adams, decided to run against him for the top job -- and in the election of 1800 beat his boss.

The second occurred in 1811 when Vice President George Clinton opposed President James Madison's stand on the Bank of the United States. In his book An Empire of Wealth, John Steele Gordon explains that the charter for the bank "was due to expire on March 4, 1811, and the Madison administration submitted a bill to renew it for twenty years on January 24. Unfortunately Madison, while richly deserving of his place in the American pantheon as the father of the Constitution, was a largely ineffective president. He did not push hard enough to get the bill through or even to keep members of his own administration in line. When his vice president, George Clinton of New York, broke a tie vote in the Senate against the bank bill, the measure died. It was the most significant independent political act -- nearly the only one -- in the history of the vice presidency, and it would have disastrous consequences."
________________________________

[1]John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 116-17.

Thanksgiving

2004-11-24T13:04:00.000-05:00

Question: Who made Thanksgiving a national holiday?
From: Brian B. of Wheeling, West Virginia
Date: November 24, 2004 [revised December 18, 2004]

Gleaves answers: It was a president -- or rather two presidents -- who made Thanksgiving a national holiday. But as most schoolchildren learn, the Thanksgiving story on which the holiday is based goes back further than any president. The so-called first Thanksgiving of 1621 recalls Governor William Bradford and fellow Pilgrims gathering in gratitude with Squanto, Massasoit, and other Native Americans whose harvest would provide enough food for the coming winter.

This hallowed tale has many grains of truth, to be sure, but the English harvest feast that came to be known as Thanksgiving actually has a more complex history. In the first place, the Virginia colonists at Jamestown were setting aside days of Thanksgiving and Praise more than a decade before the Pilgrims in Massachusetts Bay Colony were. Second, the Thanksgiving of children's books bears little resemblance to the harvest celebration that actually took place among Wampanoag Indians and English colonists. For a better understanding of the real deal, tour Plimoth Plantation outside Plymouth, Massachusetts, or visit the website at http://www.plimoth.org/visit/what/exhibit.asp.

Carolyn Freeman Travers of Plimoth Plantation summarizes the early history of American thanksgivings: "Over the 17th century, Plymouth Colony held many of these special [Thanksgiving] observances as circumstances required. Beginning in the 1680s, officials called for public thanksgiving and fast days 'for the mercies of the yeare' on an annual basis. In the 1700s, they settled into a cycle of spring Fast Days and autumn Thanksgivings."[1]

Colonial Massachusetts was hardly unique in setting aside a day of gratitude after the fall harvest. Each of the thirteen colonies periodically proclaimed its own thanksgiving days. But for more than 150 years, the celebration was not uniformly observed in British North America. The first attempt to celebrate an all-American Thanksgiving in the 13 states came in October 1777 during the War for Independence, when the Continental Congress asked that Patriots observe a day to give thanks to a higher power.

The first president to proclaim a day of national thanksgiving was -- who else would it be? -- George Washington. His eloquent proclamation set aside Thursday, November 26, 1789, "to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country...."[2] For the full proclamation, see the text appended to the end of this answer.

President Washington's proclamation was technically the first national thanksgiving, but three-quarters of a century would pass before the idea of an annual national holiday took hold. During the first decades of our nation's existence, the day was regarded not as a national but as a state event. Finally, during the Civil War, President Lincoln was prevailed upon by the editor Godey's Lady's Book, Sarah Josepha Hale, to proclaim a national day of thanksgiving for the last Thursday in November.[3] He issued the proclamation on the same day that George Washington had -- October 3. It was a doubly symbolic gesture for reunifying the war-torn nation. For the full proclamation, see the text appended to the end of this answer.

Since Lincoln, each president has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation, usually designating the fourth Thursday of each November as a national holiday. In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt tinkered with the custom, moving Thanksgiving from the fourth to the third Thursday of November. The historical context for the move is important: it was during the Great Depression, and FDR had been lobbied to extend the holiday shopping season by a week. The tinkering proved unpopular, however, and two years later Congress passed a joint resolution stating that Thanksgiving should be observed on the fourth Thursday of November. The sentiment behind the 1941 act has stuck.

Later in the 1940s, a light-hearted tradition began with President Harry S. Truman: the pardoning of a Thanksgiving turkey. For 57 years now, this tradition "has been compassionately enforced" by our presidents in a White House ceremony. The lucky turkey is spared the indignity of ending up on a dining room table and is instead given to a petting zoo (Kidwell Farm) in Herndon, Virginia.[4]

DOCUMENTS

President George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation (1789)

PROCLAMATION

A NATIONAL THANKSGIVING

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His Will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and

Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A. D. 1789.
Go. WASHINGTON

President Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

George W. Bush's 2004 Thanksgiving Proclamation

For Immediate Release

Office of the Press Secretary

November 23, 2004

President's Thanksgiving Day 2004 Proclamation

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

All across America, we gather this week with the people we love to give thanks to God for the blessings in our lives. We are grateful for our freedom, grateful for our families and friends, and grateful for the many gifts of America. On Thanksgiving Day, we acknowledge that all of these things, and life itself, come from the Almighty God.

Almost four centuries ago, the Pilgrims celebrated a harvest feast to thank God after suffering through a brutal winter. President George Washington proclaimed the first National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, and President Lincoln revived the tradition during the Civil War, asking Americans to give thanks with "one heart and one voice." Since then, in times of war and in times of peace, Americans have gathered with family and friends and given thanks to God for our blessings.

Thanksgiving is also a time to share our blessings with those who are less fortunate. Americans this week will gather food and clothing for neighbors in need. Many young people will give part of their holiday to volunteer at homeless shelters and food pantries. On Thanksgiving, we remember that the true strength of America lies in the hearts and souls of the American people. By seeking out those who are hurting and by lending a hand, Americans touch the lives of their fellow citizens and help make our Nation and the world a better place.

This Thanksgiving, we express our gratitude to our dedicated firefighters and police officers who help keep our homeland safe. We are grateful to the homeland security and intelligence personnel who spend long hours on faithful watch. And we give thanks for the Americans in our Armed Forces who are serving around the world to secure our country and advance the cause of freedom. These brave men and women make our entire Nation proud, and we thank them and their families for their sacrifice.

On this Thanksgiving Day, we thank God for His blessings and ask Him to continue to guide and watch over our Nation.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 25, 2004, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all Americans to gather together in their homes and places of worship to reinforce the ties of family and community and to express gratitude for the many blessings we enjoy.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-third day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-ninth.

GEORGE W. BUSH[5]

# # #

**************************************************
[1]George Washington, "Proclamation: A National Thanksgiving," in Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. James D. Richardson, vol. 1 (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), p. 56.

[2]Carolyn Freeman Travers, "Fast and Thanksgiving Days of Plymouth Colony," at http://www.plimoth.org/learn/history/thanksgiving/fastandthanks.asp.

[3]David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 471; for the full text of the proclamation, see Abraham Lincoln, "A Proclamation," in Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ed. James D. Richardson, vol. 8 (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), pp. 3373-74.

[4]Erin Martin, "Presidential Pardon: The Turkey that Lives to See Another Day," Infoplease at http://www.infoplease.com/spot/tgturkey2.html.

[5]http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041123-4.html.

2008 Election

2004-11-23T17:41:00.000-05:00

Question: Now that the 2004 presidential election is over, what are your thoughts about the wide-open 2008 election? How unusual is that in U.S. history? Are you predicting who the Democratic and Republican nominees might be?
From: Larry G. of Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: November 23, 2004

Gleaves answers: The 2008 election is going to be interesting. As you note, it will be an open presidential election since President George W. Bush cannot run for re-election, and Vice President Dick Cheney will not run for election.

OPEN ELECTIONS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY

In American history, the wide-open presidential race has become uncommon; it is unusual for neither the sitting president nor vice president to be on the ballot. In fact, it has been more than a half century since the last open race for president. The last open race occurred in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by depressingly low approval ratings because of the Korean War, declined to run for re-election; nor did his vice president, Alban Barkley, run. (Perhaps the most memorable thing Barkley ever said was, "The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated -- and a little drunk.") In 1952 Republicans Dwight Eisenhower and running mate Richard Nixon won.

Open elections used to be more common. During the first half of the twentieth century, there were four (of 14 elections held during that period). The 1928 election was an open presidential contest. Calvin Coolidge did not seek re-election, nor did Charles Dawes. Republicans Herbert Hoover and running mate Charles Curtis succeeded them.

Prior to that, the 1920 election was an open contest. Woodrow Wilson was too sick to run, and Thomas Marshall did not run either. Republicans Warren Harding and running mate Calvin Coolidge succeeded the Democrats.

The 1908 election was another open contest. Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Fairbanks were not on the ballot. Republicans William Howard Taft and James Sherman succeeded that duo.

Note that in each of the four open elections in the twentieth century, the Republican ticket won.

OPEN ELECTIONS IN THE 19th CENTURY

The first presidential race in U.S. history was technically open, but it was a foregone conclusion that George Washington, the hero of the War for Independence and president of the Constitutional Convention, was a shoo-in. So the 1789 election doesn't really count, nor does the 1792 election in which Washington was unanimously re-elected.

Historically, the first open presidential election occurred in 1808, when the Democratic-Republican James Madison was elected to succeed Thomas Jefferson. Madison had served as Jefferson's secretary of state. But even in this instance a qualification is in order, since Jefferson's vice president, George Clinton, was re-elected to serve as Madison's vice president. (It has happened only twice in U.S. history that a new president would be elected when the vice president would be the same. See yesterday's Ask Gleaves answer to find out which other vice president shares this distinction.)

Now, the first election in U.S. history in which both the office of president and vice president were wide open was 1816. That's when Democratic-Republicans James Monroe and Daniel Tompkins were voted into office.

The next time an open election took place was in the bizarre election of 1824, which saw John Quincy Adams win the White House even though initially he received enough votes neither in the Electoral College nor in the popular vote.

Other open elections in the 19th century occurred in the years before and after the Lincoln administration: in 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856; and in 1868, 1876, 1884, and 1896. In the nineteenth-century, all told, there were 11 open presidential elections (out of 25 elections) -- in other words, almost half of all electons during the first century of our nation's existence were wide open.

ASSESSMENT

Wide-open elections for president used to be fairly common. The diminution of a once-strong pattern is striking:
- in the 19th century, 11 of 25 presidential elections were wide open;
- in the first half of the 20th century, 4 of 14 presidential elections were wide open;
- in the second half of the 20 century, 0 of 11 presidential elections were wide open.

Obviously the trend over the past half century has been for the party in office to encourage the president to run again or to groom the vice president to run for the top spot. Gone are the days, it seems, when a Polk (1845-1849) or a Coolidge (1923-1929), having achieved all their major goals, would be content to serve as president only one term.

Another trend emerges when one inquires which party tends to do better in open elections (counting from 1856, when Republicans first appeared on the national scene to compete against Democrats). In sum:
- In the second half of the 19th century, the Republican ticket won three of five open elections.
- In the first half of the 20th century, the Republican ticket won four of four open elections.
- In all, since 1856, Republicans have won seven of nine open presidential contests against Democrats.

Regarding who might run in 2008, I'd humbly submit that it's a bit early to be making predictions -- I am going to stick to history, not prophesy. But watch to see if 2008 will be the first time since 1976 that a person named Bush or Dole will not be on the Republican ticket.

Regarding the Democrats in 2008, see if they don't look south of the Mason-Dixon line for their candidate. As presidential scholar Mark Rozell observes, "In the past 40 years, the Democrats have won the White House only with a Southern Baptist at the head of the ticket.... For 2008, the lesson for the Democrats seems clear: In seeking a party nominee, go south. Even more so, go south to a candidate with credibility and appeal among the region's heavy doses of evangelical and pro-military voters."[1]

Stay tuned.

_______________________________

[1]Mark J. Rozell, "Look to the South for a Nominee," Washington Post, November 11, 2004, p. A8.

Assassinations

2004-11-22T17:19:00.000-05:00

Question: Today is the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas. How many other presidents have been assassinated in U.S. history?
From: Bill B. of Ft. Worth, Texas
Date: November 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: ASSASSINATIONS

In U.S. history, four presidents have been assassinated, each by a gunman:

1. The first American president to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln, who was shot five weeks into his second term by John Wilkes Booth, in Washington, DC, in a Good Friday performance of a play at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865; he died within hours. As part of the same conspiracy, Secretary of State William Seward was attacked the same evening; he survived the assassination attempt by an accomplice of John Wilkes Booth who was known as Lewis Powell or Lewis Paine.

2. James A. Garfield was shot just months into his term of office by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881, in Washington, DC; he died September 19, 1881, making his administration the second shortest in American history.

3. William McKinley was shot a few months into his second term, in Buffalo, New York, by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901; clinging to life barely a week, he passed away on September 14, 1901.

4. John F. Kennedy was shot three years into his presidency by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Because of number of people believe that Oswald was part of a conspiracy, it has become the most investigated murder mystery in human history.

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS

In addition to the four presidents who have been assassinated, there have been assassination attempts against five presidents:

- Andrew Jackson was an assassin's target in 1835.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt was the intended victim in Miami on February 15, 1932, when he was president elect; the mayor of Chicago, Anton J. Cermak, was between FDR and the gunman Giuseppe Zangara; he paid with his life three weeks later.

- Harry S. Truman escaped injury on November 1, 1950, in Washington, DC, when Puerto Rican nationalists tried to shoot their way into Blair House, where the president was staying as the White House was undergoing renovation. One of the White House Police, Officer Leslie Coffelt, died in the line of duty.

- Gerald R. Ford was targeted for assassination twice in September of 1975 by women in California. The first attempt against his life occurred on September 5, 1975, in Sacramento, when Lynette Alice (Squeaky) Fromme aimed but did not fire a .45-caliber pistol at the president. The second attempt occurred in San Francisco, just a little over two weeks later, on September 22, 1975, when Sara Jane Moore fired one shot from a .38-caliber pistol that was deflected.

- Ronald Reagan was seriously wounded by John W. Hinckley, Jr., on March 30, 1981, as he emerged from a speaking engagement; three other people were also seriously wounded.

There was a serious assassination attempt against one former president, Theodore Roosevelt, who was shot in Milwaukee on October 14, 1912, while attempting to make a comeback for president. When he was shot, TR was on his way to deliver a speech and famously fulfilled his duty before going to the hospital.

In sum, 10 U.S. presidents were the target of assassins:
- four were shot to death;
- five survived assassination attempts (in Ford's case, twice in one month);
- and one ex-president survived an assassination attempt.

Two other politicians with presidential aspirations were assassinated: Louisiana Senator Huey Long (1935) and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1968). Plus there was an assassination attempt against Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, who was left paralyzed from the waist down (1972).

SECRET SERVICE

The U.S. Secret Service is charged with guarding the president. What is not widely know is that the Secret Service was organized in the U.S. Treasury Department in 1865, and remained there until 2003. At the founding their primary mission was to suppress counterfeit currency; during the first decades of its existence, the official responsibility of Secret Service agents did not include protecting U.S. presidents. They began an informal relationship with the White House only in 1894, during Grover Cleveland's second administration; they were with neither Presidents Garfield nor McKinley when they were shot.

It was McKinley's assassination by a terrorist in 1901 that spurred Congress to action, and the relationship between the White House and Secret Service evolved significantly during the next two decades. Already in 1901 Capitol Hill informally asked the Secret Service to provide protection for the president. The next year, with Theodore Roosevelt in the White House, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for protecting the president; two agents were assigned full time to the White House detail. Also about this time, the Secret Service began protecting the president-elect. Before leaving office, TR transferred eight Secret Service agents to the Department of Justice. They formed the nucleus of what is now the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Further changes occurred during Woodrow Wilson's time in office. In 1913, his first year in the White House, Congress authorized permanent protection of the president and president-elect. Four years later the next logical step was made. Congress authorized permanent protection of the president's immediate family. Moreover, anybody who made "threats" against the president committed a federal crime.

The White House Police Force was established in 1922, at Warren Harding's request. Only in 1930, during the Hoover administration, was the White House Police Force brought under the supervision of the U.S. Secret Service.

1951 was an important year for the Secret Service. Because of the attempt on President Truman's life, Congress enacted legislation that permanently authorized Secret Service protection of the president, his immediate family, the president-elect, and the vice president, if he requests it.

In 1962, during the Kennedy administration, Congress passed a law that expanded the charge of the Secret Service to protect the vice president.

One final note: "Congress passed legislation in 1994 stating that presidents elected to office after January 1, 1997, will receive Secret Service protection for 10 years after leaving office. Individuals elected to office prior to January 1, 1997, will continue to receive lifetime protection."[1]

On March 1, 2003, The U.S. Secret Service moved from Treasury to the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security, where it is today.
____________

[1] For the history of the U.S. Secret Service, see the official Website at the U.S. Department of the Treasury at http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml.

One VP serves two presidents

2004-11-19T17:30:00.000-05:00

Question: Was there ever a vice president who served two different presidents? It is generally acknowledged Vice President Dick Cheney will not run for president in 2008, but would it be unprecedented for him to stay on as vice president if George W. Bush's successor won?
From: Terry B. of Pittsburgh, PA
Date: November 19, 2004

Gleaves answers: Twice in American history a vice president was elected in two consecutive elections that involved two different president-elects. In 1804, George Clinton was elected to serve as Thomas Jefferson's vice president (in Jefferson's second term); Clinton was re-elected in 1808 to serve as James Madison's vice president.

A generation later, in 1824, John Calhoun was elected to serve as John Quincy Adams's vice president; Calhoun was re-elected in 1828 to serve as Andrew Jackson's vice president.

Curiously, in neither case did the vice president complete his second term. Clinton died (1812); Calhoun resigned (1832).

Presidents and Supreme Court nominees

2004-11-13T20:18:00.000-05:00

Question: There has been a lot of discussion lately about President Bush's opportunity to appoint three or more Supreme Court justices over the next four years. What is the current composition of the Court? Do most presidents have the opportunity to nominate Supreme Court justices? Who has nominated the most?
From: Pat T. of Orange County, CA
Date: November 13, 2004

Gleaves answers: Abortion, gay marriage, stem-cell research, school prayer -- there are enough contentious issues to keep any court in the headlines. The U.S. Supreme Court will certainly have its hands full during its next term. But will it be the court as it is currently composed?

One of the most important duties of the president, as set out in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, is to nominate judges to the federal bench. Congress sets the number of justices that will serve at any given time, and currently it is nine: eight associate justices plus the chief justice.

Many justices served for an extremely long time. Hugo Black was on the bench for 34 years and one month; Stephen Field, for 34 years and six months; William O. Douglas, for 36 years and six months.[1] Yet, given the ages of several justices on the current Supreme Court, and given Chief Justice William Rehnquist's fight with cancer, it is possible that President George W. Bush will have the opportunity to nominate two or more justices during his second term. Below are (1) the current composition of the highest court in the land, (2) the nominating president, and (3) the date the judicial oath was taken [2]:

Chief jusice:
William Rehnquist was nominated by President Richard Nixon and took the judicial oath on January 7, 1972.
He was elevated from associate justice to chief justice by President Reagan on September 26, 1986.

The associate justices, who by custom are seated in seniority on the Bench, are:
John Paul Stevens, nominated by President Gerald R. Ford, took the judicial oath on December 19, 1975.
Sandra Day O'Connor (President Ronald Reagan) -- September 25, 1981.
Antonin Scalia (Reagan) -- September 26, 1986.
Anthony M. Kennedy (Reagan) -- February 18, 1988.
David Souter (President George H. W. Bush) -- October 9, 1990.
Clarence Thomas (Bush) -- October 23, 1991.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (President Bill Clinton) -- August 10, 1993.
Stephen Breyer (Clinton) -- August 3, 1994.

Note that Republican presidents have nominated seven of the nine members serving on the current Supreme Court.

Since the founding of our nation, there have been 16 chief justices. Only 14 of our 42 presidents have had the opportunity to nominate or elevate a chief justice. George Washington got to pick three; John Adams got to choose one. Since then, Republican presidents have nominated eight; Democratic presidents have nominated four.

William Howard Taft is unusual among the chief justices. After serving as president himself (1909-1913), Taft was nominated by President Warren G. Harding to be chief justice of the Supreme Court, a position he held through the 1920s.

Since 1789 there have been 97 associate justices, including those who currently serve. History has not evenly distributed their death or retirement from the bench. Just one-fifth of our presidents have nominated more than half of our associate justices. George Washington holds the record for nominating justices who would sit on the Supreme Court -- ten in all. Franklin D. Roosevelt comes in a strong second with eight justices. Jackson, Lincoln, Taft, and Eisenhower each got five of their justices on the bench. Next come Grant, Benjamin Harrison, and Grover Cleveland, with four apiece.

It is useful to recall that, although the Constitution vests the president with the power to nominate justices to the Supreme Court, he does so with the advice and consent of the Senate. Not all presidential nominees have been rubber stamped by the Senate. Robert Bork was nominated by President Reagan in the fall of 1987, only to be rejected by the Senate after particularly nasty confirmation hearings. So ugly was the confirmation process that a new verb entered the language: "to bork" (reminiscent of "to burke"), which means to assail a judicial nominee under heavy questioning that is politically motivated until the nominee voluntarily withdraws his name from consideration or is rejected by a vote on the floor of the Senate.
_______________________________________
[1]For historical information about the chief justices and associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, see the official site at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/traditions.pdf.

[2]See http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/members.pdf.

