WASHINGTON — A presidential election looms on the horizon, and
already the nation’s great organs of opinion — and occasionally of
fact — are gearing up to serve the commonweal and ever so quietly
their own biases.
Already we are told that Herman Cain — the non-politician
seeking the Republican nomination — had two untoward incidents in
the 1990s with ladies who were not his wife… or maybe he did not.
He pleads innocent. His wife does too. Then there is Governor Rick
Perry. He has appeared hesitant on the debate platform. First, he
said he was fatigued. Then he explained he is a bad debater and so
what? Ours is not a parliamentary system, and the only time a
candidate’s ability to debate is exigent is during election time.
After that, a candidate’s powers of debate matter about as much as
a candidate’s facility with chop sticks. Judgment, decisiveness,
managerial skill, and experience are what matter. Witness the
pitiable floundering of the Obama Administration.
As for speaking in public, one can use a Teleprompter, as
our present chief executive does. At least he did, until the truck
carrying the presidential Teleprompters disappeared and with the
truck went the presidential seal too. President Barack Obama really
liked his presidential seal, and I publicly plead with the
scoundrels who took the truck to give the seal back. Or perhaps the
infamous Koch brothers could buy our president a new
one.
At any rate, the presidential season is upon us so I
expect to discover many shocking things in our public-spirited
press. Though I must say ancient charges of sexual indiscretion by
Cain startle me. When similar charges (and much else) were revealed
two decades ago about President Bill Clinton in The
American Spectator, my colleagues in the press were
horrified. A tacit bond of good taste had been broken. Boys will be
boys. They all do it. What is it that people have about this thing
called sex? Has the Spectator no shame?
Ah well, at any rate there is a lot of hypocrisy in
reporting politics. Still, it is a presidential race that faces us,
and I have decided to look into what other journalists have through
the years noticed as scandalous about our presidents. A veritable
mother lode appeared in the July 1928 American Mercury,
edited by the great editor and man of letters H.L. Mencken. The
piece was not written by Mencken but by his much-underesteemed
colleague, George Jean Nathan, a drama critic but also a historian
of Americana. If he were on the scene today and he could stand the
indignity, I think he would make an excellent talking head, though
the audience would need constant recourse to the dictionary and to
a book on etiquette. Nathan was a well-educated gentleman and was
very amusing,
According to Nathan, “James Monroe used toothpicks in the
presence of his guests, and Andrew Jackson relished smelly cheeses
so greatly — he served them regularly at his White House dinners
— that the ladies sitting near him at table had to use extra large
fans. John Quincy Adams perspired copiously and, after wiping the
beads from his face, would dangle his wet handkerchief to and fro,
spreading moisture over everybody about him.” Moreover, Nathan
sniffed, “Zachary Taylor was a victim of chronic indigestion.”
Millard Fillmore, so frequently compared nowadays with the present
incumbent in the White House, “would frequently doze off and snore
gently in the presence of his guests.” Even the war hero, President
U.S. Grant, was not insulated from the journalists’ scorn. Grant,
“like a good Methodist… used often to hit the bottle in private and
to show up nicely enameled.” Also he smoked pungent cigars and
“liked to blow rings at persons with whom he was talking.” Can you
imagine such indiscretions today? President Grant did not even go
out to the Rose Garden to blow his rings!
We are doubtless going to read in the press in the weeks
to come more shocking tales about the candidates — at least the
Republican candidates. President Obama is a saintly man, though he
rarely attends church and has Solyndra and other green projects on
his mind these days. So there will be no whiff of scandal about
him. But as for the rest of the candidates, I hope readers will
take refuge in history and be reassured that no president today
would smoke in the White House or, like Zach Taylor,
burp.
