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?
_____________________________________
[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]
Showing posts with label 33. Harry Truman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 33. Harry Truman. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Monday, January 31, 2005
State of the Union message
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.
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.
__________________________
[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.]
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Bible passages at inaugurations
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
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
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
The Veep's last words
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.
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.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Person of the Year
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
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
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Thanksgiving
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)
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.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Assassinations
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.
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.
Friday, October 22, 2004
Wartime presidents
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.
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.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Reaganomics
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.
[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.
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.
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Presidents, the economy, and domestic policy
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:
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.
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
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Presidential Memoirs
Question: Bill Clinton's 957-page memoir is coming out today. Is it the longest? How many presidents have written their life story? Do memoirs have any impact on a president's reputation?
From: Dane W. of Notre Dame, Indiana
Submitted: June 22, 2004
AN OVERSOLD GENRE?
MEMOIRS AND REPUTATION
Bill Clinton is concerned about his reputation. Richard Nixon was too. Nixon used to say that 50 years would have to elapse before an historian could write about him objectively. What has the impact of memoirs been on the reputation of our chief executives?
Most historians would concur that The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant are the finest in the genre. But has the quality of that book helped Grant's reputation? Apparently not. In virtually all presidential polls, he is ranked in the lower half of all presidents.
Same with Herbert Hoover, who devoted three volumes to his life. The third volume, a hash of the 1932 election that saw him lose to FDR, was written two decades after the fact. Still, observes George Nash, it lacked true historical distance and thus had virtually no impact on Hoover's poor reputation as president.
Historian Richard Norton Smith***** points out that presidential memoirs seem to be irrelevant to one's long-term reputation. On the one hand, James Buchanan wrote a memoir justifying why his presidency was not a failure even though the nation drifted toward Civil War during his administration. He wasn't highly regarded in 1861, the year he left office, and he isn't highly regarded now. No one even remembers that he wrote a memoir. It is irrelevant. On the other hand, three presidents wrote memoirs soon after leaving office but got little bounce for their effort. Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan were about as popular after the publication of their memoirs as before. But with the passage of time, each of these three climbed up the presidential rankings. Again, their memoirs seem irrelevant to their rising esteem.
Many former presidents have written a memoir to help pay bills. Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon racked up legal debts while in office. U. S. Grant had made a bad investment and was in dire financial straits when he wrote his masterpiece. Harry Truman was broke when he left the White House. There was no presidential pension in those days, and he didn't make tons of money on the speaking circuit. According to Richard Norton Smith, when he signed a contract for $600,000 to write his two-volume memoir, it was the first real money he had made in his entire life.
SELECTED MEMOIRS
From: Dane W. of Notre Dame, Indiana
Submitted: June 22, 2004
Gleaves answers:
PRESIDENTIAL MEMOIRS
AN OVERSOLD GENRE?
Presidential memoirs are often greeted with skepticism -- for several reasons. First, many have been ghostwritten, so readers naturally wonder how authentic the words are. It's an open secret that Ronald Reagan's memoir, An American Life, was ghosted. At the press conference unveiling the book in New York City, Reagan held the volume up and cracked, "I hear it's terrific. Maybe someday I'll read it."
There's a suspicion that even the best presidential memoir of all time, by U. S. Grant, was ghostwritten. If true, the question is: by whom? Shortly after Grant's death, Adam Badeau claimed authorship; he had been a general on Grant's staff and had written a three-volume military biography of the Union general. There is also speculation that Mark Twain played a considerable role in drafting the memoir. We know he helped edit the manuscript for publication. Surely the humorist was doing more than just having a cigar with Grant when he dropped in to see his dying friend at regular intervals. Was Twain patting himself on the back when he said Grant's memoir was the finest piece of military writing since Caesar's?*Second, presidential memoirs are met with skepticism even when they are not ghosted because their authors are overly concerned with their reputation. Prior to Bill Clinton's memoir hitting bookstores -- to record-breaking advance sales -- the best-selling presidential memoir was RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. That book is even longer than Clinton's, and one-third of it is devoted to Watergate. Almost everybody who bought Nixon's book was hoping to gain new insights into the scandal. Nobody did. And that's the problem with Nixon's or any other president's memoir. Ex-presidents want to raise their stock with posterity; the politician in them makes them loathe to bare their soul.
Third, presidential memoirs can be disappointing because they seek to settle old scores and hash old issues. Herbert Hoover devoted the third volume of his memoir to refighting the 1932 campaign. As Hoover biographer George H. Nash points out, "The book is too argumentative. It is relentlessly critical of FDR and the New Deal -- so not the best primary source."**
Nash also notes that he has seen a lot of the manuscript that did not make the final cut; earlier drafts are back in the Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa. When Hoover was writing his memoirs during World War II, he had given up running for president any more. (He had wanted to challenge Franklin Roosevelt as late as 1940.) Hoover perceived that he was an elder-statesman-in-the-making, however, so he refrained from including his more gratuitous jabs at FDR's character in the final draft. The work was thus robbed of some of its pith, and the historical record is the poorer.
