{"id":1913,"date":"2020-07-19T19:09:08","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T19:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=1913"},"modified":"2020-07-19T19:10:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T19:10:59","slug":"ftv-one-and-done-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=1913","title":{"rendered":"FTV: One and Done – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0After reading Cormac O\u2019Brien\u2019s book, <\/span>Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents – What your teachers never told you about the men of the White House<\/span><\/i> (Quirk Books – 2009), I thought it might be interesting to examine some of the \u2018one and done\u2019 U.S. Presidents.\u00a0 We ended Part 1 with the death of #11 (James Knox Polk) and will pick up the thread with the man who helped turn the concept of Manifest Destiny into the biggest expansion of the United States since the Louisiana Purchase.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As was stated in Part 1 of<\/span> One and Done<\/span><\/i>, James Knox Polk fanned the flames of Manifest Destiny but it was General Zachary Taylor who did the leg work.\u00a0 During the war with Mexico, someone asked Taylor whether he would run for president to which he replied, \u201cSuch an idea never entered my head.\u00a0 Nor is it likely to enter the head of any same person.\u201d\u00a0 He must have been a wild and crazy guy, because less than two years after saying this, he became president #12.\u00a0 What he excelled in was being a military tactician, yet his outward appearance and nickname (\u2018Old Rough and Ready\u2019) showed his dislike of formal military attire.\u00a0 A simple man, his frugality almost cost him the presidential nomination.\u00a0 The Whig party had sent his nomination to him via unposted mail (a common practice in those days) and because he had instructed the postal service to not deliver any unstamped mail to him, it sat unattended until it was almost too late.\u00a0 Taylor\u2019s term lasted from only 1849 to July of 1850 when he ignored warnings about consuming raw fruit or water if one didn\u2019t know where it came from (there was a major outbreak of cholera plaguing Washington that summer).\u00a0 Ignoring the conventional medical wisdom of the day was costly and in the end, Taylor died on July 9, 1850, his system overcome by dehydration and diarrhea,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For only the second time in the Republic\u2019s history, a Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, stepped into office as president #13 (serving from 1850 to 1853).\u00a0 Largely a self educated, self made man, he worked his way from public service in his native Buffalo, NY to the nation\u2019s highest office.\u00a0 He was ill prepared to fill the spot and regularly enters the list ranking the presidents somewhere in the bottom ten.\u00a0 He managed to enrage just about everyone by endorsing Henry Clay\u2019s Compromise of 1850 which would admit California as a free state while giving in to southern demands for more stringent fugitive slave laws.\u00a0 He found favor with Queen Victoria who proclaimed him the handsomest man she had ever met.\u00a0 Not bad for the president who had secured a valuable trade agreement with Peru for bird droppings that were used as a common fertilizer in those days.<\/span><\/p>\n

Filmore remained a humble man to the point that he turned down an honorary degree from Oxford University because, \u201cNo man should, in my opinion, accept a degree he cannot read.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next name on our list of \u2018one and done\u2019 presidents is Franklin Pierce (#14, served 1853-1857).\u00a0 His chances for re-election were greatly dimmed when his own Democratic party changed their campaign slogan to \u201cAnybody but Pierce.\u201d\u00a0 The slavery issue was largely responsible for Pierce\u2019s demise when he supported Senator Stephen Douglas\u2019s Kansas-Nebraska act.\u00a0 Douglas felt the newly organized federal territories had the right to decide the slavery issue on their own.\u00a0 The bloody conflict that threw the Missouri Compromise under the bus (the Compromise had set the demarcation line for owning slaves at latitude 36 degrees, 30 minutes) showed Pierce to be an impotent leader.\u00a0 When he threatened Spain (a hollow threat of hostility if they didn\u2019t sell Cuba to the United States), he lost what little support he had left.\u00a0 Known as a \u201chero of many a well-fought bottle,\u201d he took the pledge years before he became president.\u00a0 After being elected president, Pierce fell off the wagon big time when his life\u2019s path became a rocky road.\u00a0 Pierce lost a son (who was crushed in a train accident), his marriage fell apart, and he was immersed in the party atmosphere that was Washington.\u00a0 All these factors contributed to him bailing on sobriety.\u00a0 Excess consumption finally took its toll and Pierce died in 1869.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The last in this long line of one and done presidents was James Buchanan (#15, served 1857-1861).\u00a0 While he would be the last in this string to try and deal with the elephant in the room (slavery), he was, according to O\u2019Brien, \u201cAs unimaginative and ineffective as his predecessors, leaving a rough-hewn, flappy-eared comedian from Illinois named Abe Lincoln to carry a fractured nation through its bloodiest trial.