I was a Watergate junkie. I didn’t realize it until I saw Gore Vidal on a television talk show, probably Dick Cavett’s, where he said he was a Watergate junkie and he needed his fix everyday. Yep. That was me. I had come a long way from supporting Nixon during his 1960 run for the … Continue reading The Presidents – No 37 Richard Nixon 1969 – 1974

I was riveted to the television during the weekend of the JFK assassination, and of course, I saw LBJ’s brief remarks upon landing at Andrews Air Force Base: This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know … Continue reading The Presidents – No 36 Lyndon B. Johnson 1963 – 1969

  JFK had the major embarrassment of the Bay of Pigs, shortly to be followed by the triumph of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I guess more than made up for it. I remember when he came on television to announce his actions towards the Cuban missiles. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, … Continue reading The Presidents – No 35 John F. Kennedy 1961 – 1963

I had a sociology prof at Penn State who liked to make Eisenhower jokes. Nothing substantial mind you, and I can’t really remember any of them, but the punch line was always something like, “But we still had four more years of Eisenhower.”  I know that the big knock on Eisenhower used to be that … Continue reading The Presidents – No 34 Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953 – 1961

I’ve written about my 10th grade American history teacher, Mr. Kugle, several times previously. One of the things I remember most about him, because he repeated it on more than one occasion, is that he had no respect Harry S. Truman because he thought Truman had behaved in a non-presidential manner when he wrote a … Continue reading The Presidents – No 33 Harry S. Truman 1945 – 1953

My mother didn’t talk about politics very much when I was young, but the one thing that I do recall her mentioning, several times, was how Franklin D. Roosevelt dealt with the depression when he became president.  He closed the banks. I had no idea what closing the banks had to do with the depression … Continue reading The Presidents – No 32 Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933 – 1945

  Herbie did not cause the Great Depression, oh, sorry—Herbert Hoover didn’t cause the Great Depression, but he didn’t know how to deal with it either. And then there was the forcible deportation or “repatriation” of about a million Mexican-Americans to Mexico, approximately 60 percent of whom had been born in this country. Perhaps that’s … Continue reading The Presidents – No 31 Herbert Hoover 1929 – 1933

In 1924, a year into his first term as president, his younger son Calvin Jr. died, and from then on he displayed the symptoms of clinical depression. He didn’t accomplish much after that. I challenged myself to find a Sondheim song that would be appropriate for Calvin Coolidge, so here is Norm Lewis singing “No … Continue reading The Presidents – No 30 Calvin Coolidge 1923 – 1929

  If you thought the Republican penchant for choosing unqualified candidates was a modern thing, take a look at what the New York World had to say about its choice of Warren Harding in 1920: a “weak and mediocre” man who “never had an original idea.” Even the New York Times claimed he was “second class”. … Continue reading The Presidents – No 29 Warren G. Harding 1921 – 1923

Wilson did several worthwhile things while in office, but as far as I'm concerned the good he did is far outweighed by the bad. He was an academic so he should have known better, in my opinion, but he was so intent on establishing his pie in the sky League of Nations (a good idea … Continue reading The Presidents – No 28 Woodrow Wilson 1913 – 1921