Presidents as high priests

2004-11-12T17:20:00.000-05:00

Question: As a follow up to my last question about all the presidents' roles, would you please elaborate on the president as America's "high priest" (your term)?
From: Walter A., of Portland, ME
Date: November 12, 2004 [revised November 23, 2004]

Gleaves answers: In my last answer I said that Americans expect presidents to govern, to be sure. But they also want leaders who can inspire, console, comfort, and even lead the nation in prayer when the situation warrants -- in other words, to be their high priest. Think about it: no other individual in America can summon the entire nation to prayer when there is a D-Day Invasion, a Challenger tragedy, or a September 11th.

Nor do we look to our presidents to serve as high priests only in crises. Going all the way back to the founding, we have followed our leaders when they have called for days of "fasting, thanksgiving, and prayer." Presidents have lent solemnity to the national mood when laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And they direct our thoughts when leading us in benediction at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

There is no question that religion has been historically linked with the presidency. The question is: What are the policy implications of this relationship?

Secular-Friendly Interpretation of the Presidency

To say that presidents have served as Americans' high priest is to confirm the historical record, and to broach one of the thorniest debates in the United States today. On the one side are historians, sociologists, and political scientists with secular leanings. The most extreme secularists would share Ernest Hemingway's sentiment, "To Hell with a church that becomes a state; to Hell with a state that becomes a church."

For these, Jefferson's famous letter to the Baptists, calling for the separation of church and state, has become tantamount to a Constitutional provision (which is somewhat curious, considering that Jefferson was neither a delegate at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 nor the author of the First Amendment).

One of the deans of American history, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, has weighed in on Hemingway's side of the debate. Recently the former aide to John F. Kennedy roundly attacked attempts to merge God's House with the White House by going back to our nation's origins. In the interest of balance, it is worth quoting Schlesinger at length:

"The founding fathers did not mention God in the Constitution, and the faithful often regarded our early presidents as insufficiently pious.

"George Washington was a nominal Anglican who rarely stayed for Communion. John Adams was a Unitarian, which Trinitarians abhored as heresy. Thomas Jefferson, denounced as an atheist, was actually a deist who detested organized religion and who produced an expurgated version of the New Testament with the miracles eliminated. Jefferson and James Madison, a nominal Episcopalian, were the architects of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. John Quincy Adams was another Massachusetts Unitarian. Andrew Jackson, pressed by clergy members to proclaim a national day of fasting to seek God's help in combating a cholera epidemic, replied that he could not do as they wished 'without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the general government.'

"In the 19th century, all presidents routinely invoked God and solicited his blessing. But religion did not have a major presence in their lives. Abraham Lincoln was the great exception. Nor did our early presidents use religion as an agency for mobilizing voters. 'I would rather be defeated,' said James A. Garfield, 'than make capital out of my religion.'

"Nor was there any great popular demand that politicians be men of faith. In 1876, James G. Blaine, an aspirant to the Republican presidential nomination, selected Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a famed orator but a notorious scoffer at religion, to deliver the nominating speech: The pious knew and feared Ingersoll as 'The Great Agnostic.'

"There were presidents of ardent faith in the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson had no doubt that the Almighty designated the United States -- and himself -- for the redemption and salvation of humankind. Jimmy Carter ... was 'born again.' Ronald Reagan, though not a regular churchgoer, had a rapt evangelical following. But neither Wilson nor Carter nor Reagan applied religious tests to secular issues, nor did they exploit their religion for their political benefit."[1]

John F. Kennedy is perhaps unique among the presidents. On the way to becoming the nation's first Roman Catholic president, he explicitly distanced himself from the Vatican and church teaching. His September 1960 speech to Baptists gathered in Houston was a landmark in campaign history.

Religious-Friendly Interpretation of the Presidency

Most presidents have not been like Kennedy. Most have unapologetically deployed their faith to tap into the strong spiritual beliefs of citizens. Many of our early presidents, for example, could call for official days of fasting, thanksgiving, and prayer without being criticized. Some other specific examples:

Jefferson, stung by accusations of being an atheist in the bruising campaign of 1800, proved to be more accomodating to Christianity than is generally realized. He acknowledged the beneficence of Providence in his Second Inaugural Address and funded Catholic missions to the Indians with federal dollars.

During our nation's agony, Lincoln, a man of deep faith, openly wondered in his Second Inaugural Address about divine retribution for the nation tolerating the sin of slavery and appealed to "the better angels of our nature."

Garfield was the nation's first preacher-president.

On June 6, 1944 -- D-Day -- Franklin D. Roosevelt asked that Americans stop what they were doing to pray for the success of the Allied reconquest of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Ike at his Inauguration read aloud a prayer that he himself had composed; was baptized in the White House; and hired an individual to be his liaison to the faith community.

Carter appealed directly to the "born again" for political advantage.

Reagan, who was rarely seen going to Sunday servives, nevertheless courted evangelical Protestants (known as the Moral Majority) and wrote a pro-life article for Human Life Review. He also detailed William Casey to work with the Vatican to end the Cold War.

Many was the Sunday that Bill Clinton would use going to church, with Bible in hand, as a photo-op. But those who know Clinton well say that his faith is no superficial gesture, that it is genuine and deep.

On the campaign trail in 2000, President George W. Bush famously said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ. And Democratic candidate Al Gore said he supported faith-based initiatives to help solve social problems.

There is no question that many of our presidents have been men of faith. Nor is there any question that they have served as a kind of high priest in our national life. But debate rages over the extent to which the presidents' personal religious convictions should inform public policy.

AMERICA AS A RELIGIOUS NATION

To acknowledge that our presidents from time to time play the role of high priest presupposes that the United States is a religious nation with citizens who are open to such a high priest. In fact, the U.S. is unusual in this regard. Of the twenty most developed nations in the world, the U.S. is by far the most religious. Surveys show that a large majority of Americans believe in God and in Satan and say that religion is important to them; more than half our population believes that the U.S. benefits from divine protection and has a negative view of atheists; almost half attend a worship service weekly. The extent of American religiosity contrasts sharply with that of other peoples. Only 20 percent of Germans, 12 percent of Japanese, and 11 percent of French say that religion is highly important to them.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, "religious expression in the United States seems to have grown, not diminished, with socio-economic development. According to Roger Finke, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, in 1890, 45 percent of Americans were members of a church. By 2000, that figure was 62 percent."[2]

It is fascinating to inquire why America is the most religious of the top twenty nations on the United Nations' Human Development Index. Our country hardly fits the long-espoused sociological model that held that modernization and religion do not mix; that said the more wealth a nation generated and distributed, the less religious it would be. A fascinating piece in the New York Times explains: "Old-school sociology holds that as nations become more prosperous, healthy, and educated, demand for the support that religion provides declines. People do not suddenly lose faith as they grow rich, these sociologists argue. Rather, they gradually go less to church -- reducing their children's exposure to religion. Meanwhile, secular institutions take over functions, like education, formerly controlled by the church. Religious attendence, they argue, wanes from one generation to the next. In economic terms, demand for religion drops as its perceived benefits diminish compared with the cost of participating."[3]

Certainly the old sociological model seems to account for the lukewarm state of religion in thoroughly modernized European nations, as well as in Canada and Japan. But it does not explain why the wealthiest and most modern nation of all, the United States, has remained an enclave of religiosity.

The way to understand American exceptionalism may lie in thinking by means of an analogy. The analogy that suggests itself is supply-side economics, long associated with America's fortieth president, Ronald Reagan (which is apt, considering the extent to which the Gipper reached out to evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics, and pro-Israeli Jews). Here is what the same New York Times piece observes: "over the past 10 years or so a growing group of mostly American sociologists has deployed a novel theory to explain the United States' apparently anomalous behavior: supply-side economics. Americans, they say, are fervently religious because there are so many churches competing for their devotion."[4]

More specifically, "demand for religion has little to do with economic development. Instead, what creates change is the supply of religious services. That is, Americans are more churchgoing and pious than Germans or Canadians because the United States has the most open religious market, with dozens of religious denominations competing vigorously to offer their flavor of salvation, becoming extremely responsive to the needs of their parishes. 'There's a lack of regulation restricting churches, so in this freer market there is a larger supply,' said Mr. Finke."[5]

What's more, "The suppliers of religion then try to stoke demand. 'The potential demand for religion has to be activated,' said Rodney Stark, a sociologist at Baylor University. 'The more members of the clergy that are out there working to expand their congregations the more people will go to church.'"[6]

Further, "Mr. Finke notes that this free-market theory fits well with the explosion of religion across Latin America, where the weakening of the longstanding Catholic monopoly has led to all sorts of evangelical Christian churches and to an overall increase of religious expression. The supply-siders say their model even explains secular Europe. Europeans, they argue, are fundamentally just as religious as Americans, with similar metaphysical concerns, but they suffer from an uncompetitive market -- lazy, quasi-monopolistic churches that have been protected by competition by the state. 'Wherever you've got a state church, you have empty churches,' Mr. Stark said."[7]

Historian Garry Wills makes the trenchant observation that the American tradition of separating church and state "protected religion from anticlericalism." This fact, combined with our pluralism, would help religion flourish in the U.S.[8]

All these factors help explain why Americans do not shy away from seeing their president occasionally play the role of high priest. But this statement must be qualified. If the president is to play the role of a "pope" in America's civil religion, he must be respectful of America's tradition of religious pluralism. He must not be perceived as a proselyte or apologist for his particular denomination. He must take care to avoid using symbols and words that are peculiar to his denomination.

___________________________________

[1]Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Los Angeles Times.

[2]Roger Finke quoted in Eduardo Porter, "Give Them Some of That Free-Market Religion," New York Times, November 21, 2004, p. 14 in Week in Review.

[3]Porter, "Give."

[4]Porter, "Give."

[5]Finke quoted in Porter, "Give."

[6]Rodney Stark quoted in Porter, "Give."

[7]Stark quoted in Porter, "Give."

[8]Garry Wills quoted in Porter, "Give."

Modern Campaign Origins, Development

2004-11-09T17:24:00.000-05:00

Question: When was the first modern political campaign?
From: Megan S. of Allendale, Michigan
Date: June 3, 2004 [updated November 9, 2004

Gleaves answers:

This is the question that Karl Rove, the chief political advisor to President George W. Bush, asked himself when he masterminded the campaign strategy that would help Bush become Texas governor (1994, 1998) and U.S. president (2000, 2004). As you will see below, one campaign in particular fascinated Rove and became a model for the modern campaign.

IN THE BEGINNING, CANDIDATES DID NOT CAMPAIGN

It's hard to imagine nowadays, but there was a time when it was considered poor form for a candidate to campaign openly for the presidency. They did not even attend their own nominating conventions. Historian Alan Brinkley explains how, in the nineteenth century, "The public aloofness of most presidential candidates gave an aura of nonpartisan dignity to the election process and kept alive the vision of the nation's founders of a political world free of parties and factions." Indeed,

As late as 1900, when William McKinley ran for reelection as president, it was possible for a candidate to remain almost entirely out of view during the national campaign and allow other party leaders to do virtually all the work of mobilizing voters. Successful presidential candidates in the nineteenth century accepted election almost as if it were a gift of the people -- a gift that they pretended never to have sought and that they had made no active efforts to accept (although of course they had almost always worked incessantly if quietly to obtain it).[1]

The custom was so powerful that an orator the caliber of Abraham Lincoln adhered to it -- even in 1864, when the nation was at war, and even though the president was driven to serve a second term. As David Herbert Donald explains,

There was little that Lincoln could do openly to promote his renomination and reelection. Custom prohibited him from soliciting support, making public statements, or appearing to campaign for office. But as the nominating season approached, he made a point of hosting numerous social activities at the White House ... which could only boost the president's hopes for a second term.[2]

This custom of imposed restraint affected much American political life. Indeed, one pretext for drawing up articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson was that he "disgraced" Congress by openly, unabashedly campaigning; not for himself, mind you, which was considered beyond the pale even for him -- but for his supporters. After Congress slapped Johnson down, presidential aspirants dared not openly campaign for another three decades.

18TH- AND 19TH-CENTURY BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN CAMPAIGN

Some students of history say that there is nothing new under the sun. Indeed, there are 18th- and 19th-century roots to that quadrennial civic ritual we call the modern presidential campaign, and it is important before proceeding to acknowledge them. In his study on the bitterly fought campaign of 1800 between presidential aspirants John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr, historian John Ferling wrote of the similarities he perceived between that election and present-day elections:

The prevailing sense for some time has been that politics in the eighteenth-century was substantially different from modern politics. Supposedly, public officials were different as well, tending to be more detached and disinterested, more above the fray. That was not what I found.... Politicians then, as now, were driven by personal ambition. They represented interest groups. They used the same tactics as today, sometimes taking the high road, but often traveling the low road, which led them to ridicule and even smear their foes, to search for scandal in the behavior of their adversaries, and to play on raw emotions.[3]

The 1800 contest had one element of modern-day campaigning in spades -- negative attacks. Federalist newspapers, siding with John Adams, waged a no-holds-barred assault on Republican Thomas Jefferson that makes modern journalism look like the model of civility and nonpartisanship. Federalist writers accused Jefferson of being an atheist, pro-slavery, a coward who avoided military service during the Revolutionary War, and a "romantic airhead" who would wrecklessly entangle the young U.S. with revolutionary France; later they circulated the story that he had had sex (and children) with his slave. For their part, Republican newspapers, which were pro Jefferson, accused Adams of being mentally unbalanced and a closet monarchist; they also circulated the rumor that he was having prostitutes shipped over from Britain. If you thought today's campaigns were bad, look no further than to the Founding Fathers; the campaign of 1800 was surely one of the nastiest in U.S. history.

Actually, the contest for president in 1828 was even nastier. Attack dogs for incumbent John Quincy Adams accused Andrew Jackson of being a dictator who was determined to subvert the presidency into a tyranny. Jackson, they claimed, was so ambitious for empire that he would become the American Napoleon. The Adams camp had plenty of ammunition to use against Old Hickory -- the brawls and duels, his execution of deserters in the War of 1812, his declaration of marshal law in New Orleans, his association with Aaron Burr, his invasions of Spanish Florida in 1814 and 1818. Meanest of all, they seized on Andrew's marriage to Rachel, who through no fault of her own was a bigamist when Jackson married her. Adams’s attack dogs charged that neither Andrew nor Rachel Jackson was morally fit to inhabit the White House.

Political historians point to 1828 as a landmark in U.S. history for other reasons as well. Among them, he was the last veteran of the American Revolution to become president; yet he was the first president not considered a Founding Father; and -- to your point -- he was the first president to be popularly endorsed. Jackson did not rely on a small cadre of party leaders and "King Caucus," as the Founding Fathers had. Rather he got the nod from the Tennessee legislature as well as conventions and mass meetings around the nation. Presidential historian Paul Boller observes, "Voters in 1828 regarded the election that year as a momentous event.... A 'great revolution,' both sides agreed, had taken place; henceforth, there was to be more popular participation in American politics."[4]

The 1828 campaign, by the way, was interesting for its political cartoons. Political cartoons have been around since politically-motivated newspapers. But when a cartoonist wanted to poke fun at Andrew Jackson's populism, he depicted Old Hickory as a jackass. Jackson turned the jackass image to his advantage -- he would stubbornly fight for the people --and the donkey stuck as a symbol of Jackson and the Democratic party.

Indeed, by 1832, the Democratic Party would hold its first national convention in a Baltimore saloon. (Perhaps the atmosphere of conventions has not changed much in the past 170 years!)

The 1840 campaign that catapulted William Henry Harrison to the White House also saw modern flourishes --slogans, songs, and the selling of the candidate. That landmark campaign season saw:

One of the first catchy campaign slogans in U.S. history: "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!" Whig supporters pasted the slogan (referring to General Harrison's victory over Indians at Tippecanoe, Indiana, and to the vice presidential nominee) on whiskey bottles, cigar tins, sewing boxes, and pennants.
Image management: "handlers" took the aristocratic Harrison -- who was to the manor born, at Berkeley Plantation on the James River in Virginia -- and with the unwitting assistance of Democratic opponents transformed him into a log-cabin frontiersman in the Indiana wilderness.
Songs: incorporated both political slogans and snappy music.
Mass rallies: one of the most spectacular mass rallies in the early decades of the republic occurred when tens of thousands of Harrison's admirers descended on Tippecanoe Battlefield in the Indiana wilderness -- no small feat, considering the rough roads and limited water transport in those days. Another mass rally was held at Fort Meigs, where then-General Harrison fought during the War of 1812.
Women campaigners: the irony of course is that woman couldn't vote, but they campaigned energetically for their Whig candidate, attending conventions, giving speeches, writing political pamphlets, and parading with brooms to "sweep" Democrats out of office. It got so intense that girls in Tennessee wore sashes demanding, "Whig husbands or none."[5]
Negative campaigning that sank to new lows: nineteenth-century politics tended to be a lot nastier than what we are treated to today. Harrison supporters went after the sitting president, Martin Van Buren, with a vengeance. Whigs nicknamed him "Martin Van Ruin." Whig glee clubs went around singing, "Van, Van, is a used up man." And Whigs made hay out of the fact that Vice President Richard Johnson had had affairs with African-American women. And you think Bill Clinton had problems?

The 1852 campaign saw a presidential nominee enlist the talent of a national celebrity to help him win office. At Bowdoin College, Franklin Pierce had a famous classmate. His name was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Pierce called on the great novelist to write the campaign biography that would help him get elected.[6]

The 1880 campaign that put James A. Garfield in the White House also took some baby steps toward the full-fledged modern campaign. The Republican candidate had a famous publicist in Horatio Alger, who did not have to resort to fiction to tell Garfield's rags-to-riches story; Garfield, the last of our presidents born in a log cabin, was the "ideal self-made man." Although Garfield adhered to the tradition of presidents lying low during elections, he was one of the greatest orators in the Republican arsenal. It made no sense for him totally to conceal his talent under a bushel basket. So he waged the first "front porch" campaign from his home in Mentor, Ohio. It was a kind of canned press conference for any newspapermen, lobbyists, and citizens who showed up to listen to him discourse on the issues of the day; during the fall of 1880, some 17,000 visitors dropped by to hear his stirring orations.

The 1896 campaign is considered pivotal by many students of American politics. When William McKinley decided to run for president, he enlisted a fellow Ohioan, Mark Hanna, to mastermind his campaign. It was a fortuitous choice: not only would McKinley win the election, but in the process Mark Hanna would create the mold for the modern presidential campaign.

In the first place, Hanna -- himself a successful industrialist -- recognized the importance of outspending the opponent, William Jennings Bryan, a populist Democrat who was criss-crossing the nation giving speeches that blasted East Coast elites. To overcome Bryan's energy and popular appeal, Hanna raised more money than any previous U.S. presidential campaign.

In the second place, Hanna, loaded with money, launched a massive ground campaign. He hired an army of 1,400 campaign workers who feverishly distributed buttons, leaflets, pamphlets, and posters.

Third, an army of speakers stumped for McKinley in strategic electoral areas. Hanna's strategy especially focused the candidate's message on two key cities, New York and Chicago, in states that were rich with electoral college votes.

Fourth, Hanna understood the importance not just of the ground campaign, but of ideas. Elections are about articulating, testing, proving, and vindicating ideas. One man in particular, Kansas newspaperman William Allen White, was in the vanguard of the campaign for ideas. He wrote a powerful editorial called "What's the Matter with Kansas?" in the Emporia Gazette on August 15, 1896 -- a conservative broadside against the Populists and their leader William Jennings Bryan. "The GOP reprinted a million copies of this editorial in pamphlet form, making sure that every middle class voter in the Midwest had a copy."[7]

The strategy worked. McKinley won, and Hannah's methods are studied to this day, as Karl Rove will attest. Mark Hanna is his guru.

It bears repeating: in the nineteenth-century, incumbent presidents did not go out on the stump on their own behalf. Even presidential candidates who were not incumbents rarely courted voters. Many of those who did -- Horace Greeley in 1872, James Blaine in 1884, and William Jennings Bryan in 1896 -- all lost.[8]

The first time an incumbent president tentatively spoke out on his own behalf was exactly one hundred years ago, when Theodore Roosevelt ran for re-election in 1904. Tentative is not a word normally associated with TR. No stranger to energetic campaigning, he had stumped hard as a vice presidential candidate in 1900 on behalf of William McKinley's reelection. But in 1904 he had to cool his heels at Sagamore Hill -- an act of torture, given his ebullient personality. As he wrote to his son Kermit, on the eve of the election, "I have continually wished that I could be on the stump myself.... I have fretted at my inability to hit back, and to take the offensive ... against Parker."[9] Nevertheless, he speechified from his front porch and wrote some pieces defending his record.

TR's restrained behavior in 1904 would go by the wayside within a decade. By the time the 1912 campaign rolled around, both William Howard Taft and TR were competing in public for votes, perhaps because of the personal animous that had developed between the two.

Even after TR and Taft broke the mold, Warren Harding resorted to the hallowed practice of a front porch campaign in 1920 in Marion, Ohio, and Herbert Hoover ventured out the give only seven campaign speeches when he ran for president in 1928.

One important innovation came about in 1928 that would impact the 1932 race between Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Democrats, tired of being shut out of the White House during the Roaring Twenties, hired a full-time attack dog and put him in an office in Washington, D.C. Charles M had a background in journalism; his job was to churn out press releases and op-eds that would magnify every mistake Herbert Hoover made as president. The stock market crash of 1929, and spreading depression, made the task of tearing down the so-called Great Engineer all the more delectible. It helped tee up the Democrats to nominate a candidate, FDR, who would crush Hoover in the 1932 contest.

