Note: This was originally published on One Good Move on March 2, 2008. It has been slightly revised.
There is a rather interesting interview of Senator Barack Obama in the New Yorker magazine from November 2006. The interview makes for interesting read offering insights on how Obama views the Presidency.
In the interview one comment by Obama did irk me. Obama noted:
”By the way,” just as an aside. You know, I’m not a historian, so— There’s a hotel, I think it’s the Capitol Hilton, in Washington; and downstairs, where there are a lot of banquet halls, there’s a whole row of all the presidents. You walk by the forty-three that have been there and you realize there are only about ten who you have any idea what they did.
La di da. You want the Presidency so please read up on it. While I am a historian by training, I have never worked on the history of the United States. Granted I have taken many classes on American History and, of course, I am a citizen who reads. Senator Obama’s comments just struck me as odd and he is, of course, a Senator who most certainly deals on issues that are leftovers or better put hangovers from previous Administrations. That 1872 Mining Law that Obama is so fond of for example that dates to the Grant Administration. Even in his lifetime, there have been nine Presidents and even if you excuse the first 10 years of his life that still leaves seven he should know something about. And he has been so fond of Ronald Reagan during this campaign and so dismissive of Bill Clinton. That’s three right there and surely he is familiar with George W. Bush’s deeds. He should be aware of accomplishments and short-comings of past legislative agendas. He was also a Constitutional lawyer and professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, surely he must remember some bit that caught his mind. To not understand history and to be so dismissive of it is frankly rather disconcerting. Where is Doris Kearns Goodwin when you need her. Have her give you a quick lesson or two. Frankly hire me. I work for cheap.
But this is not all Barack, all the time. I now turn to unexpected heroes at unexpected times. There are, of course, many damn good forgotten Presidents and some that we could all forget, the present incumbent comes to mind. And so I am here to defend the honor, reputation and legacy of one of my personal favorite Presidents, a forgotten one poor Chester A. Arthur, an accidental President and one of the most unpopular within his party in his own time and yet wildly popular with the American people. Could it be he accomplished something rather remarkable to earn such ignominious treatment by his party and such unfair dismissal by posterity? To be fair he accomplished several things that set him apart from the other 42 who have held that office. There is also something else that he did that stands apart from both his all of his predecessors and some of his successors.
Chester Arthur was an accidental President via being a compromise choice for the Vice Presidency, an assassin’s bullet and the most serious case of Presidential medical malpractice. Technically the bullet did not kill James A. Garfield. His doctors did. The bullet lodged in his shoulder. Had they left him alone to recuperate, he would have lived. Instead, they tried for over a month to dislodge the bullet, failed to do so and in the process weakened him and the infections took his life. In hindsight, we are lucky that Garfield died for otherwise the most competent and selfless man, in my view, ever to hold that office would have never held it. Chester Arthur was a one term President because his party, the GOP, hated him and apparently they still hate him. He ended the cronyism of the GOP that run the country since “Useless” Grant. He was put on the ticket because he was reformer from New York who did battle with the political machines such as Tammany Hall. The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 was his doing. It established a nonpartisan professional civil service. That is his legacy. Quite a legacy and one that this administration has tried to undo. Witness Heckva job Brownie. See why I keep on saying we are fighting battles from the 1870s. They want to return to “Useless” Grant, the one who gave us that Mining Law of 1872.
He also reformed the US Postal Service and gave us “special delivery.” Arthur also gave us the first comprehensive immigration reform opening the doors to increased immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. How many of your ancestors came to America because of Chester A. Arthur? I suspect quite a few. It is true that to get that immigration reform, he was forced to accept the Chinese Exclusion Act that banned Chinese immigration for the next sixty years (to be fair Arthur fought for only a ten year ban, Congress overruled him). There were trade-offs even then. Sad but true.
But don’t think him a racist. Because the other great legacy of Chester A. Arthur was that he stopped the genocide of the American Indian that had been on-going since the Pilgrims. True there were few left to kill, but he stopped it. He was the first President to visit the West, sitting down with tribal leaders and getting securing protection for them from the US Calvary. Unfortunately, Benjamin Harrison, who only ventured out of the White House to go duck hunting, reversed that. The massacre of the Lakota and the Sioux came on Harrison’s watch. Chester Arthur also set aside Yellowstone preventing mining interests from raping it. That pesky Mining Law again. What will we do?
Chester A. Arthur, so reviled by his party, was shunned at the GOP convention. He is the last incumbent President to seek the nomination of his party and not receive it. If he had had a party to stand on, he would won the Presidency. Here is a tribute from his era:
Publisher Alexander K. McClure recalled, “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired … more generally respected.”
Funny how things work out. Chester A. Arthur a great American, a damn good President and much underrated. I might add he wins my fashion award for best dressed and best groomed President ever. He wasn’t called “Elegant Arthur” for nothing. This gay boy is quite the fan.