They All Get Tiny Participation Trophies on Presidents Day

Note—A Version of this post last appeared in 2019.  Now updated.

Finding it hard to get into the spirit of the day, Bunky?  Are pictures of George and Abe, fly-over panoramas of Mt. Rushmore, your kid’s cherry tree and log cabin school projects magneted to the refrigerator, mattress sales, crazy deals on Korean cars, and all the bunting in the world not doing it for you this year, eh Bunky?  Can’t erase the fetid stench of corruption, betrayal, ignorance, racism, and lingering around White House despite a new resident and through disinfectant makes you want to retch when you hear the word President?  You are not alone, Bunky.

Well, suck it up!  Pull up your big boy/girl panties!  Take a stroll down memory lane with us today to remember what Presidents Day is and some of the gents it honors.  And we will play the drinking game of bests and worsts, knowing the last Occupant blew all competition for the latter category out of the water.

Presidents Day is a bastard holiday, born of merchant avarice on one hand and the despair of parents stuck with small children at home twice in February.

These guys each had their own Federal Holidays once upon a time.

The old Federalists made sure that the nation marked George Washington’s Birthday. It was to be a patriotic celebration emphasizing dignity, decorum, and authority.  In short, it was to celebrate a Founder as demigod, an old revolutionary stripped of rabble and insurrection.  The old Republicans—the Jeffersonians—not to be confused with the current squatters on than honorable appellation—despised the celebration as monarchical and preferred to swarm the streets carrying Liberty Caps on poles—French style—on other occasions.

But Washington deserved the honor.  He invented being President.  He served honestly and honorably, and if he preferred the council of his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton to that of his fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, at least he resisted all of the former’s blandishments toward aristocracy and his desire to advance himself as Grand Vizier to the President’s Caliph.  Most importantly Washington earned every accolade he has received by the simple act of voluntarily leaving the job and allowing his successor to peacefully follow him into office.  This precedent setting feat has seldom been matched in post-revolutionary nations.  That Americans take it for granted is astonishing.

Later, most Northern states added Lincoln’s Birthday to their calendars following the Civil War.  It began amid the hagiography of the fallen leader and his elevation to martyr status and continued as a way for the Grand Army of the Republic and the new Republican Party to Wave the Bloody Shirt at home while sticking their collective thumbs in the eyes of their vanquished foes.  Across the old Confederacy Lincoln was reviled as a murderous tyrant.  They preferred to celebrate Jefferson Davis, or better yet the unblemished knight of the Lost Cause, Robert E. Lee.

When Harry S Truman finally proclaimed Lincoln’s Birthday a Federal holiday, his very Confederate mother, then residing with him and Bess at the White House, cursed her son and never forgave him.

So the nation ended up with two holidays in inconvenient February.  If only they had managed to get born at a decently separated interval of months, both might have been able to retain their own celebration.

Presidents Day give retailers a three day weekend to tastefully promote their wares.

But, alas, they did not.  And the days fell either inconveniently mid-week or on a weekend.  The former disrupted the work week for employers.  The latter cheated workers of a paid holiday.  Educators hated the disruption to their pedagogy for two holidays.  Parents despaired of rug rats at home.  Merchants yearned for an extended weekend of sales.  So Congress, in its infinite wisdom, decreed Presidents Day, conveniently set down on a Monday between the actual natal anniversaries of the original honorees.  Whoopee! Three Day Weekend!

Better yet, none of the rest of the denizens of the White House need feel slighted—this was going to be their holiday too.  Like a first grade T-ball player spared the sting of losing by playing a “fun game where no one keeps score,” Rutherford B. Hayes could rest easy in the comforting knowledge that he was the peer of the Founder and of the Emancipator.  It also silenced the partisans of Franklin D. Roosevelt on one hand and Ronald Reagan on the other, who dreamed of raising their respective heroes to a loftier pantheon and a place on the national calendar.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson posited that “All men are created equal…”  Unitarian Universalists treasure our First Principle—“Respect for the inherit worth and dignity of every person.”  Neither of these are assertions of blanket uniformity of talent, capacity, wisdom or Honesty.   Nor has there been equality of ability, opportunity, and circumstance among the occupants of the Presidential chair.  There have been great presidents and there have been failures.  There have been, however, no saints and no pure knaves—until the last one.

A popular pastime for the holiday is the annual articles listing the best and worse presidents.  By almost universal consensus the two original February honorees are listed one and two, occasionally swapping spots followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, his distant cousin Theodore and either Thomas Jefferson or James Knox Polk (for Manifest Destiny fans.)

The classic roster of worsts includes such luminaries as Franklin Pierce, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Warren G. Harding .

