ARA: the Presidents

undeniable

Kelly, that guy from western New York, asked several questions, two about the Presidents.

One scenario I had in mind when Biden was elected was that he would serve two years–essentially steward the country through the worst of COVID and get the economic recovery going–and then step down, making Harris President. Should he have done so? Would Harris have done better as an incumbent?

One thing I know about Joe Biden is that he is a traditionalist regarding the presidency. Barring extraordinary circumstances, such as severe illness, he would never serve two years and then resign. Only one president in our history resigned from office: Richard Nixon in 1974, less than two years after Joe became the US senator from Delaware.

Moreover, if he had announced too early that he would quit after two, any chance of his agenda being acted upon would have been almost impossible to achieve. I suppose he could have done it secretly and then announced it after the midterms of 2022.

However, completing a president’s agenda in the best situations takes time. There are negotiations to be had, and much of what he achieved was in the latter half of his term. I noticed that FOTUS felt entitled to do everything on Day One, but he didn’t even have his cabinet in place on January 21st.

Secondly, I don’t think he would have ceded the presidency to Kamala Harris in 2022. Many people, including me, thought she was a terrible candidate when she ran for president in 2020. Heck, her campaign didn’t even make it to the election year; she started it in 2019 and ended it in 2019.

HHH redux

Moreover, in 2022, she would have been burdened by immigration and inflation worse than in 2024. Conversely, the Biden support for Israel in the Gaza war harmed her greatly. It would have been like Hubert Humphrey running against LBJ’s Vietnam War in 1968; it would have been even more difficult for Kamala to separate herself from Joe.

She was a much better candidate than I anticipated when she ran in 2024. Still, many people hated the process of her becoming the Democratic nominee; even people I know IRL, who probably voted for her, were appalled by the manner in which she became the pick.

I have intimated before that it would have been a better choice for Joe to decide to be a one-term president much earlier. There have been willing, “successful” one-term presidents before. The most noteworthy in terms of his agenda was James Knox Polk (1845-1849), who managed to win the Mexican War and expand our manifest destiny. I’m not saying this is good, merely that he was triumphant at it.

His inner circle ultimately served him poorly by trying to manage his physical decline. As Dean Phillips suggested, Biden should have stepped down around July 2023. Then, there would have been a primary process that most Democrats would have embraced.

(BTW,  my candidate would have probably been Pete Buttigieg because he spoke so well to the rightwing news crowd, going on their shows regularly; he was like the “FOX whisperer.”)

All that said, I’m not sure that ANYONE could have beaten FOTUS unless the man were indicted shortly after January 2021. Jack Smith’s much-too-late report proves clearly that he was the felon we all knew he was. “But for [his] election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” the report states.

AotD

On November 22, 2024, Senator John Fetterman told ABC This Week’s Jon Karl: “You have a singular political talent [in FOTUS]. It’s undeniable. …if you’re not afraid to say all of those things, or, and after you survived an assassination, you literally were shot in your head and had the presence of mind to respond, ‘fight, fight, fight.’

“I was driving home from Indiana County (PA) at nine o’clock, and there was a Trump superstore on the side of a road, nine o’clock on Friday night, and people are buying swag. And that really crystallized in, at the assassination [attempt]… the day or two later, you start seeing people wearing shirts with that iconic picture. And, you know, the energy and the anger and, it’s like, wow, I really thought — in fact, I thought that might be ball game.'”

So, FOTUS has mastered the Art of the Deal, in which January 6, 2021, was a stroll through the Capitol. His pardon of the J6 insurrectionists was the final nail in the gaslighting coffin.

“They’re eating their cats” is merely Orange hyperbole. Yet I read how he picks out the lies and errors of others. Joe LIED about not pardoning Hunter. He was wrong about the fact that the Afghan Taliban wouldn’t take over Afghanistan that quickly.

Part of the reason is that many Americans, especially men, preferred Ben Shapiro, “Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, YouTube, and X over the mainstream media,” where Biden and Harris largely operated.  

