It’s that time of year again. Time to celebrate Presidents Day. We all know what that means. Time to buy a new mattress or a new car!
It is sad that the one day in a year we set aside to honor the men who have guided our republic for almost 230 years has deteriorated into a marathon television advertising fest hocking cars and selling mattresses.
Our Constitution’s qualifications for becoming president of the United States commands that a person must be “a natural born Citizen, Attained the age of thirty five Years and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States”. (Article II. Section. I)
There are no other qualifications for or against any of the following to run for the office of the presidency: Race, religion, ethnicity, gender, prodigy, ability, venality, intelligence, marital status, political affiliations, education, prior government or military experience, temperament, self-aggrandizement, affability, congeniality, honesty or a criminal record.
Our founding fathers gifted presidents a “get out of jail free” card to sweeten the pot for executive power. Presidents can pardon those accused of a federal offense, ( Article II, Section 2, Clause I). Some legal minds believe presidents may be able to pardon themselves.
Our constitutional remedies for removing a president from office are impeachment (Article II, Section 4) or removal if the president is deemed mentally or physically unfit to serve in office (Article IIV, Section 4).
Presidents are given generous executive latitude to govern at will. Many presidents have exercised that power to the limit.
Lincoln suspended a Writ of Habeas Corpus during our Civil War, granting martial law and holding people in jail without a trial. He was granted this power in our Constitution. (Article I, Section 9, Clause 2).
We are a nation of laws, not men. Our secular Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Even presidents are subservient to it.
Some of our presidents were competent, others excelled and a few were great. The following is a tribute to three popular presidents serving during troubled times: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Washington’s life has been generously chronicled. The son of landed gentry in Virginia, he was educated by home tutors and enjoyed a comfortable living standard while much of colonial America was impoverished and illiterate.
As a young man, his considerable logistical acumen served him well during the French and Indian Wars and later in the American War of Independence. He was instrumental for turning an unskilled army of ordinary militia into a credible fighting force. The Continental Congress awarded him the title of Commander-In-Chief of the Continental Army. He lost many battles but never surrendered an Army. That war climaxed with the defeat of the British at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781.
It was not good luck or bellicose rhetoric that helped Washington succeed where others had failed. It was his exceptional military and leadership skills.
In 1777 he personally awarded the first Badge of Merit (later to become the Purple Heart medal) to three solders in the Continental Army. It is still the oldest military award given to members of the United States military killed or wounded in battle. More than 1,910,162 Purple Heart medals have been awarded because of his initiative.
A grateful nation elected him to be our first president in 1789.
He remains our only president to twice receive the totality of electoral votes. Later, Congress named our new nation’s capital after him. He would be the first president to literally “drain the swamp” in the District of Columbia. We are still at it.
As president, he rejected all manners of pretentiousness and lofty titles. He established precedents for future presidents to follow. Not all presidents have headed his advice or demeanor. His farewell address was famous for his sage advice cautioning America not to become entangled in foreign alliances.
His greatest failure was his shameful ownership of human beings as slaves which severely diminishes any claim attributed to his superior moral character. No amount of moral relevancy can erase that stain off of his character.
The 75-year period between the election of George Washington to the election of Abraham Lincoln as presidents, 50 of those years we had presidents who were slave owners.
Washington was not alone.
Honest Abe. The soul of our nation was written on the face of this man. Every young person should discover this amazing individual. Given the hardships of his youth and his struggles to become a relevant political figure, it is a testimonial to his fortitude and character that he ultimately became our 16th president.
As president, he was given a civil war that defined his presidency. He endured where other men may have chosen to settle earlier with the Confederacy over the issue of slavery.
He never wavered in his belief that the Union cause was just and the conjoined future of our nation was always paramount in his mind.
He was more enamored with the Declaration of Independence than he was with the Constitution. He refereed to the Declaration as “an anchor sheet” of republicanism. He believed that the Constitution had been erroneously interpreted to endorse slavery with the scurrilous Supreme Court’s Dred Scott v Sandford decision.
To measure the character of this man, we can judge him by the enormous sacrifices endured by both sides in our Civil War. Near the conclusion of that war, his kindness, compassion and generosity were directed toward all who fought in it and they are all warmly remembered in his second inaugural address. A lesser man may have chosen to gloat over the Union victory and exaggerate his contributions in ending that war. Not Lincoln.
