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 XXIII
Americans sure do love political dynasties. Benjamin Harrison was the great-grandson of a former Governor (of Virginia), grandson of a former President (William Henry), and son of a U.S. Representative (of Ohio) who would become a Senator from Indiana and eventually that state’s only President so far.
Attacked as a tax-and-spend liberal, it was under Harrison that the federal government had its first billion dollar budget. For comparison, the 2010 budget will be about $3.6 trillion owing to inflation and an expanded federal governmental role. The Democrats used this (alleged) profligacy against him, leading to defeat in his re-election bid. I guess some things never change, conservatives seem to always have shocking success with cries of fiscal irresponsibility that don’t add up.
As a Senator, he was part of a government trying to figure out what to do with a budget surplus. The Democrats wanted to cut tarrifs (we’ll call this the Bush approach) while Republicans wanted to invest it in pensions and education improvements in the South and such socially minded things, feeling that education of former slaves was essential to equality. He also opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in opposition to his party. Not a bad term in office.
Tariffs were a major issue then (as they are in a sense now), and my free-trade instincts would be against tariffs, but Harrison made a reasonable push to at least tie tariffs rates to the actions of trade partners.
More notably, the Sherman Antitrust Act passed during his Administration, a significant if not crucial piece of legislation moving forward.
There was not too much else of interest, though it is interesting to note that Harrison was second only to George Washington in the number of states admitted to the union under his watch.
