Happy president's day
In honor of the holiday, a list . . . AnnaRay's five favorite presidents
5) James K. Polk. There's a good reason They Might Be Giants wrote a song about him.
4) Lyndon Johnson. Without Vietnam, he was a giant for civil rights -- despite being a backwoods, election-stealing, racist, sexist, pooping-in-front-of-other-people jerk. With Vietnam, he was a Shakespearean tragedy.
3) FDR. He got us out of the Depression, got us into our last just war and, to top it all, was perhaps the greatest pure politician ever in the White House.
2) Teddy Roosevelt. A pampered and sickly rich kid who grew up to be one tough dude. If only somebody in the Republican Party would read any of the umpteen bios of him published in the last five years and realize that you can be an environmentalist and an intellectual and still scare the rest of the world into behaving the way you want.
1) Abraham Lincoln. A god among men. Seriously. It's scary and depressing as hell to think about how much better off -- and better led -- the great Southern swath of this country would be if he'd lived a little longer.
Anyway, that's my list. Feel free to share your own.
posted by AnnaRay at 3:00 PM
6 Comments:
That's a tough one. The only elected official I have ever had any particular emotional involvement with was Jim Hunt, the North Carolina governor who created the statewide high school that was my bus ticket out of Shelby.
Even that guy, though, was a dubious place to point your adulation. People used to say about Jim Hunt that you wanted to put a thumbtack in his chair to get an honest reaction out of him about something.
Good old TR. Rich as he was, he still worked cattle in North Dakota.
And then he bought the ranch, and built himself a house three times the size of a normal ranch house (three rooms, it was).
But he worked the damn cattle.
-Michael
Ditto what Brian said.
Re: James Polk, don't forget the other obvious reason -- Tar Heel Class of 1818. His slab in UNC's (newly renovated) Memorial Hall is immediately across the hall from the west bathrooms. I saw it last night when I was at at show with Ira Glass.
A. and I were discussing LBJ last night, and the fact that, as you sdaid, despite his being a crooked West-Texas so and so, he was determined to leave the country with a legacy, one that said that as a nationa we beleive that no person should starve or go without medical care that they need. Of course, now our elected leaders have decided we don't believe that any more.
I would def. include LBJ and Lincoln. I waver about JFK. One of my must-haves is Jimmy Carter; most people I knwo say "a very decent man, but not a good president"; I beg to differ. He showed, I believe, what happens when a truly good person is elevated to high office--you have an expectation of decency and an example of honesty that rolls from teh top of government down, instead of flwoing up and stalling somewhere around "state legislator"...
I'd also add John Adams, for pursuing what he felt was the best course of action for the nation, despite it costing him his political career, for having to live through the first campaign of attacks ads and mudslinging in US history, and for handing over the reins of power after the first fiercely conducted election in US history--an example of the transfer of power in democratic government that mabny systems could aspire to.
I've been reading about "Why we fight" and wondering if Eisenhower shouldn't be on that list. Does he lose point because he presided over a peaceful period in which massive economic growth was all but assured? I never paid attention in history class, so I don't know much about it.
No, sweetie. He loses points for his vice president.
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