<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Being an election year, the above title will give some the wrong idea right off the bat.\u00a0 While I have my political opinions, it has been a cardinal rule of mine to not spend time trying to convince anyone else that what I think about politics is \u2018right\u2019 while their opinions are \u2018wrong\u2019.\u00a0 When I was a newly minted voter and space geek, a big pulling point for a presidential candidate was a plan for funding the space program.\u00a0 Good, bad, or indifferent, my views of our past Presidents in my younger years were heavily influenced by the sanitized versions presented in History classes.\u00a0 Textbooks tended to buff up the good points and gloss over the bad presidential characteristics.\u00a0 At the very least, texts minimized the damage done by the Chief Executives who performed poorly.\u00a0 Before I got sidetracked into a teaching career in Geography – Earth Science, I had seriously toyed with the idea of becoming a History teacher.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When election time would roll around during my teaching days, some of my students would inevitably ask me who I was going to vote for.\u00a0 After reminding them that it was none of their business, I would ask them a question:\u00a0 \u201cHow many Presidents have there been in YOUR lifetime?\u00a0 Can you name them?\u201d\u00a0 While they thought it over, I would start at Ike and rattle off the twelve who held the office in my lifetime (up through my retirement in 2018).\u00a0 It is too bad they no longer seem to distribute those \u2018Presidents of the United States\u2019 calendars that regularly adorned classrooms – they made a great visual aid when having this discussion with my classes.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When my birthday rolled around last fall, I was given a book entitled <\/span>Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents – What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Men of the White House <\/span><\/i>(Cormac O\u2019Brien – Quirk Books – 2009).\u00a0 As I read through the first chapters, some of my public school knowledge base (about sanitizing past presidential accomplishments and failures) was confirmed by O\u2019Brien\u2019s description of the Office of the President of the United States of America.\u00a0 For example, the Senate wanted George Washington\u2019s title to be \u201cHis Highness the President of the United States of America, and the Protector of Their Liberties.\u201d\u00a0 Whew, that is quite a mouthful.\u00a0 Washington himself wanted no part of being associated with a more or less royal title, preferring to just be called \u2018Mr. President\u2019.\u00a0 The highlights of his military and political career are the things, as O\u2019Brien states, \u201c[That] get your face on a quarter, but there\u2019s another side of the coin.\u00a0 The Father of Our Country had just as many flaws as any other dysfunctional dad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Delving deeper into these entertaining factoids about George and the other Mr. Presidents who followed him, I began focusing on the twenty six presidents who did not serve more than one term.\u00a0 Through Andrew Jackson (#7), five of our earliest Chief Executives served two terms.\u00a0 The next seventeen were all \u2018One and Done\u2019 presidents.\u00a0 All of our presidents have brought their own unique attributes to the office.\u00a0 While some were great war heroes, intelligent business men, skilled politicians, and likable people . . . others were not.\u00a0 Space here does not allow for me to get into the whole roster of Presidents, nor even all of the \u2018One and Done\u2019 Executives.\u00a0 With that said, let us go back and examine some of the high and low lights of our one term Presidents.\u00a0 Maybe we can look back and see what factors may have kept them from being elected for a second term.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0President John Adams (#2 – served 1797-1801) had the unpleasant task of replacing \u201cThe Father of Our Country.\u201d\u00a0 Until the electoral process was modified in 1804, the person who came in second in the presidential sweepstakes was named to the Vice-Presidency.\u00a0 Part of Adams undoing was his relationship with his own VP, Thomas Jefferson.\u00a0 So insecure was Adams about his second in command, he signed the Alien and Sedition Acts which made speaking out or printing libelous opinions about the government a crime.\u00a0 According to O\u2019Brien, \u201c[signing this act fed] the widespread feeling that [Adams] had delusions of kingship\u201d (even though he only signed the bill that had been crafted by others in Congress).\u00a0 Still, his detractors thought him pompous and began calling him \u2018His Rotundity\u2019.\u00a0 The following quotes give a little more background as to how Adams was perceived:\u00a0 (Thomas Jefferson) – \u201c<\/span>He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern man.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>(Benjamin Franklin) – \u201c<\/span>[Adams is] sometimes absolutely mad.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 (Secretary of War James McHenry (at least until he was fired by Adams) – <\/span>\u201cActually insane.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>(and finally Abigail Adams (his wife)) – <\/span>\u201c[You have] a certain irritability which has sometimes thrown you off your guard.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Enough said?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Oddly enough (or perhaps not), the next \u2018One and Done\u2019 president was John Quincy Adams (#6), John Adams\u2019 son.\u00a0 JQ Adams spent twenty years of his life outside of the United States, spoke seven languages, and was known as \u2018Old Man Eloquent\u2019 for his time in Congress.\u00a0 He is the only Commander in Chief to serve in Congress after his presidential term, but that did not help him much when he was elected President.\u00a0 In a strange twist, none of the four candidates in that election year were able to gain a large enough majority to win, so he buddied up with one of the four (Henry Clay). Clay supported JQA who then became president.\u00a0 In return, Clay was named Secretary of State, angering fellow candidate Andrew Jackson and his cronies.\u00a0 They vowed to, \u201dDo everything in their power to make JQA\u2019s presidency impotent.\u201d\u00a0 Adams had an ambitious set of public projects in mind, but the hostile Congress made sure that his was one of the most ineffectual administrations in the history of the United States.\u00a0 As Adams summed it up, \u201cThe four most miserable years of my life were my four years in the presidency.