20TH-CENTURY CAMPAIGNS HARNESS NEW TECHNOLOGIES

But change was afoot. Take the impact of the transportation revolution on campaigns. As the era of the horse-and-buggy passed, energetic candidates harnessed trains, automobiles, and airplanes to set themselves on the road to the White House. One of the most dramatic campaign-transportation firsts occurred in 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt flew from Albany, New York, to the convention in Chicago, Illinois, to accept his part's nomination for president. This act marked a break with tradition. Prior to 1932, most nominees stayed home during conventions and received a delegation called a "notification ceremony," informing them that they were the party's nominee for president. Of course, they already knew that fact, but the formal ceremony was part of American custom until 1932. After '32 it was dispensed with.

Changed was also ushered in by the development of electronic media. Edison's phonograph in the late 1800s, radio and motion-picture newsreels in the 1920s, television in the 1940s and '50s -- all revolutionized presidential campaigns. Think about it: all through the nineteenth century, candidates had relied on a print culture -- newspapers and broadsides, almanacs and political biographies -- to reach a mass audience; there was little difference in communication the message of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and, say, Grover Cleveland in 1888. But with the invention of a host of new electronic media -- phonographic recordings, radio, motion-picture newsreels, TV -- suddenly the nation became a giant town hall without walls. Millions of American citizens could experience what no previous generation had: they could listen first-hand to candidates speak and express their views. Increasingly, emphasis would be on the way a candidate projected his personality, and on the quality of his voice and looks. Were candidates physically fit? Did they sound and look like presidential material?

There are several media milestones worth mentioning; each shaped the modern campaign. The 1924 election saw candidates use the new medium of radio to broadcast their message. Prior to '24, candidates had been using phonographs to disseminate their voice to a mass audience.

Another media milestone occurred in the 1936 election, when Franklin Roosevelt and challenger Alf Landon saw the heavy use of radio combined with a reliance on the new science of polling, which would increasingly utilize another spreading technology, the telephone.

Other media milestones occurred in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower became the first presidential candidate to appear in a television campaign commercial. That same year saw Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon deliver his famous "Checker's speech" on live TV and give such a credible performance that a flood of supportive letters deluged the campaign and Nixon salvaged his candidacy. Also in 1952, the CBS television network broadcast that year's national conventions. As Walter Chronkite observed in his biography, A Reporter's Life, it was the first -- and for a long time the last -- time that TV cameras caught mostly unrehearsed political behavior at a major convention. After 1952, a new professional type -- the media handler --would increasingly influence what presidential candidates would say and do under the klieg lights. Political campaigns became choreographed presentations, like a Madison Avenue advertisement or Hollywood production. One new technology that fed this development was A. C. Nielsen's audimeter and film cartridge, which registered what TV viewers were staying tuned in to.

In 1960 the debates between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy ushered in the era of live televised performances. "The four debates," notes the Smithsonian Institution, "established new standards and expectations for candidate preparation, performance, and appearance." There was no doubt about TV's impact on the election. "When asked at a press conference the day after the election whether his victory would have been possible without the help of television, Kennedy replied, 'I don't think so.'"[10]

Campaign TV commercials have also become a staple of the modern campaign. The 1964 presidential contest saw a masterful if cynical attempt to manipulate the public when the Johnson campaigned aired -- just once -- the infamous television commercial of the little girl picking daisy petals, which dissolved into a mushroom cloud.

The 1968 campaign saw the sophisticated packaging of a candidate reach new heights. For the team of media advisors who managed the Nixon campaign and masterfully manipulated the media in the process, see Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President. Henceforth, a skeptical press corps would often filter campaign events for viewers.

Partly in reaction to the public's sense of over-reporting and biased editing, C-Span developed a format that brought the sound and images of campaigns straight to viewers, without intermediaries. Watching such programs as "Road to the White House," viewers were left free to take in the sights, sounds, and substance of a campaign, and to form their own judgments.

The development of the Internet in the 1990s brought yet new dimensions to modern campaigning, as people could form virtual communities around candidates, and campaigns could tap into vast new populations in order to fundraise and disseminate their message.

The transportation and media revolutions -- as well as the steady erosion of the custom of restraint --dramatically changed the way candidates campaign. Combined, these factors made campaigns increasingly fast-paced and dynamic. As a result, even the verbs we use to speak of campaigns has changed. In an earlier day, when candidates stayed home, they "stood" for election. By the mid 20th-century, they "ran" for election.[11]

[1]Alan Brinkley, Introduction, Campaigns: A Century of Presidential Races (London: DK, 2001), p. 7.
[2]David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 475.
[3]John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. xviii.
[4]Paul F. Boller, Jr., Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 42.
[5]Ibid., p. 74.
[6]Philip McFarland, Hawthorne in Concord (New York: Grove Press, 2004), pp. 157-58.
[7]William Allen White, "What's the Matter with Kansas," online at http://www.h-net.org/~shgape/internet/kansas.html.
[8]Boller, Presidential Campaigns, p. 197.
[9]Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Kermit Roosevelt, October 26, 1904; cited in "The Election of 1904," exhibit at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site (Wilcox Mansion), Buffalo, New York.
[10]Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, "The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden," exhibit label in Communicating the Presidency.
[11]George Nash, phone interview by Gleaves Whitney, August 31, 2004.

Cabinet members from the opposing party

2004-11-09T13:01:00.000-05:00

Question: With all the talk about Bush's cabinet leaving or changing posts, I was wondering how often a president reaches out to the other party to fill vacancies.
From: Rachel R. of Salt Lake City, UT
Date: November 9, 2004 [revised January 20, 2005]

Gleaves answers: As a nation we will probably never again achieve the balance that George Washington did when there were just three cabinet members. He hired the nation's brilliant Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, to serve as secretary of the Treasury at the same time that he had the nation's stellar Democratic-Republican, Thomas Jefferson, come on board as secretary of state. That was an era -- brief in duration -- when a lid was kept on openly partisan politics because Washington willed it so.

Washington's precedent of trying to bridge factional differences has held up symbolically. It is not unusual for a president to nominate a cabinet secretary from the opposing party, even in the harsh climate of modern politics. For example, Republican Dwight Eisenhower had Democrat James P. Mitchell serve as secretary of labor. Because of his efforts on behalf of migrant laborers and other working people, Mitchell was called "the social conscience of the Republican party."

Democrat John F. Kennedy had Republican C. Douglas Dillon serve as secretary of the Treasury. Dillon had previously been in the Eisenhower administration and was known as a strong advocate of tax cuts. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, kept Dillon on.

Democrat Bill Clinton had Republican William Cohen serve as secretary of defense during his second term.

Republican George W. Bush has had Democrat Norm Mineta serving in the top spot at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Prior to that post, Mineta served as secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration.

As you suggest, the question at the beginning of the second term is whether President Bush is inclined to expand the Democratic roster among his cabinet. David Frum puts the matter in historical perspective: "The only president to have derived political benefit from naming members of the opposing party to his cabinet was Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, when he named Henry Stimson secretary of war and Frank Knox secretary of the Navy. But Roosevelt was accepting a tough bargain: Bidding for an unprecedented and shocking third presidential term, he tried to allay Republican fears by handing operational control over the pending war in Europe to the leading GOP foreign-policy figure of the day and over the pending war in the Pacific to the most recent Republican nominee for vice president. It would be as if George W. Bush made Richard Holbrooke secretary of state and John Edwards secretary of defense."[1]

Much of the post-election discussion over the composition of the cabinet is symbolic, in any case. As Thomas Patterson points out, "Although the cabinet once served as the president's main advisory group, it has not played this role since Herbert Hoover's administration. As national issues have become increasingly complex, the cabinet has become outmoded as a policymaking forum: department heads are likely to understand issues only in their respective policy areas. Cabinet meetings have been larely reduced to gatherings at which only the most general matters are discussed."[2]

Looking further back in American history, we see that there was an attempt to elevate the status of the cabinet in the nineteenth century. Bret Stephens briskly observes in the Wall Street Journal: "Although the administration of William Henry Harrison isn't the most acclaimed in American history, it did contribute one intriguing idea to the theory of executive government. According to historian John Baker of Louisiana State University, 'Harrison had agreed that executive decisions would be based on a majority vote among members of the cabinet, with the president having one vote.' As fate would have it, Old Tippecanoe died within a month of taking office and his successor, John Tyler, promptly did away with the cabinet government concept. Good thing, too: Had Abraham Lincoln allowed his cabinet to govern with him (or for him) the Union would probably have gone to war against Great Britain, per the suggestion of his Secretary of State William Seward, instead of the Confederacy."[3]

In the end, having cabinet members from the opposing political party or contrary viewpoints must not mask a chief requirement of the presidency -- that "the executive office must be single -- that is, occupied by only one person -- to guarantee the necessary executive power and responsibility." This follows from Alexander Hamilton's defense of the presidency in Federalist 70, where he called for "energy in the executive."[4]

CABINET TURNOVER

According to presidential historian Richard Shenkman, 60 percent of George W. Bush's cabinet had changed over by Inauguration Day -- the highest over the past century. The average is about 50 percent.

___________________

[1]David Frum, "A New Style for a New Mandate," Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2004, p. A18.

[2]Thomas E. Patterson, We the People: A Concise Introduction to American Politics, 5th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004), p. 386.

[3]Bret Stephens, "What Is a Cabinet For?" Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2004, p. A15. It should be noted that William Seward had not been thinking of threatening war just with Great Britain. Between the Inauguration and the Sumter crisis, the secretary of state wrote a letter to the new president headed, "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration." Geoffrey Perret records that Seward "wanted Lincoln to unite the country by waging war -- or at least threatening war -- against France and Spain. The Spanish had recently seized Santo Domingo and, with French connivance, were poised to grab Haiti. This violation of the Monroe Doctrine could not be allowed to stand. Tell them to get out of our hemisphere, or else, he urged." [Geoffrey Perret, Lincoln's War: The Untold Story of America's Greatest President and Commander in Chief (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 23.

[4]Peter Woll, ed., American Government: Readings and Cases, 15th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2004), p. xv.

All the presidents' roles

2004-11-08T13:47:00.000-05:00

Question: What are the different roles that a modern president has?
From: Walter A. of Portland, ME
Date: November 8, 2004

Gleaves answers: "My God, this is a hell of a job!" exclaimed President Warren G. Harding, who died during his first term, perhaps in part due to the mounting stress of his work. Harry S. Truman described the job using a vivid comparison: "Being a president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed."[1]

"The American presidency," observes the splendid Smithsonian exhibit on the subject, "has the brutal power to line a face with age, and to do so more swiftly than ever in an age of instant communication and nuclear arsenals. It is a position for which no training can be adequate, no preparation complete, no counsel sufficient -- an office that outstrips anyone's capacity to negotiate the ever-widening circle of its responsibilities."[2]

No doubt about it, the president has the toughest job in the world. Citizens expect their man in the White House to be a miracle worker; to do everything from ginning up jobs to winning wars to congratulating people on making it to a hundred years old. True, the presidency has changed with the times and with the men who have served in the office, but throughout U.S. history the office has been "a glorious burden."[3]

CONSTITUTIONALLY STIPULATED DUTIES

Nowadays we speak of an "imperial presidency," and it is true that the office looks and feels a lot like an elected monarchy. Already at the dawn of the new republic, John Adams tried to convince George Washington that he should act like a king. Adams suggested that the indispensable man should wear robes instead of plain clothes and be addressed as "Your Excellency" instead of "Mr. President." Washington demurred; his one monarchical tendency was that he loved big cars. His canary-colored coach, pulled by six white horses and attended by a bevy of black slaves, must have made quite an impression in New York City, site of the nation's first capital.

Despite some monarchical vestiges that persisted at the creation of the presidency, the U.S. Constitutional is really rather modest about what a president is charged to do. Article II specifies only a half-dozen duties for the chief executive must perform:

(1) As a citizen like the rest of us who himself must live under the law, "he shall take [an] Oath or Affirmation" to uphold the Constitution.
(2) As our chief executive, "he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and "shall commission all the Officers of the United States."

(3) As the head of the nation's armed forces, he "shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."

(4) As head of state, "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties...."
(5) He shall nominate, with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, "Judges of the Supreme Court." Additionally, "he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls ... and all other Officers of the United States." On a related note, "he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers."
(6) As a kind of legislator in chief, "He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."[4]

Look at the verbs that express the chief executive's power. A president can ... take, take care, commission, be, have, make, nominate, appoint, receive, give, recommend, and judge. Not a cipher of an office, to be sure, but executive action is bounded by constitutional, legal, bureaucratic, and political restraints, as well as by custom, media influence, and popular opinion. You would hardly know from the foregoing that the president of the United States is the most powerful man in the world.

THE GROWTH OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER

It is in the framework of restraints and responsibilities that we can begin to understand the "glorious burden" of the presidency. By looking at a president's roles in greater depth, we will see how the office has evolved since George Washington was sworn in some 215 years ago. Following are some of the roles the modern president is expected to fill:

Chief Executive. At the top of the president's job description is making sure the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed. No small task, given how busy Congress is. That's why the president has a staff of 3,400 people who not only work in the Old Executive Mansion and West Wing, but also out in the bureaucracies.

One of the most important tasks of any president is to nominate outstanding jurists to the federal bench and Supreme Court. That may be the most important legacy presidents leave the nation. If they are in power long enough to shape the judiciary, they can also contribute significantly to the culture of the nation.

Chief Diplomat. In his Farewell Address, George Washington advised future presidents to maintain good relations with other nations. A state of peace would allow the United States to grow and prosper and build up the armed forces necessary to defend herself. We were the world's first large republic -- an experiment in ordered liberty -- and maintaining good relations with other nations would require exceptional diplomatic skills.

One of the greatest diplomatic coups in human history was the Louisiana Purchase. Never in human history had a large republic doubled its territory by diplomacy rather than by war. That in itself was a magnificent legacy bequeathed by Thomas Jefferson.

Since Jefferson's time, the president of the U.S. has acquired disproportionate burdens in the global arena. In the first place, we are the world's lone hyperpower, capable of projecting more power and influencing more people than any other nation in history. Second, we have the world's greatest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, capable of destroying more people than any other nation in history. Third, in contrast to most ancient and modern empires, we do not think it enough merely to exert our will abroad in the national interest -- we put a premium on using power morally. This has made some of our presidents not just chief diplomats, but chief crusaders or chief missionaries.

The Smithsonian exhibit on the presidency puts it this way: "To the outside world, the United States president is both a national spokesman and a world leader. As a representative of a nation of immigrants with cultural and economic ties around the globe, the president is not only expected to defend the country's national security and economic interests but also to promote democratic principles and human rights around the world."[5]

Commander in Chief. The Preamble to the Constitution observes that one purpose of government is to "provide for the common defence." The framers of the Constitution believed that civilian control of the military is a cornerstone to liberty in times of war and peace. General George Washington demonstrated this commitment at Newburgh, New York, when he had to bring to heel insubordinate officers who wanted to march on Congress.

The nation was still in its youth when a series of crises forced our first four presidents to act in the role of commander in chief. Washington had to put down the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. John Adams had to wage the Quasi War against the French in the Caribbean. Thomas Jefferson had to go after the Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean. And James Madison had to finish the War for Independence from Great Britain by waging the War of 1812 (America's first congressionally declared war). Our first presidents sported swords on ceremonial occasions; now they go to rallies with the "football," the briefcase that contains nuclear codes and other information needed in a military crisis.

No other duty has caused our presidents more anguish than being commander in chief in time of war. Every president has said the most wrenching decisions he faced, by far, involved sending men into battle knowing that somebody's son, brother, or father wouldn't make it home. A stark photograph of Lyndon Johnson captures the agony of being a wartime commander in chief. LBJ is slumped over in a chair in the Cabinet Room, his head down; a reel-to-reel tape recorder is in front of him. The photo captured LBJ listening to a recording by his son-in-law, Charles Robb, who was a captain in the U.S. Marines serving in Vietnam. "When I left for Vietnam," Captain Robb explained, "the president gave me a small battery-operated tape recorder ... so that I could send Lynda occasional recordings. I think [those tapes] gave him some of the texture of the war at company levels."[6] And that photograph gives Americans some of the texture of being a wartime commander in chief.

There is often an idealism to which presidents appeal to justify American war-making. While Jefferson, a passivist, spoke of expanding the Empire of Liberty, it was Abraham Lincoln who truly infused war with transcendent aims. To Lincoln it was not enough to preserve the Union; by 1863 he also meant to emancipate all black slaves on American soil. To Woodrow Wilson it was not enough to go to war to defend United States interests against German aggression; we had to "make the world safe for democracy." To Ronald Reagan it was not enough to maintain detente with the Soviet Union; communism was an evil system destined for the dustbin of history; we had to help liberate the people in its shackles. To George W. Bush it is not enough to defend the U.S. against jihadists; we have to establish democratic governance in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Imagine if the president were Ghengis Khan, a law unto himself. His ability to make war would be infintely easier than a U.S. president's ability, hemmed in as he is by constitutional, institutional, legal, and democratic restraints. Indeed, the commander in chief cannot appropriate the funds to wage war; for that he must work with Congress. The commander in chief cannot be indifferent to the law when he wages war; he has federal courts with which to contend and ultimately the threat of impeachment and removal from office. The commander in chief cannot have a tin ear when it comes to public opinion in times of war; as the people exercise their sovereignty every four years, he must respect the public and the media who help shape their opinion, assuming he or his party wants to stay in power. (See the Ask Gleaves column, "Wartime presidents," for historical trends regarding wartime presidents running for re-election.)

The following story illustrates the limits on a president's power, even during wartime. Since 9/11, President George W. Bush has been leading the fight against Al Qaeda. He wanted terrorist detainees at Guantanamo to be tried as war criminals. But shortly after Bush's re-election, a "federal judge ruled ... that President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the United States naval base here [at Guantanomo Bay] as war criminals."

It was a blow to the president, who is trying to win a war. A spokesman at the U.S. Department of Justice explained the administration's position: "The process struck down by the district court today [November 8, 2004] was carefully crafted to protect America from terrorists while affording those charged with violations of the laws of war with fair process, and the department will make every effort to have this process restored through appeal.... By conferring protected legal status under the Geneva Conventions on members of Al Qaeda, the judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war."[7] (See the Ask Gleaves column, "Bush Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary," for pre-emptive wars in U.S. history.)

Manager of the Economy. Among the reasons the founders called delegates to Philadelphia in May of 1787 were that a number of economic problems had arisen under the very imperfect Articles of Confederation."[8] The framers knew that a leadership position had to be created that gave more power to execute the laws of the land. There were enormous economic consequences to that decision back in 1787.

The Preamble to the Constitution observes that one purpose of government is to "promote the general welfare." What that means in a free-market system is that the president does not create jobs; rather, he fosters the conditions in which jobs are created. Despite limitations on presidential power, citizens have high expectations of what the CEO of America can do in the economic arena. He must endeavor to keep the country prosperous and make sure markets are functioning well by pursuing a responsible fiscal policy, negotiating treaties that are fair to American workers, resolving disruptive strikes, and appointing judges whose jurisprudence is sound and predictable and not unsettling to markets.

"Even though they have very limited power to control the economy, woe to the president who governs during an economic downturn and is perceived as not doing enough."[9] Herbert Hoover will forever be remembered in an unfavorable light because of Hoovervilles, the shantytowns built on the outskirts of cities in the early years of the Great Depression. (See the Ask Gleaves columns on the presidency and jobs.)

Party Leader. This is an example of a modern-day presidential role that is nowhere prescribed in the Constitution. In fact, George Washington in his Farewell Address urged fellow citizens not to succumb to faction or party. As a fallback position, if parties developed, he wanted presidents to remain above the fray -- to no avail. No sooner had George Washington retired than presidents became the leaders of their parties. And that fact has made them much more effective executives.

Some might quip that the development of political parties has led to the opposite of domestic tranquility -- one of the purposes of government in the Preamble of the Constitution -- but in historical perspective, our parties have served America well. As I've said in another Ask Gleaves column, parties "are the way Americans have long organized and channeled political disputes. They certainly beat the alternatives seen elsewhere around the globe -- little things like tribal wars, putsches, revolutions, assassinations, and mobs at the barricades. We should be grateful that our politics are so relatively genteel."

The men who have been ambitious for their parties have also, on occasion, been ambitious and effective presidents. As the Smithsonian puts it, "Several presidents rose to the office by building political parties or reshaping those that already existed. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican party in the 1790s to counter the Federalist party of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Andrew Jackson created the new Democratic party in the 1820s and won the presidency in 1828 by consolidating the remnants of the Democratic-Republican party and attracting newly enfranchised voters. Others such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan reshaped their party structures, establishing new coalitions and bringing in new supporters."[10]

Ceremonial Head of State. At his Inauguration, the president takes an oath before fellow citizens and before the divine that he will uphold the laws of the land. This is appropriate, considering that the Preamble states that a purpose of government is to "secure the blessings of liberty." The operative word is "blessings." Americans expect presidents to govern, to be sure. But they also want them to inspire, console, comfort, and even lead the nation in prayer when the situation warrants -- in other words, to be their high priest. Think about it: no other individual in America can effectively call the entire nation to prayer when there is a D-Day Invasion, a Challenger tragedy, or a September 11th. And not just in crises -- the president also leads Americans when laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Moreover, through the years many of our presidents have called for days of "fasting and prayer." We have even had a preacher become president: James A. Garfield.

These symbolic events provide occasions when a president can connect with the American people. They are a vital source of presidential power.[11]

CONCLUSION

From the above, we see that there is a correspondence between the six presidential roles set out in Article II of the Constitution, and the six general purposes of government set out in the Preamble:

(1) The president is to take care that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed; this is necessary to "insure domestic tranquility."