Feeling cynical? You're not alone. Read the comments of presidential historians as reported in newspapers*** on the eve of the release of Bill Clinton's memoir, and you'll see a consensus: presidential memoirs are typically neither good history nor great literature. Not one has ever won the Pulitzer Prize.
Richard Shenkman: "A memoir, to be successful, must be honest. No president can afford to be truly honest. He can't explain the deals he made, the compromises he accepted, the sacrifices of his principles on the altar of personal ambition. So instead of the truth, we get the president as he would like to be remembered. This is death to a good memoir. There are no revealing anecdotes that explain who he really is or what motivated him. For a person who has spent their life concealing who they are -- and all politicians do this to an extent -- the memoir is especially unsuited to presidents." Furthermore, "Only a few presidents were wordsmiths: Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson. In Jefferson's day, presidents simply didn't write memoirs. Lincoln was assassinated before he could possibly have written his. Wilson suffered a stroke a year before leaving office, incapacitating him."
Louis Gould: "There are not a lot of great presidential memoirs. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to think of one that you'd want to take home and read over the weekend just for the sheer joy of it." The reason? "Most presidents don't do their own writing. They spend four or eight years having everybody write stuff for them. Their skills in that regard shrink. Many [presidential autobiographies], I suppose, are dictated, or as-told-to, or written with either an official ghost or an unofficial ghost. That's the death of individuality right there."
Robert Caro: "Most presidential memoirs are pretty canned. If they're not written by somebody else, they seem like they are."
Robert Dallek: "There was only one [great presidential memoir], and that was Ulysses Grant's. All the rest are dreary, overly partisan attempts at self-defense or self-justification. This doesn't make for great reading at all. It leaves out the flaws and weaknesses that make any human being interesting."
Douglas Brinkley: "It's almost become a tradition in America that when you leave the White House, you raise money for your presidential library and gin out a memoir as quickly as possible."
THE PRESIDENTS' VANTAGE POINT
Clearly the historians aren't keen on presidential memoirs. But one of the men they study was. Harry S. Truman lamented that few of his predecessors had written an account of their time in the White House:
I have often thought in reading the history of our country how much is lost to us because so few of our Presidents have told their own stories. It would have been helpful for us to know more of what was in their minds and what impelled them to do what they did.
Why didn't more presidents write their memoir? Why, by contrast, did Truman take on such an arduous task? He explained:
Unfortunately some of our Presidents were prevented from telling all the facts of their administrations because they died in office. Some were physically spent on leaving the White House and could not have undertaken to write even if they had wanted to. Some were embittered by the experience and did not care about living it again in telling about it. As for myself, I should like to record, before it is too late, as much of the story of my occupancy of the White House as I am able to tell.
Other presidents who have written memoirs include U. S. Grant, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. Not all of them were prolix. Not all of them were totally self-serving. LBJ explained:
I have tried to avoid engaging in historical pamphleteering. I did not set out to write a propaganda piece in support of my decisions. My purpose has been to state the problems that I faced as President, to record the facts as they came to me, to list the alternatives available, and to review what I did and why I did it.
CLINTON'S MEMOIR
Does size matter? The memoir Bill Clinton wanted to write was much longer than the book you can buy. His editor, Robert Gottlieb, talked the ex-president out of making it a two-volume production -- he cut some 500 pages.****
At least five of Clinton's predecessors wrote memoirs that are longer than his: Herbert Hoover needed three volumes to review his life. Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George H. W. Bush each took two-volumes to describe, analyze, and justify their presidency. Richard Nixon did it in one volume, but with a larger word count than Clinton's.
Following are early comments by historians about President Clinton's memoir, My Life.
Robert Caro: "From what I hear, because we have the same editor, President Clinton wrote this himself, every word, longhand. The idea of an ex-president writing a book of that length himself makes me feel that this, more perhaps than any other presidential memoir, will be worth reading. Just from that fact that he wrote it himself, it almost has to have perceptions and insights about the presidency that will help us understand that office more than we have before."
Richard Shenkman: "I cannot imagine him writing a dull book. His publisher won't let him -- they have to recoup their investment. And he isn't dull."
Robert Dallek: "For 10 million bucks, he ought to say something."
At least five of Clinton's predecessors wrote memoirs that are longer than his: Herbert Hoover needed three volumes to review his life. Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George H. W. Bush each took two-volumes to describe, analyze, and justify their presidency. Richard Nixon did it in one volume, but with a larger word count than Clinton's.
Following are early comments by historians about President Clinton's memoir, My Life.
