Oval Office Oddities

by Bill Fawcett

  The answer: the first major American public works program which would be financed by the raising of tariffs (tariffs being taxes by any other name, though to be fair he never promised “Read my lips—no new tariffs!”).

  It was to be called “the American System” and it was to be composed of a program of internal improvements including road building, canal-digging, university endowing, and other pet projects, including a national observatory for astral studies and a national bank to encourage productive enterprise and form a national currency. It also included a number of pork projects.

  So much for smaller government and limited taxes.

  Now if we compare him to the next level-headed (thus skipping Andrew Jackson and his ineffective lackeys) Democrat president, we come to James K. Polk, the eleventh president.

  Opposite party.

  Opposite policy.

  A Democrat through and through.

  And what did he do?

  He lowered the tariffs and is widely credited with actively supporting unrestricted free trade, thus ticking off the Northern protectionists who had flourished during the reign of the mad Whig Party.

  In addition to his economic incentives, he also had a very non-Democratic idea of promulgating the expansion of U.S. holdings. Where previous expansion had occurred through diplomatic negotiation and economic expansion (both of which Polk also practiced), the eleventh president had another plan up his sleeve.

  “If they don’t want to negotiate…there are always alternatives.” And in Polk’s case this alternative wound up with a name: the Mexican-American War, where our casus belli was simple—they didn’t want to give us what we wanted.

  So when Mexican forces crossed the Rio Grande and killed eleven American troops, Polk announced that Mexicans had “invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil.” (More precisely soon-to-be American soil, as this territory was part of the real estate for which our “negotiations” were stymied.)

  The result: a soon-to-be state named New Mexico. (It is worth noting that Polk tried the same sort of maneuver with Spain for Cuba. But the lack of a situational excuse like the Mexican incursion effectively neutralized his strategy, putting Cuba on the back-burner for a few more presidents to try and handle.)

  The Mexican-American War contributed more than just territory to American history—it also gave us the war career of future President Pierce.

  Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president and an avowed Democrat, holds a true distinction among all presidents to date: thus far, he is the only president ever to have hailed from the great state of New Hampshire.

  Now, the state slogan of New Hampshire, as anyone with access to New England license plates knows, is “Live Free or Die.”

  So since he was a Northern Democrat, what was his view on the slavery issue?

  Ironically, the opposite of what one would expect, and indeed, by signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he pretty much undid the war-averting Missouri Compromise and thus allowed the further spread of slavery and laid the groundwork for the Civil War.

  Recently, two new issues have risen to the forefront for the right-leaning Republicans:

  the dismantlement of the federal civil service system to divorce it from political cronyism

  immigration as a means to bring in “cheap labor” to feed our competitiveness in an international free market economy (without the obligation of a path to citizenship, of course)

  Consider therefore the career of the twenty-first president of the United States Chester A. Arthur, who assumed the presidency upon the death of James Garfield.

  The two hallmarks of his tenure in office were:

  the passage of the 1883 Pendleton Act, which established the Civil Service Commission, which “stopped big businesses from giving out rebates and pooling with other companies, forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a system that made certain government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations and protected employees against removal for political reasons” (yes, the exact system that current Republicans are trying to dismantle)

  the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which allowed the United States to essentially block entry to Chinese immigrants solely on the basis that they were undercutting the ability of U.S. citizens to get jobs and also driving down the wages for said positions (passed largely in response to the numerous railroad labor construction jobs that were linked to the Gold Rush and seemed to be continually filled by low-cost laborers from the other side of the Pacific)

  And what was Chester A. Arthur?

  A staunch and conservative Republican, of course.

  Indeed, things are never as simple as they seem, and ideas and ideologies seldom really split down party lines.

  Possibly our most racist president was a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

  This twenty-eighth president, though obviously a man of learning (he was a scholar and an Ivy League university president after all), was an ardent fan of the D. W. Griffith film The Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Reconstruction-era exploits of the Ku Klux Klan as a natural evolutionary reaction to post-Civil War events. (Indeed, one of Wilson’s classmates penned the novel The Klansman, upon which the film was based.) It is even believed that he supported segregation in the Washington, D.C., governmental workplace, and actively discouraged minorities from applying to Princeton when he was president there.

  But all of this, too, must be taken with a grain of salt.

  After all, who is the only president known to have actually looked into joining the Communist party?

  The fortieth president, Ronald Reagan, a Republican and the man credited by some with breaking the back of the Soviet menace.

  Just as it took a Democratic president (Bill Clinton) to balance the budget and reform welfare, it sometimes takes a maverick in one party to implement a pragmatic approach to a process that, in essence, achieves the goals of the other party—usually to the betterment of the lot of the American people.