(2) The president is to nominate judges; this is necessary to "establish justice."

(3) The president is to serve as commander in chief and make treaties; this is necessary to "provide for the common defence."

(4) and (5) The president is to give Congress information about the state of the Union and recommend measures to improve it; this is necessary to "promote the general welfare" and "to form a more perfect union."

(6) The president is to take an oath at his Inauguration; this is necessary to confirm that ours is a system of laws over men, which in turn is necessary to "secure the blessings of liberty."
_______________________________________

[1]Harding quoted in Lonnie G. Bunch, Spencer R. Crew, Mark G. Hirsch, adn Harry R. Rubenstein, The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, Introduction by Richard Norton Smith (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), pp. 67, 70.

[2]Bunch, et al., American Presidency, p. xii. The Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum teamed up to host the Smithsonian Institution's exhibit, "The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden," on October 2, 2003.

[3]Bunch, et al., American Presidency.

[4]For a good overview of Article II, see Linda R. Monk, The Words We Live By (New York: Hyperion, 2003), pp. 62-88.

[5]Bunch, et al., American Presidency, p. 76.

[6]Photograph and caption in Robert Dallek, "Lyndon B. Johnson," in To the Best of My Ability: The American Presidents, ed. James M. McPherson (New York: DK, 2001), pp. 264-65.

[7]Neil A. Lewis, "U.S. Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guantanamo," New York Times, November 9, 2004, p. A1.

[8]Bunch, et al., American Presidency, p. 83.

[9]Bunch, et al., American Presidency, p. 83.

[10]Bunch, et al., American Presidency, p. 85.

[11]Bunch, et al., American Presidency, p. 81.

Election 2004 in perspective -- part I

2004-11-07T13:05:00.000-05:00

Question: What lessons can be learned from the 2004 presidential election?
From: The editorial desk of The Detroit News (Detroit, MI)*
Date: November 7, 2004

Gleaves answers: The dust of Election 2004 is starting to settle. The Democrats are everywhere seeing red, which is giving them the blues. At this point it is helpful to take a step back from the fray and try to put the election in historical perspective. When it comes to the presidency:

1. Republicans who run as conservatives (not moderates) win. Conservatives have prevailed in four of the last seven elections. Two-term President George W. Bush calls himself a "compassionate conservative." But an earlier two-term president, Ronald Reagan, was arguably the most conservative president in the 20th century, and he won both the 1980 and 1984 elections in landslides.

Back in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower ran as a staunch conservative during his first campaign, winning by a large margin even while vowing to abolish Social Security. Richard Nixon, who early in his first term reached out to the "silent majority" of Americans in Red states, positioned himself as a conservative, and went on to be re-elected in a landslide in 1972.

Moderate Republicans typically don't do as well. Consider the ill-fated campaigns of Gerald R. Ford in 1976, George H. W. Bush in 1992,[1] and Bob Dole in 1996. Indeed, only once in the last half century -- in 1964, when Barry Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson -- has a self-consciously conservative Republican been rejected at the polls.

2. Democrats who run as liberals (not centrists) lose. The political landscape is filled with the detritus of left-of-center candidates -- George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry -- every one of them defeated at the polls.

In response to Ronald Reagan's stunning electoral success, Democrats formed the Democratic Leadership Council to champion more moderate candidates who could talk like -- well, Republicans. DLC Democrats wanted to cut taxes, reform welfare, and shrink significant sectors of the federal government. Not coincidentally, Bill Clinton, who hitched his ideological wagon to the DLC star, was the Democrats' only two-term president after Franklin Roosevelt.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein commented on the election from a Democratic perspective: "When you look at a presidential election where we lost in every age group except one, I think it's time to do some reassessment. I have noticed," she continued, "that all the gravitas [of our party] has slid to the left. All one has to do is look at the map to know that you can't win a presidential election that way. If we keep going on this way, we'll be a minority party."[2]

3. Religion, morals, and values matter. Hardly any pundits anticipated the shock fact of Election 2004: 22 percent of Americans cited moral values as the primary reason they voted the way they did; not the sluggish economy or the war in Iraq, but moral values; and 80 percent of these voters cast their ballot for Bush. Whoever occupies the office, the president has become a kind of high priest in American life; the people want the person in the Oval Office to reflect their mores.

What went wrong for the Democratic nominee was apparent. On the hustings, Kerry was clearly less comfortable talking about his faith than was Bush. Kerry also had a Senate record that included votes for partial-birth abortions. Because he supported civil unions and was supported by Hollywood liberals, he was damaged goods to evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics, who came out in droves to support Bush, the candidate with whom they could more closely identify.

As reported by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, about a week prior to the election John Kerry received a phone call from former President Bill Clinton, who advised the Democratic candidate to come out firmly against gay marriage. Kerry declined to take the advice and paid the price.

The backlash against liberals was particularly obvious in the 11 states that offered voters the chance to reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage; in all 11 the conservative position prevailed by large margins (indeed, by a 6 to 1 margin in Mississippi and by a 3 to 1 margin in Arkansas and Kentucky). The landslides even occurred in states where Bush lost the popular vote; in Michigan, voters approved constitutional amendments that upheld the traditional definition of marriage and restricted gambling. For some time now, the great cultural and political divide in this nation has been not between Protestants and Catholics -- as in decades past -- but between those who go to worship services at least once a week, and those who hardly go at all.

4. The "mainstream media" continue to get it wrong. Whether it's the anchor desk at CBS or the reporting desk at the New York Times, an unabashed bias is apparent, and Americans in the heartland reject it. It was widely observed, for example, that CNN's Judy Woodruff was visibly distressed Tuesday when Florida went to Bush. Does she know -- does she care -- how silly she looked to folks out in the Red states?

A wise commentator observed that, in Election 2004, it was not the media who were teaching Americans, but Americans who were teaching the media.

5. A final lesson: If many in the media got this election wrong, who got it right? The organization that called it right this time -- as it has in 12 of the last 13 presidential elections -- was the WRC, yes, the same WRC that publishes the Weekly Reader that surveys school kids every election year.

As reported two weeks ago, our youngest citizens predicted that Bush would beat Kerry in a landslide. More to the point, they wanted Bush to beat Kerry in a landslide.

Of course, these kids are America's future.

_________________________________

*A shorter version of this op-ed appeared in the Detroit News on Sunday, November 7, 2004.

[1]George H. W. Bush had a conservative background, gleaned from many of his early political races. When he ran for president in 1988, he also could appeal to conservatives because of his eight years of service as vice president in the Reagan administration. But Bush was abandoned by conservatives over two issues: (1) his decision to raise taxes after the famous "Read my lips -- no new taxes" pledge made at the GOP convention in New Orleans; and his nomination of David Souter to the United States Supreme Court, who proved to be more socially liberal than Main Street as well as the mainstream judiciary.

[2]Dianne Feinstein quoted in Adam Nagourney and Carl Hulse, "For Democrats in Senate, Leader of a Different Stripe: Red State Survivor for Party with the Blues," New York Times, November 14, 2004, p. A22.

States claiming the most presidents

2004-11-06T16:21:00.000-05:00

Question: Which states can claim to be the home or birthplace of the most presidents?
From: Susan G. of San Antonio, TX
Date: November 6, 2004

Gleaves answers: Just three states have given the United States half of her presidents.

Virginia, long nicknamed the "Mother of Presidents," was the birthplace of eight of our 42 presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. There is a whimsical painting hanging in the School of Education at the University of Virginia that shows all eight Old Dominion presidents having an imaginary encounter on the porch of George Washington's home, Mount Vernon. It's definitely worth seeing if you are on the campus in Charlottesville.

Ohio comes in second, as the Buckeye State was the birthplace of seven of our 42 presidents, every one of them Republican: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding. Ohio also likes to claim William Henry Harrison as one of her own; although born in Virginia, he later settled in Ohio. This fact justifies why the Buckeye State vies with Old Dominion for the coveted title, "Mother of Presidents."

New York comes next, as the Empire State can boast of six native sons going on to the White House: Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Two states are next in line, having given the U.S. four presidents each. Massachusetts was the home of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Calvin Coolidge (technically born in Vermont), and John F. Kennedy.

Texas also has bragging rights. (What else is new, considering it's Texas?!) The former republic has been the birthplace or home to four U.S. presidents: Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

Tennessee claims three U.S. presidents: Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson. And California can claim three presidents: Herbert Hoover, Richard M. Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

Adding it all up, you can see that seven states have given our nation six of every seven presidents:
- Virginia 8 (counting strictly birthplace)
- Ohio 7 (counting strictly birthplace)
- New York 6
- Massachusetts 4
- Texas 4
- Tennessee 3
- California 3

It is curious that some historically large states whose origins were in the colonial era have not contributed more of the nation's chief executives. For instance, Pennsylvania -- the same state that saw the creation of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution; the same colony that became the Keystone State -- was home to only one president, and not a distinguished one at that: James Buchanan. It is true that Dwight Eisenhower bought a farm in Pennsylvania and lived there in retirement, but that was after he had served in the White House.

Preacher-president

2004-10-28T18:18:00.000-04:00

Question: Who was the only president who had served as an ordained minister?
From: Jennifer B. of Florence, Alabama
Date: October 27, 2004

Gleaves answers: With all the talk about the separation of church and state, it will probably surprise many Americans to learn that there was a preacher who served as president of the United States. James Abram Garfield (1831-1881) began sermonizing when he was 21 years old, well before he became president. One of the finest orators of his day, he is sometimes regarded as America's "preacher-president."

Garfield, also known as a log cabin president, had not been reared in a particularly pious household. Although he attended a sectarian school -- the Baptist Geauga Academy -- he did not have a transformative religious experience until he was 18 years old. Dissatisfied with his life -- sensing, as he put it, that there was "sleeping thunder in my soul" -- he was drawn in the winter of 1850 to a Disciple camp meeting in Ohio, scene of one of the frontier's last Great Awakenings; the next day, March 4, 1850, he was baptised by immersion in the ice-cold waters of the Chagrin River. For a considerable time thereafter, Garfield possessed all the passion of a true believer, embracing Disciple doctrines while holding at arm's length all other Christian sects from Methodism and Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism, which he believed was thoroughly corrupted. Like other Disciples, Garfield was wary of politics and patriotism. As biographer Allan Peskin observes, "Each July 4th, while his neighbors were celebrating with patriotic frenzy, Garfield piously withdrew into prayer, puzzled that so many could celebrate independence while still slaves to their appetites and passions."[1]

At college, one of his classmates predicted, "I suppose he will be a preacher, and if so he will be a superior one."[2] Indeed, Garfield helped pay his way through college by preaching. Here is how Allan Peskin describes the future president's forays to the front of the church:

Preoccupied though he was with the literature of pagan antiquity, Garfield did not neglect his Christian duty. In the spring of 1853 he began to preach at neighboring churches. Garfield approached his first full-length sermon in a cold sweat of anxiety. By the end of the year, however, he was preaching almost every Sunday, and receiving a gold dollar for each sermon.[3]

Garfield's most famous preaching came on the day after Good Friday, 1865, hours after President Abraham Lincoln had been shot. By that point in his career a Civil War general in the Union army, he was in New York City on a business trip when he heard the dreadful news of the assassination. Peskin writes:

The city seethed with rumors and frightened crowds gathered in the streets for news and reassurance. They were in an ugly mood. According to "a distinguished public man, who was an eyewitness to the exciting scene," fifty thousand people were crammed in the Wall Street area ready to lynch suspected Southern sympathizers. The mob had just about decided to wreak its vengeance on the office of the Copperhead newspaper The World when a figure appeared on the balcony of the customhouse holding a small flag in his hand. "Fellow citizens!" he cried. "Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!"

According to the eye witness: "The effect was tremendous." The crowd was miraculously hushed, turning its thoughts at once from violence to a contemplation of God's eternal yet inscrutable will. It was the greatest triumph of eloquence the "public man" had ever seen, and he turned to a neighbor to ask who the orator was. "The answer came in a low whisper. 'It is General Garfield of Ohio!'"[4]

The legend hovering about Garfield's "God reigns" sermon would persist into the twentieth century. In 1929 in McLean, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, a church was christened the Garfield Memorial Christian Church, commemorating "the only president who functioned as clergy while in office." The president's widow, Lucretia Garfield, even "donated $150 and a picture of the former President to have an inset made for a window."[5]

It is interesting that a number of presidential candidates in recent decades have been "men of the cloth." The Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for president on the Democratic ticket in 1984 and 1988. The Rev. Pat Robertson ran on the Republican ticket in 1988. And the Rev. Al Sharpton ran on the Democratic ticket most recently, in 2004.

_____________________________________________________

[1]Allan Peskin, Garfield (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999), pp. 17-20.

[2]Peskin, p. 23.

[3]Peskin, p. 28.

[4]Peskin, p. 250.

[5]http://www.garfieldchurch.org/history.htm

Best signs for predicting the winner

2004-10-25T10:29:00.000-04:00

Question: Which polling organization has the best track record of predicting who will win the presidency?
From: Tara C. of Grand Rapids, MI
Date: October 24, 2004 [revised November 2, 2004]

Gleaves answers: Eat crow, Gallup. Move over, Zogby International. Eat dirt and die, NBC/Newsweek. You don't even come close to being as good as WRC readers when it comes to predicting who wins presidential races.

As good as who?

The Weekly Reader Corporation (WRC) publishes a newspaper for school kids, and in every presidential election since Dwight Eisenhower's re-election it has invited our youngest citizens to predict who will win the November contest. Since 1956, the WRC poll has correctly dubbed the winner in 11 of 12 contests.

That's saying something, considering some of the close presidential elections in the last half century. In 1960 school kids correctly predicted that Kennedy would come out on top in a breathtakingly close contest with Nixon. Same with the fiercely fought battle in 1976 when incumbent President Gerald Ford was eventually overcome by Jimmy Carter, and the bitter contest in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore that held the nation in suspense for more than a month.

The only election the kids got wrong was 1968, when they thought Robert F. Kennedy would beat out the Republican nominee. However, that survey was gathered in the spring of '68, months before the election and before RFK was assassinated in June.

Whom do school kids think will win in 2004?

The news release available this morning from Weekly Reader opens: "The students who read Weekly Reader’s magazines have made their preference for President known: they want to send President Bush back to the White House.... Hundreds of thousands of students participated, giving the Republican President more than 60% of the votes cast and making him a decisive choice over Democratic Senator John Kerry."[1]

It was almost an electoral sweep at every level. Elementary school kids in every grade voted overwhelming for George W. Bush. Among middle school kids the president also won, but by a narrower margin. Most high schoolers also preferred President Bush; only 10th graders voted in greater numbers for Senator Kerry.[2]

Besides the Weekly Reader poll, other indicators have traditionally presaged who wins in November.

For instance, The stock market's performance in the two months leading up to an election can tell you who will win. There have been 26 elections since 1900. In 16 of those elections, the Dow Jones industrial average trended up in September and October, and in all but one of those 16 elections, the incumbent party candidate won in November. In 10 elections since 1900, the Dow trended down in September and October, and in all but one of those elections, the incumbent party candidate lost in November. What is more, no president running for re-election has ever lost if the Dow in October is up at least 3 percent compared to one year earlier. But no president has been re-elected if the Dow in October is down by 5 percent of more, according to Jeff Hirsch in the Stock Trader's Almanac. [The less than stellar performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in September and most of October would seem to favor Kerry; however, there was a surge of earnings at the end of October, which might have reflected confidence in a Bush victory.]

Moreover, for the last 40 years the road to the White House has gone through the sunbelt; every winner since 1964 has been from the west or the south. Going further back, to 1948, candidates who came from sunnier, warmer states -- a home base to the south or west of their opponent's home base -- tended to win the White House. So:
- 1948: Missouri (Truman) beat New York (Dewey).
- 1952: Kansas (Eisenhower, who was actually born in Texas) beat Illinois (Stevenson).
- 1956: ditto
- 1960 is the clear exception to the rule: Massachusetts (Kennedy) beat Southern California (Nixon).
- 1964 saw two sunbelt contestants, as Texas (Johnson) beat Arizona (Goldwater); in this case, the candidate from the state with both western and southern elements won.
- 1968: Southern California (Nixon) beat Minnesota (Humphrey).
- 1972: Southern California (Nixon) beat South Dakota (McGovern).
- 1976: Georgia (Carter) beat Michigan (Ford).
- 1980 saw two sunbelt contestants, as Southern California (Reagan) beat Georgia (Carter).
- 1984: Southern California (Reagan) beat Minnesota (Mondale).
- 1988: Texas (with more than a touch of New England in George H. W. Bush) beat Massachusetts (Dukakis)
- 1992: Arkansas (the unambiguously southern Clinton) beat Texas (the ambiguously southern Bush who, remember, had New England roots).
- 1996: Arkansas (Clinton) beat Kansas (Dole).
- 2000: Texas (Bush) beat Tennessee (Gore).
- 2004: [The trend favors Bush of Texas over Kerry of Massachusetts.]

But don't count northern states out for their usefulness in determining the winner. Watch, for example, how the state of Ohio leans. Republicans have never won the White House without carrying the Buckeye State. [Bush is leading slightly in Ohio.]

Also, look at the "right track" or presidential approval poll numbers for the incumbent. If the last sizeable, reputable poll before the election shows that more than 50 percent of likely voters believe that the nation is on the right track, or that the president is doing a good job, then that is a common-sense sign that the incumbent will win. [Bush is at or slightly above 50 percent in most polls.]

And -- this one's really curious -- watch how the Redskins football team does in its last home game prior to the election. If the Redskins win, the incumbent's party stays in; if the Redskins lose, the incumbent's party loses too. This uncanny coincidence has prevailed for 17 straight elections -- all the way back to 1936. So:

1936 -- [Boston] Redskins beat the Chicago Cardinals 13-10; Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected.
1940 -- Washington Redskins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 37-10; Roosevelt was re-elected.
1944 -- Redskins beat the Cleveland Rams 14-10; Roosevelt was re-elected.
1948 -- Redskins beat the Boston Yanks 59-21; Democrat Harry S. Truman was elected.
1952 -- Redskins lost to the Pittsburgh 24-23; Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected.
1956 -- Redskins beat the Cleveland Browns 20-9; Eisenhower was re-elected.
1960 -- Redskins lost to the Cleveland Browns 31-10; Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected.
1964 -- Redskins beat the Chicago Bears 27-20; Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson was elected.
1968 -- Redskins lost to the New York Giants 13-10; Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected.
1972 -- Redskins beat the Dallas Cowboys 24-20; Nixon was re-elected.
1976 -- Redskins lost to the Dallas Cowboys 20-7; Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected.
1980 -- Redskins lost to the Minnesota Vikings 39-14; Republican Ronald Reagan was elected.
1984 -- Redskins beat the Atlanta Falcons 27-14; Reagan was re-elected.
1988 -- Redskins beat the New Orleans Saints 27-24; Republican George H. W. Bush was elected.
1992 -- Redskins lost to the New York Giants 24-7; Democrat Bill Clinton was elected.
1996 -- Redskins beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-16; Clinton was re-elected.
2000 -- Redskins lost to the Tennessee Titans 27-21; Republican George W. Bush was elected.
2004 -- Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers 28-14.... [The pattern suggests Kerry will win, eh?]

There are other "signs" that are watched to predict the presidential race -- like the Iowa Electronic Futures; like Nickelodeon viewers' preference (there the kids accurately picked the winner from 1988-2000); like the top sales of Halloween masks of the candidates (sales of Bush masks are selling 10 percent better than Kerry masks this fall), to name just three. These offbeat "polls" are considered by many to be eerily accurate. But because of all the contradictory signals this year, all bets are off. What we know for certain is that some of the traditional "reliable predictors" are going to be wrong. Ultimately, the one poll that counts will be taken on November 2, when the ballots are counted.

_______________________________________________________

[1]http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_vote.asp

[2]http://www.weeklyreader.com/election_results.asp

[3]The pattern holds for the team specifically called the Redskins, whether in Boston (during the 1936 election) or in Washington (since the 1940 election). Interestingly, the Boston team had been called the Braves until 1933, when the name changed to the Redskins. Source: USA Today, November 1, 2004, p. 3C.

Wartime presidents

2004-10-22T23:39:00.000-04:00

Question: How have presidents in wartime fared in seeking a second term?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Date: October 22, 2004 [revised November 3, 2004]

Gleaves answers: When the United States is at war, Americans don't like to change horses mid-stream. Six presidents have run for re-election when U.S. forces were involved in blockades, naval battles, or major ground operations -- and in each case the incumbent won. During the first Barbary War, voters returned Thomas Jefferson to office. During the War of 1812, they sent James Madison back to office (1812). During the Civil War, they returned Abraham Lincoln (1864). During World War II, they kept Franklin Roosevelt (1944). During the Vietnam War, they retained Richard Nixon (1972). And during the Iraq War, they kept George W. Bush (2004).

The lesson is, when wartime presidents seek re-election, Americans keep them. But there is a twist; for the pattern to hold, the president has to seek re-election. Two presidents declined to run for re-election because they were so downcast by war: Harry Truman did not seek re-nomination in 1952 because Americans had grown weary of the Korean War, and Lyndon Johnson did not seek re-nomination in 1968 for a similar reason during the Vietnam War. (Coincidentally, both Truman and Johnson were Democrats who had become president upon the death of their predecessor, then won an election on their own, then declined to run four years later during a major war when they were afraid of being jettisoned by voters; indeed, in both cases voters chose the candidates -- that old team, Eisenhower and Nixon -- from the ranks of Republicans. Does history repeat itself?)

