POTUS 28: President Woodrow Wilson - The President Who Short-Circuited & POTUS 28A: President Edith Wilson - An Alternate Portrait

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Happy Birthday, April 30th!

April 30 is an important date in the history of the USA. On this date in history:

Washington was sworn into office, Hitler commited suicide, and The Vietnam War officially ended.

POTUS 33: President Harry Truman - "The Buck Stops Here"

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Harry Truman did not want to be vice president, and he didn't have to be for long. He was VPOTUS 83 days before FDR died in his fourth term of office.

He hoped to play the piano for a living, but opened a haberdashery with a fellow army buddy that went bust. Harry refused to declare bankruptcy and worked his entire life to pay the debts from the business. He got into politics.

In his bid for re-election in 1948, he was dubbed the loser to Thomas Dewey as newspaper headlines read DEWEY WINS when in fact Truman was the winner. You've seen the famous photograph of Harry holding the 'paper declaring Dewey the winner.

When bad reviews appeared in the press following his daughter Margaret's singing debut in new York, he threatened to punch the reviewer in the nose.

The President never removed his suit jacket while working in the Oval Office. Harry was not a shirt-sleeve guy.

When Japan refused to surrender in World War II, he made the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities devoted to war work. He may have ended the war, but he let the genie out of the bottle, and we've never been able to put the genie back.

In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman again went to war: "There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it." A brutal struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old border of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, and avoided engaging either China or Russia.

He retired in early 1953, succeeded by President Eisenhower.
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POTUS 28: President Woodrow Wilson - The President Who Short-Circuited & POTUS 28A: President Edith Wilson

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President Wilson started out as an academic, working his way up to President of Princeton in 1902. He ran for governor, and won, in 1910, and was nominated for President at the democratic convention in 1912.

After winning re-election in 1916 on the premise that "he kept us out of war," he asked congress to declare war on Germany in 1917. The American presence in the war eventually helped tilt the balance in favor of the allies. After the Germans signed an armistice, Wilson went to Paris to work on the Treaty of Versailles and The League of Nations. Alas, in the midterms, the balance in Congress had tilted toward the Republicans. The Treaty died in the Senate.

After a long tour on the hustings to drum up support for Versailles and the League of Nations, President Wilson became ill.

On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him partially paralyzed on his left side. His intellectual capacity remained intact, but his emotions and judgment were shattered. No one suggested that Wilson resign. The 25th amendment was fifty years in the future. His wife, Edith, undertook a massive cover-up of his condition. She controlled access to him and made the decisions for him. In a very real sense, Edith Wilson was the 29th President of the United States (or maybe 28A).

It's a mind f**ker for us in the age of revved up Kleig-light journalism and media scrutiny to imagine keeping a President on ice for two years. Imagine if a year from now, we never saw President George W. Bush again. We get communiques from him, we never actually see him. He is somewhere behind The Closed Door. He becomes a Howard Hughes and any information we do get comes from aides. You no longer even really know who is behind that closed door. No one has the power to peek beneath the covers.

Although President Wilson gradually recovered from the worst effects of the stroke, Wilson never got his game back. In the meantime, the Senate twice rejected the Versaille peace treaty. Wilson had refused to compromise and the United States never joined the League of Nations. President Wilson left the White House in March 1921 a broken man.
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More Thoughts On Jacko - Michael Jackson's Trial Continues

A comedian has to have already said this, but::::::::::::::::shouldn't Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon and dermatologist be on trial for something?
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POTUS 31: President Herbert Hoover - The Scapegoat

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As I've said before about Hayes, Taft, Coolidge, Bush, Ford (who barely qualifies), et al, my second favorite variety of President is the one-term Republican defeated for re-election. My favorite configuration is, of course, the two-term Democrat. I am sad to report that in my now lengthy lifetime, I've seen--and voted for--only one: POTUS 42 William Jefferson Clinton.

Run from office on a rail in 1932 by the FDR juggernaut, President Hoover's star has risen over the years.

In the book, The Herbert Hoover Story, Eugene Lyons writes: "A Fantastic Hoover Myth. . .It presents our thirty-first President as a heartless ogre, inept and callous and reactionary, who 'caused' a depression, then 'did nothing' to mitigate its horrors."

President Hoover is no longer blamed for causing the Depression. However, he was trounced by FDR and the nation then began the excruciatingly slow march toward recovery, and, a decade later, war with the Axis.

Years later, in 1947, President Truman enlisted Hoover to help with various issues, including flying to Europe to fix the food production pipeline in defeated and occupied post-Hitler Germany.

