Welcome to Blogging the Presidents: A Voting While Intoxicated™ Almost Original Series. We will be taking a serious look at the 43 men who have led our country and hopefully finding a few laughable details.
PART XX
America’s first cat president…and boy he did love lasagna. Oh, he’s not that Garfield?
Garfield was the second President to be assassinated, only being in office for a few months, so like William Henry Harrison, he leaves us little to evaluate him on. His nomination for President was under unusual circumstances, a late ballot compromise candidate for the Republicans, split between other candidates. This rift, and his ensuing attempt to satisfy the various factions, but failing to please them, basically engulfed the entirety of his Presidency.
Garfield’s assassination was at the hands of a member of one of these factions, unhappy over his snubbing for a position he was not qualified for. A backer of Vice President Arthur, suspicions abound, though that might be a topic for the next entry into this series.
Interesting factoid, Alexander Graham Bell invented a metal detector in order to find a bullet lodged in Garfield, however, as Garfield was on a metal-frame bed, it did not function properly. If not for the grave consequences, it would be a little funny that you’ve got a genius like Bell overlooking the metal bed-frame as a cause of the problem.