His personal challenges were considerable. An ill and needy wife, the tragic loss of his young sons, office seekers constantly demanding too much of his time and his doubts about his abilities to save the nation from itself all contributed to his melancholy. He was tall in stature and monumental in character.
Those who have visited his classical memorial in Washington, DC, will testify that when you exit the memorial, you leave it a different person than when you entered it.
His greatest failure was using poor judgment by accompanying his wife to Ford’s Theater on the evening of April 14, 1865.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was our 32nd president. A Hudson River Valley patrician, born into wealth and privilege, he could have easily pursued a career in business but instead chose public service. He was hated and reviled by some, including those in his own social class, beloved by others.
His many accomplishes included serving twice as the governor of New York State. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in World War I. He was our only president to be elected to four terms. During his presidency, his administration created 140 national wildlife refuges, 29 national forests and 29 national parks and monuments as well as many major public works projects across America and in New Hampshire, including Gunstock Mountain Resort in Gilford (1937).
Concord enjoyed a generous amount of federal largesse during the Roosevelt years and we can thank Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration for our public library (1938) and dozens of Works Progress Administration projects for improvements to Blossom Hill Cemetery, White Park, Memorial Field and flood control.
He contracted Poliomyelitis at age 39. The ten pounds of steel on his legs did not prevent him from becoming president. Many Americans were unaware that he was crippled. In 1938, he founded The March of Dimes Foundation, dedicated to finding a cure for polio.
His radio broadcast Fireside Chats (1933 to 1944) during the Great Depression and WWII are legendary. They resonated with ordinary people both in the cities, towns and on farms who believed that he truly cared about them and their welfare.
Sadly, both Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats in Congress thwarted his plans for serious economic relief for our county that was suffering with 9.5 to 21.6 percent unemployment during the late 1930’s. You can’t lay that tragedy at Roosevelt’s doorstep.
He was the author of the political “New Deal” and proud of it.
Roosevelt and Progressivism became synonymous. I doubt that he would have had a problem with that. He wore it as a badge of honor, which infuriated his detractors.
The next time that you cash that Social Security check, thank Franklin Roosevelt.
One of my favorite quotes of his is “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” (October 6,1939) It reminds me of the “Fake news” commentary that is so fashionable with some politicians today.
Then came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The greatest war in history had begun.
His speech before a joint session of congress was a powerful declaration of war. His pathos for the loss of so many military personnel and in such a brutal, deceptive and cowardly manner was demonstrated by the depth of his anger and deep emotions.
The last sentence in that speech is memorable. “With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounded determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us god.”
Notice that he never once says, “I or me” He is always inclusive, “We, Our and Us.” That is a hallmark of a confident and compassionate man.
The soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines fighting that war in far away places did not care about his politics, good or bad. He was their commander-in-chief. They and he were in a war that he promised them we would win. He kept that promise.
His greatest failure was his Executive Order Number 9066, incarcerating over 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage during WWII. A major moral lapse.
All three of these men represented the best America had to offer at tremulous moments in our history. Others tried to measure up to their standards. Most failed. None of these three men pretended to be perfect presidents. They all had human frailties including troubled temperaments, ill health, family tragedies, moral challenges and political disappointments.
I doubt that we will ever see presidents like them again. We appear to be content in electing presidents who are either incompetent at best, criminals at worse and sexual predators for good measure.
It is not a stretch to compare some current politicians with presidential ambitions to the ambitions of the fictional character of Rev. Dr. Elmer Gantry in Sinclair Lewis’s novel “Elmer Gantry.” The more righteously indignant his sermons became, the more immoral he became. It is a story as old as mankind. Lewis was awarded a Noble Prize in Literature.
Can you imagine any of the three presidents that I profiled boasting that, “I am not a crook,” “I am the decider,” “I’m the only one that matters” and “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”?
We can do better. We need to become better informed, more engaged in serious political discourse and critical thinkers instead of mindless followers.
These three presidents knew that it wasn’t all about them. It was about us.
(Jim Baer lives in Concord.)