Tag: presidents
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Who I’m With
Just over a year ago, I was lying on a hotel bed in Peoria, Illinois, after a day of attending sessions at a library conference, and planned to finish off my evening reading. But instead I turned on the TV (always a big mistake) and was immediately thrust into the Select Committee on Benghazi’s marathon…
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160 Years Later
Reading Robert Strauss’s Worst. President. Ever.: James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser Presidents, which quotes this passage from Robert Merry’s Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians: Long before he became president, Buchanan demonstrated that he lacked the character required for strong…
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How to Win My Vote
My first presidential vote was in 2008 for Barack Obama. It’s a vote I will never regret, despite the mixed results of the Obama administration. But in 2012 I didn’t vote to re-elect Obama, despite being generally supportive of his presidency and against the prospect of Mitt Romney. I voted for the libertarian candidate Gary…
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Herbert Hoover in the White House
By nature of their office presidents generally believe the press corps is working against them, but there is little question that in Washington in 1932 reporters and editors had a lively antipathy for Hoover, a disdain unmatched by any successor until the next Quaker to occupy the White House—Richard Nixon, some forty years later. From…
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Destiny of the Republic
In Assassination Vacation, one of my all-time favorite books, Sarah Vowell calls the circumstances surrounding the Garfield assassination “an opera of arrogance, a spectacle of greed, a galling, appalling epic of egomania dramatizing the lust for pure power, shameless and raw.” After reading Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, which details said circumstances, Vowell’s characterization now almost…
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Today In Nerdery
In my continuing work at the Frances Willard House Museum and Archives, I’ve started working with the Willard correspondence, which begins in the mid-1860s and continues through the turn of the century. Because of this, and because of Frances’ high stature as a public figure during that time, there are a few letters I’ve happened upon…
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Flag Abuse
Responding to the anti-shutdown right-wing protest in front of the White House on Sunday (which featured the Confederate flag and a rebel yell), Ta-Nehisi Coates gets at something that has long gnawed at me: If a patriot can stand in front of the White House brandishing the Confederate flag, then the word “patriot” has no meaning. The…
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James Mehdison
Finally made it through Ralph Ketcham’s James Madison: A Biography. Presidential biographies usually take longer to get through than other books, but I clamored for the end of this one. It’s funny how the POTUS books I’ve read thus far usually take on the characteristics of their subjects: Edmund Morris’ Theodore Roosevelt trilogy was expansive yet…
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Rutherford B. Hazy (In History)
Marching onward in my quest to read a biography of every U.S. president, I finally made it through Ari Hoogenboom’s Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President. I confess to having held the same vague notions of Hayes that Hoogenboom writes he’s commonly known for: that he won the disputed 1876 presidential election, ending Reconstruction, and that…
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Action Andrew Jackson
When I look back on my nearly 19 years of classroom education in elementary, middle, high school, college, and grad school, I think I’ll remember my junior year AP U.S. history class in high school as my favorite. What I loved about it was what probably bored most other students in class: it was a…
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History Crush: Theodore Roosevelt
I recently stumbled upon the National Archives’ “History Crush” series, wherein archivists confess their undying love for certain historical figures like Susan B. Anthony, Charles Sumner, and Alexander Hamilton. This got me thinking about who mine would be. As a certified history nerd, I have many. But with a gun to my head, I’d probably…
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Sarah Palin Is Not A Serious Person
If Sarah Palin plans to run for president in 2012 (which I’m not yet sure if she’ll do), many people will vote for her. But count me as one of those Americans who will not check the box for Sarah Palin if that day comes. There are a few reasons why I won’t vote for…
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Rumsfeld’s Biblified Briefings
Last week, GQ magazine reported that the top secret intelligence briefings that were sent to President Bush by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 were often adorned with inspirational Bible verses and images meant to influence the president, who is a self-described Christian and often liked…