Nov. 4th presidents a varied crew

Well, yesterday was Election Day and you know a whole lot more about the decisions that we all made than I do. Not because I don’t pay attention; but because my deadline for this column was just about the time that people started heading to the polls. And I sure wish I’d had a crystal ball Monday night when I was writing this column because I’d know which half of my friends are leaving the country today and which half are staying.

This election was so polarizing that just about everyone I know was scared to death that the guy from the other team would win.

Because of my deadline, I can’t tell you anything about our new president whom – electronic paper trail-less voting machines not withstanding – we elected Nov. 4. That is unless we talk about a different Nov. 4.

For example, on Nov. 4, 1952, we elected one of the best presidents of the 20th century, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Or back to Nov. 4, 1856, we elected – hands down without exception – the worst president of his century, James Buchanan.

The 4th of November heralded the elections of true mediocrity as well. Grover Cleveland defeated renowned supporter of impartial suffrage and author of the 14th Amendment, James G. Blaine, on Nov. 4, 1884. And Calvin Coolidge, whose lackluster leadership many credit for the great depression of 1929, got re-elected on Nov. 4, 1924.

But the superlatives – Eisenhower and Buchanan – were remarkably dissimilar men. Gen. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, was praised for helping save the world’s democracies, while James Buchanan became the president who impotently looked on as seven states left the union and our nation slid headlong into civil war.

Does yesterday’s election have the same potential? Our country is facing troubling times. We’re fighting wars and hemorrhaging cash through every pore of our economy.

James Buchanan had oodles of foreign policy experience. He had even been ambassador to Russia. But that international expertise did him no good. Buchanan’s challenges were domestic. A staunch federalist, he didn’t interfere with decisions made by individual states.

Buchanan wasn’t just a bad president, he was a racist. He believed that importing new African slaves was bad for the slave business because our country had bred a more domesticated and docile version of black people and new slaves would fire up their blood.

Remarkably, 152 years after Buchanan’s election, we may have a president-elect who is the son of one of those figurative African immigrants.

Or is our president-elect the 56th-anniversary commemoration of our last war hero chief executive? Our new president might be a guy who was tortured so mercilessly that he won’t be able to fully lift his arm to take the oath of office. Those war-time experiences may make him strong enough to heed Eisenhower’s warnings and curtail the “military industrial complex.”

Or our Nov. 4th president might give us more Nov. 4th mediocrity. The billion-dollar election question: will he most resemble Cleveland, Coolidge, Eisenhower or Buchanan?

Here are some quotations from those four presidents. Time will tell if we have elected a man of vision or a man without a clue about what’s to come.

“What is right and what is practicable are two different things … Our union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war.” – President James Buchanan.

“More people out of work leads to higher unemployment.” – President Calvin Coolidge.

“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.” – President Grover Cleveland.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” – President Dwight Eisenhower.

I wonder what kind of Nov. 4th president our new one will be.

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is a spokeswoman for The Olympia Group and its campaign for a casino in Oxford County. She may be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.