  A great philosopher and social commentator once said, “Only Nixon could go to China,” meaning that it takes a strong and bellicose anti-Communist to make peace with a strong and equally bellicose Communist.

  Okay, that wasn’t said by a great philosopher; it was said by Mr. Spock in Star Trek VI, but its wisdom still stands.

  14

  WHEN, WHO, AND HOW MUCH?

  “Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.”

  John Quinton

  Here are some fun facts on the statistics, numbers, and names related to the presidents.

  The law states that a president has to be at least thirty-five years old. None have approached that youthful age. There is no upper limit.

  Until modern times, the ex-president who lived the longest was Herbert Hoover, who likely enjoyed it the least. He was never forgiven by the nation for being in office when the Great Depression started, or for his bungled efforts to stop it. Also living to ninety was John Adams, who happily played the role of elder statesman. The two presidents who lived to the oldest age were Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. The youngest resident at death was the assassinated John Kennedy. The oldest president elected was Ronald Reagan. It is interesting to note that, through the first twelve presidencies, over half were born in Virginia. After Zachary Taylor, the next and latest Virginia-born president was Woodrow Wilson. From Grant in 1869 until Harding in 1921, Ohio became the state to be from. Half the fourteen presidents elected during this period were from Ohio. Of the last thirteen presidents, starting with Hoover, a majority (seven) were born west of the Mississippi River.

  West

  Truman, Ike, LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Reagan

  East

  Hoover, FDR, JFK, Carter, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2

  THE “H” WORD

  It probably means nothing, but there have been five Presidents whose name began with an “H.” These were William Henry Harrison, Benjamin H
arrison, Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren G. Harding, and Herbert Hoover. It probably means nothing, but if your name is Haig, or Harvey, or anything starting with an H, each and every one of these men was not reelected to a second term.

  MONEY TALKS

  Of the eleven types of bills that were at any time circulated, presidents are on eight of them. The $100,000 bill was only used for Treasury purposes and also featured a president: Wilson. Note that two of the three exceptions were treasury secretaries, who control the Bureau of Engraving. All bills over $100 are no longer used.

  $1

  George Washington

  1st U.S. President

  $2

  Thomas Jefferson

  3rd U.S. President

  $5

  Abraham Lincoln

  16th U.S. President

  $10

  Alexander Hamilton

  1st Secretary of the Treasury and never President

  $20

  Andrew Jackson

  7th U.S. President

  $50

  Ulysses Grant

  18th U.S. President

  $100

  Ben Franklin

  Statesman and never President

  $500

  William McKinley

  25th U.S. President

  $1,000

  Grover Cleveland

  22nd & 24th U.S. President

  $5,000

  James Madison

  4th U.S. President

  $10,000

  Salmon Chase

  U.S. Treasury Secretary under Lincoln

  $100,000

  Woodrow Wilson

  28th U.S. President

  LIVING MONEY

  Harkening back to the Roman Empire, when the reigning emperor put his own likeness on coins, only once in history has a living president been on money. This was when Calvin Coolidge appeared alongside George Washington on a special, sesquicentennial half dollar.

  STARTING SALARY

  While later presidents’ salary suffered from the ravages of inflation and the cost of being the chief host for the nation, the first president, George Washington, was paid a really excellent salary that would translate today into a high six-figure amount. This was intended to, and did, allow him to act presidential, though no one was sure what that was yet. The closest they knew was royalty, so the budget was there to pay for a good deal of pomp. After all his years of sacrifice and field camps with the Continental Army, Washington rightly used his high pay to look and act like the leader of a sovereign nation. He traveled extensively, dressed well, entertained with style, and even bought his horses fancy robes made of such exotic materials as leopard skins. Some records show that more than five percent of the total he spent during his presidency went for the purchase of alcohol—though mostly for entertainment and not his personal use.

  VP PAY

  The honor was often dubious and no one knows why today anyone would want to be the vice president, but it is certain the vice presidents have never been after the job for the money. Though in real dollars it used to actually pay better than it does today, since in 1800 one dollar had the buying power of over sixteen of today’s dollars, and in 1900 that had risen to twenty-six to one. Here is a quick look at what we pay our backup leaders:

  1789

  $5,000

  1907

  $10,000

  1949

  $30,000

  1964

  $43,000

  1969

  $62,500

  2001

  $171,500

  2004

  $192,600

  The question is what changed to make the vice president worth three times as much today as in 1969?

  CAN YOU SPARE ME A DIME?

  Many of the first presidents and vice presidents were rich men. They were the leaders of their states and had to be well off enough to spend long periods governing. Many also were from what we today call “old money” and served because it was a family tradition. It did not matter to them that their paychecks were a bit slow in coming. This time it did. Vice President John Tyler had not yet received his first paycheck when a messenger arrived informing him that William Henry Harrison had died and he was to be the president. The vice president was at his home in Williamsburg and had never been financially well off. It was quickly discovered that he simply did not have enough money to get to Washington for his own inauguration. Several friends rallied to Tyler and loaned him the money for the trip. That was probably a very safe loan, since now that he was president, they certainly knew where he lived.

