If nothing else, FDR looked and sounded confident. (Photo from picturehistory.com)
The pageantry is over, and it's time for Barack Obama to stand and deliver. It comes with the territory, as any new president comes in with a sack full of great expectations.
Obama may find it a rough go as he gets ready to start work. We're in two wars -- one of them more unpopular than the other -- and the economy is in the worst shape I've seen it in since the early 1980s. Rough times, and I don't envy Obama for all the stuff he has on his plate.
Writer/historian Mark Updegrove says eight presidents in particular were tested early and often when they took office. He outlines his thoughts in a recent book, "Baptism By Fire." I haven't read the book yet, but he discussed the topic on a recent radio talk show with Jim Bohannon.
Updegrove's choices for the Presidents with the biggest batch of crises when they came in were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Gerald Ford. Some of these choices are obvious while others are ... well, I wouldn't have thought of them. Just who is this John Tyler guy anyway?
Of the eight, Roosevelt's situation is probably closest to Obama, and the incoming president may well take a page from him. I'm not talking about the New Deal here, which not only did not solve the Great Depression (World War II was the final solution here), but throwing taxpayer money at a problem never did anything but make the problem bigger. But let's hand it to FDR; he was one confident guy. You can see it in just about every photo of him, and you can hear it in just about every taped radio address or speech. The photo that comes to my mind is one with Franklin D. behind the wheel of his hand-controlled car, cigarette holder poking upward upward, jaw out to here. Doesn't matter whether the man was full of it at that point; he looked confident enough to lead the public through anything.
The President can't really do anything to turn an economy around -- it takes sea changes on the business level and among the workers, and the 535 idjits in the legislative branch have more pull than the President there. But the President can set the tone, forge an example, urge, exhort, maybe even be something of a cheerleader. FDR did this, and so did Reagan.
Obama's hero Lincoln had a tough go early on. As soon as he was elected, South Carolina pulled out of the Union, followed by 10 other states. And Abe wasn't even sworn in yet. Things were so bad around D.C. that Abe had to be smuggled into the capital to be inaugurated. Quite a bit different from the love fest we saw during this recent inauguration, yes?
The old joke about Washington was that he couldn't blame his predecessor for leaving a mess for him to clean up. He had no predecessor; in fact the Constitution was still a little murky about what to expect from a President. Like, what do you call the guy? Mr. President, or George I? "He could have been the first monarch," Updegrove says. Although George wasn't exactly a man of the people, he wasn't about to wear any crown either. Had he opted for a third term (basically becoming president for life), I'm sure no one would have really minded. But his personal two-term limit created a tradition before FDR broke it, and now that limit is in the Constitution.
Jefferson's presidency was the first one that was really contested (his opponent was that lovable scoundrel Aaron Burr), and the election itself was decided by Congress. Jefferson was also the first chief executive not associated with the Federalist Party, which kicked open the door for the two-party system we still have.
Until President William Henry Harrison died a month into his presidency, Tyler was little more than an afterthought. Instead he was thrust into an unprecedented situation, and no one was sure what he was. Acting President, or the real deal? The Constitution wasn't real clear on that either, so it was up to Tyler to clear things up a bit. "He insisted he was the President," Updegrove says. "That strengthened the presidency."
If you want someone who was ill-prepared to take the job, how about Truman? Let's see ... we were in the mother of all wars. We had this new weapon that would change warfare. Truman didn't have the background. He was vice president for only a couple of months, and he wasn't very tight with his predecessor anyway. Plus there were questions about how to contain the Germanys and Japans in the future. Ol' Harry S. didn't look or sound much like a President. He wasn't real popular during his administration; he had to fight to be elected on his own and went out with an anemic 31 percent approval rating. But let history record that the ol' buckstopper did all right while he was in office -- especially for a guy who was flying blind.
When Kennedy was inaugurated, the Cold War was probably at its frostiest. The hard-line tough guys of the Communist world probably figured JFK as inexperienced, callow, a lot more sizzle than steak -- something Obama can probably relate to here. Kennedy didn't help his own cause much in the early going, though he did take the heat publicly for that train wreck called the Bay of Pigs. The Cuban Missile Crisis of '62 probably pushed us closer to a nuclear exchange than we've ever been, before or since.
In a lot of ways, Ford wasn't really President. He wasn't even elected as VP. Besides his sometimes brain-dead ways, he made sure he would never be elected President by pardoning Richard Nixon. A very unpopular move, but history is looking more kindly at that decision these days. Public trust was at an all-time low then, and the move did bring some closure to Watergate. It pulled one gigantic monkey from our backs. The pardon, Updegrove says, "helped in the healing process ... it put Nixon behind us."
Obama's going to have a rough time, and you can bet the love affair will be over before the year is out. That is, assuming the populace uses the brain rather than the emotions, which can really be a stretch. But he'll have ample opportunity to tick everyone off.
He'll have company here, but at least Secret Service didn't have to smuggle him into D.C.
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