Making politics palatable
Lyndon Johnson is my longstanding presidential crush (not to be mistaken for who I see as the most handsome of the presidents.) Sometimes I blame this obsession on a cold. I was home from work convalescing on the couch and I decided to watch LBJ American Experience. As I drifted into and out of shallow […]
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last army general to become President of the United States. Like Andrew Jackson and Ulysses S. Grant before him, his military performance begat his political popularity. His military history, after all, was a long one. He served in the army from 1915-1953. He didn’t see combat in the first World […]
This is really neither here nor there, but the elementary school I attended was named after President James A. Garfield. I had wondered whether this was the case, but confirmed it in an article that talked about the school’s closing. Garfield is one of those presidents who wasn’t in office very long. Due to an […]
I have always thought that Ulysses S. Grant was the most handsome of our presidents. There, I said it. If it can be said that the Civil War had a darling, from the Union point of view, that would have been Ulysses S. Grant. Most of his fame came from his deeds on the field, […]
Andrew Johnson is a president who I first remember learning about in the fourth grade. I remember learning about him and trying to understand what impeachment is. Andrew Johnson, like many of the other presidents is someone given to us by swirling, crazy circumstances. Abraham Lincoln choose him as his running mate largely as a […]
James Buchanan is one of the presidents unfortunate enough to be on one side of Lincoln, a president commonly remembered as a great one (well, at least among some folks). The one fact that I remember from elementary school studies is that he was the only president not to have been married, ever. There […]
Franklin Pierce was known as Handsome Frank. This is the kind of thing that can make a certain type of person, you know the type to dedicate a part of her life to developing president-themed cupcakes, lose hours to the internet looking for a picture of him she found handsome. Beauty, folks, is in the […]
When William Henry Harrison and John Tyler ran for office, they were nicknamed the fertility ticket. Between the two of them, they had 25 children. Each and every time I think about that, I feel all of my internal organs quiver in fear upon even considering what it would be like to birth as many […]
James Monroe was the final founders-generation president. He was also the fourth Virginian to hold the nation’s highest office. Monroe is perhaps best known for the Monroe Doctrine. Back in 1823, Monroe made a speech where he said, “that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are […]