This is Richard Nixon’s centennial year. Partisans still have
strong emotions about him: the Left, which finally triumphed over
him with Watergate; his own supporters who recently filled
Washington’s Hotel Mayflower ballroom with a celebratory centennial
dinner in his honor.
There are two non-partisan groups who should be always grateful
to the 37th president, for he gave them a priceless gift: a reason
for an annual three-day sale—the Presidents’ Day weekend. The
groups are used car and mattress salesmen.
In 1970, Nixon did a pre-Obama pre-emption. Instead of asking
Congress to convert the George Washington’s Birthday weekend (still
its official name), he simply issued a Presidential Proclamation
urging all Americans to celebrate all of the nation’s presidents.
Hence, “Presidents’ Day.” Calendar publishers, non-nosy news media
(that is, most of them) and the aforementioned sales-happy
merchants swallowed the suggestion without so much as a “What’s
this?”
To date there have been 43 presidents (44 presidencies, because
Grover Cleveland’s two terms were not consecutive). Washington’s
Birthday has long been a nationwide holiday. Originally a
stand-alone, it became part of the three-day system created by
Congress with the 1968 Monday Holiday Act. For years, school
children had given Washington recitations prior to the day.
Newspapers and magazines ran features extolling his career and
accomplishments. Historian James Flexner once described him as “the
indispensable man,” for without him it is unlikely the fledgling
republic could have survived its early years. All that seems to
have fallen away.
Now, thanks to Richard Nixon, we have a three-day weekend the
purpose of which no one remembers, only that is called the
Presidents’ Day Weekend.
Nixon, in issuing his proclamation wanted his fellow Americans
to honor all presidents. It is doubtful he thought through that
idea, for to honor all means to honor none. Would he have wanted us
to honor, say, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison, and Andrew
Johnson with the same reverence that we might show George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln? Even allowing for the probability
that all presidents did the best they could, their contributions to
the nation have hardly been equal.
Why was George Washington frozen out of recognition on what is
still, officially, his special weekend? There is more than one
cause. Many schools no longer focus on leaders when teaching
American history. They (and textbook authors and more than a few
present-day historians) hold the view that history is a bottoms-up
process and that leaders gradually emerge, rather than seizing the
reins and pulling the people along. The truth comes, in part, from
both the push and pull processes.
A definite contributor to the decline of Washington in the minds
of the public is visual imagery. He came from a period long past,
when men wore powdered wigs and women wore hoop skirts. In
Lincoln’s time, clothing styles, particularly for men, looked much
more recognizable than silver-buckled shoes and long
waistcoats.
The folks at Mount Vernon, Washington’s estate on the Potomac
River, do an energetic job of working with history teachers and
creating readable Washington material and traveling exhibits to
restore the Father of the Country at the head of the presidential
pantheon. Still, it is a constant effort.
As for Nixon, he doesn’t even get credit for his gift from the
retail salesmen who are indebted to him. Most today are too young
to remember that it was he who bestowed on them their wonderful
three-day-sale weekend.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