Also, if major combat operations have ceased, it's hard to discern any meaningful re-election pattern. While some presidents win big after a war (William McKinley in 1900 after the Spanish-American War), others are thrown out of office (John Adams in 1800 after the Quasi-War with France, and George H. W. Bush in 1992 after the Persian Gulf War). After still other wars, the commander in chief's successor was rebuffed (as happened in 1848 and 1920).

In November 2004, George W. Bush was the sixth president to seek re-election when the U.S. was conducting major combat operations. Because history so often is prologue, his re-election fit the pattern.

Elections with 3 viable candidates

2004-10-22T23:00:00.000-04:00

Question: Has there ever been an election with three viable candidates?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: Several elections in U.S. history had more than two strong candidates. One of them occurred in 1912, when any one of three contenders could have won the White House: Woodrow Wilson (who received 42 percent of the vote), Theodore Roosevelt (27 percent), and William Howard Taft (23 percent) all made a respectable showing. Well, in Taft's case it was not exactly respectable; Taft's last place finish is the only time in American history that the incumbent came in third on Election Day.

Another trio had a shot in the contentious Election of 1800. Two Democratic-Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, came in tied with 73 Electoral votes apiece, while incumbent president John Adams, the Federalist candidate, had a respectable 65 votes. The problem arose because Burr had agreed to be Jefferson's vice president, but Burr thought better of it when he did surprisingly well in the College. When Burr refused to step aside, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. Anything could have happened, but 36 ballots later, Hamilton's deal-making swung the election to Jefferson.

Now, there have been elections in which third and fourth candidates, while not themselves viable, had a huge impact on the outcome nevertheless. Take the election of 1824. John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay were all competing for the prize. Counting just the popular votes, Jackson should have won handily; he received 42 percent of the vote; next was Adams with 32 percent; Crawford and Clay each came in with 13 percent. But because none of the four candidates received a majority in the Electoral College, the contest was thrown into the House of Representatives. There, following the provisions of the 12th Amendment, the House considered only the top three candidates who received the most Electoral College votes. That rule eliminated Clay from the running (who had come in fourth in the Electoral College). The Great Compromiser threw his support to Adams. That had a huge impact. For the 12th Amendment stipulates that each state -- no matter how many representatives in its delegation -- will vote as a single unit; a simple majority determines which candidate gets that's state's single vote. So little Rhode Island's single vote counts as much as mighty New York's. Clay's support gave Adams several states (i.e., several votes), and the Massachusetts scion won by 5 votes, receiving the support of 13 states in the House, to Jackson's 7. The outcome was totally at variance with what had happened in the popular vote.

If a president dies during the campaign

2004-10-22T22:40:00.000-04:00

Question: What would happen if the president died during a campaign for re-election? And has this ever happened?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at the start of the 1964 presidential race. (In fact, he was in Texas to shore up support among wobbly Southern Democrats, who distrusted Massachusetts liberals.) But Kennedy had not yet been officially renominated by his party.

That, more precisely, is what I believe your question is getting at. The fact is, death has never struck down a renominated president campaigning for re-election. It happened to a vice president shortly before the election in 1912, when William Taft’s running mate, incumbent Vice President James Sherman, died of Bright's Disease. Just days later, Taft went on to lose the election to Woodrow Wilson, so it didn’t matter that there wasn’t a VP candidate.

Expanding your question a bit, Hauenstein Center Associate George Nash points out that there are at least four possible scenarios to think through if death, disability, or resignation occurs when a president is running for re-election:

a. Say the president dies after the convention that renominates him, but before the November election. There is no Constitutional provision or federal law governing such a scenario, but by custom it is the party that would determine who would then be the presidential nominee. In other words, if the incumbent president died during the re-election campaign, then the national committee of the president's party would convene to select a new nominee. Both parties have such a procedure in place. Party leaders might promote the vice presidential candidate, but they wouldn't have to; they could turn to another party leader, and that person would stand for election. You have to go back to 1972 to see anything remotely resembling this scenario. That was the year when Thomas Eagleton, who was George McGovern’s vice presidential running mate, was forced to confirm that he had undergone shock therapy. Public opinion did not support the Democratic ticket. So he resigned, and leaders of the Democratic party convened and selected Sergeant Shriver to replace Eagleton. (McGovern-Shriver lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide.)

b. What about the gray area between the November election and the December meeting of the Electoral College? This scenario, remarkably, is the subject of unsettled debate. It is not automatic that the vice president-elect would become the president-elect. Nor is it a sure bet that the impacted party could pick a new person to step into the role of "president-elect." After all, the election would have already taken place, and electors technically would have pledged their vote to the deceased president-elect and not be bound to vote for a new person.

c. Yet another gray area lies between the December meeting of the Electoral College and the date when the House of Representatives convenes to count and certify the results. This scenario, too, is the subject of unsettled debate. It is not a given that the vice president-elect would slide into position as the president-elect.

d. What if death, disability, or resignation occurred after the House of Representatives certified the results? Here we are back on terra firma, as the 20th Amendment, Section 3, would kick in: upon the death of the president-elect, the vice president-elect would become president on January 20.

It surprises most students of American history and politics to realize that the Constitution only speaks to one of the four scenarios outlined above. The fact that parties still call the shots in scenario one, and may have an impact on scenarios two and three, shows the power of America’s unwritten constitution. Political parties in the U.S. did not exist in when the Constitution was drafted in 1787; they only appeared in something resembling their modern form in 1831. Yet parties, developing organically as opposed to existing by constitutional stipulation, play the major role in determining who can serve as president.

How presidents salute

2004-10-22T17:28:00.000-04:00

Question: What is the protocol presidents should follow when they salute?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: Since presidents are the commander in chief, they are at the top of the chain of command and therefore do not have to initiate a salute. They are only expected to return a salute initiated by someone down the chain of command.

There are rules for saluting that every president learns. You should never have something in your mouth or in your saluting hand when you salute.

You should salute the flag when it is 6 paces away and approaching, and hold the salute for 6 paces after it passes.

Ronald Reagan described saluting as the crisp cocking of the arm, followed by dropping the salute smartly to your side in one motion, but without slapping your leg. To make sure it was smart, Reagan advised that you should end the salute as if you were throwing something very unpleasant out of your hand!

Presidential succession

2004-10-22T16:59:00.000-04:00

Question: What is the chain of succession should a president die in office? How far down the chain has it gone?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: Succession has never gone further than from a president to a vice president (in all, on nine occasions, when eight incumbents died in office and one incumbent resigned). Prior to 1947, if a president died, become severely disabled, or resigned, succession would have proceeded in this order:
- vice president;
- secretary of state;
- secretary of war (later defense); and
- other cabinet secretaries in the order in which their departments were created.

The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 slightly modified the successors and is operative to this day. The act added two individuals fairly high up in the order of succession:
- president;
- vice president;
- speaker of the House (added because elected -- thus in theory more accountable to citizens);
- president pro tem of the Senate (added for the same reason);
- secretary of state;
- other Cabinet secretaries in the order in which their departments were established, so treasury secretary; defense secretary; and so on down to the homeland security secretary, since he heads up the last department that was created.

To understand the order of succession is to know why one Cabinet secretary is not present at the President's annual State of the Union address. If a catastrophe took out Capitol Hill, the surviving secretary could assume the presidency.

Americans who recall the Reagan presidency might remember one incident that caused equal parts confusion and consternation. When Ronald Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981, Secretary of State Al Haig, meaning well, said he was "in control." Vice President George H. W. Bush was not in Washington, DC, at the time, but Secretary Haig seems to have forgotten that the speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate were in town and, more to the point, ahead of Haig in line of succession because of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. Perhaps Secretary Haig reacted to the stressful situation by automatically reverting to what he had learned in grammar school, when the old order of succession was taught.

There are two surprising historical footnotes to this notion of presidential succession.

Hauenstein Center associate George Nash masterfully tells one of them. The Election of 1916 was closely fought between incumbent Woodrow Wilson and challenger Charles Evans Hughes; the electorate was tense because it was widely believed that the U.S. would be forced into World War I. Woodrow Wilson worried, too, which prompted him to come up with an arresting idea. In those days, prior to ratification of Amendment XXV, four months elapsed between Election Day and Inauguration Day. To Wilson, that was too long a period when the nation was poised on the edge of war. This is the plan Wilson hatched. If he had lost his bid for re-election, he would have his secretary of state, Robert Lansing, resign. With the Senate's cooperation, he would then nominate his Republican opponent, president-elect Charles Evans Hughes, to be the new secretary of state. Then -- here is the interesting twist -- he (Wilson) and Vice President Thomas Riley Marshall would resign, thus paving the way for Hughes to assume the presidency much sooner than the following March. The entire plan depended on the cooperation of the Senate, but was never implemented since Wilson defeated Hughes and was returned to the White House.

For the second footnote, fast forward to 1973-1974, to the tumult surrounding President Richard Nixon once the Watergate break-in came to light. James Cannon tells of a succession plot to end all plots in his biography of President Ford, Time and Chance. In October of 1973, Nixon's first vice president, Spiro Agnew, was forced to resign in disgrace. The Republican Nixon would be nominating a replacement who would have to be confirmed on Capitol Hill. But Congress was led by Democrats. New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug hatched a scheme to thwart Nixon and -- worse -- the plain intent of the Constitution. She and several other Democrats floated the idea that the Senate obstruct Nixon's VP nominee. In other words, they would insure that there would be no vice president. Then, when the president resigned because of public pressure from Watergate, succession would pass to the other party, to the Democratic speaker of the House, Carl Albert (since there would be no VP). When Congresswoman Abzug presented the scheme to Speaker Albert, he refused to go along with the extra-constitutional scheme. Some historians have argued that this is the closest to a coup d'etat the U.S. has ever come.

And most people think presidential succession is a boring topic!

Why the Oval Office is oval

2004-10-22T16:28:00.000-04:00

Question: Why is the Oval Office oval?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: The Oval Office is the primary working office of the president of the United States. It is located in the West Wing.

The West Wing seems as if it has been around forever, but it did not exist prior to the early 1900s. The West Wing was added to the Executive Mansion because Theodore Roosevelt had a large, young, rambunctious family that needed all the room possible in the main part of the house. So in 1902 Congress authorized office space to be added to the Executive Mansion. TR and the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White could not agree on a design, so the original West Wing was built as a temporary structure to house the executive offices. There was no Oval Office in this first West Wing.

The West Wing was expanded in 1909, while President William Taft was on vacation. That’s when the Oval Office was created on the site where a tennis court once stood. Taft was the first president to work daily in the Oval Office.

The Oval Office was designed by an architect named Nathan Wyeth. The room’s shape was inspired by two rooms in the adjoining White House: the Blue Room and the room directly above it, the Yellow Oval, both located in the middle of the south side of the old mansion.

The Blue Room has a history. It was inspired by George Washington. Washington did not live in the White House, but he was one of the jurors who approved the winning design. Washington had neoclassical tastes. He told the architect of the White House that he wanted a room that was neoclassical and suitable for greeting people in the proper manner. The first president basically didn’t like to greet people in a line, shaking their hands. He preferred to host levees, in which guests would come into a room and arrange themselves in a loose circle or oval, allowing the president to stand in the middle of the room and bow to them. This gesture kept a formality, a distance, between the president and his guests. Washington thought it was an appropriate social greeting; it certainly dramatized the office of the presidency, and John Adams, who was thought to possess monarchical tendencies, maintained the practice. (Thomas Jefferson, by the way, ended the practice of holding levees; he was the first president to greet his constituents with a simple handshake. It was less monarchical, more republican.)

So the idea for the Oval Office goes back to the Blue Room, which was designed to conform to the way George Washington wanted the president to greet people!

White House staff

2004-10-22T13:34:00.000-04:00

Question: How many people work in (or for) the White House?
From: WUOM listener (Ann Arbor, MI)
Date: October 22, 2004

Gleaves answers: A famous document called the “Plum Book” lists the personal appointees and staff of more than 3,400 people who serve the president of the United States. To put that number in perspective: that's more people than the entire federal government employed under our early presidents. When Thomas Jefferson was president, for example, the entire federal government (excepting the military) had fewer than 3,000 people, consisting of about 1,200 tax collectors, 1,000 postmasters, and 600 others.

Here are some other staffing levels in today's White House:
- 92 people to keep the living quarters of the mansion;
- 5 full-time chefs, including a pastry chef, to prepare the meals.

(Sad) bachelor president

2004-10-13T11:08:00.000-04:00

Question: Has there ever been a president who was not married?
From: Todd P. of Big Rapids, MI
Date: October 13, 2004

Gleaves answers: Only one man never married before, during, or after his time in the White House: our 15th president, James Buchanan, was America's only bachelor to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Apparently not by choice: it turns out that Buchanan was as unlucky in love as he was in luck when later he was president. He came close to marrying in his late twenties. During the summer of 1819, at the age of 28, he became engaged to Anne Coleman, who lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and was the daughter of the richest man in Pennsylvania, Robert Coleman. Contemporary accounts say that she was extremely winsome. But by the fall there was a deal-breaking lovers' quarrel. It is conjectured that Anne was unhappy for three reasons: (1) she thought that he put his career before her; (2) she grew suspicious that James was marrying her only for her money; and (3) his underlying sexual orientation may have been toward other men.[1]

We will probably never know exactly what caused the break-up, as Buchanan did something rather curious. Years after the engagement, he placed under lock-and-key documents that he claimed would explain why the couple broke up. But when he died and the sealed materials were found, there was a note accompanying them stipulating that the materials be destroyed unexamined; Buchanan's executors complied, so we will probably never know the particulars of the break-up.

After Anne broke off the engagement, she went to stay with relatives in Philadelphia to recover from her emotional wounds. There the 23-year-old's health deteriorated precipitously and she died suddenly on December 9, 1819. Some believe she suffered from a terminal case of "hysterical convulsions" (epilepsy); others, that she committed suicide. Whatever the cause of death, her father would forever hold James responsible for the loss of his daughter; he even prevented James from attending the funeral or walking in procession behind the coffin.

James took Anne's death hard. He wrote: "I have lost the only earthly object of my affections, without whom life now presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off, and I feel that my happiness will be buried with her in the grave."[2]

In later years, Buchanan tried to cultivate the impression that he would never marry again, as a sign of devotion to Anne. But in fact in 1833 and again in 1856 he tried to woo a mate. This last apparent attempt occurred when he was running for president, and he seriously considered engaging Dolley Madison's nineteen-year-old niece, Anna Payne. But that relationship never ripened into full romance.[3]

In 1856, Buchanan was elected the nation's fifteenth president and went to the White House having never married. He asked his orphaned niece, Harriet Lane, whom he had reared, to serve as the official hostess of the White House.

Historian Jean Baker puts Buchanan's bachelorhood in broader context: "In the end James Buchanan never married and so remains the only bachelor among American presidents. Certainly bachelorhood has always been an exceptional and potentially harmful status for any public man in any generation. Before the Civil War only three of every one hundred American men stayed single. Buchanan's celibacy (there was never creditable gossip about his having a sexual relationship with any woman) shaped his personality. His life was never modulated by the need to make compromising adjustments in his domestic affairs, nor did he benefit from the intimacy, affection, and relaxation that a marriage and family might have afforded. An often lonely James Buchanan came to depend on his male friends, and this reliance had a dramatic impact on American history in the winter of 1860 [just before the Civil War]."[4]

___________________

[1]Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 20.

[2]George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan: Fifteenth President of the United States (New York: Harper & Bros., 1883), vol. 2, pp. 664ff; quoted in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents: From George Washington to George Bush, 3rd ed. (New York: Wing Books, 1991), pp. 213, 223.

[3]Baker, Life, p. 21.

[4]Baker, Life, p. 22.

Reaganomics

2004-10-09T14:39:00.000-04:00

Question: What is Reaganomics, and did it outlive the Reagan administration?
From: Bob S. of Minneapolis, MN
Date: October 9, 2004

Gleaves answers: Reaganomics -- the economic program named after President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) -- has been one of the most controversial programs in American politics, much mentioned but little understood since first bolting onto the scene in the early 1980s. Reagan's long-time friend and advisor Edwin Meese III observed that Reaganomics "was the most consistently attacked and most ardently defended of all the president's initiatives."[1] Another Reagan domestic and economic policy advisor, Martin Anderson, tried to explain one source of popular misunderstanding: "There is a great deal at stake in the writing of the history of the Reagan presidency. For the past 25 years most of the men and women on the political Right ... have focused their energies on creating new policies, forging political coalitions, electing presidents, and fomenting peaceful worldwide revolution. They have been successful far beyond their wildest fantasies. But while many of us have been basking in warm contentment and self-satisfaction, those who were beaten have been busily writing our history."[2]

DEFINITIONS, PERCEPTIONS

Reaganomics was the name given to the economic program of our 40th president, who championed fiscal restraint and smaller government, tax cuts for individuals and less red tape for businesses. Reaganomics is based on "supply-side economics," a counter-intuitive set of policies that aims to increase revenues by decreasing taxes. Here is how it supposedly works: Significant tax cuts can lead to greater economic activity, since people have more money to spend and invest, which in turn can lead to greater tax revenues for the government.

To middle class Americans, Reaganomics was sold primarily as a tax cut that would let families keep more of their money, impose limits on big government, and increase consumer spending, savings, and investment. It was an idea that had broad appeal to many moderate and fiscally conservative voters when it was introduced in the early 1980s. To die-hard supporters, Reaganomics was more than an economic program. It was an idea inspired by nothing less than the American founding. In an era of creeping statism, it was a moral crusade to limit government power and restore individual freedom.

To critics, by contrast, Reaganomics was not based on sound economic policy at all, premised as it was on the "trickle down" theory of how wealth spreads. Critics liked to point out that it led to high budget deficits and provided the political cover to cut taxes for the rich -- invariably "on the backs of the poor." It is telling that George H. W. Bush, when he was competing with Reagan for the Republican nomination in 1980, referred to Reagan's economic plan as "voodoo economics." By whatever name, according to critics, Reaganomics was shorthand for bogus economic policies and the greed of the 1980s.

However viewed, Reaganomics was the centerpiece of the 40th president's domestic policy, forcefully articulated by Ronald Reagan during the 1980 campaign and persistently pursued during his first years in office. As the economists who formulated it explained, Reaganomics meant:
- slowing the rate of growth in federal spending (as opposed to shrinking the size of government),
- trimming personal income tax rates,
- reducing the regulatory burden on business, and
- cooperating with the Federal Reserve System's monetary policy to encourage a stable currency and robust financial markets.[3]

Meese notes that "The economic program was the first matter the administration tackled, and it dominated discussion of domestic policy for years."[4]

ROOTS OF REAGANOMICS

There are many sources of Reaganomics, most of them drawn from the experiences of Ronald Reagan himself. In the first place, at Eureka College he had majored in economics.

Second, as his movie career took off, Reagan became increasingly dismayed by the taxes he paid to Sacramento and especially to Washington.

Third, Reagan had to stay atop economic policy throughout his eight years as California's governor. As Meese points out, "When Reagan ran for president, one of his most obvious and impressive credentials was that he had been chief executive of the largest state in the Union. It would be hard to imagine a better training ground for the managerial job at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With over 20 million people [in the late 1960s], California was larger than 90 percent of the countries on earth; had it been a separate nation, its gross national product would have been the seventh largest in the world."[5]

A few years later, when he ran for president, Reagan assembled an estimable team of advisors, some 460 policy experts who advised the candidate on everything from atom bombs to welfare reform; 74 of these experts were detailed to 6 economic task forces focusing on the federal budget, tax policy, spending control, regulatory reform, inflation, and international monetary policy. Some of the advisors are now familiar names: Alan Greenspan, Milton Freedman, William Simon, Jack Kemp, and George Schultz, who was chairman of the campaign's Economic Policy Coordinating Committee. These advisors formed the brain trust that gave Reaganomics its shape.

The economic malaise that arose on President Carter’s watch was the ostensible bogeyman that Reaganomics set out to slay. But Reagan also set his sights on a more formidable foe -- a three-headed hydra that was part Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, part Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, and part Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. From the 1930s to the 1960s, these three Democrats pushed the size and scope of the federal government beyond anything the Founders intended, according to Reagan. The California governor set out on a quest to slow down the advance of Leviathan, realizing that it would probably only be a rear-guard action.

Reagan, it should be said, was also trying to distance himself from a previous Republican president, also from California. Richard Nixon (1969-1974) turned out to be as progressive on the domestic front as Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) had been. For example, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed the Family Assistance Program to guarantee a minimum income for the poor, unveiled the start of national health insurance, and imposed wage and price controls to battle inflation. Nixon's was government on offense. As presidential historian Robert Dallek observes, "Everyone mistakenly assumed Nixon would scale back the Great Society, but he actually took up many traditional liberal causes."[6] Reagan believed that the Republican party needed to be the nation's conservative party, rather than a pale shadow of the nation's other party, the home of progressive Democrats.

OPPORTUNITY

Reagan's entry onto the national political stage occurred when he spoke on behalf of Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign; from that point forward he was seen as a spokesman for the conservative (as opposed to Eastern Establishment) wing of the GOP. Reagan himself made a modest run for president in 1968, and launched a much more serious effort in 1976, when he challenged the Republican incumbent, Gerald R. Ford, and won a number of primaries. Both times he was turned back -- the time for his ideas was not ripe.

