Yet another one!

Yet another one!
January 19, 2001

OK. So we have a new President -- or will have tomorrow. We're all pretty up tight about the election - one way or another -- but what's new? We have had 41 presidents -- good ones and bad ones and mediocre ones, and somehow the Republic has continued to exist. In fact, I read yesterday on the Internet (no author given) that the United States strength comes from this remarkable system of laws and institutions we have inherited -- a system that was designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.

So far during my lifetime there have been 15 presidents: eight Republicans and seven Democrats. Nobody ever said the job was an easy one. George Washington arrived at his Inaugural in 1789 shadowed by doubts. "My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit, who is going to the place of his execution," he wrote to his friend Henry Knox.

Politics was always a subject discussed around the dinner table when I was a kid, so I got indoctrinated early and have watched all 15 presidents with varying degrees of admiration or anger -- or amusement.

The White House resident when I was born was Woodrow Wilson. I must admit I was not much interested in what he was doing, but by the time Warren Harding came along, discussion about him spoiled a lot of family meals. Harding's administration was one of the most corrupt in modern history, being especially famous for the Teapot Dome scandal. We even learned about him in grade school.

To keep the record straight, Republicans Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover presided over the country as we slid into the Great Depression. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt led us out of it.

FDR was elected President in November 1932. By March there were 13 million unemployed, and almost every bank in the United States was closed. In his "first hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform. His programs were, of course, highly controversial through his entire presidency, but those of us who heard his passionate words, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," believed them. I was in college during those early Roosevelt years and I was all too familiar with the reality of the depression.

Thinking back over "Presidents I Have Known," my favorite has to be Jack Kennedy. He was a member of my generation, just three years younger than I was. He will be forever young in my mind -- the prince of Camelot.

On the day of his inaugural he stood there, tall and handsome with the wind blowing his hair and his beautiful wife at his side. His ringing words in that pure Boston accent I can still hear. "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

His economic programs launched the country on its longest sustained expansion since World War II. He had plans for a massive assault on persisting pockets of privation and poverty. He was a fighter in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of the national culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society. He brought us the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps. He was an American idealist with a world vision.

Since then President watching hasn't been nearly as much fun. Nixon turned me into a Democrat. Jimmy Carter was possibly the most decent human being we have had in the White House, but that didn't make him very popular. We expect perfection in our presidents, but we do everything we can to tear them down. Today there are no secrets and no privacy.

So now we are about to see what my 16th President can offer in the way of leadership. I'm fearful, but time will tell. After all, I've lived through 15 of them. But when, oh when, are we going to get a woman in there who will clean house?