Oval Office Oddities
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JOHN CALVIN COOLIDGE 1923–1929
Silent Cal, as the president was known, really was a man of few words. He was actually honest, pushing for reform of the bureaucracy, modest, and a competent manager. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was to avoid any situation so grave he would be remembered today for dealing with it. He was more cautious than conservative and more concerned with foreign affairs than most in an era when isolationism was a very real force. Yet another president who used his middle name.
HERBERT CLARK HOOVER 1929–1933
This president was a hero of the siege of Tientsin (as portrayed in 55 Days in Peking, the hit movie starring Charlton Heston), as was his wife. He was also a top engineer and self-made millionaire by age forty. During World War I he personally supervised the escape of American citizens from Europe, often using his own fortune to buy them passage. A brilliant man and known humanitarian, Hoover, it seemed, would make an excellent president. And, for a while, this is how it was. Then came the Great Depression in 1929. Being a good Republican of his day, Herbert Hoover believed that it was not the place of government to meddle in the economy. So he did little to alleviate the problems or poverty that followed. His popularity fell and the shantytowns became known as “Hoovervilles.”
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CAMPAIGN PROMISES
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
H. L. Mencken, 1956
The president campaigns, sometimes for years, to be elected to the position. Because of the electoral college, this is not as straightforward as it sounds. It can be a lot of fun to watch if you have the right attitude.
REAL WASHINGTON OUTSIDERS
In this age, when it seems to be a political asset to not be an experienced Washington figure, William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, likely holds the record for the biggest jump in Civil Service position. A successful and popular general, Harrison chose after the War of 1812 to retire to his farm near Cincinnati. While he had previously served as governor of the Northwest Territory (those states that we now call the upper Midwest) he chose for a while to have a less stressful life. After retiring, the only office he held was that of clerk of the courts. But in 1840 the Whig Party was looking for a military hero to run for president. Harrison won in what became known as the Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign. He went directly from local court clerk to president of the United States.
Grover Cleveland spent almost all of his life in Erie County, New York. His first elected office was sheriff in Buffalo, New York. It wasn’t until three years before being elected that the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president traveled substantially outside the county. His first trip to Washington, D.C., was for his own inaugural.
ROLE MODEL
Andrew Jackson had real problems with the way that the nation’s finances were handled. He disliked the federal banks and their monopoly on issuing money. He also was just plain old-fashioned about money. He was the first president to accomplish something that none of us has seen in our lifetimes: Jackson paid off the entire national debt and turned a technically solvent nation over to his chosen successor, Martin Van Buren.
CALIFORNIA DREAMING
No president visited California until Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. It didn’t have as many electoral votes in those days. But the entire West Coast was growing quickly in both population and economic importance. The journey from Washington, D.C., to California took several days on the transcontinental railroad and Hayes’s presence in the far west was a major novelty. He drew large crowds and often gave impromptu speeches.
CHADS REDUX
Close elections are not the sole property of George W. Bush and Al Gore. In 1880, James Garfield defeated Winfield Hancock by the narrow margin of only 9,464 votes nationally to become the twentieth president. Al Gore actually got half a million more votes than George W. Bush in 2000, fifty times more than the difference between Garfield and Hancock. Then there is what may be the most infamous election ever, that of 1876. That year, those in power engineered what would today be considered a coup, when three very Democratic voting states were excluded from the Electoral College. This allowed Republican Hayes to be elected by a single electoral vote. And you thought Florida seemed unfair.
CLINTON REDUX
When he had barely started his campaign, Grover Cleveland publicly admitted that he had once had an affair with a lady from New York named Maria Halpin. It was also public knowledge that her son was likely his. It had very little effect on the campaign, this being before the days of TV and blogs. Unlike the Monica Lewinsky affair, where President Clinton hedged, stalled, and lied, Cleveland came clean early and that made all the difference in keeping the faith of the American people.
AND WITHOUT A TELEPROMPTER
The news crews that follow candidates and elected officials often hear the same speech so often they can recite it better than the candidate. They sit there just waiting for some new sentence or paragraph in the canned talk that will give them something to write or talk about. This may be one reason they always look so bored when the audience is shown. There was one time when this definitely was not the case. One of our brightest and most scholarly presidents was Benjamin Harrison. Even his enemies acknowledged that he was a brilliant orator. Perhaps his most noteworthy achievement in this regard occurred on a thirty-day tour of the Pacific Coast states. He gave about 140 speeches, and each one was original. Some were written in advance, by Harrison in most cases; others were given on just a few minutes’ notice when a crowd had gathered spontaneously. Today’s news staff can only look back with envy.
LOSERS
The men who became president did not all have a smooth rise to power. A surprising number of them lost one or even several elections before attaining the nation’s highest office.