But the economic stresses that beset the United States during the 1970s made the public receptive to a change. After Jimmy Carter had been in the White House for four years (1977-1981), the economy "was in the midst of its worst crisis since the Great Depression. In January 1981 the unemployment rate stood at 7.4 percent, on its way up to 10 percent. Persistent double-digit inflation had pushed interest rates to an unbelievable 21 percent. Real pre-tax income of the average American family had been dropping since 1976, and -- thanks to bracket creep -- after tax income was falling even faster. The supply of oil and other raw materials seemed precarious. The outgoing president warned of a bleak economic future."[7]

It was these stresses -- and Carter's inability to manage them effectively -- that gave Reagan the opportunity to mount a serious challenge during the 1980 campaign. The movie star beat the incumbent Democrat in a landslide.

Reagan wasted no time trying to enact his economic program, the centerpiece of which was a 25 percent tax cut over three years. As I've written in another Ask Gleaves answer, although Reagan had campaigned lower taxes and leaner government, in 1981 he had to deal with a Democratic majority in the House. (In the '81 election Republicans gained control of the Senate.) True, an incoming president traditionally enjoys a honeymoon period of a hundred days or so, but in his first couple of months in office, Reagan was encountering stiff resistance among House Democrats. After Reagan proposed his Economic Recovery Plan, Speaker Tip O'Neill said, "We're not going to let them [the Republicans] tear asunder programs we've built over the years."[8]

The mood changed dramatically after John Hinckley fired his way into history. The would-be assassin shot Reagan on March 30, 1981, barely two months after the 40th president's inauguration. The president's grace and courage during the ordeal raised the esteem in which the American people held him. In such an atmosphere it was difficult for congressional Democrats to criticize the recovering president. Edmund Morris wrote of this critical period in Reagan's presidency:

"By April 24, [Reagan] was well enough to walk to the West Wing and chair a full Cabinet meeting. And four days later, live on prime time, he made the most dramatic presidential appearance in Congress since Franklin Roosevelt's return from Yalta.

"The millions watching saw a large and splendid man, literally death-defying, appear at the threshold of the House as the doorkeeper roared the traditional 'The President of the United States!' All members rose as required, but their respect on this occasion verged on reverence -- and also signaled a near-helpless capitulation to the message they knew he was bringing.

"'I walked in to an unbelievable ovation that went on for several minutes,' he wrote afterward. His speech -- a call for one hundred percent support for his Program for Economic Recovery -- was interrupted by fourteen bursts of applause and three standing ovations. 'In the 3rd of these suddenly about 40 Democrats stood and applauded. Maybe we are going to make it. It took a lot of courage for them to do that, and it sent a tingle down my spine.'

"Not forty but sixty-three Democrats subsequently joined the solid Republican minority, sending Reagan's budget to the Senate with a vote of 253-176. If not quite the total support he had dreamed of, it was a huge victory, and the first official register of his legislative power. As Speaker Tip O'Neill philosophically reminded reporters, Congress was ultimately responsible to the American people, 'and the will of the people is to go along with the President.'"[9]

All through the spring and summer of 1981, Reagan lobbied Congress to cut welfare, the food stamp program, school meals, and Medicare and Medicaid. Congress went along with most of the president's plan, passing the Economic Recovery Tax Act on July 29, 1981. Reagan signed the legislation the next month at his ranch in California, outside the house on the now-famous tax-cut table. The legislation cut taxes by $750 billion over five years, making it the largest tax cut in American history.

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF REAGANOMICS

Defenders of Reaganomics like to talk about how the bleak '70s gave way to the sunny '80s. "From 1982 to 1990 the United States experienced 96 straight months of economic growth, the longest peacetime expansion in its history [at that point]. Almost 20 million brand-new jobs, most of them high-paying jobs, were created. Inflation fell dramatically to low levels and stayed there as the American dollar once again became sound. Interest rates also fell dramatically and stayed down. The stock market soared, nearly tripling in value. Government revenues -- at the federal, state, and local levels -- nearly doubled, making possible the largest increase in social welfare spending in history. And, almost incidentally, we financed an enormous buildup in America's military power, checkmating the evil intentions of the old Soviet Empire, and ultimately causing the disintegration of Communism throughout the world."[10]

IMPACT ON THE NATION'S CLIMATE OF OPINION

Economists continue to debate the degree to which Reaganomics delivered economic recovery and prosperity. Whatever its contribution to the nation's economic recovery, there is no question of its impact on public discourse and policy. No sooner did Reagan leave office in 1989 than many of the nation's governors -- Republican and Democratic -- picked up the gauntlet and adopted the lower taxes/smaller government mantra.

Indeed, Reaganomics informed the economic thinking of the fiscally conservative New Democrats, of whom Bill Clinton was a leader. During Clinton's eight years as president, he never seriously entertained taking the nation back to the marginal tax rates of the Carter administration. In one of his State of the Union addresses, he disarmingly proclaimed, "The era of big government is over." It was because of Reaganomics.

Most recently, in the second presidential debate of the 2004 campaign, John Kerry was pressured into saying, in no uncertain terms, "I will not raise taxes" on the middle class. It was because of Reaganomics.

There is no question that economic and social debate at the state and federal level are different because of the credibility Reaganomics gained in the 1980s. "In retrospect, the initial Reagan economic program was the most ambitious attempt to change the direction of federal economic policy of any administration since the New Deal.... In the end, for various reasons, there was no 'Reagan Revolution' -- but considerable evolution occurred in economic policy during the Reagan presidency."[11]
___________________________

[1]Edwin Meese III, With Reagan: The Inside Story (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1992), p. 148.

[2]Martin Anderson, "When the Losers Write the History," National Review, August 31, 1992.

[3]Willaim Niskanen, William Poole, and Murray Weidenbaum, Introduction to the Reagan Economic Reports, in Two Revolutions in Economic Policy: The First Economic Reports of Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, ed. James Tobin and Murray Weidenbaum (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), p. 280.

[4]Meese, With Reagan, p. 148.

[5]Meese, With Reagan, p. 27.

[6]Robert Dallek, To Lead a Nation: The Presidency in the Twentieth Century (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004), p. 75.

[7]Ed Rubenstein, Introduction to "The Real Reagan Record," National Review, August 31, 1992.

[8]Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), p. 203.

[9]Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Modern Library, 1999), pp. 438-39.

[10]Martin Anderson, "When the Losers Write the History," National Review, August 31, 1992.

[11]Niskanen, Poole, and Weidenbaum, Introduction to the Reagan Economic Reports, in Two Revolutions, p. 289.

Bush-Kerry debates

2004-09-30T20:43:00.000-04:00

Question: Everyone knows that the presidential debates are highly scripted events nowadays, so how important are the three debates between President Bush and Senator Kerry? What does Bush have to do to keep his momentum? What does Kerry have to do to knock Bush off his stride?
From: Jim H. of Houston, TX
Date: September 29, 2004

Gleaves answers: Organized debates have always been scripted. Do you think Lincoln and Douglas were unscripted when they had their famous debates in 1858? They rehearsed beforehand and knew exactly what they wanted to say when they squared off; the format required them to develop their arguments in hours-long blocks of time.

Although scripted, the three debates between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry are critically important to the future of our nation. In this quadrennial civic ritual, each candidate will have the opportunity to lay out his vision for what America should stand for and do over the next four years. Tomorrow night will be especially important for Sen. Kerry, who is not as well known as the president. This is his hand-shake with the American people.

The first debate, in Coral Gables, Florida, on the campus of the University of Miami, will center on foreign policy and homeland security. If you have still not decided whom you should vote for on November 2; if you have questions about each candidate's record, agenda, statesmanship, and view of America, then you should tune in. There is no better way to take the measure of the contestants than when they fight in the same arena.

Even if you think you have made up your mind, you will still want to watch how your candidate performs when in the same arena with his opponent. If you think that the nation is on the right track, that President Bush is doing a good job in the war on terror, in the war in Iraq, and in our relations with allies, then you will want to fight for his re-election on November 2. If, on the other hand, you think that the nation is on the wrong track, that President Bush is not focused on the right enemies in the war on terror, that he made a mistake to go into Iraq the way he did, and that he has alienated allies as well as potential allies, then you will want to fight for Senator Kerry's election.

CANDIDATE STRENGTHS

Bush's advantages going into the three debates:
- he is president, the incumbent, the commander in chief with experience and an awesome bully pulpit;
- he has momentum and is ahead in the polls, especially in critical swing states;
- he has relatively united supporters who back the war in Iraq;
- he has exercised steady leadership during a tough time in U.S. history;
- he has a simpler, clearer message;
- he is personally optimistic, which the American people usually respond favorably to;
- he has a bold vision of American greatness;
- Americans tend not to switch horses in midstream when at war; Madison during the War of 1812, Lincoln during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, and Richard Nixon during Vietnam were re-elected in wartime. (Because of their unpopularity, Truman and Johnson declined to run for another term while the nation was at war.)

Kerry's advantages going into the debates:
- as a prosecutor and senator, he has great debate experience;
- because he is behind in the polls, the public's expectations are not necessarily great;
- he is taller and thus has a physical advantage over his opponent;
- he has a deeper, more sonorous voice;
- he has a reputation for great physical courage;
- in tough races, he usually rises to the occasion down the home stretch.

CANDIDATE WEAKNESSES

Bush's disadvantages going into the debates:
- steady stream of bad news and images from Iraq;
- changed reasons for going to war against Iraq;
- on the defensive regarding the war in Iraq;
- economy has experienced a net job loss (first president since Hoover to have that happen);
- the federal surplus turned into a considerable deficit due to his spending priorities;
- health care costs are still skyrocketing;
- the Social Security debate has not been settled, even though Bush has been president with a GOP Congress;
- the cost of a gallon of gasoline is over $2 in most places around the U.S.;
- Bush is thought to be stubborn, even when it would be in the nation's interest to adjust policy;
- Iran and Korea -- two of the three nations in the axis of evil -- are going nuclear;
- Iraq -- the other nation in the axis of evil -- was never nuclear;
- misspeaks when tired;
- people think by a two-to-one margin that he'll win the debate, so expectations are high.

Kerry's disadvantages going into the debates:
- he has one of the most liberal voting records in the U.S. Senate;
- he is not your "ordinary guy," and sometimes lacks warmth and is thought aloof;
- early on, the Bush campaign successfully defined him as a flip-flopper;
- at other times, the Bush campaign has successfully labeled Kerry "another Massachusetts liberal";
- his supporters are not united over U.S. policy toward Iraq.

CANDIDATE STRATEGY

Bush strategy in the debates:
- look presidential (no smirking);
- stay composed;
- hammer the point that Kerry has no core values, but changes his mind based on politics;
- successfully defend his decision to go to war against Iraq;
- show the American people that progress is being made in Iraq.
- show that his tax cuts are leading to economic recovery.

Kerry strategy in the debates:
- look presidential;
- put the president on the defensive regarding Iraq;
- have a clear exit strategy for getting out of Iraq;
- overcome the perception that he is a flip-flopper;
- attack the president for Iran and North Korea going nuclear on his watch;
- be prepared to answer in an undefensive manner when challenged on his liberal voting record;
- attack Bush's economic policies, especially his tax cuts, especially since he is the first president since Herbert Hoover to see the economy lose jobs on his watch.

GRADING THE DEBATERS

Following are several criteria by which to judge the performance of each candidate in debate:
- personality (Is the attitude optimistic, confident, authoritative, strong? Common touch, ability to connect?)
- character (honest, trustworthy, good?)
- knowledge (Who has a better command of each topic that is brought up?)
- vision (Who has the greater vision of America's history, purpose, and destiny in the world?)
- logic of the arguments
- passion in making the case
- elocution (language use, manner of expression, diction, figures of speech)
- body language (What is being communicated with the stance, arms, hands, and face?)
- zingers
- gaffes

Debate teachers often use the "five classical canons of rhetoric" to assess speakers. These criteria have been around since Cicero (hence the Latinate terms): invention (content), disposition (organization), elocution (style), memory, and delivery.

DEBATE SCHEDULE (all times Eastern)

1. September 30, Coral Gables, FL, 9 pm
2. October 8, St. Louis, MO, 9 pm (town hall format consisting of an audience of undecided voters)
3. October 13, Tempe, AZ, 9 pm

The vice presidential candidates -- Republican incumbent Dick Cheney and Democratic challenger Senator John Edwards -- will square off in one debate on October 5, Cleveland, OH, 9 pm.

Presidents and jobs

2004-09-15T16:11:00.000-04:00

Question: As a follow-up to my previous question, which recent presidents have had the best record of job growth?
From: Sherry J., Phoenix, AZ
Date: September 15, 2004

Gleaves answers: This answer is going to surprise many people, especially if they are partisan and have a dog in the fight. Going back to 1929 and the Hoover administration, following are the presidents who presided over the most job growth (expressed as a percentage).
1. Bill Clinton -- 11.6 percent increase in jobs during his first term (1993-1996).
2. Bill Clinton -- 11.4 percent increase in jobs during his second term (1997-2000).
3. Ronald Reagan -- 10.8 percent increase in jobs during his second term (1985-1988).
4. Jimmy Carter -- 10.5 percent increase in jobs while in office (1977-1980).
5. Lyndon Johnson -- 9.8 percent increase in jobs during his one full term (1965-1968).
6. Franklin Roosevelt -- 7.7 percent increase in jobs during his third term ((1941-1944).

The winner, in five of the top six instances, was a Democrat.

Going back to 1929 and the Hoover administration, following are the presidents who presided over the least job growth (expressed as a percentage):
1. Herbert Hoover -- 6.4 percent decrease in jobs while in office (1929-1932).
2. George W. Bush -- 1.2 percent decrease in jobs during his first 3 and 1/2 years in office.
3. Dwight Eisenhower -- 0.8 percent increase during his second term (1957-1960).
4. George H. W. Bush -- 2.5 percent increase while in office (1989-1992).
5. Dwight Eisenhower -- 2.8 percent increase during his first term (1953-1956).

The least impressive performances, in all five cases, were those of Republicans.

The other presidents -- Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford -- occupied the Oval Office when the Help Wanted ads expanded between 3 and 6 percent.

ECONOMIC STEWARDSHIP

Technically presidents don't create jobs; what they really do is help create the conditions in which jobs are added to or subtracted from the economy. That's why one of a president's chief tasks is economic stewardship. Presidential stewardship of the economy has a storied past, going back to the beginning of our nation, when George Washington hired Alexander Hamilton to be Treasury secretary. Hamilton wrote a series of perceptive reports and proved to be a brilliant architect of economic growth that has influenced presidents and policymakers to this day.

How do presidents carry out the task of economic stewardship? First, foremost, and hopefully by doing no harm. Presidents have to watch what they say because their words can make the stock market rise or fall. They have to think through their fiscal policy since it usually involves changes in tax policy, the regulatory burden, a budget surplus or deficit, and the national debt. Whether they sign or veto the legislation sent to their desk from Capitol Hill can similarly have an impact, as can the trade agreements they negotiate. And since the president is the commander in chief, do not forget the impact of war, which usually has an enormous impact on the economy.

Presidents have historically taken quite different tacks to influence the economy. Those in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt spoke of "stimulus packages" -- i.e., government programs -- to pump money into the economy to try to create jobs. Those in the tradition of Ronald Reagan have spoken of tax and regulatory cuts to stimulate the economy. Whatever their economic approach, by word and deed modern presidents can have an impact on trade, outsourcing, income, savings, investment, the gross domestic product, consumer confidence, home ownership, business expansion, and job growth.

Now, since presidents are constrained by the Constitution, Congress, Supreme Court, the bureaucracy, public opinion, election year politics, term limits, and custom, there are limits to their power over the economy. Moreover, they exercise economic leverage through fiscal policy, not monetary policy, which is the province of the Federal Reserve Board.

How is the economic stewardship of any given administration measured? One measure is the percentage change in jobs, which your question seeks to plumb. Two other common measures are the unemployment rate and inflation rate. These two can be added up to reckon the Misery Index, devised by Jimmy Carter's campaign in 1976 to criticize President Gerald R. Ford's economic performance. Four years later, Ronald Reagan turned the Misery Index against its creator to discredit Jimmy Carter's economic stewardship.

This answer started with some surprise facts. But over the past several decades, polls have consistently shown that voters regard Republican presidents as better economic stewards than Democratic presidents. Republicans tend to run as fiscal conservatives. Most voters and a good many economists believe that fiscal conservatism -- lower tax rates, a balanced budget, fewer regulations -- leads to better conditions for job growth than the alternative -- higher taxes, budget deficits, and more regulations. However they are measured, virtually all modern presidents want to be remembered as good stewards of the nation's economy.

Job growth and elections

2004-09-14T13:30:00.000-04:00

Question: Is strong job growth the best predictor of an incumbent president's re-election chances? Likewise, is weak job growth the best predictor of a challenger's chances to unseat an incumbent?
From: Sherry J. of Phoenix, AZ
Date: September 14, 2004

Gleaves answers: Yes and no -- how do you like that for an answer?

Seriously, the answer is more complex than many voters may realize.[1] The conventional wisdom is that if presidents are in office when there is double-digit job growth, they or their hand-picked successor will win re-election. We are constantly told that people vote their pocketbook. But tell that to Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and Lyndon Johnson, each of whom lost following double-digit job growth.

The truth is that pocketbook issues are extraordinarily complex; job growth is just part of the calculus that involves inflation, interest rates, consumer confidence, consumer debt, home ownership numbers, and other factors.

The best that can be said is that some presidents who presided over double-digit job growth won re-election. This is true of Bill Clinton, who owns the record; there was 11.6 percent job growth during his first term (1993-1996), and he handily beat back challenger Bob Dole in 1996. Similarly, Vice President George H. W. Bush did quite well because of Ronald Reagan's legacy; there was 10.8 percent job growth during Reagan's second term (1985-1988), and Bush easily defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988.

On the other hand, double-digit job growth did not insure victory for others who had been in office. There was 11.4 percent job growth during Bill Clinton's second term (1997-2000), but it did not secure Vice President Al Gore's victory over George W. Bush in 2000. Likewise, the fact that jobs grew by 10.5 percent during Jimmy Carter's term (1977-1980) -- a statistic that really surprises people -- did not guarantee his being returned to office when Ronald Reagan challenged him.

So: twice in recent times the electorate rewarded incumbents after double-digit job growth, and twice the electorate turned them out.

It is hard to discern a meaningful political pattern based on robust or anemic job growth. During Dwight D. Eisenhower's first term (1953-1956), there was only 2.8 percent job growth, yet he was easily returned to office. During Lyndon B. Johnson's term (1965-1968), there was 9.8 percent job growth, but his successor was defeated.

And think about this. Franklin D. Roosevelt became president during the depths of the Great Depression, when one in four workers was unemployed -- there was nowhere to go but up. Yet he was re-elected when there was 5.5 percent job growth in his first term (1933-1936), 3.3 percent growth in his second term (1937-1940), and 7.7 percent growth in his third term (1941-1944), when the nation was totally mobilized for war. Hardly exceptional numbers, any of them.

Not that job performance is irrelevant to one's chances of re-election. Consider poor Herbert Hoover: the nation's economy lost 6.4 percent of its jobs during his term (1929-1933), and the Great Enginneer failed to win re-election. Is there a causal link? Absolutely.

So what about the current president, George W. Bush? Based on data through July of 2004, it appears that Bush will be the first president since Hoover to reside in the White House when there is a net job loss; there are 1.2 percent fewer jobs today than in 2000. Come November 2, will there be a causal link between the economic fact and the political performance? Yes. Will it be enough of a link to determine the outcome of the election? Not likely. As of this writing, Bush is ahead of rival John Kerry in the polls.

What to make of such a statistical hodge podge? Only this: In the end, many factors determine who wins presidential elections. It is not always true -- as was said in 1992 -- that "It's the economy, stupid!" The context of the times is always a factor. If the nation is at war, then the country is judging the candidates as commanders in chief. If the nation is grappling with past wrongs, then citizens are judging candidates' sense of justice. If the nation is impatient for reform, then voters are sizing up candidates' relations with Congress, and whether they have the ability to get legislation passed and signed.

Citizens are sensitive to many dimensions of the people who run for high office: vision, character, personality, sense of justice, political skills, communication skills, economic stewardship, administrative skills, international relations, leadership in a crisis -- all play a role. In the end, the choice often seems to be a mystery.

_________________________________________________________________

[1]For the data used in this answer, I am indebted to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg Financial Markets, and Dylan Loeb McClain, "In Elections, It's Not Always about Jobs," New York Times, August 8, 2004, p. 2 of Week in Review.

9/11 and the presidency

2004-09-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

Question: How did 9/11 change what we look for in a president?
From: Monica P. of Colorado Springs, CO
Date: September 11, 2004

Gleaves answers: In short and above all: we want a commander in chief more than an economic manager.

That was hardly the case a few short years ago. We Americans live in interesting times. Our nation has experienced three distinctly different eras during the last five presidential election cycles. We have gone from the Cold War to peacetime to the war on terror. You'd be hard pressed to find a comparable period in our history when the challenges have been so differently defined. Election cycles reflect those changing challenges.

WANTED IN 1988: A RETIRING COMMANDER IN CHIEF

In 1988, when Vice President George H. W. Bush ran against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, we were dialing down our nation's epochal struggle against the Soviet Union. Yet there were lingering dangers with all those missiles pointed at us, so foreign policy was still high on our list of political priorities. Bush struck most people as the better man for the job.

Dukakis, in retrospect, hardly stood a chance. No image better encapsulates his failed bid for the White House than the one of him riding around in a tank in Warren, Michigan, an oversized helmet on his head. The diminuitive governor hardly looked like the stuff of which commanders in chief are made, and he was practically laughed out of his campaign.

