Jack wrote this in February, 2006:
If you remember them they’re best forgotten.
So, here we are, blogsters. Good morning to you.
Another Presidents Day’s rolled around. I hope it hasn’t caught you unprepared. All you bank employees, Postal workers, government agency employees home from work getting ready to kick up your heels in remembrance.
Hope you got all your shopping done early. However, today I want to remind you of a couple of things that are often forgotten, get lost in all the hoopla of Presidents Day, most venerated of times.
Think of Franklin Pierce, of Millard Fillmore, of McKinley, Taft and Dwight Eisenhower.
What makes for a truly great President of the US, blogsters? What symptoms of greatness do you search for?
He’s forgotten.
He managed to pass through the office of President without doing anything much to be remembered for. He didn’t get enough of his fellow Americans killed to stick in the headlines of memory.
That’s right, blogsters. The greatest US Presidents are the ones who let the country run itself as it’s supposed to. They didn’t try to be kings.
They let Congress do the jobs Congress is charged to do by the Constitution, they signed and vetoed Bills put before them by Congress, they signed budget proposals, and didn’t get overly impressed with the powers of office. If there was a war to be fought, they let Congress declare it to be so, and if Congress hadn’t done so they got us the hell out of it.
They managed to remember that Americans never really wanted a king.
Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, McKinley, Taft, Dwight Eisenhower and the others you can’t recall.
Those were the great US Presidents. The ones with names you don’t recognize. The ones who didn’t try to be kings.
Jack
So Far From Heaven 