Perhaps it’s a function of what author Jianwei Xun, in his book about FOTUS and Musk, calls Hypnocracy, a “new form of social control… that… induces a permanent functional trance through algorithmic modulation of collective consciousness… In the era of post-truth and artificial intelligence, power no longer operates through repression but through the manipulation of reality perception.” 

When this question came in, my daughter and I watched the 2005 Charlie the Chocolate Factory movie with Johnny Depp. She suggested that the children that Willy Wonka selected were like FOTUS. Much of the American public was like the indulgent parents who capitulated to their noisy brats.

BHO

What WERE 45 and Obama saying to one another at President Carter’s funeral, anyway?!

“Donald, you know that I think you’re a dipwad. But you’re gonna be president again, much to my consternation. [FOTUS laughs]. So you’re in ‘the club.’ Let’s get together and have a rational conversation somewhere about why you shouldn’t undermine the Panama Canal treaty or blow up NATO by seizing  Greenland and threatening Canada. Hey, if these actions don’t happen, people will think all of this is bluster and that you’ve ‘grown’ into the presidency. This could help your historical reputation!”

Politics: Don’t forget about 1974

RMN

Understandably, many people’s jaws have dropped over the changes in the political landscape during July 2024. Many of them compared it to 1968, and rightly so.

But don’t forget about 1974. That was the year that Richard Nixon resigned after the Watergate debacle. I was reminded of this when my Wordle buddy used PENCE on the way to PENNE. He said he was thinking about the money, not the VEEP. I replied: “Of course, but it reminds me to try the word occasionally.”

His response: “AGNEW has 5 letters, but nobody ever thinks of him.” Au contraire! “I think of Ted all of the time. He’s why Jerry Ford became president 50 years ago.”

Ted

Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew was newly re-elected in 1972 with Richard Nixon. Initially, he was not the target of an investigation in Maryland, where he had been governor. However, by June 1973, [Lester ] “Matz’s attorney disclosed to Beall that his client could show that Agnew had not only been corrupt but that payments to him [from Matz’s engineering firm] had continued into his vice presidency. The statute of limitations would not prevent Agnew from being prosecuted for these later payments.”

Ultimately, “on October 10, 1973, Agnew appeared before the federal court in Baltimore and pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to one felony charge, tax evasion, for the year 1967. [U.S. Attorney General Elliot] Richardson agreed that there would be no further prosecution of Agnew and released a 40-page summary of the evidence. Agnew was fined $10,000 and placed on three years’ unsupervised probation. Immediately prior to entering court, Agnew had an aide submit his formal letter of resignation to the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and sent a letter to Nixon stating he was resigning in the best interest of the nation. Nixon responded with a letter concurring that the resignation was necessary to avoid a lengthy period of division and uncertainty, and applauding Agnew for his patriotism and dedication to the welfare of the United States.”

25A

This kicked in Section 2 of the 25th Amendment, which reads:  “Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.”

Some Vice-Presidents ascended to the Presidency and had no Veep: John Tyler (after William Henry Harrison, 1841-1845); Millard Fillmore (after Zachary Taylor, 1850-1853); Andrew Johnson (after Abraham Lincoln, 1865-1869); Chester A. Arthur (after James Garfield, 1881-1885). Others – Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson – had no Veep until the following election.

So this was a new thing. Gerald Ford, the House Minority Leader,  “was nominated to take Agnew’s position on October 12, the first time the vice-presidential vacancy provision of the 25th Amendment had been implemented. The United States Senate voted 92 to 3 to confirm Ford on November 27. On December 6, the House confirmed Ford by a vote of 387 to 35. After the confirmation vote in the House, Ford took the oath of office as vice president.”

Then, after Watergate became untenable for Nixon, he addressed the nation on television on August 8, 1974, and resigned from the presidency the next day.

When Gerald Ford became President, the 25th Amendment was used again to elevate Nelson A. Rockefeller to vice president in December 1974. Those were weird times.

1968

Not that 1968 wasn’t strange. Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has a recent book about how she and her late husband interacted with the times, appeared on The Weekly Show in late July. She schooled Eugene Daniels and host Jon Stewart on the situation’s complexity.

