Coins and presidents

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

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

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

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

OBVERSE PORTRAITS

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

- penny: Abraham Lincoln, looking right;

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

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

- dime: Franklin Roosevelt, looking left;

- quarter: George Washington, looking left;

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

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

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

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

- dollar: Eisenhower centennial silver dollar (1990);

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

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

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

LEFT- VERSUS RIGHT-FACING

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

MORE COINS, MORE PRESIDENTS?

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

THE STORIES BEHIND THE PORTRAITS

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Question from Lupe M. of Fresno, CA)
_______________________________

[1] See the U.S. Mint Website at http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/mint_history/

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

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

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

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

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.

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.]

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

Inaugurations in American history

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

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

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

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

SEVEN MEMORABLE INAUGURAL ADDRESSES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OTHER FACTS AND HIGHLIGHTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second inaugurations

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

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

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

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

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

THE SWEET 16

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

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

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

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

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

SIX SECOND INAUGURATIONS DURING WARTIME

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

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

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

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

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

Election 2004 in perspective -- part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, these kids are America's future.

_________________________________

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

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

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

States claiming the most presidents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best signs for predicting the winner

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

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

As good as who?

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

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

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

Whom do school kids think will win in 2004?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________________________________

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

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

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

Presidents and jobs

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

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

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

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

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

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

ECONOMIC STEWARDSHIP

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

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

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

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

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

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

Job growth and elections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_________________________________________________________________

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

Presidential greatness

Question: What makes a president great?
From: Karrie J. of East Lansing, MI
Date: September 10, 2004

Gleaves answers: Your question goes to the heart of leadership. It is one of the cornerstone questions we ask at the Hauenstein Center.

One of the leading presidential historians of our day, Robert Dallek, believes that America's greatest presidents possess six qualities:

1. Vision: great presidents capture the public imagination by vividly showing people where they are headed. Listen to how the presidents use words to explain where they want to take the nation – words like “freedom,” “opportunity,” “justice for all,” “peace through strength.”

2. Command of practical politics: our best presidents have knowledge and experience when it comes to the political process -- they know how to get things done. Lyndon Johnson was a master of practical politics, and his Great Society was comprised of almost a thousand bills.

3. Character: a strong leader is someone who shows courage, who inspires trust, who is temperate and persistent and disciplined and not afraid of hard work.

4. Presidential personality: leaders by definition need followers, and persuasive leaders have the charisma to make people feel attracted to them.

5. Consensus builders: effective leaders can work with diverse interest groups, the Congress, the bureaucracy, the media, and ultimately citizens to build support for their programs. This has presented challenges to the military men who have become presidents. Michael Korda observes that Truman "would remark of Eisenhower that he would never know what hit him when he reached his desk in the White House -- as a general, when he gave an order it would be obeyed instantly, but in the White House he would give an order and nothing would happen. The same phenomenon hit Grant almost immediately. He too, like Ike, was accustomed to instant obedience, not to the political process of building up support for a policy in Congress, or appealing for support to the public, or wooing newspapermen to obtain it. He expected at the very least the backing of his own party, without realizing that everything in politics has to be negotiated -- at a price."[1]

6. Luck: highly-ranked presidents need to have circumstances go their way -- they're just lucky. FDR’s New Deal floundered in his second term; his reputation as a leader was probably saved by Tojo, Hitler, and the hostile regimes that forced America into World War II.

Lots of books have been written about effective leadership; no doubt there will be many more. Hauenstein Center associate Marc Jordan, personally and professionally curious about the elements of presidential leadership, earned a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He and I recently talked about the insights he derived from classes and conversations with David Gergen, Roger Porter, Richard Neustadt, and other Harvard faculty. Great and near-great presidents need certain abilities, skills, and attributes to get to the White House, stay there with any success, and leave a worthy legacy. They need (in no particular order):

1. Intellectual curiosity from an early age: leaders have active minds and are driven to know how things work. They have the capacity to teach themselves. Many of our presidents, in fact, did. Abraham Lincoln hungered for knowledge and could become absorbed in all manner of things. During the Civil War, for instance, he became intensely curious about weapons and gun powder. No question escaped his roving, curious mind.

2. Ability to speak, write, and communicate effectively with staff, other political leaders, and the public. Among recent presidents the Great Communicator, by all accounts, was Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was also extremely effective connecting with audiences.

3. Ambition, with a willingness to accept increasing responsibility at every stage of their career

4. Ability to focus on three to four things that can be accomplished.

5. Management skills that include the ability to delegate, thus succeeding with growing responsibility

6. Character, a moral compass

7. Strong mentors or role models

8. Sociable, a team player – not a lone wolf or overly introspective

9. Good at self-promotion and managing a public image: Ike used Reeves in ’52 – an ad genius.

10. Sound judgment

11. Ability to assemble a championship team: great presidents are good judges of character. They have an ability to read people and know how to motivate them to be loyal and hard-working members of an administration. One great example is George Washington's decision to bring into his cabinet the two most brilliant men of the founding generation: Alexander Hamilton (secretary of the Treasury) and Thomas Jefferson (secretary of State). Another good example is when President William McKinley asked Elihu Root to join the administration. Peter Drucker and other management gurus have pointed to this as one of the greatest management decisions of all time [Stuart Crainer]. Gerald R. Ford also assembled one of the most talented staffs in the post-war presidency.

12. Capacity to deal with the cacophony of voices and views in Congress

13. Ability to multi-task

14. Vision … a clear sense of what the mission is: George Washington knew that he had to do everything in his power to establish a republic and set good executive precedents. Abraham Lincoln knew that he had to do everything in his power to save the Union. Franklin Roosevelt had to defeat economic depression and warring tyrants. Ronald Reagan confronted an evil empire and set his sights on winning the Cold War. George W. Bush has to fight and win a war on terror.

15. Adaptability to new circumstances: Thomas Jefferson was a strict constructionist when it came to interpreting the U.S. Constitution. That document says nothing about acquiring or purchasing new territory, only about how to form states from the nation's existing land. When the opportunity presented itself to purchase Louisiana, Jefferson found a way, even though it conflicted with his earlier, rigid stance on interpreting the basic law of the land.

16. Continuous learning, combined with an ability to accept new challenges

17. Strong faith: virtually all our great presidents believed that they had to recharge their battery by being connected to a higher moral power.

18. Ability to make tough decisions. Gerald R. Ford made an extremely unpopular decision when he pardoned former President Richard M. Nixon. But he thought it was the right thing to do because the nation faced so many problems and had to move on.

___________________________
[1]Michael Korda, Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 118-19.

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:

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