\u201d\u00a0 Andrew Jackson would replace Adams beginning in 1829, but his would prove to be the last two term presidency (from 1837 to 1885) for many, many years\u00a0 The next \u2018One and Done\u2019 proved to be Old Hickory\u2019s second term VP, Martin Van Buren.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Van Buren (#8\u00a0 1837-1841) was the first president to be born after the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 Old Hickory (Jackson) may have symbolized the emerging Democratic Party, but it was Van Buren who built the party from behind the scenes.\u00a0 As skillful as he was at building coalitions, his own presidency was rocked by more troubles than successes.\u00a0 While President Jackson\u2019s actions were the primary cause of the financial panic of 1837, it was Van Buren who earned the nickname \u2018Marty Van Ruin\u2019.\u00a0 He made some amends by creating a strong and independent treasury that would limit future presidential meddling (ala Andrew Jackson).\u00a0 His term also witnessed the continuation of the program to resettle Native American groups, the infamous Cherokee Trail of Tears taking place under his watch.\u00a0 He did manage to avoid yet another war with the British during a rebellion in Canada.\u00a0 \u2018The Little Magician\u2019 stated, \u201c<\/span>As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Following on the heels of Van Buren was William Henry Harrison (#9 – served 1841).\u00a0 Harrison described his election as follows:\u00a0 \u201c<\/span>Some folks are silly enough to have formed a plan to make a president of the U.S. out of this Clerk and Clod Hopper.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 He was the last American president born an English subject and his father was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 Prior to Harrison, presidential candidates did not involve themselves with campaigning for the office.\u00a0 The Whig party unseated the incumbent Van Buren with garish parties, banners, and bands with the hope that they could push the \u2018Clod Hopper\u2019 into office and then have him do their bidding.\u00a0 Soon after the election, Harrison began ignoring their suggestions, thus setting up a showdown between the president and his party.\u00a0 No showdown actually occurred, however, after Harrison gave the longest inaugural speech on record (one hour and forty five minutes) on a cold and blustery day.\u00a0 He refused to dress for the occasion and became sick the next day.\u00a0 Harrison recovered, but he had severely weakened his system.\u00a0 After coming down with a bad case of the chills on March 27, he passed away on April 4, 1841.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0John Tyler (#10 – served 1841-1845) thus became the first VP to gain the office via a presidential death in office (another first).\u00a0 Did this make Tyler the actual president or was he merely the sitting president?\u00a0 His opinion was established firmly when he returned all mail addressed to him as \u2018The Acting President of the United States\u2019 unopened (with \u2018addressee unknown\u2019 marked on the envelope).\u00a0 Tyler was the former governor of Virginia and had served in both houses of Congress.\u00a0 He got in trouble with the Whig-dominated Congress for not voting with them on their pet projects (like reestablishing the Bank of the United States that had been disassembled by Jackson and Van Buren).\u00a0 The Whigs banished the president from his own party and five of his six cabinet members resigned.\u00a0 Previous friction with the Democrats left him adrift for a gloomy four years.\u00a0 He collected death threats almost daily and his first wife died of a stroke in 1842.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of the three things that Tyler did manage to accomplish as president, two were political and one was personal.\u00a0 Tyler\u2019s administration settled the Canada-Maine border issue and also began the annexation of Texas.\u00a0 His personal triumph?\u00a0 He remarried Julia Gardiner, thirty years his junior. Including the children he had with his first wife, Letitia, he sired a remarkable 15 offspring, the most of any president.\u00a0 Tyler himself was born during Washington\u2019s presidency and his youngest daughter, Mary (who was born when Tyler was 70), died during Harry Truman\u2019s administration – a span of thirty-two presidents and more than 150 years.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Tyler\u2019s successor, James Knox Polk (#11 – Served 1845-1849) swept into office because he firmly stood behind the idea of Manifest Destiny (the idea that the United States should expand its borders from sea to sea).\u00a0 Tyler may have started the ball rolling, but it was Polk who caused a true border crisis. He ordered troops under General Zachary Taylor south of the acknowledged US-Mexican border, the Nueces River to \u2018keep an eye on the Mexicans\u2019 (Polk had made the dubious claim that the true border was farther south at the Rio Grande River).\u00a0 When the Mexicans defended their territory, Polk accused them of shedding, \u201cAmerican blood on American soil\u201d and got Congress to pass a declaration of war.\u00a0 By the time he was done (two years later), he had added California, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona to the fold.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Polk was described as, \u201cA humorless workaholic who believed that public servants, especially the president, had no business indulging in anything as frivolous as private time.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, he was away from the capital just six weeks during his four year term in Washington.\u00a0 Most historians think that his untimely death (some three months after his term ended) was a result of Polk\u2019s preposterously long working hours having weakened his system.\u00a0 Polk had entered the office at age 49, the youngest president to that point and was only 53 when he died.\u00a0 Yes, many think he worked himself to death.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In Part 2 of <\/span>One and Done<\/span><\/i>, we will pick up the story with the next General turned president, Zachary Taylor.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Billy Joel writes a musical history lesson for us all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Being an election year, the above title will give some the wrong idea right off the bat.\u00a0 While I have my political opinions, it has been a cardinal rule of mine to not spend time trying to convince anyone else that what I think about politics is \u2018right\u2019 while their opinions are \u2018wrong\u2019.\u00a0 When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1901"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1904,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1901\/revisions\/1904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}