Lincoln Lost race to become U.S. senator from Illinois
Jackson Lost his first presidential race
Nixon Lost the presidency to Kennedy and his race for governor of California two years later
Benjamin Harrison Was defeated running for both governor and senator of Indiana
Polk Twice defeated when running for governor of Tennessee
McKinley After fourteen years, lost the election to serve his eighth term in Congress
Harding Defeated running for governor of Ohio
Fillmore Lost a run at governor of New York
Coolidge Couldn’t get elected to the school board in Northampton, Massachusetts
Cleveland Lost a bid to become the prosecuting attorney for Buffalo, New York
Teddy Roosevelt Was beaten when running for mayor of New York City
Franklin Roosevelt Ran for vice president and lost
SELECTED CAMPAIGN SLOGANS
Slogans became popular when the nation expanded and the ability of the people to know the candidates diminished. At first they referred to specific issues or promises. Lately they seem to have become more generalized propaganda.
1840
William Henry Harrison, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too”
1844
James K. Polk, “54–40 or Fight”—This involved a dispute with Britain over the Canadian border and also annexation of Texas.
1844
Henry Clay, “Who is James K. Polk?”—The next president, as it turned out.
1848
Zachary Taylor, “For President of the People”
1856
John C. Fremont, “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Speech, Free Men, and Fremont”—Lots of free stuff, but Buchanan won.
1860
Abraham Lincoln, “Vote Yourself a Farm”
1864
Abraham Lincoln, “Don’t Swap Horses in the Middle of the Stream”
1884
Grover Cleveland, “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the Continental Liar from the State of Maine”—Note that negative ads have a long history.
1884
> James Blaine, “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” This was in reference to Cleveland’s out-of-wedlock child. After winning, Democrats responded: “Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!”—Mud throwing is not a modern development.
1896
William McKinley, “Patriotism, Protection, and Prosperity”
1900
William McKinley, “A Full Dinner Pail”
1916
Woodrow Wilson, “He Kept Us Out of War”—And he did, until 1917 anyhow….
1920
Warren G. Harding, “Return to Normalcy”—No, that was not a real word yet.
1924
Calvin Coolidge, “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge”—Well, this was before air conditioners.
1928
Herbert Hoover, “A Chicken in Every Pot and a Car in Every Garage”—In 1929, the Depression hit, and the American people never forgave Hoover, calling their shanty towns “Hoovervilles.”
1952
Dwight Eisenhower, “I Like Ike”—War heroes do not need issues.
1960
Richard Nixon, “For the Future”—Lost to Kennedy.
1964
Barry Goldwater, “In your heart you know he’s right”—But not many did.
1968
Richard Nixon, “Nixon’s the One”—He certainly was….
1972
George McGovern, “Come Home, America”
1976
Gerald Ford, “He’s Making Us Proud Again”
1976
Jimmy Carter, “Not Just Peanuts,” and later, “Leader, for a Change”
1980
Ronald Reagan, “Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?”
1984
Walter Mondale, “America Needs a Change”—Most Americans didn’t think so.
1988
George Bush, “Kinder, Gentler Nation”
1992
Bill Clinton, “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”
1992
Bill Clinton, “Putting People First”—And under the desk?
1996
Bill Clinton, “Building a Bridge to the Twenty-first Century”
1996
Bob Dole, “The Better Man for a Better America”
2000
Al Gore, “Prosperity and Progress”—Global warming came later.
2000
George W. Bush, “Compassionate Conservatism”(except to Saddam Hussein) and also “Leave No Child Behind” (2000), “Real Plans for Real People” (2000), and “Reformer with Results” (2000, too).
2004
Ralph Nader “Government of, by, and for the People…Not the Monied Interests”—He got two percent of the vote.
2004
John Kerry “Let America Be America Again”
2004
George W. Bush “Yes, America Can!”
ALL FIFTY STATES
Early in his campaign in 1960, Richard Nixon vowed to be the president of all the people and to campaign in all fifty states. This included the relatively new and distant state of Alaska, with a paltry three electoral votes. Considering what came later, and maybe even a bit because of this, with just a few days before the voting and the race with Kennedy too close to call, Nixon spent a full day on a side trip to campaign in Alaska, the only state he had not yet been in. Kennedy spent that same day in the major states and later won. It wasn’t good politics, but Nixon kept his word.
LOG CABIN SYRUPS
It was a common claim by politicians in the nineteenth century that they had been born in a log cabin. This helped to portray them as just being one of the people. In six cases, presidents actually were born in log cabins. These six are Jackson, Taylor, Fillmore, Buchanan, Lincoln, and Garfield. One of the most adamant of the claimants was William Henry Harrison, who was actually born in a rather large Southern mansion on the James River. But he got away with it until the biographers began checking.
CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The campaign manager who got Andrew Jackson elected was Martin Van Buren. There was a much smaller gulf in those days between the campaign and the politicians. Van Buren convinced Andrew Jackson to do one very unusual thing that probably got him elected president. This was an era when politics were very rough and tumble and two issues split the country in different ways. The first issue was slavery. This caused a split between the Northern and Southern states. The other issue was money: who could print it and what banks could issue it. This was an important pocketbook concern for many voters, since those settling new land or starting a business needed “easy money,” while the established money interests wanted to protect the value of their assets. So the country was split between social classes, and also frontier versus older states, on money. The result was a series of vicious congressional sessions. Tempers were high enough to result in physical violence. And don’t forget it was the time when duels still took place, though illegal. What Van Buren did was to get Andrew Jackson to resign from the U.S. Senate. By doing this, he was able to return to his estate in Tennessee and avoid being part of the partisan bickering. This meant his reputation as a victorious general and statesman remained intact, since he was less of a target than those voting in Congress. By the time it was apparent that Jackson was going to run for president, and he had become a target of the really dirty politics of that day, his position with the voters was secure. By avoiding the fights in Washington, he managed to appear to stand above them. While the election was hard fought and his enemies diligent in their efforts after he had won, Andrew Jackson was elected to two terms.
The genius campaign manager was even able to convince several dozen congressmen to pledge their personal fortunes in order to set up printing presses used to further Old Hickory’s campaign. That’s something we are not likely to see the equivalent of today. Jackson rewarded Van Buren, whom he called a political genius, by naming him as the man he wanted to succeed him and, in 1836, after Jackson retired, Van Buren won. So by leaving his job as senator from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson was able to become president.
FINANCIAL FLIP-FLOP
While being shown to be a “flip-flopper” condemns today’s politicians, there are a number of presidential flip-flops that served the country well. One of these involved the biggest sale of land in history. Knowing that Napoleon was short on money, Thomas Jefferson sent a delegation headed by John Adams and Robert Livingston to Paris with an offer. The offer was to rent or purchase the right for American traders to move freely through New Orleans, which was becoming vital to businesses in what are now the Midwestern states. To the delegates’ amazement, Napoleon offered them the entire territory at a large but bargain price. Now, this was not all generosity. The French navy had been virtually driven from the seas and there was a good chance he would lose the territory, which had just been recovered from Spain, to the British anyhow. Better to sell the lands to the Americans who could defend it than to simply lose it to the Redcoats.
But there was a problem. One of the most adamantly-stated portions of Thomas Jefferson’s campaign was that the United States was not going to borrow any money. (Heaven knows how the Founding Father would react to today’s deficit spending.) But the new nation did not have enough money to complete the purchase. Deciding that obtaining nearly a third of the present U.S. area was more important, Jefferson flip-flopped and quickly urged the Senate to buy Louisiana from Napoleon. Except for certain low-lying neighborhoods in New Orleans, it still looks like one of the wisest flip-flops ever performed.
FROM THE BIRDS
Millard Fillmore ran for vice president and made few promises. This is probably a good thing, because when he took office upon Taylor’s death, his list of accomplishments was short. Almost every action he took or desired was held hostage to the slave/free state debate. His first accomplishment was bringing California into the Union. This was marred by the Fugitive Slave Act, which greatly expanded federal involvement in returning slaves who had escaped to free states. His second accomplishment was to send Admiral
Perry to open up trade with Japan. This worked, though some say the eventual result of how this was handled was Pearl Harbor. Finally Millard Fillmore’s big diplomatic accomplishment was to negotiate a treaty with Peru that gave the United States access to the Guano Islands. These islands proved an invaluable source of nitrogen-rich materials. Nitrogen is used to manufacture explosives and ammunition. The actual source of this nitrogen, and Fillmore’s diplomatic accomplishment, is yards-deep piles of bird droppings that have accumulated over thousands of years on the Pacific islands.
FREEDOM TO FLIP-FLOP
When Abraham Lincoln campaigned in 1860, he promised many times that the Federal government under his leadership would not interfere with the right to hold slaves. The reason was to attract Southern voters. The ploy didn’t work. Its failure was called the American Civil War. On January 1, 1863, he flip-flopped and signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This had no immediate effect on slavery in the South, but helped to turn the war into a Crusade to Free the Slaves, making liberals and many European governments happy.
FDR’S BIG FLOP
Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaigned on the idea that one of the main reasons for the Great Depression was the deficit spending of the Federal government. Rather soon after taking office, this was forgotten and he began borrowing and spending on a massive level in an effort, only partially effective, to end the financial crisis. (World War II spending finished the recovery.) Had he kept his promise, the United States might well have not been in a position to be victorious in World War II.