Flags in the classrooms at Kent Elementary were draped with black bunting for a month when Hoover died in the fall of 1964. It was a relief I think, going back to a time when Presidents died in bed, of old age.
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POTUS 17: Pres. Andrew Johnson - The Worst President Ever

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While Andrew Johnson's predecessor, Lanky Link, is considered America's greatest President, Johnson is often considered the worst. It requires a crash course in The Reconstruction to understand how badly he screwed things up.

When Civil War broke out, Johnson was a first-term Senator in the proslavery wing of the Democratic Party. He differed with them in that he didn't want to split The Union. When Tennessee left the Union after the first election of Abraham Lincoln, Johnson broke away and became the only Southerner in the U.S. Senate.

Johnson wanted to save the union, but did not believe in the emancipation of slaves. Concerned about his chances for reelection, Lincoln felt that he needed a man like Johnson on the ticket in 1864. Lincoln's enemies could not easily depict him as a tool of the abolitionists with the scurrilous and racist Johnson as his running mate.

Days after the Civil War ended, Lincoln was assassinated. President Johnson now blocked efforts to force Southern states to guarantee equality for blacks. While Congress was in recess, The President rushed through his own twisted policies--handing out thousands of pardons and essentially allowing slavery under another name. When Congress reconvened, the Republicans went to political war against the President.

During the congressional mid-terms in 1866, President Johnson went on a speaking tour to campaign for congressmen supporting his policies. In speech after speech, Johnson personally attacked his Republican opponents in vile and abusive language. On many occasions, it appeared that the President was drunk. One observer estimated that Johnson lost one million Northern votes in this debacle.

Congress voted to impeach Johnson by a vote of 126 to 47 in February 1868, citing his violation of the Tenure of Office Act and charging that he had brought disgrace and ridicule on Congress. The Senate voted not to convict Johnson (he won by one vote), and he limped through the sullied term originally won by President Lincoln.
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Happy 202nd Birthday Meteors

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202 years ago today, around 2,300 meteorites weighing between one quarter ounce and 20 pounds fell on the town of L’Aigle in northeastern France, 100 miles from Paris.

No one was killed. No one was even hurt. It was the first time scientists could verify that stones could come from outer space.

How the scientists figured it out is anyone's guess. Doctors at the time still believed that "humors" in the blood caused all illness. Bloodletting was the cure-all. Doctors didn't even wash their hands until the late 19th century, when Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister's findings led to antiseptic surgery. Antiseptic practice saved thousands of lives during the Franco-German War, and yet American and British doctors--who killed far more people than they saved--long resisted the theory of sepsis.
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POTUS 6: President John Quincy Adams - First Son Of A President To Become President And The First President To Become A Congressman Post-White House

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John Quincy Adams, the son of POTUS No. 2, attended Harvard and held several diplomatic posts over the years. He was elected to the Senate in 1803 and from 1809 on, held many other dipolomatic posts. As Secretary of State for James Monroe, he worked closely with POTUS 5 to formulate The Monroe Doctrine.

In 1825, no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes. Adams, with the support of Henry Clay, was elected President by the House over Andrew Jackson. His independence did not sit well with The Federalists, who kicked him out of the party.

Leaving the White House, Adams ran for the House as a Whig, and stayed there many years, and in fact, experienced a stroke on the floor of the House and died two days later.
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VPOTUS Nelson Rockefeller Gives The Finger To Protestors

This is one of my favorite political photos. At a campaign stop for Senator Bob Dole (on the VP's left) in '76, Nelson Rockefeller was heckled by protesters over his Vietnam war policy. Rocky ricocheted it. Soon after this, and unrelated to the famous finger, an appellate court ruled that giving the finger was not legally obscene.
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Myth # 8: The Consumer

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I don't know where this came from, but it's true. At least about videogames.
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POTUS 25: President William McKinley - Puppet Or Visionary?

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William McKinley has often been considered a lame President; a marionette controlled by cronies who was pressured into war with Spain by a hysterical press. Historians now lean toward seeing him as a decisive President who launched America on the road to world power through his use of tarriffs, his policy toward trade with China, his war against Spain over Cuba, and by annexing real estate we picked up in our adventures.

He was a populist president, usually taking the side of The People over the side of "private interests," e.g., business.

In the 100-day war over Cuba, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Cuba, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico. He also picked up Guam for his troubles.

His second term began well, but came to a tragic end in September 1901. He was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot him twice. He died eight days later and was succeeded by his VPOTUS, Teddy Roosevelt.
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