Presidents Day 2021

Today in these United States of America it's Presidents Day. And I'm not sure I like it.

While there are several men who have served in the office whom I believe deserve recognition I hardly believe that they all do. James Buchanan merely sat on his hands as Civil War threatened. While he has arguably been a good former President Jimmy Carter was an inept actual President. Richard Nixon was, well, Richard Nixon. I'm not sure how much glory, laud, and honor they merit.

Then there's the ones who did nothing particularly notable or horrible who are lumped in with the truly deserving on the holiday. What did Benjamin Harrison actually do except be William Henry Harrison's grandson? And what did General Harrison himself do as Chief Executive but become a trivia question (the shortest served President)? 

Perhaps what is meant is to acknowledge the public service they each presumably represent. My argument there would be whether they all were so definitely public spirited. I won't cite examples here because I don't want my overall point levelled down to mere personal opinion. But do any of us really believe that each and every man who sought the office did so out of altruism? I am ready to name several whom I firmly believe were simply on ego trips. I don't doubt that you could too.

At the risk of broaching that argument which I just finished saying that I didn't want, I only see three Presidents worthy of a holiday: Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan. Washington in particular I would argue deserves a holiday precisely because he's Washington, a man who did more for this nation on more levels than President alone to make him a singular figure in our history. All the others so far as I'm concerned, even the very good ones, don't rise to where they merit such praise. 

Nonetheless, Happy Presidents Day. I suppose it just is what it is.

President Jimmy the Second!

President-elect Barack Obama has announced that the economy could get worse before it gets better, and that the recession could "linger for years" without quick action by Congress. Quick action in the form of spending barrels of taxpayers' cash, that is.

Shades of smiling Jimmy Carter. Instead of telling the American people, a la the great Ronald Reagan, to believe in themselves and be hopeful about the future, we're told that at least the foreseeable future is bleak. That's malaise talking, folks, not someone who believes in the American ideal. Further, it strikes me that getting government even more in the way and into our pockets isn't what got us out of the last two recessions. Reagan's tax cuts in the Eighties and a truly Republican Congress in the middle Nineties did that.

What we have here is a typically Democratic administration forming. I thought it appropriate a few weeks ago when I spoke of here of Clinton Redux: Obama naming so many Clintonites to high level jobs. Now we have Carter Redux: don't believe in yourselves, believe in Washington.

Perhaps Obama is simply lining up his excuses, with 2012 surely already on his mind. Well, and I hope you heard Reagan's voice when you read that word, let's hope 2012 isn't a long time coming.