Robert Caro: "From what I hear, because we have the same editor, President Clinton wrote this himself, every word, longhand. The idea of an ex-president writing a book of that length himself makes me feel that this, more perhaps than any other presidential memoir, will be worth reading. Just from that fact that he wrote it himself, it almost has to have perceptions and insights about the presidency that will help us understand that office more than we have before."
Richard Shenkman: "I cannot imagine him writing a dull book. His publisher won't let him -- they have to recoup their investment. And he isn't dull."
Robert Dallek: "For 10 million bucks, he ought to say something."
MEMOIRS AND REPUTATION
Bill Clinton is concerned about his reputation. Richard Nixon was too. Nixon used to say that 50 years would have to elapse before an historian could write about him objectively. What has the impact of memoirs been on the reputation of our chief executives?
Most historians would concur that The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant are the finest in the genre. But has the quality of that book helped Grant's reputation? Apparently not. In virtually all presidential polls, he is ranked in the lower half of all presidents.
Same with Herbert Hoover, who devoted three volumes to his life. The third volume, a hash of the 1932 election that saw him lose to FDR, was written two decades after the fact. Still, observes George Nash, it lacked true historical distance and thus had virtually no impact on Hoover's poor reputation as president.
Historian Richard Norton Smith***** points out that presidential memoirs seem to be irrelevant to one's long-term reputation. On the one hand, James Buchanan wrote a memoir justifying why his presidency was not a failure even though the nation drifted toward Civil War during his administration. He wasn't highly regarded in 1861, the year he left office, and he isn't highly regarded now. No one even remembers that he wrote a memoir. It is irrelevant. On the other hand, three presidents wrote memoirs soon after leaving office but got little bounce for their effort. Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan were about as popular after the publication of their memoirs as before. But with the passage of time, each of these three climbed up the presidential rankings. Again, their memoirs seem irrelevant to their rising esteem.
Many former presidents have written a memoir to help pay bills. Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon racked up legal debts while in office. U. S. Grant had made a bad investment and was in dire financial straits when he wrote his masterpiece. Harry Truman was broke when he left the White House. There was no presidential pension in those days, and he didn't make tons of money on the speaking circuit. According to Richard Norton Smith, when he signed a contract for $600,000 to write his two-volume memoir, it was the first real money he had made in his entire life.
SELECTED MEMOIRS
Cynicism aside, memoirs are important documents because Americans should know how a president explained the most important decisions he made and how those decisions have affected our country. Memoirs are also valuable because they are among the source materials that historians use to write biographies, construct narratives of an era, compare presidents, analyze change over time, study ideas and institutions, etc.
James Buchanan
U. S. Grant
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
Herbert Hoover
Harry S. Truman
Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: 1945: Year of Decisions
Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956
The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961
Lyndon Baines Johnson
The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969
Richard Nixon
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(Nixon received a $2.5 million advance in 1974 to write his memoir. It is the longest one-volume presidential memoir. One third of the book is devoted to Watergate.)
Jimmy Carter
Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President
Ronald Reagan
An American Life
George H. W. Bush
A World Transformed (with Brent Scowcroft)
All the Best: My Life in Letters and Other Writings
Bill Clinton
My Life
*E. B. Long, Introduction to Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (Cambridge, MA: De Capo, 2001), pp. xxviii-xxx.
**George H. Nash, interview by Gleaves Whitney, June 27, 2004.
***The following quotations are from Kevin Canfield, "Presidential Memoirs," Journal News, June 20, 2004; accessed at http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/062004/e0120presmemoirs.html
****Harriet Rubin, "Presidential Memoirs Rarely Inspire: In Walks Clinton," USA Today, June 20, 2004; accessed at http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-06-20-rubin_x.htm
*****Richard Norton Smith, interview with Gwen Ifill, NewHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, June 21, 2004.
James Buchanan
U. S. Grant
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
Herbert Hoover
Harry S. Truman
Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: 1945: Year of Decisions
Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956
The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961
Lyndon Baines Johnson
The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969
Richard Nixon
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(Nixon received a $2.5 million advance in 1974 to write his memoir. It is the longest one-volume presidential memoir. One third of the book is devoted to Watergate.)
Jimmy Carter
Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President
Ronald Reagan
An American Life
George H. W. Bush
A World Transformed (with Brent Scowcroft)
All the Best: My Life in Letters and Other Writings
Bill Clinton
My Life
*E. B. Long, Introduction to Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (Cambridge, MA: De Capo, 2001), pp. xxviii-xxx.
**George H. Nash, interview by Gleaves Whitney, June 27, 2004.
***The following quotations are from Kevin Canfield, "Presidential Memoirs," Journal News, June 20, 2004; accessed at http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/062004/e0120presmemoirs.html
****Harriet Rubin, "Presidential Memoirs Rarely Inspire: In Walks Clinton," USA Today, June 20, 2004; accessed at http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-06-20-rubin_x.htm
*****Richard Norton Smith, interview with Gwen Ifill, NewHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, June 21, 2004.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)