In the public imagination, the phony photo-op of Dukakis riding around in a tank was juxtaposed to something authentic: the grainy film clip of fighter pilot George H. W. Bush being rescued by a submarine after a dangerous mission in the Pacific during World War II. Americans wanted the Real Thing. Is there any question who looked more suited to finish the Cold War?

Now, it didn't hurt that Bush proposed steering the ship of state out of choppy seas and back to calmer waters where the nation could be its "kinder, gentler" self. Bush did have a domestic dimension to him; he had majored in economics at Yale University. But the habits of the Cold War were still very much with us in 1988, and that is why Bush won.

WANTED IN 1992, 1996, 2000: ECONOMIC MANAGER

Yet the times they were a changin'. Once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989; once the Soviet empire collapsed in 1991; once the exuberance of those heady days faded; Americans lost interest in a man who represented an older generation and its heroic role in the last "good war." Although Bush was known for his exploits during World War II, for his outstanding foreign policy experience, and for his stunning victory in the Persian Gulf War, during which he forged an alliance of more than 50 nations, the voters were predisposed for a change. Bill Clinton was the change.

By 1992 the U.S. was basking in the post-Cold War peace dividend. Intellectuals were bloviating about "the end of history." America was the undisputed king of the jungle. The nation's economy was emerging from a recession. Peace and prosperity stretched to the horizon. Americans basically wanted their president to be a competent economic manager. Little attention was paid to foreign policy -- or to Bill Clinton's crafty avoidance of serving in the armed forces during the Vietnam War. That's why the Democrats' slogan in '92 -- "It's the economy, stupid!" -- captured the zeitgeist, and with it Clinton captured the White House.

In retrospect, the emphasis on the economy also helps explain why Clinton so easily turned back challenger Bob Dole -- another World War II veteran -- in 1996. The majority of Americans may have disapproved of Clinton's personal behavior, but they clearly were all right with his presidential performance, especially when it came to economic management.

This emphasis on things economic also helps us understand why, in 2000, both major candidates ran on their domestic vision. It is interesting to speculate whether Senator John McCain would have beaten out George W. Bush in the Republican primaries had 9/11 occurred before the 2000 contest.

Of course, 9/11 had not occurred, and when voters had a choice between two younger men who had Ivy League credentials but little foreign policy experience, the election was a toss-up. Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the vote that counts -- in the Electoral College.

WANTED IN 2004: COMMANDER IN CHIEF

9/11 totally redefined the challenges of our day and the Bush presidency along with it. Today our national challenges are somewhat different from either the four decades of Cold War or the one decade of hot stocks. The greatest effect of 9/11 on our national politics is that we don't just want an economic manager in the White House; we want a commander in chief. Our highest priority is preventing another terrorist attack by jihadists on our soil. So we want in our president a leader who will increase security at home, forge anti-jihadist alliances abroad, and take the battle to the terrorists who would destroy us.

Both John Kerry and George W. Bush understand the requirements of the new zeitgeist: commander in chief is today the most important role in a president's job description. That is why, at the Democratic National Convention in July, Kerry emphasized his service in Vietnam; his argument is that his tour of duty on a Swift boat in Southeast Asia qualifies him to be a strong commander in chief in the war on terror. And it is why, at the Republican National Convention before Labor Day, Bush emphasized his leadership since the 9/11 attacks; his argument is that his actions have resulted in the terrorists having fewer bases, less money, and diminished opportunities to strike on U.S. soil.

The need for a thoughtful, decisive commander in chief -- that is the difference after 9/11. November 2nd will tell us which candidate has made the better case with the American people.

Presidential greatness

2004-09-10T21:48:00.000-04:00

Question: What makes a president great?
From: Karrie J. of East Lansing, MI
Date: September 10, 2004

Gleaves answers: Your question goes to the heart of leadership. It is one of the cornerstone questions we ask at the Hauenstein Center.

One of the leading presidential historians of our day, Robert Dallek, believes that America's greatest presidents possess six qualities:

1. Vision: great presidents capture the public imagination by vividly showing people where they are headed. Listen to how the presidents use words to explain where they want to take the nation – words like “freedom,” “opportunity,” “justice for all,” “peace through strength.”

2. Command of practical politics: our best presidents have knowledge and experience when it comes to the political process -- they know how to get things done. Lyndon Johnson was a master of practical politics, and his Great Society was comprised of almost a thousand bills.

3. Character: a strong leader is someone who shows courage, who inspires trust, who is temperate and persistent and disciplined and not afraid of hard work.

4. Presidential personality: leaders by definition need followers, and persuasive leaders have the charisma to make people feel attracted to them.

5. Consensus builders: effective leaders can work with diverse interest groups, the Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and ultimately citizens to build support for their programs. This has presented challenges to the military men who have become presidents. Michael Korda observes that Truman "would remark of Eisenhower that he would never know what hit him when he reached his desk in the White House -- as a general, when he gave an order it would be obeyed instantly, but in the White House he would give an order and nothing would happen. The same phenomenon hit Grant almost immediately. He too, like Ike, was accustomed to instant obedience, not to the political process of building up support for a policy in Congress, or appealing for support to the public, or wooing newspapermen to obtain it. He expected at the very least the backing of his own party, without realizing that everything in politics has to be negotiated -- at a price."[1]

6. Luck: highly-ranked presidents need to have circumstances go their way -- they're just lucky. FDR’s New Deal floundered in his second term; his reputation as a leader was probably saved by Tojo, Hitler, and the hostile regimes that forced America into World War II.

Lots of books have been written about effective leadership; no doubt there will be many more. Hauenstein Center associate Marc Jordan, personally and professionally curious about the elements of presidential leadership, earned a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He and I recently talked about the insights he derived from classes and conversations with David Gergen, Roger Porter, Richard Neustadt, and other Harvard faculty. Great and near-great presidents need certain abilities, skills, and attributes to get to the White House, stay there with any success, and leave a worthy legacy. They need (in no particular order):

1. Intellectual curiosity from an early age: leaders have active minds and are driven to know how things work. They have the capacity to teach themselves. Many of our presidents, in fact, did. Abraham Lincoln hungered for knowledge and could become absorbed in all manner of things. During the Civil War, for instance, he became intensely curious about weapons and gun powder. No question escaped his roving, curious mind.

2. Ability to speak, write, and communicate effectively with staff, other political leaders, and the public. Among recent presidents the Great Communicator, by all accounts, was Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was also extremely effective connecting with audiences.

3. Ambition, with a willingness to accept increasing responsibility at every stage of their career

4. Ability to focus on three to four things that can be accomplished.

5. Management skills that include the ability to delegate, thus succeeding with growing responsibility

6. Character, a moral compass

7. Strong mentors or role models

8. Sociable, a team player – not a lone wolf or overly introspective

9. Good at self-promotion and managing a public image: Ike used Reeves in ’52 – an ad genius.

10. Sound judgment

11. Ability to assemble a championship team: great presidents are good judges of character. They have an ability to read people and know how to motivate them to be loyal and hard-working members of an administration. One great example is George Washington's decision to bring into his cabinet the two most brilliant men of the founding generation: Alexander Hamilton (secretary of the Treasury) and Thomas Jefferson (secretary of State). Another good example is when President William McKinley asked Elihu Root to join the administration. Peter Drucker and other management gurus have pointed to this as one of the greatest management decisions of all time [Stuart Crainer]. Gerald R. Ford also assembled one of the most talented staffs in the post-war presidency.

12. Capacity to deal with the cacophony of voices and views in Congress

13. Ability to multi-task

14. Vision … a clear sense of what the mission is: George Washington knew that he had to do everything in his power to establish a republic and set good executive precedents. Abraham Lincoln knew that he had to do everything in his power to save the Union. Franklin Roosevelt had to defeat economic depression and warring tyrants. Ronald Reagan confronted an evil empire and set his sights on winning the Cold War. George W. Bush has to fight and win a war on terror.

15. Adaptability to new circumstances: Thomas Jefferson was a strict constructionist when it came to interpreting the U.S. Constitution. That document says nothing about acquiring or purchasing new territory, only about how to form states from the nation's existing land. When the opportunity presented itself to purchase Louisiana, Jefferson found a way, even though it conflicted with his earlier, rigid stance on interpreting the basic law of the land.

16. Continuous learning, combined with an ability to accept new challenges

17. Strong faith: virtually all our great presidents believed that they had to recharge their battery by being connected to a higher moral power.

18. Ability to make tough decisions. Gerald R. Ford made an extremely unpopular decision when he pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon. But he thought it was the right thing to do because the nation faced so many problems and had to move on.

___________________________
[1]Michael Korda, Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 118-19.

First to travel outside the U.S.

2004-09-08T18:36:00.000-04:00

Question: Who was the first president to travel outside the United States?
From: Steve S. of Spokane, WA
Date: September 8, 2004

Gleaves answers: One hundred years ago the U.S. was getting used to the idea that it was a world power, the new nation of Panama was trying to establish itself, and the ever vigorous Theodore Roosevelt was elected president in his own right. Let these three facts converge in your mind and you can understand why TR would become the first sitting president to venture beyond U.S. territory. He did so in 1906 when he traveled to Panama, a country that he had practically willed into existence three years earlier when it became clear that Colombia would not bend to the will of the U.S. and lease land for a canal in the Isthmus of Panama.

TR, never chary of exercising a muscular foreign policy, fixated on constructing the 51-mile water highway because it would give the U.S. Navy much quicker maneuverability between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Upon completion of the canal, a ship's voyage between New York City and San Francisco was shortened from about 15,000 to 6,000 miles. This TR thought essential in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War (1898), when the U.S. found itself in possession of far-flung lands stretching from Guam and the Philippines to Puerto Rico. Also the nation needed better coastal defenses against potentially hostile regimes.

TR's 1906 journey to Panama would set the precedent for his successors to travel abroad when it was perceived that important foreign policy objectives were at stake. In 1919, for instance, Woodrow Wilson would be the first sitting president to travel to Europe in the aftermath of the First World War.

TR, incidentally, racked up two other notable firsts when he was in the White House. He was the first sitting president to travel in an automobile, and he was the first of our chief executives to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Presidents, the economy, and domestic policy

2004-09-04T20:19:00.000-04:00

Question: I'm a student and this is the first time I've written your column. Could you please tell me how the presidents have become increasingly involved in managing the economy and shaping domestic policy over the last hundred years?
From: Matt M., of Okemos, MI
Date: September 3, 2004

Gleaves answers: One of the most significant changes in the American presidency over the last hundred years has been the extent to which our chief executives are expected to manage the economy and to take the lead on domestic policy. It was not always the case. Since we are at the beginning of the gridiron season, let me answer your question in a way that compares the presidency to football.

LATE 19TH-CENTURY PRESIDENTS: REFEREES

During the last third of the 19th century -- between the Civil War and Spanish-American War -- our presidents did not have the power that presidents today have. Most of the power resided in Congress. To many Americans, this arrangement seemed consistent with what the framers of the U.S. Constitution had wanted. Article I set up a strong Congress or legislative branch of government whose role was to make laws that in large measure reflected the will of the people. Article II provided for a not-so-strong president when it came to domestic affairs, where his role was chiefly to sign, implement, administer, and enforce the laws passed by Congress. By this understanding of the Constitution, the president -- in peacetime, anyway -- was like a referee at a football game. He administered the rules of the game but did not himself want to be a player.

The comparison with football describes the referee role of presidents in the three decades between Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) and Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, it did not matter which party the president belonged to. Republican presidents like Rutherford B. Hayes were as disinclined to intervene in national life as the Democratic president of the era, Grover Cleveland. They assiduously avoided intervening in the economy. In fact, when a bill to support Texas farmers suffering from a drought came to Cleveland's desk, he vetoed it, observing, "Though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people."[1]

James A. Garfield was typical of the string of referee presidents between Lincoln and TR. Garfield biographer Allan Peskin points out:

The pantheon of presidential "greats" seems reserved for activists, which, in the nature of things, means those who dealt with major national crises. Presidents with the good fortune to preside over quiet times seem doomed to obscurity. In Garfield's day, America was at peace with itself and the world. Neither presidents nor government was expected to make things better, only to keep them running smoothly. Garfield shared this passive view. The whole duty of government, he once maintained, was "to keep the peace and stand outside the sunshine of the people."[2]

As Harvard's Thomas Patterson observes of this era, "The prevailing conception was the Whig theory, which held that the presidency was a limited or constrained office whose occupant was confined to the exercise of expressly granted constitutional authority. The president had no implicit powers for dealing with national problems but was primarily an administrator, charged with carrying out the will of Congress."[3] Because he was merely an administrator, he was not even expected to have a vision of where the country should go. "My duty," said James Buchanan, a Whig adherent, "is to execute the laws ... and not my individual opinions."[4]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT: REFEREE-COMMISSIONER

Theodore Roosevelt, who served in the White House from 1901-1909, is regarded by many historians as the first modern president. When he became president at the beginning of the 20th century, the Progressive movement was influencing public opinion. The industrial revolution had led to much social displacement and economic imbalance, and muckrakers were drawing attention to the problems. It was increasingly debated whether the federal government should restore the balance between big business on the one hand, and workers and the public on the other. Progressive politicians sought government intervention. Their vision -- of government, the economy, and social policy being an inseparable triangle -- was the future.

TR was energetic and ambitious for himself and for the United States. He cherry-picked progressive ideas and translated them into a political agenda. Because of his strong character and charismatic personality, he was able to convince the American people that the presidency should have more influence over domestic affairs. He was especially eager to "level the playing field" so that all Americans could compete and get ahead in the marketplace. TR, using the office of the president as a bully pulpit, transformed the presidency and role of the federal government. He sought to make the president and federal government the mediator between special interests and the national interest. One way he did so was by targeting overly large concentrations of power, whether in economic monopolies or political machines. It was the era of trustbusting. He called his philosophy the Square Deal, and by it he meant to make America more truly a land of opportunity.

To translate TR's action into football, imagine a guy who no longer wants to sit in the stands. Imagine a guy so interested in the game that he wants to be down on the field. He doesn't think he can play -- the rules prohibit that -- but he at least wants to referee the game. Better yet, in his wildest dreams he wants to be commissioner of the entire sport. That was TR. He was a dominant personality who started out like a referee (think of the famous NFL referee, Jim Tunney) but decided that it would be even more fun to be commissioner (think of Pete Rozell, who forever changed the NFL). That analogy describes how TR's conception of the office changed over eight years. He had an irrepressible personality that has led some historians to call him the founder of the "charismatic presidency." He used his bigger-than-life personality and ambition to transform the office of the president and its role in domestic affairs.

Now, after progressive presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and, later, Woodrow Wilson, there was a brief ebb in presidential power. Between 1921-1929, during the Harding and Coolidge administrations and first year of the Hoover administration, there was an effort to take the presidency back to what it was during the late 19th-century, a referee in American domestic life. In Calvin Coolidge's words, "The chief business of America is business."

By the 1930s, that idea was roundly rejected.

HOOVER AND FDR: GETTING INTO THE GAME AND PLAYING DEFENSE

The idea of the referee presidency was abandoned during the Great Depression. It was Herbert Hoover's misfortune to have been in office only seven months when economic catastrophe struck. A common myth of American history is that Hoover remained essentially a spectator when confronted with the deepening crisis, that he stuck to laissez-faire principles while the people starved. This is not accurate. Indeed, before he ever became president, Hoover was no apostle of the unfettered marketplace. Already as Commerce secretary under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, he championed a closer partnership between business and government. The Wall Street Journal noted, "Never before, here or elsewhere, has a government been so completely fused with business."[5]

As the Great Depression worsened from late 1929 to 1932, Hoover accepted increasing responsibility for ending the economic crisis and doing so in a socially humane manner -- he would make the economic and social effects of the depression the federal government's problem. That was unprecedented. Historian Michael Stoff observes, "Measured against past depression presidents -- Martin Van Buren in the 1830s, Ulysses S. Grant in 1873, Grover Cleveland in 1893, Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, Warren Harding in 1921 -- Hoover was a whirlwind of activity."[6]

Nevertheless, in 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt challenged the hapless Hoover and won the first of four terms. He pledged to be an energetic executive dedicated to changing the relationship between the federal government and the American people. FDR inherited the worst depression in American history -- one-quarter of the workforce was unemployed. Within his first 100 days in office, he dramatically enlarged the scope of the federal government and initiated numerous new domestic programs. During his second term, he pushed through a program that affects virtually every American to this day: Social Security. During his third term, most of which coincided with U.S. involvement in the Second World War, he instituted rationing and price controls.

To translate all this into football, FDR wanted in on more of the action. He didn't want just to call what was fair and what was foul as so many nineteenth-century presidents had; nor did he want to be the commissioner as his cousin, TR, had. He wanted to play ball and, moreover, be an impact player, so he changed out of the zebra-stripes and into a jersey. True, FDR mostly played defense; he primarily reacted to economic and social problems, like a defensive player who reacts to where the ball is. But even in that reactive capacity, during FDR's 12 years in office the federal government assumed an unprecedented role in the nation's economy. FDR's presidency consolidated the idea that the federal government, economic policy, and social policy were an unbreakable triangle in the center of which stood the American president. His actions drew much criticism, but the precedent -- of using the government to impact the economy and society -- stuck.

FDR died in 1945, but not his impact. The Employment Act of 1946 -- passed by a Republican Congress -- ratified the trend toward more federal intervention. It committed the federal government to use its economic might to achieve "maximum employment, production, and purchasing power." While specific policies were not mandated, the president was to work with Congress to foster "free competitive enterprise and the general welfare." As James Tobin and Murray Weidenbaum have observed, "The Act was an important bipartisan declaration of federal responsibility for the nation's economic performance. The electorate takes this responsibility for granted nowadays, but it was by no means generally acknowledged before World War II."[7]

It is revealing to see how difficult it is for later presidents to revert to a less active role once a greater role is carved out for the federal government. Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigned for the presidency in 1952 on a fiscally conservative platform that called for smaller government, balanced budgets, privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority, and abolishing (or at least shrinking) Social Security. So what did Ike do with Social Security once in the White House? Expand the program. The fact that a Republican president ratified the entitlement meant that significant bipartisan support had developed for the program. It has since become a "third rail" of American politics, difficult for any president to touch.

FDR's role in changing the presidency and the federal government cannot be overstated. His 12 years in office effected not only a political sea change, but also -- and perhaps more importantly -- an intellectual sea change, the merits of which are fiercely debated to this day. Roosevelt's 1944 speech, calling for a second Bill of Rights, went far beyond anything the nation's founders had conceived when they drafted the first Bill of Rights back in 1789. The first ten amendments of the Constitution were limited to political rights such as freedom of speech and the press. But in FDR's mind, a second Bill of Rights was needed that went beyond political rights. He championed the right to economic welfare and social access to all citizens. University of Chicago professor Cass Sunstein calls this sea change "FDR's unfinished revolution."

In football terms, FDR had to content himself to play on defense, but what he really wanted to do was play on offense; he wanted the presidency and federal government to set the pace of the game. He envisioned Washington, DC, assuming unprecedented power to change not just politics, but also the economic and social conditions in American life. The nation, however, was not ready for such far-reaching changes; American individualism ran strong and deep and against the current of big government. It would take at least two more decades before a president could both speak of this "unfinished revolution" and sign enough legislation to make the changes permanent.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: PLAYING OFFENSE

After the Second World War, America entered the most prosperous era of its history. Harry S. Truman conceived a far-reaching social agenda that was eventually stillborn, but significant to our story nonetheless. The Fair Deal was government on offence. It proposed medical care for the elderly and only went down in defeat because of the Korean War.

Where Harry S. Truman's ambitions for the federal government stumbled, Lyndon B. Johnson's hit a marathon stride. LBJ represents a major turning point in the presidency. The former Senate majority leader and vice president would have a huge impact on the role the president would play in the American economy and society. In short: the president should not just be reactive; he should be proactive. Johnson reasoned that the United States was the richest, most powerful nation in world history. Given our national resources, couldn't the president make the federal government an agent of positive change?

Johnson was much more ambitious for the federal government than previous Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, or John F. Kennedy had been.

LBJ explained to aides that he wanted to make his mark on history and unroll a "Johnson program." In May of 1964 he went to Ann Arbor to sketch his vision in a commencement address at the University of Michigan. He appealed to their idealism: "Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?... Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?" As historian Robert Dallek notes, "The result of Johnson's antipoverty crusade and reach for a Great Society was an explosion of groundbreaking and far-reaching laws passed by Congress between 1964 and 1968." Henceforth there would be Medicare and Medicaid, a federal Office of Economic Opportunity, the food stamp program; not to mention job training, community volunteerism, and urban renewal spearheaded inside the Beltway.[8]

One of America's most influential commentators, James Reston, observed at the time: "President Johnson is beginning to make Franklin Roosevelt's early legislative record look like an abject failure. He's getting everything through the Congress but the abolition of the Republican party, and he hasn't tried that yet. It's a political miracle. It has even surpassed his own expectations, which were not modest...."[9]

Johnson was president for barely more than 5 years, from 1963 to 1969, but his war on poverty -- his advancing his vision of a Great Society -- encompassed almost a thousand bills and impacted almost every element in American society.

In football terms, this was not a president playing defense. It was a president playing offense. The playbook was not always flashy -- often it was three yards and a cloud of dust -- but it represented quite a change for a president to use the federal government itself as an agent to change society.

AFTER JOHNSON: A WEST-COAST OFFENSE?

Not that Washington's tentacles grew willy nilly; not at all, for at least two reasons. In the first place, there were three decades in the past hundred years in which voters grew weary or skeptical of leviathan and were happy to put the beast on a diet: the 1920s of Calvin Coolidge, the 1950s of Dwight Eisenhower, and the 1980s of Ronald Reagan. In Coolidge's case, the federal budget initially shrank but then grew slightly by the end of the '20s. In Eisenhower's case, federal expenditures diminished the first couple of years but then grew significantly by the end of the '50s. In Reagan's case, the federal budget almost doubled during in the '80s [10] -- although it is arguable that it would have ballooned even more had a progressive been in the White House.