\u201d\u00a0 When he passed the reins to Lincoln, he told him, \u201cMy dear sir, if you are as happy entering the White House as I am leaving it, you are a very happy man indeed,\u201d\u00a0 The greatest asset to his presidential electability was his absence (he was serving as the ambassador to Great Britain before being nominated).\u00a0 When the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had no right to outlaw slavery (in the Dred Scott case), Buchanan thought that the matter was solved.\u00a0 As the country was torn apart by this mother of all hotpoint issues, he did nothing.\u00a0 To the day he died, Buchanan insisted that he had done nothing wrong.\u00a0 History corrects this statement to the more accurate \u2018he did nothing\u2019 while believing it would be unconstitutional to try and prevent states from seceding from the Union.\u00a0 Can one imagine the President of the United States saying it was not in his purview to provide guidance to the states as the country crumbled around him?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We are all aware that Andrew Johnson became president when Lincoln was assassinated.\u00a0 It was a tough time for him to become #17 (served 1865-1869).\u00a0 As a Southern congressman from Tennessee opposed to secession on the eve of the Civil War, he had been in tough positions before.\u00a0 During the height of the succession crisis, he was dragged off his Tennessee bound train and beat by a crowd in Virginia.\u00a0 Apparently, they refrained from hanging him only because they felt it should be left to his constituents in Tennessee to finish the job.\u00a0 Johnson took to keeping a pistol under the lectern during speeches supporting Unionism.\u00a0 In the wake of the South\u2019s defeat, some felt he would be sympathetic in guiding the country toward reconstruction.\u00a0 Johnson lost any hope of re-election when he claimed God had deliberately struck down Lincoln so he would be president.\u00a0 When the Senate came up one vote shy of impeaching Johnson (for firing a cabinet member that Congress said could not be fired), no one wanted to see Johnson re-elected.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Johnson was replaced with the first two term president in many years, Ulysses S. Grant.\u00a0 From 1877 to the present, there would be another ten one and done presidents.\u00a0 To keep this from running into a \u2018part 3\u2019, we will stick to the low-lights, beginning with Rutherford B. Hayes (#19, served 1877-1881).\u00a0 Wide spread corruption during the election led Hayes to lose the popular vote and be appointed to office by congress.\u00a0 His devout religious beliefs and an outright ban on alcohol in the White House did him no favours.\u00a0 This pious president received death threats aplenty.\u00a0 In light of the traumatic election drama, he promised to serve only one term.\u00a0 His parting shot?\u00a0 \u201cI am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hayes\u2019 good friend James Garfield (#20, served four months in 1881) was struck down by a disgruntled lunatic who was seeking an appointment as the consul general to Paris.\u00a0 He lingered on his deathbed eighty days as he was poked and prodded with unsanitary medical equipment.\u00a0 There is disagreement whether it was his wound or the treatment of it that did him in.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The man who shot Garfield wrote a letter to Chester Arthur (#21, served 1881-1885) proclaiming his act had, \u201cRaised you from a political cypher to President of the United States.\u201d\u00a0 A natty dresser and the first president to employ a valet, Arthur was dumped by his own party going into the next presidential convention.\u00a0 As one party official stated, \u201cPresident Arthur never did today what he could put off until tomorrow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Benjamin Harrison (#23, served 1889-1893) is the only one and done president to serve a term that separated a two term president.\u00a0 His predecessor, Grover Cleveland, is the only two term executive to serve non-consecutive terms.\u00a0 Harrison, described by O\u2019Brien as being, \u201cabout as exciting as lunch meat,\u201d was so cold that he was referred to as the White House Iceberg and even cut his own children from his will.\u00a0 His isolationist tendencies can be distilled from the following quote:\u00a0 \u201cWe Americans have no commission from God to police the world.\u201d\u00a0 The wars of the next century may have ended much differently had these isolationist views been carried forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0William Howard Taft (#27, served 1909-1913) was elected after the energetic and lively term of Teddy Roosevelt.\u00a0 As the largest (as in 325 pounds) president in history, he was prone to getting stuck in the bathtub (until he had one installed that could seat four normal size men).\u00a0 His old friend Teddy was so infuriated at Taft walking back many of the policies that he had pushed during his two terms, Roosevelt formed the Bullmoose Party and entered the race.\u00a0 The three way split saw Taft receive the lowest percentage of votes for an incumbent (23) and handed the election to Woodrow Wilson.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Warren Harding (#29, served 1921-1923) died in San Francisco from a heart attack, it did not exactly rob the United States of an notable statesman.