Mud Covered Presidents
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Mud-Covered Presidents
During his first presidential campaign, he was vilified and ridiculed, not for his ideas, but for his unpolished appearance and his folksy accent and his lack of education. They called him stupid, an ape, a country bumpkin, and made fun of the way he pronounced his words.
His enemies declared that his election would be the end of everything good in the world. They threatened to leave the United States if he won -- this despite the fact that he was certainly the most moderate Republican who could have won his party's nomination.
He won on a fluke. If his main opponent's vote had not been diluted by third-party candidates, he most likely would have lost. As it was, he received far less than the majority of the vote.
He did not ask for the war that came on his watch, but he was grimly determined to see it through to victory. The trouble was, nobody thought he was doing it right.
The radicals in his own party demanded that he prosecute it one way; but he had to take into account the political reality that the country was divided and he could only wage war in a way that the people would support.
Even though his own party held a majority in both houses, he constantly had Congress looking over his shoulder. His cabinet contained some powerful personalities who thought they were better suited to make decisions than the ignorant man who had accidentally become president. And in the country at large, he was savaged in the press and second-guessed by everyone.
He made mistakes. He trusted the wrong man in some cases; he insisted on some military principles that made the war more difficult to win.
The war was still raging -- and with discouraging results, too many casualties, few visible signs of victory -- as the election approached. The candidate the Democrats ran against him was regarded by many as a war hero who everyone expected would find some compromise that would allow the United States to declare victory and bring the troops home without wasting any more soldiers' lives in a lost cause.
But the soldiers themselves knew better, and many political observers believed that in the election their absentee ballots might provide the margin of victory for the President they trusted. Of course these soldiers feared death and mourned the loss of brave friends who had already died or been crippled by war.
The soldiers preferred, however, to stay with the President they trusted to see the war through to victory. Why? Because if he won, then those deaths would mean something. And if the other fellow became President, then all those lost lives would have been spent for nothing at all.
In the long run, it was this President's courage and wisdom, his constant juggling of other people's priorities and his constant soothing of ambitious or angry or jealous or arrogant men that led to complete victory.
And a week after his second inaugural, he was shot to death by an actor who hated him and everything he stood for.
George W. Bush is no Abraham Lincoln. Which is good, because what we need right now is a living President, not an icon. The Lincoln that buildings are named for and whose image is stamped on pennies and five-dollar bills never existed. Instead there was a man that few people thought capable of dealing with the Presidency at the single worse moment in our history.
Only a few presidents have had to face such times. An attack on American soil; an enemy with enormous power to disrupt our lives, and whom we could only with great difficulty attack, and then not directly, not for years.
It happened in the War of 1812 -- a dangerous (and some think needless) war against an arrogant world power. In that one, an enemy was able to damage symbolic government buildings for the last time in our history ... until 9/11. We fought it in part because our enemy -- Britain -- had a habit of stopping our ships at sea and seizing our sailors. And because they also had a penchant for arming the Indian tribes that committed terror attacks against American settlers beyond the Appalachians. That war was the challenge of President James Madison. One of the founding fathers -- but no soldier. Still, we won against a world power, through a combination of military victories and negotiations.
It happened also in 1941, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had seen for years that war was inevitable and who had manipulated and finagled and finessed to get Congress to provide Britain with the war materiel to continue its lone fight against Germany. For if Britain had fallen, then our ability to wage war with Germany would have been drastically diminished. But the American people didn't want to join that war. If the Japanese had not bombed American soil, we would have stayed happily within our own borders and let the rest of the world tear itself apart. Roosevelt, like Lincoln, had a large contingent of Americans -- this time Republicans -- who thought he was the devil. They thought of him as being a closet Communist; they hated him for running for a third term in 1940; they hated him for trying to pack the Supreme Court and for ramming social change down the throat of Americans even though the Constitution clearly forbade many of the things he tried to do.
During his first presidential campaign, he was vilified and ridiculed, not for his ideas, but for his unpolished appearance and his folksy accent and his lack of education. They called him stupid, an ape, a country bumpkin, and made fun of the way he pronounced his words.
His enemies declared that his election would be the end of everything good in the world. They threatened to leave the United States if he won -- this despite the fact that he was certainly the most moderate Republican who could have won his party's nomination.
He won on a fluke. If his main opponent's vote had not been diluted by third-party candidates, he most likely would have lost. As it was, he received far less than the majority of the vote.
He did not ask for the war that came on his watch, but he was grimly determined to see it through to victory. The trouble was, nobody thought he was doing it right.
The radicals in his own party demanded that he prosecute it one way; but he had to take into account the political reality that the country was divided and he could only wage war in a way that the people would support.
Even though his own party held a majority in both houses, he constantly had Congress looking over his shoulder. His cabinet contained some powerful personalities who thought they were better suited to make decisions than the ignorant man who had accidentally become president. And in the country at large, he was savaged in the press and second-guessed by everyone.
He made mistakes. He trusted the wrong man in some cases; he insisted on some military principles that made the war more difficult to win.
The war was still raging -- and with discouraging results, too many casualties, few visible signs of victory -- as the election approached. The candidate the Democrats ran against him was regarded by many as a war hero who everyone expected would find some compromise that would allow the United States to declare victory and bring the troops home without wasting any more soldiers' lives in a lost cause.
But the soldiers themselves knew better, and many political observers believed that in the election their absentee ballots might provide the margin of victory for the President they trusted. Of course these soldiers feared death and mourned the loss of brave friends who had already died or been crippled by war.
The soldiers preferred, however, to stay with the President they trusted to see the war through to victory. Why? Because if he won, then those deaths would mean something. And if the other fellow became President, then all those lost lives would have been spent for nothing at all.
In the long run, it was this President's courage and wisdom, his constant juggling of other people's priorities and his constant soothing of ambitious or angry or jealous or arrogant men that led to complete victory.
And a week after his second inaugural, he was shot to death by an actor who hated him and everything he stood for.
George W. Bush is no Abraham Lincoln. Which is good, because what we need right now is a living President, not an icon. The Lincoln that buildings are named for and whose image is stamped on pennies and five-dollar bills never existed. Instead there was a man that few people thought capable of dealing with the Presidency at the single worse moment in our history.
Only a few presidents have had to face such times. An attack on American soil; an enemy with enormous power to disrupt our lives, and whom we could only with great difficulty attack, and then not directly, not for years.
It happened in the War of 1812 -- a dangerous (and some think needless) war against an arrogant world power. In that one, an enemy was able to damage symbolic government buildings for the last time in our history ... until 9/11. We fought it in part because our enemy -- Britain -- had a habit of stopping our ships at sea and seizing our sailors. And because they also had a penchant for arming the Indian tribes that committed terror attacks against American settlers beyond the Appalachians. That war was the challenge of President James Madison. One of the founding fathers -- but no soldier. Still, we won against a world power, through a combination of military victories and negotiations.
It happened also in 1941, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had seen for years that war was inevitable and who had manipulated and finagled and finessed to get Congress to provide Britain with the war materiel to continue its lone fight against Germany. For if Britain had fallen, then our ability to wage war with Germany would have been drastically diminished. But the American people didn't want to join that war. If the Japanese had not bombed American soil, we would have stayed happily within our own borders and let the rest of the world tear itself apart. Roosevelt, like Lincoln, had a large contingent of Americans -- this time Republicans -- who thought he was the devil. They thought of him as being a closet Communist; they hated him for running for a third term in 1940; they hated him for trying to pack the Supreme Court and for ramming social change down the throat of Americans even though the Constitution clearly forbade many of the things he tried to do.
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