Posted on by rjonakait

A Day for Presidents

Ulysses S. Grant liked to say that he knew two songs. One was “Yankee Doodle” and the other was not.

John Ganz in When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024) says that George H.W. “Bush was the representative of a class bred to govern, not to lead.”

Grover Cleveland vetoed more bills in his first term than all previous presidents combined. (Many, however, were private pension bills.)Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

Lincoln said about General Phil Sheridan, who had a distinctive body, that he was a “chunky little chap, with a long body, short legs, not enough neck to hang him, and such long arms that if his ankles itch, he can scratch them without stooping.”Scott W. Berg, The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul (2023).

Warren Harding, when President, privately said that his vote for World War I was a mistake. Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022).

Nicole Hemmer in Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s summarizes President Ronald Reagan as being fueled by anticommunism, which gave him “a preference for more-open borders and higher immigration levels, for fewer tariffs and a stingier social net. Anticommunism mattered more to him than democracy or small government. He wanted a sharp increase in military spending, a more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union, and more extensive aid to right-wing illiberal regimes in place in South and Central America and Southern Africa.”

Hemmer also reports that Reagan’s 1980 presidential race was the first with a partisan gender gap.

Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) reminded me that Reagan, in response to Black Panthers, said there is no reason why anyone should carry a loaded gun on the streets.

Joshua L. Powell writes in Inside the NRA: A Tell-All Account of Corruption, Greed, and Paranoia within the Most Powerful Political Group in America (2020) that gun owners voted for George W. Bush by 25 points over Al Gore.

Al Gore is younger than Donald Trump.

Ted Widmer in Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington (2020) refers to a historian who said that to discuss Millard Fillmore was to overrate him.

One modern president who was religious believed strongly in the separation of church and state. Jonathan Alter writes in His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020) that when he was the Georgia governor, Carter canceled a weekly worship service for government employees because it violated separation of church and state. President Carter did not allow religious sermons in the White House because of separation of church and state.

Jill Lepore states in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) that Lyndon Johnson had broad support among evangelicals in 1964.

Something that would not happen today: Doris Kearns Goodwin reports in An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s that she thought that she would lose her position as a White House Fellow in 1967 because she had co-authored a piece in The New Republic titled “How to Remove LBJ in 1968.”

Jonathan Alter maintains that Jimmy Carter had a photographic memory for names, which reminded me of a story a former colleague told me. Ed grew up in a small Arkansas town where his parents had a modest, but successful, business. When Bill Clinton ran for state attorney general, Ed’s parents attended a fundraiser in their hometown for the candidate. Eight years later, when Clinton was out of office between his non-consecutive gubernatorial terms, Ed’s parents were in Washington, D.C. They spotted Clinton on the opposite sidewalk. They debated whether they should go up to him because of their one meeting. Before they had made a decision, Clinton strode across the Georgetown street, stuck out his hand, and greeted Ed’s parents by their first and last names.

This is not the first time we have had an administration with strange opinions about vaccinations. Jill Lepore in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) states that Dwight Eisenhower and his Health Secretary said that the free distribution of the polio vaccine was socialized medicine.

According to Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (2018), Trump in 2016 did best in counties with a public health crisis, especially where the suicide rate and opioid use was high.

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Snippets

After the New Orleans New Year attack, Trump wrote that this confirmed that our country was unsafe because criminals were crossing the border. A Fox News host said that the country would soon be safer after Trump closed the border. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested the same. This was said even though the terrorist, an Army veteran, was an American citizen born and raised and living in Texas. Perhaps what Trump and the others were really suggesting is that we close the border between Texas and the rest of the country. This might not make the United States safer, but it would make me feel better.

I was surprised that the New Orleans terrorist was flying an ISIS flag. Trump destroyed that organization in 2019. Or at least that is what he said.

The Washington, D.C., homicide rate, which increased while Trump was president, has been decreasing.

His death brings to mind some Jimmy Carter trivia as well as a story about his mother. This is drawn from Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020). Because he was a veteran, Carter qualified for and lived in a new government housing complex shortly after leaving the Navy. He thus became the only president to have lived in public housing.

Carter is the last president not to have golfed while in office.

It was loudly proclaimed that the Carters did not lie. A reporter asked Jimmy’s mother about this, and Lillian Carter conceded that the family told white lies. When the reporter asked for an example, Miss Lillian replied, “Remember how when you walked in here, I told you how sweet and pretty you were?”

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” Walter Lippman.