In the second place, wars have often diverted presidents' domestic ambitions. In any given administration, domestic policy and foreign policy compete for the president's attention. But when war breaks out, domestic concerns usually take a back seat. American wars are a two-edged sword when it comes to domestic affairs. On the one hand, wars lead to more concentration of power at the federal level; every major U.S. war has put pounds on leviathan: the federal government inevitably grows larger and more intrusive. On the other hand, as presidential historian Robert Dallek observes, wars have repeatedly thwarted reformers' attempts to bend the federal government to their social and economic purposes. The Spanish American War took some of the steam out of populism; World War I took the wind out of the sails of Progressivism; World War II put a halt to the New Deal; the Korean War frustrated supporters of the Fair Deal.

This is why understanding the presidency of Lyndon Johnson is so important to understanding the last four decades of U.S. history. For it was with LBJ that the nation believed that the federal government could simultaneously fight a war against communists abroad and a war against poverty at home. Whether Americans supported or decried the "Johnson program," it was breathtakingly audacious when one considers how tied up in Vietnam the nation was becoming by 1965. Johnson, president during an extremely prosperous era, wanted to have it all -- guns and butter.

We live in Lyndon Johnson's world -- the Johnson administration represents the paradigm in which we live today. He successfully pushed to expand the president's role in domestic affairs. TR (playing commissioner) and FDR (playing defense) and Truman (trying to play offense) were the engineers who made it possible for LBJ to build up the federal government into a leviathan. He did so over vigorous objections and heated debate, and the arguments -- philosophical and practical -- rage to this day.

Yet most chief executives after LBJ either explicitly continued many of his policies -- Nixon, Ford, Carter -- or implicitly recognized that they would not be dismantled -- Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. Reagan railed against the Great Society but did little truly to dismantle it.

President Clinton is an interesting study in the tension between big-government progressives in his administration and small-gevernment conservatives in a Republican-controlled Congress. Clinton's ambition during his first year in office to nationalize much of the U.S. health system was a breathtaking effort to transform the playbook into a wide-open, West Coast offense. When Clinton was stymied, he settled back into the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust playbook of his predecessors. The retrenchment was marked rhetorically with the famous line, "The era of big government is over" -- which was not true. For a brief time, President Clinton was compelled to cooperate with a conservative Congress and Republican governors to reform welfare programs. Yet the Great Society model was not, at its core, dismantled. Many of Johnson's programs survived.

Indeed, when a Republican president like George W. Bush has seemed more interested in reforming Great Society programs than in rescinding them (under the guise of "compassionate conservatism") you know that the offensive role of the federal government in the nation's social and economic life has become permanent.

Nowadays, even amid the war on terror, Americans take it for granted that presidents will spearhead an ambitious domestic agenda. It is useful to recall how unthinkable that would have been barely more than a century ago.

____________________________________________________________________

[1]Suzanne Garment, "Stephen Grover Cleveland," in Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, ed. James Taranto and Leonard Leo (New York: Free Press, 2004), p. 113.

[2]Allan Peskin, "James Abram Garfield," in Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House, ed. by James Taranto and Leonard Leo (New York: Wall Street Journal Books, 2004), p. 105.

[3]Thomas E. Patterson, We the People: A Concise Introduction to American Politics, 5th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004), pp. 369-70.

[4]Buchanan quoted in Patterson, We the People, p. 370.

[5]Michael B. Stoff, "Herbert Hoover," in The American Presidency, ed. Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p. 336.

[6]Stoff, "Hoover," p. 338.

[7]James Tobin and Murray Weidenbaum, Two Revolutions in Economic Policy: The First Economic Reports of Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, ed. James Tobin and Murray Weidenbaum (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), p. viii.

[8]Robert Dallek, "Lyndon B. Johnson," in The American Presidency, pp. 413-14.

[9]James Reston quoted in John F. Stacks, Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), p. 236.

[10]See the federal budget year-by-year at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/sheets/hist01z1.xls

Republican conventions

2004-08-29T18:25:00.000-04:00

Question: It's my understanding that the Republicans have never held their national convention in New York City. Given that it's historically a northern-based party, that surprises me. Where have they typically met?
From: Karen C, of McLean, VA
Date: August 28, 2004

Gleaves answers: It does seem surprising that the Republicans have never before selected the Big Apple to be the site of their national convention. But since 9/11 everything has changed; we Americans live in a different era. Most obviously the GOP chose the city for their 2004 convention because it was the scene of the greatest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil; the city serves as a powerful backdrop for George W. Bush, and the GOP party faithful hope that that backdrop will elicit patriotic feelings associated with the war president. Indeed, Madison Square Garden, where the Republicans are gathering, is less than four miles from the World Trade Center site.

No one believes that President Bush will capture New York's electoral votes on November 2nd. Most of the residents of New York City wouldn't vote for him. It's Hillary Rodham Clinton country.

Still, there were several reasons Republicans chose New York City in 2004: (1) former mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, became a national hero in the aftermath of 9/11 and is sure to be a crowd pleaser; (2) current mayor Michael Bloomberg is also a Republican; (3) the governor of the state, George Pataki, is likewise a Republican who had a strong presence following 9/11. So the GOP pow-wow has relatively friendly political hosts. However, New York City is also the home of, and magnet for, legions of protesters who seek to capture media attention during the four-day affair. They will be vying with Madison Square Garden for the spotlight during the four-day affair, which runs from August 30 through September 2.

Now for a little of the historical background. Republicans have held 38 national conventions since 1856. Listed below is information about each convention: (1) the convention year, beginning with the party's origins in the decade prior to the Civil War; (2) the host city; (3) the nominee; and (4) an asterisk, which indicates that the nominee was elected president the following November.
1856: Philadelphia -- explorer John C. Fremont
1860: Chicago -- former Congressman Abraham Lincoln*
1864: Baltimore -- President Abraham Lincoln*
1868: Chicago -- General Ulysses S. Grant*
1872: Philadelphia -- President U. S. Grant* (an offshoot, the Liberal Republicans, met in Cincinnati)
1876: Cincinnati -- Governor Rutherford B. Hayes*
1880: Chicago -- Representative James A. Garfield*
1884: Chicago -- Senator James G. Blaine
1888: Chicago -- Senator Benjamin Harrison*
1892: Minneapolis -- President Benjamin Harrison
1896: St. Louis -- Governor William McKinley*
1900: Philadelphia -- President William McKinley*
1904: Chicago -- President Theodore Roosevelt*
1908: Chicago -- Secretary of War William Howard Taft*
1912: Chicago -- President William Howard Taft (By the way, Taft lost, which was the only time in U.S. history that the incumbent came in 3rd in the general election)
1916: Chicago -- Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes
1920: Chicago -- Senator Warren G. Harding*
1924: Cleveland -- President Calvin Coolidge*
1928: Kansas City -- Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover*
1932: Chicago -- President Herbert Hoover
1936: Cleveland -- Governor Alf Landon
1940: Philadelphia -- Wendell L. Willkie
1944: Chicago -- Thomas E. Dewey
1948: Philadelphia -- Thomas E. Dewey
1952: Chicago -- General Dwight D. Eisenhower*
1956: San Francisco -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower*
1960: Chicago -- Vice President Richard M. Nixon
1964: San Francisco -- Barry Goldwater
1968: Miami Beach -- former Vice President Richard M. Nixon*
1972: Miami Beach -- President Richard M. Nixon*
1976: Kansas City -- President Gerald R. Ford
1980: Detroit -- Governor Ronald Reagan*
1984: Dallas -- President Ronald Reagan*
1988: New Orleans -- Vice President George H. W. Bush*
1992: Houston -- President George H. W. Bush
1996: San Diego -- Senator Bob Dole
2000: Philadelphia -- Governor George W. Bush*
2004: New York -- President George W. Bush (result?)

Note several things. After 22 of the 38 GOP conventions, the party's nominee went on the win the presidency -- the "bounce" that counts. That's almost a 60 percent success rate.

George W. Bush is the 14th Republican incumbent to be renominated. Of 13 previous incumbents who were renominated, 8 were returned to the White House (Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, Roosevelt, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan).

Also, you are correct about the Republicans having their origins in the North and thus preferring Northern cities in which to meet. For many decades, Chicago was the favored site; the city in the Land of Lincoln hosted 14 conventions between 1860 and 1960. Philadelphia is the next favorite venue, having hosted 6 conventions, including the first one back in 1856, and the previous gathering that nominated George W. Bush in 2000.

Republicans, in fact, did not venture to assemble in one of the former Confederate States of America until 1968, when they met in Miami Beach (which hardly feels Southern). They met again in Miami Beach in 1972. The venue reinforced Richard Nixon's touted "Southern strategy," designed to capture disaffected Southern Democrats following the civil rights legislation spearheaded and signed by Lyndon Johnson in the mid 1960s.

Republicans got on a positively Southern roll when they met in Dallas (1984), New Orleans (1988) and Houston (1992).

Interestingly, three times the nominee came from the state in which the convention was held: Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, Illinois, was nomintated in the Windy City. Rutherford B. Hayes, an Ohioan, was nominated in Cincinnati; and George H. W. Bush, of Houston, was nominated in the city's Astrodome.

No veep

2004-08-26T13:24:00.000-04:00

Question: On the occasions when we have not had a vice president -- in the administrations of John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt (first term), Calvin Coolidge (first term), Harry Truman (first term), and even LBJ (first term) -- who presided over the Senate and performed any other vice presidential duties?
From: Dave M. from Rockford, Michigan
Date: August 26, 2004

Gleaves answers: Here is a fact that surprises most Americans: during one in every six years of U.S. history, there has been no vice president. For the equivalent of 38 years of our nation's existence -- 17 percent of our history -- no VP. This is because of three situations that arose between our nation's founding and passage of the 25th Amendment in 1967, which finally addressed the vacuum:
- eight presidents died in office, necessitating the vice president to move into the presidency; that left the nation without a VP for 287 months of our history;
- six vice presidents died in office -- eerily, four of them during the third week of November; worse, James Madison had two VPs die on him; this situation left the nation without a VP for 140 months; and
- two vice presidents -- John Calhoun and Spiro Agnew -- resigned from the office, leaving the U.S. without a VP for some 4 months.

Add the numbers up, and you'll see that there were 431 months in which the U.S. had no VP: 38 years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT WHO DUELED

The nation came close to experiencing an additional period without a VP -- and under less than savory circumstances. Early on July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton and sitting Vice President Aaron Burr met to defend their honor on a dueling ground in Weehawken, New Jersey. Historians are not sure who fired first. But that morning Burr was more accurate with the hair-triggered .54-caliber pistol, and his shot felled Hamilton, who died the next day in New York City. The event caused such an uproar that Burr was indicted for murder in New York and feared that a mob would break into his house to do him harm. To keep passions from escalating, Burr left New York, sought refuge for two months on an island off the Georgia coast, and then returned to the capital to serve out his remaining six months as vice president under Thomas Jefferson. How different our nation's history might have been had Hamilton killed Burr.

RUNNING DEBATE FROM 1841-1967

Remarkably, when the first president died in office back in 1841, Americans were not quite sure what to do. William Henry Harrison expired after only 30 days in office. Debate ensued over whether Vice President John Tyler was merely acting president or was really, truly, constitutionally president. Tyler, ambitious and possessing a strong personality, asserted that he was not merely a place-holder (i.e., not merely acting president); he asserted that he was constitutionally authorized to be president for the 47 remaining months of his term. Following Tyler's example, it became customary for the vice president to assume the presidency without ambiguity, and this turn of events came about on seven subsequent occasions -- upon the deaths of Presidents Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, and Kennedy.

Nevertheless, our nation had a running debate from 1841 to 1967 about how to turn the custom into law. In 1967 the debate was settled with the ratification of the 25th Amendment, and now there is a clear constitutional procedure to nominate a new vice president, should the previous vice president die, become disabled, or resign. Spiro Agnew's resignation in October of 1973, then Gerald R. Ford's nomination later that fall, triggered the 25th Amendment for the first time; it had been ratified only six years earlier.

APPENDIX A: DEATH

It's amazing to think that, just due to presidents' deaths, our nation lacked a sitting vice president for the equivalent of 24 years of our history. John Tyler served for 47 months without a VP; Millard Fillmore for 32 months; Andrew Johnson for 47 months; Chester Arthur for 41 months; Theodore Roosevelt for 42 months; Calvin Coolidge for 19 months; Harry S. Truman for 45 months; and Lyndon B. Johnson for 14 months. That's a total of 287 months -- almost 24 years -- 11 percent of our nation's history -- without a vice president.

It could have been worse. In addition to the four presidents who were assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), and the four who died of natural causes while in office (W. H. Harrison, Taylor, Harding, FDR), six presidents were the victims of assassination attempts (Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan). Others suffered such severe health problems (notably Washington, Wilson, and Eisenhower) that they easily could have died. Add these folks up, and you're looking at the nation losing or almost losing more than one-third of its presidents. It's a high-risk job.

The historical record brings us to one of the glaring oversights of the Founders who met in Philadelphia in 1787. The Constitution they drafted did not adequately answer the question of vice presidential succession. Not until the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967 did this gap in governance get solved.

Vice presidents have quipped that their job is the most useless on earth. (Some veeps have certainly lived down to that perception.) Franklin Roosevelt's first VP, John Nance Garner, summarized it this way: "The vice presidency? It's not worth a pitcher of warm spit."

As stipulated by the U.S. Constitution, the vice president is the only U.S. official who is a member of two branches of government. One of the duties of the vice president is to preside over the Senate. More specifically, the veep is the tiebreaker -- he can only vote to break a deadlock in the Senate (Article I, Section 3). As constitutional writer Linda Monk has pointed out, "The vice president's power to cast a vote in a divided Senate is one of the checks and balances that the executive branch has over the legislative branch, and it has been used several times in U.S. history to help the president win passage of controversial laws."1

When there is no vice president in the Senate -- for whatever reason -- there is no constitutional crisis. The top dog is the president of the Senate pro tempore (in daily parlance, the president pro tem). He is selected by the majority party caucus. Next down the food chain are the presiding officers of the Senate, who are appointed by the president pro tem to chair the Senate as it conducts its business. The glory of being one of these presiding officers is fleeting, usually lasting only an hour at a time, as the position continually rotates among senators in the majority party.

Prior to 1967, when there was no vice president, his tasks were picked up by cabinet members, other administration officials, and the president himself.

APPENDIX B

In the list below, note the number of instances in which there has been no vice president:

George Washington (1789-1797)
- John Adams (1789-1797)

John Adams (1797-1801)
- Thomas Jefferson (1797-1801)

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)
- Aaron Burr (1801-1805)
- George Clinton (1805-1809)

James Madison (1809-1817)
- George Clinton (1809-1812)
- VP office vacant (1812-1813)
- Elbridge Gerry (1813-1814)
- VP office vacant (1814-1817)

James Monroe (1817-1825)
- Daniel D. Tompkins (1817-1825)

John Quincy Adams (1825-1829)
- John C. Calhoun (1825-1829)

Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)
- John C. Calhoun (1829-1832)
- VP office vacant (1832-1833)
- Martin Van Buren (1833-1837)

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)
- Richard M. Johnson (1837-1841)

William Henry Harrison (1841)
- John Tyler (1841)

John Tyler (1841-1845)
- VP office vacant (1841-1845)

James K. Polk (1845-1849)
- George M. Dallas (1845-1849)

Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
- Millard Fillmore (1849-1850)

Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)
- VP office vacant (1850-1853)

Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)
- William King (1853)
- VP office vacant (1853-1857)

James Buchanan (1857-1861)
- John C. Breckinridge (1857-1861)

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)
- Hannibal Hamlin (1861-1865)
- Andrew Johnson (1865)

Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)
- VP office vacant (1865-1869)

Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
- Schuyler Colfax (1869-1873)
- Henry Wilson (1873-1875)
- VP office vacant (1875-1877)

Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
- William Wheeler (1877-1881)

James A. Garfield (1881)
- Chester Arthur (1881)

Chester Arthur (1881-1885)
- VP office vacant (1881-1885)

Grover Cleveland (1885-1889)
- Thomas Hendricks (1885)
- VP office vacant (1885-1889)

Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
- Levi P. Morton (1889-1893)

Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
- Adlai E. Stevenson (1893-1897)

William McKinley (1897-1901)
- Garret Hobart (1897-1901)
- Theodore Roosevelt (1901)

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
- VP office vacant (1901-1905)
- Charles Fairbanks (1905-1909)

William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
- James S. Sherman (1909-1912)
- VP office vacant (1912-1913)

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
- Thomas R. Marshall (1913-1921)

Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
- Calvin Coolidge (1921-1923)

Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
- VP office vacant (1923-1925)
- Charles Dawes (1925-1929)

Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
- Charles Curtis (1929-1933)

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)
- John Nance Garner (1933-1941)
- Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945)
- Harry S Truman (1945)

Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
- VP office vacant (1945-1949)
- Alben Barkley (1949-1953)

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
- Richard Nixon (1953-1961)

John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
- Lyndon B. Johnson (1961-1963)

Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)
- VP office vacant (1963-1965)
- Hubert H. Humphrey (1965-1969)

Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
- Spiro Agnew (1969-1973)
- VP office vacant (1973)
- Gerald R. Ford (1973-1974)

Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)
- office vacant (1974)
- Nelson Rockefeller (1974-1977)

Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
- Walter Mondale (1977-1981)

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
- George Bush (1981-1989)

George Bush (1989-1993)
- Dan Quayle (1989-1993)

Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
- Al Gore (1993-2001)

George W. Bush (2001- )
- Dick Cheney (2001- )

_______________________

1. Linda R. Monk, The Words We Live By (New York: Hyperion, 2003), pp. 36-37.

The 1904 Convention

2004-08-26T11:38:00.000-04:00

Question: Where was the Republican National Convention held in 1904?
From: Jack W. of Tulsa, Oklahoma
Submitted: August 24, 2004

Gleaves answers:
Chicago -- the Republicans had been holding national conventions since 1856, so the gathering in the Windy City in 1904 was the 14th time they met. Chicago was by far the favorite venue of the Republicans in the first half-century of the party's existence: the 1904 convention that nominated Theodore Roosevelt was the 6th time Republicans met in the Land of Lincoln.

If history is prologue, watch out for a crisis to erupt in the Muslim world during the convention. There was a Middle Eastern crisis in the summer of 1904 involving the last of the Barbary pirates. A Moroccan warrior called Raisuli abducted a man with close American ties named Ion Hanford Perdicaris. Sound familiar? Hollywood resurrected the incident in a 1975 film, The Wind and the Lion, in which Raisuli was played by Sean Connery.

Raisuli was by all accounts a charismatic man with a commanding presence. TR did not want to make a mistake in dealing with him. To demonstrate toughness, the president wielded his "big stick." He ordered seven U.S. warships to the Moroccan coast and demanded the release of the victim: "This government wants Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead," demanded the telegram dispatched to Morocco.

TR used the telegram to great effect at the Chicago convention, reading it aloud to the the wildly cheering delegates. But several unsavory facts surrounding the incident were not revealed to the Republican party faithful or to American citizens that summer. What TR and Secretary of State John Hay discovered -- but did not want to come to light -- was that Perdicaris was not even an American citizen at the time of his abduction. They also did not want it known that the U.S. pressured Britain and France to give in to the kidnapper's demands and pay the ransom. A secret these facts remained until most of the principals were dead and gone; not until 1933 did an historian uncover the real story.

Given the embarrassment it could have caused TR, it is remarkable that this little drama was staged to enliven an otherwise dull convention -- "but," observes presidential historian Lewis Gould, "it made for great political theater and reinforced Roosevelt's image as a man of action."¹

TR's display of toughness appealed to the American people, and he easily defeated his Democratic opponent, Alton B. Parker, in the November election.

Exactly one hundred years ago, "Long before there were suicide bombers, Osama bin Laden, or chants of 'Death fo the Great Satan,' a Trenton man named Ion Perdicaris became the 20th century's first American victim of Middle Eastern terrorism."²

1. Lewis L. Gould, Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 147.

2. From a vivid account of Perdicaris's life and abduction by Jon Blackwell, "1904: 'Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead!'" at http://www.capitalcentury.com/1904.html.

Electoral College sweep

2004-08-16T23:17:00.000-04:00

Question: Is it true that George Washington is the only president to win every vote in the Electoral College?
From: Chris F, from Honolulu, HA
Date: August 16, 2004

Gleaves answers: That's right -- George Washington is the only man who became president with a unanimous vote in the Electoral College. The hero of the American Revolution accomplished that feat not once, but twice. In 1789 he received all 69 votes, and in 1792 all 132. He was without peer.

Few American realize that a later candidate came close to replicating Washington's total domination of the Electoral College. In 1820, during the Era of Good Feelings, incumbent James Monroe ran unopposed for president. He received all but one vote in the Electoral College, which was still quite a feat considering there were many more votes (231) cast that year than either of the years Washington was elected.

But -- since Monroe ran unopposed, how is it that he failed to sweep the College? There are two versions to this story, and both involve New Hampshire Governor William Plumer, who cast the singular vote against Monroe. One story -- the more romantic -- is that Plumer voted against Monroe to preserve Washington's record as the only man to enjoy a unanimous vote in the Electoral College. The other, more likely story is that Plumer genuinely disliked Monroe, and cast his ballot for a fellow New Englander, John Quincy Adams.