\u00a0 As Harding himself said, \u201cI am a man of limited talents from a small town;\u00a0 I don\u2019t seem to grasp that I am president.\u201d\u00a0 He died after two uneventful years as the chief executive and one can only speculate if his obsession with Poker\u00a0 would dent his reputation (he is said to have wagered and lost an expensive set of White House silverware in one game).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Herbert Hoover (#31, served 1929 – 1933) proclaimed in his nomination acceptance speech that, \u201cThe poorhouse is vanishing from among us.\u201d\u00a0 Seven months later, the United States slipped into The Great Depression and pretty much sealed his fate in terms of a second nomination.\u00a0 Keeping up an aristocratic air at the White House (requiring formal attire for lunch and dinner)\u00a0 did not help his chances.\u00a0 As unemployment reached 25 percent, shantytowns (called \u2018Hoovervilles\u2019)\u00a0 to house the unemployed began to spring up around the country. Like Nero,\u00a0 Hoover fiddled while the country crashed and burned around him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The modern era has provided a mixed bag of interrupted presidencies.\u00a0 John F. Kennedy (#35, served 191-1963) was cut down by an assassin.\u00a0 Gerald Ford (#38, served 1974-1977) had the misfortune of following Richard Nixon\u2019s whole Watergate debacle.\u00a0 The only true one and done president elected in the later half of the Twentieth Century was Jimmy Carter (#40, served 1977 – 1981).\u00a0 Jimmy Carter was a devout Christian, non-Washingtonian outsider who entered the White House amid snickers about the \u2018peanut farmer-governor from Plains, Georgia\u2019.\u00a0 As a Washington \u2018outsider\u2019 surrounded by advisors with his same background, Carter never did advance his political learning curve to the national level.\u00a0 A struggling economy and a botched effort to rescue American hostages from Iran doomed his re-election chances.\u00a0 He did manage to get Israel and Egypt together and brokered the Camp David Accords that finally brought some semblance of peace to the Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Carter also championed research geared toward using more green energy sources, but these programs were dismantled soon after Ronald Regan took office.\u00a0 In this case, the \u2018wisdom\u2019 of walking back a previous administration\u2019s \u2018green policies\u2019 set back the development of electric vehicles for decades.\u00a0 After leaving office, Carter continued his life of public service as a roving diplomat asked to mediate various world conflicts.\u00a0 Carter turned his presidential library into a think tank to promote worldwide peace.\u00a0 As of this writing, he is now considered a beloved national figure and the oldest living former president.\u00a0 Even his recent medical problems have not kept him from teaching Sunday school.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Politics do make strange bedfellows.\u00a0 There are those who would advocate that presidents should only serve one term.\u00a0 Our nation has survived presidents who were incompetent, lackadasical, ambitious, and in power at the largess of other political forces.\u00a0 When they look back at the first twenty years of this millenium, it will be interesting to see how future historians classify these times.\u00a0 Only time will tell whether the current election cycle will produce another one and done president or a second term.\u00a0 The COVID-19 crisis is already reshaping the political landscape for the next presidential election.\u00a0 The country grapples with restrictions necessary to stem the spread of the virus while trying to minimize the next wave of the pandemic.\u00a0 Unlike the unfortunate primary debacle in Wisconsin, it will become more difficult to ignore the wisdom of instituting more \u2018vote by mail\u2019 systems for the safety of poll workers and voters.\u00a0 Vote by mail programs have already been successfully deployed in multiple states.\u00a0 Those who oppose voting by mail claim it will cause widespread voter fraud, but a detailed analysis of past elections employing the process shows this to be untrue.\u00a0 It is another issue that will rise and fall in the next election cycle, but surely the ongoing pandemic makes it a logical next step in election reform.\u00a0 Toss in the protests about systemic racial injustice that have spread across the country in recent weeks, and it is shaping up to be a long three months until the first Tuesday of November.\u00a0 For me, the best summation comes from the Grateful Dead lyric:\u00a0 <\/span>What a long, strange trip it has been.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Top Piece Video – Quote the Dead, play the Dead!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0After reading Cormac O\u2019Brien\u2019s book, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents – What your teachers never told you about the men of the White House (Quirk Books – 2009), I thought it might be interesting to examine some of the \u2018one and done\u2019 U.S. Presidents.\u00a0 We ended Part 1 with the death of #11 (James […]<\/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-1913","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\/1913","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=1913"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1916,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions\/1916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}