All of which begs the question of how more recent Presidents fare.  Lately historians are rating Dwight D. Eisenhower as a comer, even breaching the top five on a few lists.

Presidents Day give retailers a three day weekend to tastefully promote their wares.

During his occupancy of the office, I boldly suggested that George W. Bush may have done the impossible and reached the pinnacle of presidential awfulness.  He left office with few fans even in his own party, who were beginning to hate him not for his unnecessary wars but for being the champion spendthrift to that point in history.  Even his staunchest supporters have pretty much given up the campaign to paint the Shrub as a misunderstood Lincolnesque figure, boldly pursuing a noble cause while the ignoble people doubted.  It was simply too ludicrous to be maintained.

Does my harsh judgment hold up?  Most of the bottom dwellers on the list got there not for doing  bad, but for being lazy, incompetent, drunk or for not doing anything at all to stave off the long slide to Civil War.  Grant and Harding presided over notoriously corrupt administrations, but neither did lasting harm to the nation or Democracy.

But the legacy of George W. Bush was far more damaging and longer lasting.  He sponsored and presided over unnecessary war, prosecuted that war with stunning incompetence, nearly destroyed the ground forces of the U.S. military, proclaimed a doctrine of preemptive war that left the nation nearly friendless in the world, embraced a policy of torture, systematically attacked the civil liberties of American citizens, subverted the Constitution by asserting  a new doctrine of the unitary executive, turned a budget surplus into a staggering Federal debt, pursued a policy of showering the rich with tax breaks and relief from regulation that compounded the class divide in the nation to 19th Century levels, allowed an American city to be virtually destroyed and abandoned it citizens, attacked the “bright line” separating Church and State, ignored science whenever it drew conclusions that threatened his ideological preconceptions, and ignored Global Warming as a tipping point crisis neared.  And he exited shoveling money at the bankers who caused the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression—and managed to make people think that that was his successor’s idea. That’s a pretty impressive list.  It surely means that he must at least have a spot alongside the “Northern men of Southern Principles”—Pierce and Buchanan—whose malfeasance set the stage for the Civil War. 

Despite all of this, and it is a lot, the Shrub never seemed intrinsically evil.  Dim, yes.  Often clueless and way out of his depth.  He generally was trying to do the right thing as he understood it through his religious and political lenses.  He was capable of human empathy and compassion.  He was reasonably honest and did not use the office for personal aggrandizement or his private ATM.  He did not need to be worshiped and adored 24/7.  He expected to be criticized as a public figure, although the criticism must frequently have chaffed and did not launch vendettas against a critical press.  He did not obsess over slights and sought to personally humiliate or destroy his perceived enemies.  And he even had enough self-awareness not to always take himself too seriously and could even joke about his limitations and foibles.

Donald Trump blew away the competition for the title of Worst President ever over the likes of James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.

In other words, Bush was the opposite of the narcissistic sociopath later sitting in the Oval Office in front of his golden drapes waiting for his ring and ass to be kissed.  On a policy level that played out with orders and actions meant to enrich himself and his class; harshly punish the poor, the alien, the other of every stripe; and indiscriminately insult the world.  Bad policy in Donald Trump’s case was a direct result of bad character.  That makes him hands down the worst and most dangerous President ever.                                                                                                                                     

And what of the Orange Menace’s predecessor?  It is, of course, too early for the ultimate judgment of history.  Barack Obama certainly came into office at a time of crisis—a boost to any chances to make one’s mark.  Brilliant men and able men have served and been forgotten simply because of the relative tranquility of their terms.  Faced with almost unprecedented economic disaster and two unpopular wars almost impossible to easily and safely withdraw from, Obama soldiered on with dignity and surprising success given the implacable opposition of an ideologically driven opposition in control of Congress.  He even managed to secure the passage of the first major health care reforms since Medicare, however half-hearted and flawed they may be.  And after stunning the world by winning re-election by solid popular and Electoral College majorities he staked out a bold progressive agenda for his second term.  Finally giving up on hopes of compromise with the Republican Congress, he became more daring in shaping the national agenda by executive orders where possible.

But there is a major fly in the ointment—the fatal flaw that overwhelms real achievement and merit.  For example Lyndon B. Johnson advanced civil rights and social reforms continuing a New Deal legacy but was bogged down in a senseless and unpopular war.  Richard Nixon had foreign policy triumphs like opening relations with China and presided over the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration but was undone by his own paranoid criminality.  Woodrow Wilson’s international idealism and reluctant support of women’s suffrage was matched by unprecedented domestic repression of labor and socialists and by the introduction of Jim Crow segregation into the Federal Government.  Andrew Jackson may had democratized American politics, modeled a strong modern Chief Executive, and boldly clamped down on the nation’s first secession crisis, but his murderous Indian Removal policy, oppression of the early stirrings of organized labor, destruction of the economically stabilizing Second Bank of the United States, and establishment of the spoils system all showed how much lasting damage a truly ruthless but capable President can do.

