Welcome to Blogging the Presidents: A Voting While Intoxicated™ Almost Original Series. We will be taking a serious look at the 42 men who have led our country and hopefully finding a few laughable details.
PART XVIII
Sure, he did a lot to win the Civil War, perhaps the greatest military commander in American history (suck on that Washington), but military figures don’t always make great Presidents (I’m looking at you Andrew Jackson). If nothing else, he made it through a full two terms, the first since…Andrew Jackson, with ten presidents in between (on the other hand, five of the first seven lasted two terms, with the Adamses both failing to be re-elected). Interesting enough, Grant ran for a third term, but did not win.
Grant was given a fairly tricky situation, cleaning up Johnson’s mess, and may have been the most racially progressive President at that point since John Quincy Adams (or if you wish, Abe Lincoln). I would suspect that being a military general, and having had African-Americans fight for the Union, he might have gained a different level of respect. Another accomplishment was establishing the first National Park, Yellowstone.
The Panic of 1973 send the country into a depression for the rest of Grant’s second term, a sign of how far our economic understanding, and tools to deal with the challenge, have come. We may not always effectively use these tools, but we at least know what they are. It is less clear that Grant had effective tools.
Though there had been two prior “tricky” elections where no one secured a majority in the Electoral College and thus the election went to the House, in the 1976 election, for the first time other than 2000, the electoral college winner was not the popular vote winner. The Democrat, Samuel Tilden won by 3% in the popular vote, but lost by 1 electoral vote. This led to outrage (rightly so, the electoral college is absurd) but Grant played a crucial role in helping maintain a peaceful transfer to the Republican, who, by Constitutional means had won, assuming no particular fraud.
Finally, under his watch, Colorado, became a state, and a Homestead deed was signed by Grant (or should I say “signed” since I don’t expect the President actually signed them all by hand) for my ancestors in Minnesota. So he’s got a lot going for him on a personal level.