I had a dream I was in hell; I was trapped in a corner at an endless cocktail party by a birder.

Given our divided country, I like to recall the words of some political and historical observers: “Conservatives are but people who learned to love the new order forced upon them by radicals.” And: “Radicals: Those who advance and consolidate a position for the conservatives to advance a little later.”

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First Sentences

“When he was old and allowed himself a reverie, he remembered the soil and the way it felt as it caressed his feet.” Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.

“They were firing from the bell-tower with machine-gun bursts or careful rifle shots, according to our movements.” Leonardo Sciascia, Antimony.

“On January 16, 1934, a Nazi customs official arrived at the door of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology with a stack of papers.” Sam Apple, Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection.

“This was the day that Daniel vaulted the wall.” Louis de Bernières, The Dust That Falls from Dreams.

“The hillside on which the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho were about to make such a grisly fool of Lieutenant Colonel William J. Fetterman was dun-colored and bare, with no cover save for broken rocks that looked as if they had been thrown down by a short-tempered God.” Sally Jenkins, The Real All Americans: The Team that Changed a Game, a People, a Nation.

“Gramercy Park is the most wistful and the gentlest of the New York squares, and the Players Club is one of the handsomest buildings in it.” David Stacton, The Judges of the Secret Court: A Novel about John Wilkes Booth.

“’Remember the year 1763,’ the celebrated stage actor David Garrick told James Boswell.” Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America. (History group.)

“Bill Rankin sat motionless before his typewriter, grimly seeking a lead for the interview he was about to write.” Earl Derr Biggers, Behind That Curtain.

“More than a decade later, racial antagonism still burned in Jones County, a south Mississippi setting with a complex history.” Curtis Wilkie, When Evil Lived in Laurel: The “White Knights” and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer.

“For a long time, my mother wasn’t dead yet.” Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn.

“Law is the intersection of language and power.” Fred R. Shapiro, The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations.

“I am lucky: I know what people say about me.” Lauren Belfer, City of Light.

“Why should we begin with biblical, Greek, and Roman wives?” Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Wife.

“The two suspects sat on mismatched furniture in the white and almost featureless lounge, waiting for something to happen.” Alex Pavesi, The Eighth Detective.

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Snippets

I watched a few minutes of a TV travel show about the Alps. It showed street performers in a touristy town. There was yodeling. That evening while getting ready for bed, an NPR segment featured yodeling. I had heard yodeling twice in a day when I had not heard that art form for a long time. I used to hear it more because a lot of country singers once yodeled, and I thought that even my favorite of the singing cowboys, Roy Rogers, occasionally yodeled. The next day I went to YouTube and was pleased to find that some of my memories were still correct and that Roy Rogers did indeed yodel. (It does not seem right just to call him Rogers, but it would be ok to just say Roy.) That, as is my wont with YouTube, led me to other clips, and I heard more yodelers. I realized that during each of these yodeling encounters, I smiled while listening to the minute or two of the distinctive vocalizations. A whole hour of yodeling might be bad for mental health, but a few minutes can make you feel more lighthearted. Perhaps in these troubled times we all ought to take a break each day to listen to some yodeling.

I dreamt I was in a land where there was too much coffee. It was a fantasy.

Jonathan Alter reports in His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (2020) that after Jimmy Carter said that he would tell no lies as president, a reporter asked his mother Lillian Carter whether the Carters ever lied. Miss Lillian said that the family had told white lies. When asked for an example of a white lie, she said, “Remember how when you walked in here, I told you how sweet and pretty you were?”

Old joke: She said that she wanted to confess the sin of vanity because she always thought about how beautiful she was when she looked in the mirror. The priest replied, “My child that is not a sin. That is a mistake.”

“How hollow and insincere it sounds when someone says, ‘I am determined to be perfectly straightforward with you.’ The thing needs no prologue; it will declare itself.” Marcus Aurelius.

I was at first surprised that the Wisconsin Congressman on Fox News was not wearing a U.S. flag pin. Instead, on his lapel was a Green Bay Packers symbol. You might not think that he has his priorities right, but for a Wisconsin politician he does.

A reminder to everybody: This year I continue to be awards-eligible.

New York City pedestrians violate the traffic laws less than they did a generation ago. I was used to walkers coming to an intersection with the light against them and looking for a break in traffic in order to scamper across before they got the green. Now if people can’t cross when they get to the corner, they look not at the traffic but down and read, scroll, or text on their smartphones. They don’t look for an opening in the cars and trucks and often don’t even notice that the light has changed.