Desperate for a way to extricate ground troops from Iraq and Iran and to counter the lingering threats of an already largely smashed and dismantled terrorist enemy, Obama embraced the star chamber secrecy and brutality of a secret war established by the Bush administration which he had once railed against.  And he came to rely on war-at-a-safe distance drone technology and a policy of targeted assassinations.  Not only did the targets include American citizens, more importantly they were blunt instruments with plenty of civilian deaths in collateral damage and by simple mistake.  Every Pakistani village hit earned generations of implacable new enemies sworn to revenge.  Far from restoring, as the world hoped after his first election, American prestige and respect, those policies further isolated this country.  Further policies of domestic surveillance and coordination of attacks on the Occupy Movement and other social protests threatened freedom of speech and protest in this country.

Trump made many nostalgic for Barack Obama.

On the other hand, he comes off looking pretty good by comparison to the petulant would-be dictator who took his job.

Neither can Joe Biden who is in the third year of what may, or may not, be his first term be assessed from the prospective of history rather than the fluctuating circumstances of the news cycle.  He was elected handily in both the popular and Electoral Collage vote by a deeply divided nation that was mostly sick to death of his predecessor.  He immediately faced ludicrous claims of election fraud and the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  He took office amid turmoil and tried to offer a steady, uniting hand.

Biden got off to a strong start under the circumstances despite the skepticism of the progressive wing of his party.  He acted quickly to un-do by executive order many of disastrous dictates of the previous White House occupant in areas of the environment, education, labor relations, job safety, voting rights, medical access and women’s health, and other critical areas.  He appointed the most widely diverse Cabinet, agency leadership, and White House staff in history as well as among his judicial nominees.  He acted quickly to mend fences with allies, particularly in Europe.

Most critically, he faced the Coronavirus pandemic entering its second year head on.  He promoted basic science and research and worked to make access to vaccination available to Americans as quickly as possible at no cost to the inoculated.  He succeeded in getting a rare bi-partisan package through Congress that included sweeping measures to aid those affected by the economic dislocation.  Most Americans received emergency cash relief, tax breaks, and other benefits.  State and local governments received discretionary funding.  As a result of the infusion of cash the economy began a remarkable recovery and record shattering unemployment began to recede.  A serious recession, or even a crash, was averted.

Yet the persistence of the pandemic and new variants, and relentless anti-vaccination propaganda eroded Biden’s support among a population yearning for a return to some kind of normalcy.  What should have been his greatest success turned into a political liability and his public support in the polls sank.

He also came under attack for his attempts at immigration reform.

Politically weakened, Biden had to accept a bi-partisan Build America Better package that stripped provisions most cherished by progress but still pumped billions into the economy and began to address long ignored crumbling infrastructure.  But he was unable to pass the high priority John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act even though a Supreme Court decision undercut generations of voting rights protection.  In response, Republican states have rushed through many new voter suppression initiatives.

Many thought Joe Biden's 2023 State of the Union Adress was his finest hour and an effective argument against those who think he is too old to run again. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine presented Biden with his first and greatest international crisis.  His experience as a Cold War liberal in the Senate served him well.  He quickly asserted U.S. support of Ukraine, acted to build a united response among NATO allies, invoked crippling economic sanctions on Moscow and other actions to internationally isolate Vladimir Putin, and arm the resilient defenders.  He directed billions in military and economic aid and got Congressional action for more.

But the disruption to world petroleum supplies by sanctions on Russian oil as well as the effects of disruptions of delivery of Ukrainian grain set off a sudden dramatic surge of inflation which Republicans were quick to blame Biden for.  Food and fuel costs in the US seriously hit middle class pockets and eroded the President’s political support further.  Meanwhile the dominant Trump wing of the GOP in Congress openly supported Putin and Russian expansionist ambitions.

When he was elected, many assumed that Biden would be a one term transitional president due to his age.  But despite health concerns and a tendency to ramble off the cuff, Biden has signaled his intention to run for re-election when he is near 90.  Some doubt it.  But the stance makes him less of a lame duck.  So far few Democrats have signaled a serious intention to challenge him in the primaries if he runs.  That may change if there is a health emergency or some serious age-related gaffe.  Or Biden might announce an intention to retire when it is too late for most candidates to get up and running giving a leg up to his Vice President Kamala Harris.

At any rate, happy Presidents Day to one and all.  Go and buy a mattress.  Millard Fillmore will thank you.