Friday, July 16, 2004
Periodic Presidents 0: The Crisis Presidents
I have saved the best for last. The Presidents who have served our country during its biggest crises are the best Presidents that we have had. All of the historians and pundits put these three Presidents over all the others in their ranking systems. Yet in many ways, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt were ordinary people or Presidents who happened to take office during a crisis. The crisis drove them to do great things for America and its people. They were as fallible as the other Presidents. George Washington supposedly lied about the cherry tree. Lincoln chose his generals poorly. Franklin Roosevelt had at least one extramarital affair. But we remember them for, and put them on our currency for, their handling of the crises, something that Strauss and Howe call Fourth Turning. When a crisis comes, the people follow their leader in helping them get out of it. There can be only one Fourth Turning president, unless something like death occurs, because people don't like to change horses midstream. This is why Franklin Roosevelt served four consecutive terms. Lincoln served only one term because the Civil War was brutal, but short. The American Revolution crisis created, the US Presidencyso there was no time for more than one President then.
George Washington is known as the father of our country. He led the troops during the Revolution, and after the states found the Articles of Confederation to be unsatisfactory, helped them write the Constitution and served as its first President. The Revolution Crisis finally ended when George Washington exerted his new authority to quell the Whiskey Rebellion.
Abraham Lincoln inherited a nation split in half. He made sure with his actions that the Union which was formed four score and seven years previous would be preserved. He did stumble in a few places. His first general, McClellan, would just play with the Confederates, going up to them but not attacking. After this led to the Confederates charging into Pennsylvania, Lincoln did something about it, resulting in the bloody Battle of Gettysburg. He then proceeded to destroy the South, with Sherman's March to the Sea with its brutal actions to people along the way, and with the effort spent in Virginia trying to defeat Lee's army, although at times he did so poorly that his reelection was in doubt for a while. He finally defeated the Confederates in 1865 April, the most cataclysmic month in American history. A week after the war ended, he was assassinated.
Franklin D. Roosevelt won election on a theme of doing something better for the nation, as he told us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself. He took bold new unheard-of steps to get America out of the Great Depression, including spending way in the hole to get people working again with regular paychecks. This Depression spread around the world, and this did not react well in Europe and Japan. Another world war occurred, and when the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt immediately said we were at war, and that we were going to put an end to Japan's imperialism. And he did so with a war effort that eventually paid off in victory in both fronts, although it pulled the dreaded nuclear-weapon genie out of the bottle.
Our present President is a Nero President, in column 11. This means first of all that yet another crisis is imminent, and that the next president will be one of the greatest in our history, to be compared with Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. He or she will be a Crisis President, a column 0 president. This president would start a new row in the periodic table, Row Number Four. So who is this going to be? It could be John Kerry, John Edwards, or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Or it could be a complete surprise. Or we could have a double Nero president; that would not be out of the question. My guess would be John Edwards, but we will have to see what history dishes out.
George Washington is known as the father of our country. He led the troops during the Revolution, and after the states found the Articles of Confederation to be unsatisfactory, helped them write the Constitution and served as its first President. The Revolution Crisis finally ended when George Washington exerted his new authority to quell the Whiskey Rebellion.
Abraham Lincoln inherited a nation split in half. He made sure with his actions that the Union which was formed four score and seven years previous would be preserved. He did stumble in a few places. His first general, McClellan, would just play with the Confederates, going up to them but not attacking. After this led to the Confederates charging into Pennsylvania, Lincoln did something about it, resulting in the bloody Battle of Gettysburg. He then proceeded to destroy the South, with Sherman's March to the Sea with its brutal actions to people along the way, and with the effort spent in Virginia trying to defeat Lee's army, although at times he did so poorly that his reelection was in doubt for a while. He finally defeated the Confederates in 1865 April, the most cataclysmic month in American history. A week after the war ended, he was assassinated.
Franklin D. Roosevelt won election on a theme of doing something better for the nation, as he told us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself. He took bold new unheard-of steps to get America out of the Great Depression, including spending way in the hole to get people working again with regular paychecks. This Depression spread around the world, and this did not react well in Europe and Japan. Another world war occurred, and when the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt immediately said we were at war, and that we were going to put an end to Japan's imperialism. And he did so with a war effort that eventually paid off in victory in both fronts, although it pulled the dreaded nuclear-weapon genie out of the bottle.
Our present President is a Nero President, in column 11. This means first of all that yet another crisis is imminent, and that the next president will be one of the greatest in our history, to be compared with Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. He or she will be a Crisis President, a column 0 president. This president would start a new row in the periodic table, Row Number Four. So who is this going to be? It could be John Kerry, John Edwards, or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Or it could be a complete surprise. Or we could have a double Nero president; that would not be out of the question. My guess would be John Edwards, but we will have to see what history dishes out.