  LINCOLN PENNIES

  For some reason, there is an impression that Abraham Lincoln was some sort of monkish figure who lived on good intentions and honor. The reality is that Lincoln was a rather good businessman. Unlike John Tyler, he was quite financially comfortable when he took office in 1861. One bank in Springfield, Illinois, owed him the proceeds of a note for almost $10,000. That would be $250,000 of today’s money. While president, Lincoln often saved his salary, and in 1864 used those savings to purchase federal bonds totaling almost $68,000. After Lincoln’s assassination, he left an estate valued at about $111,000, or the equivalent of well over two million dollars in today’s money. Lincoln had not always been this well off. He made most of his money in his law practice. His attempt to become a grocer went almost as badly as that of U. S. Grant. One story goes that it took Honest Abe sixteen years to repay the whole grocery bill he ran up in the attempt. If it did, Lincoln must have had one patient creditor.

  LOCAL HERO

  Illinois is the only state whose toll ways accept pennies. While a bother for the authorities, and anyone behind a person throwing eighty pennies into the collector, there is a reason. President Lincoln is on every penny and Illinois is the state whose motto is “Land of Lincoln.”

  BUSINESS SENSE

  When it comes to being a business failure, President U. S. Grant is generally the example we all remember. But he really has to contend for that dubious honor with James Monroe. Always bad with money, he even had trouble while president. Since all of Dolley Madison’s new furniture was ruined when the White House was burned in 1812, President Madison received $50,000 from Congress to get the place back into shape. This is almost exactly double what Dolley spent. Trouble was, he didn’t keep very good track of the money and his bookkeeper stole almost $20,000 of it. Then, his taste for Paris modern (okay, modern for 1817) was expensive. What developed was another presidential precedent now popular with defense contractors: the cost overrun. Congress bailed Monroe out, but when investigating they also discovered that he had sold to the White House, effectively himself, much of his own furniture for the then substantial sum of $9,000. None of this did Monroe any good in the long run. After his presidency, he seemed to never quite be able to earn a living. The nation was only a few decades old and James Monroe was the first president not to be personally very wealthy, so there simply were no procedures for supporting former presidents. There was no pension for former presidents yet, either, so they were left to live on what they could earn. In the years after he left office, Monroe bombarded the government with bills for expenses he had incurred while president and belatedly wanted reimbursement for. Only a few were actually honored by an annoyed Congress. Eventually James Monroe, the fifth president, had to move in with his daughter in New York City, where he died on July 4 in 1831, still broke.

  HEIR APPARENT

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt really was raised being fed with a silver spoon. His family was very well off and he inherited large sums from a number of relatives. His father left him $100,000 ($1.4 million in today’s dollars) and his mother was worth close to a million dollars (read that as $14 million today) herself, and owned Hyde Park, a six-hundred-acre estate on the Hudson River not far from Poughkeepsie, New York. In addition, he was almost constantly employed in an elected or appointed position. While he was the president that dealt with the Great Depression of 1929, FDR certainly did not suffer because of it.

  AND HE
IS ON THE $500 BILL

  In 1890, after seven terms in Congress, William McKinley, not yet president, found he had been defeated for reelection; in 1893, he was also informed that a massive note he had cosigned for a friend had defaulted. He was suddenly was out of work and out of money. The note was so large that paying it off took all of the family money and his wife’s inheritance, wiping out over $100,000 they had accumulated. Still it was not enough and an additional $100,000 was raised by Mark Hanna (the machine boss) from McKinley’s many friends. Though it basically left the former congressman destitute, he paid off the note. Three years later, his fortunes improved when the still financially stretched William McKinley was elected the twenty-fifth president of the United States in 1896.

  GIFT OF HONESTY

  As we live in a time when all ethical reforms have built-in loopholes, one past president should be an inspiration. James Buchanan was not that great a leader, but he was a most ethical one. In his time, as is sadly true now, gifts and contributions to those in office were common. Votes were not-too-subtly up for sale. In reaction, the fifteenth president had a rule. His secretary was to return all gifts immediately, even those from his personal friends and longtime supporters. He kept assiduously to this rule during his entire administration.

  THICK AS A BRICK

  If you are not up on your conspiracy theory, the Freemasons are taking over, or have taken over, the world. A large number of the Founding Fathers were members, as have been many other influential men in U.S. history. The real question is not if the Freemasons have taken over, but if they are in turn controlled by Skull and Bones. If you are curious, here is a list of the presidents who were Freemasons: