Presidents

Tweet

It's President's Day here in the US and I've come to the sad realization that a good portion of US citizens can't even name most of our presidents. I know all of the presidents but sometimes struggle to remember the order they came in. I can name the first eight fairly easily but after that, I sometimes forget. I know a little trivia about several of them. I can tell you that Washington was the first president, he was the only president that did not have anyone run against him. He also did not live in the white house as it was not built yet. He is one of the most famous presidents simply because he was the first president. Another pretty well-known president was Lincoln who was our 16th president. He was known as "Honest Abe". He was president during the Civil War and is known for freeing slaves although he probably wasn't as kind as people thought he was. A lot of people who wanted them freed still treated black people as second class citizens and definitely not as equals. Abraham Lincoln was also assassinated which is pretty well known. Franklin Delano Roosevelt "FDR" is also super well known thanks to WWII when he did a lot to help our country and he is the only president in history who served more than two terms. Now presidents are not allowed to serve more than two terms (one term is four years). John F Kennedy is yet another famous president. He too was assassinated and I know a lot of older people who remember how sad his death was. The Kennedy family had a lot going on and they are believed to have connections to the mob. A lot of the Kennedys had tragic or mysterious deaths. Something a lot of people don't seem to know about JFK is that he was a very ill man and had he not been killed he probably wouldn't have survived his presidency anyway. He had almost died on several occasions. He had something called Addison's disease. People with Addison's disease can and do often live a fairly normal lifespan but I remember watching a documentary on JFK that said he struggled a lot with his health because of it. Ronald Reagan was president when I was born and he was a movie star before he was president. A lot of people really liked him and a lot say he was probably the best president in history. Richard Nixon is well known but mostly in an infamous way because of the Watergate scandal. He would have been impeached and probably removed from office had he not resigned. Something a lot of people seem confused about is the term "impeach" they think it automatically means the president will be removed from office which is not at all what it means. An impeachment is a trial that can get them removed from office but has yet to have anyone removed from office. The first president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson. Johnson fired someone who was protected under the Tenure of Office Act and because the house felt he brought the office of president into disgrace. He was only spared removal by one vote. Nixon is the only president to resign. There have only been three presidents to ever be impeached Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. None of them were removed from office had Nixon not resigned he probably would have been the first to be removed from office. I'm sure there is a lot more I could share about the presidents but there's a lot. I will say that each president no matter how horrible offered at least one good thing to office even if we hate to admit but often that one act of good doesn't negate all of the bad they did. It's not an easy role and I can honestly say I would not want that job. No matter how good they are they are going to face opposition. Everyone has their own idea of what they think the president should be doing but know this the president doesn't even have most of the power. They are more or less the head figure. We have three branches of government for a reason so that no single branch holds all of the power.