Not only did Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic President, decide he would not run for re-election, but he would also engage in some diplomacy to end the Vietnam War. He realized that if he couldn’t do the latter without doing the former, so he went on TV at 9:00 PM on March 31st.

But only four days later, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. This put the kibosh on the peace plan, as he had to deal with massive disruptions on the streets. Robert Kennedy started actively running for president after Eugene McCarthy had gotten 42% of the vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary against the incumbent. He was very likely to become the party nominee when, in early June, just after the California primary, RFK was assassinated.

This caused chaos at the Democratic convention in Chicago in August 1968. Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president, became the nominee, but so many people were slow to get behind HHH that Richard Nixon – remember him? – barely won the Electoral College, with George Wallace, the third-party candidate, taking five states.

2024

So, it is not shocking that the Democrats have coalesced behind Kamala Harris. Her campaign could keep the money raised by the Biden/Harris campaign.

I find it hysterically funny that the Republicans are suggesting that those 14 million people who voted for Joe Biden in the very non-contested Democratic primaries were losing their franchise because Harris is now the nominee. They have supported a candidate on the Republican side who wanted to disenfranchise 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and, more than that, continue the lie that the election was stolen.

It’s almost humorous to listen to djt being surprised that Kamala Harris identifies as part black, given the fact that she attended an HBCU, Howard University, and was a member of a black sorority, AKA. Her mother has been on record that she raised Kamala as black because she knew that she would be perceived as black by most people. Yes, race in America is complicated, but the misogynoir in djt has often been very strong.

I’ve been aware of Rachel Scott, the ABC reporter who questioned him at the black journalists’ event, for a while. She, along with Diane Sawyer, presented a Peabody-nominated report about how pregnant women who wanted to have kids were experiencing severe outcomes but, because of anti-abortion laws, could not receive medical treatment. She’s not a new kid on the block but is the senior congressional reporter for ABC News. 

50 years ago: the beginning of political activism

By the time this was published, two or three weeks later, I was MORTIFIED by my response.

When I was 15, I was a conventionally conservative kid, fueled by my religion and small city roots. I had been in a couple civil rights marches but that was a topic that affected me personally.

I was preternaturally aware of the political issues, reading the op-ed pages of both the morning Sun-Bulletin and the Evening Press. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were on the NBC news and Walter Cronkite was over on CBS, and I watched one network or the other since I was 11.

I entered Binghamton Central High in February 1968 and was asked early on by someone on the school newspaper, the Panorama News, who I supported for President. Oddly, I hadn’t given it much thought. I opted for Richard Nixon, noting that he had eight years as Vice-President.

By the time this was published, two or three weeks later, I was MORTIFIED by my response. I was going through…something. It may have been the influence of new friends or Cronkite’s assessment of the Vietnam war on February 27 as a likely stalemate.

On March 12, Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) received 42% of the vote in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire against a sitting President, Lyndon Baines Johnson. I was utterly fascinated by this turn of events.

Still, I was not prepared when Johnson invoked the pledge in his March 31 national address, announcing, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” I had developed mixed feelings about LBJ. Great on civil rights, but like many, I was doubting the point of the war in southeast Asia.

So I’m pleased that my daughter, at an age younger than I was, is feeling all riled up about some issues in her world, more about which I’ll mention in due time. I think the Resistance play she was in this month at church was really in her emotional wheelhouse.

J is for the Johnson amendment

Preachers can preach on feeding the poor and clothing the naked, and that a just society ought to be doing that.

In the midst of the process of creating the massive tax bill at the end of 2017, the US Congress attempted to remove The Johnson Amendment. Fortunately, Congress’ own rules prevented from happening in that particular manner.

From the Wikipedia: It is “a provision in the U.S. tax code, since 1954, that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. [These] organizations [range] from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, [later the 36th President] who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954.”

Recent claims suggested that the provision was some sort of attack on the First Amendment’s freedom of religion and speech. Defenders of the Johnson amendment, including me, believe that when the churches and other nonprofit organizations that are exempt from taxation, the prohibition against “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office” is appropriate, for it would otherwise be the state establishing religion.

Now the law is fairly narrow in scope. “Nonpartisan voter education activities and church-organized voter registration drives are legal. Pastors are free to preach on social and political issues of concern. Churches can publish ‘issue guides’ for voters.” In other words, preachers can preach on feeding the poor and clothing the naked, and that a just society ought to be doing that.

As it turns out, the piece to quash the Johnson amendment in the December 2017 budget bill was blocked by the Senate parliamentarian. “Because of a requirement called the Byrd Rule, reconciliation bills — which are passed through a simple Senate majority — cannot contain ‘extraneous’ provisions that don’t primarily deal with fiscal policy.”

Nonreligious people have said for decades that we ought to be taxing the churches, and I disagree. But if a religious entity wants to engage in partisan politics, endorsing candidates, it should give up its tax-exempt status.

For ABC Wednesday

Presidents Day 2017: Nixon’s the One

JFK Calls about Furniture


George Washington’s first inaugural address (April 1789), referring to himself: “One, who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.”

Now I Know: The Case of George Washington versus Pinocchio

John Quincy Adams: When The People Cheered

Presidents in Our Backyard – Part 1 (Martin Van Buren, Chester A. Arthur, Ulysses S. Grant)

The highest-ranked President who only served one-term is James Knox Polk.

Sarah Knox Taylor, the second daughter of Zachary Taylor and the first Mrs. Jefferson Davis

This is an actual standard fantasy I’ve had over the years: I’m captured, and the Americans think I’m a spy. I name all the Presidents correctly, including the year entering the office and political party – I really CAN do that – then they shoot me, because OBVIOUSLY, I’m a Soviet/Russian/Chinese spy, since NOBODY knows Millard Fillmore (1850-1853, Whig), who was New York State Comptroller before becoming Vice-President.

Worst president ever: The ignominy of James Buchanan – On the way to the Capitol for the inauguration of his successor on March 4, 1861, Buchanan told Abraham Lincoln, “If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland [his home in Pennsylvania], you are a happy man indeed.”

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (1861)
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Lincoln’s Great Depression

Now I Know The Vice:President (David Rice Atchison) and John Wilkes Booth’s Heroic Brother

Are You a Presidential Beard Connoisseur?

Ulysses S. Grant’s Veal & Sweet Potato Fries

The first President to ban immigrants?

Chris Churchill: A chat with President Chester A. Arthur

Now I Know: Grover Cleveland’s Pole Tax

‘All for each and each for all:’ Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal

Theodore Roosevelt holds that it is “unpatriotic, servile, and morally treasonable to proclaim that there must be no criticism of the President.” (1918)

Who was the first president to visit Canada? I was surprised.

Quora: Which US President had the most foresight?

Listening In: JFK Calls about Furniture (July 25, 1963)

Lyndon Johnson Speech Before Congress on Voting Rights (March 15, 1965): “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans—not as Democrats or Republicans–we are met here as Americans to solve that problem.”

Lyndon Johnson orders pants.

Nixon Aide Reportedly Admitted Drug War Was Meant To Target Black People. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.” Anyone who read Michele Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow already knew this.

Nixon’s Vietnam Treachery. This was treason.
US fatalities in the Vietnam war:
1969 – 11,780
1970 – 6,173
1971 – 2,414
1972 – 759
1973 – 68
1974 – 1
1975 – 62

Now I Know: The Red Menace (Nixon in China)

Three Presidential $1 Coins were issued in 2016, the final year of the program, for Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter had the audacity of still being alive; hope he’ll get one down the line, after he passes away.

Now I Know: Reagan and Gorbachev’s Green Pact

You Must Remember This podcast – Storm Warning: Ronald Reagan, the FBI and HUAC (THE BLACKLIST EPISODE #8)

10 Books to Understand the Obama Presidency

Presidential Payroll: What Commanders in Chief Have Earned Since 1789

Ramblin' with Roger
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