"Why should the President direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do?"

"If a day of thanksgiving must take place... let it be done by the authority of the several States."

"What lessons could today's leaders learn from [Lincoln]?"

A question posed to University of Wisconsin history prof Stephen Kantrowitz (on the occasion of the release of the Spielberg movie "Lincoln"):

Lincoln learned from experience and grew while in office. Born and raised in a white supremacist society, he believed as late as the fall of 1862 that whites and blacks could not live together as equals and that, if freed en masse, blacks would have to depart the United States. But by the end of his life he came to understand the wartime struggles of slaves and free blacks as morally equivalent to those of the American Revolution, and to imagine a place for African-Americans as equal citizens of the republic. He did not confuse clarity of purpose with rigidity of outlook.

Also at the link, UW film prof Jeff Smith talks about movies about Presidents. What other films about Presidents should there be?

The big surprise is that there has been no biopic about George Washington. If Lincoln does well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jon Meacham’s book, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” get optioned. Jackson’s persona lends itself to screen treatment.  And I have no doubt that Barack Obama will someday be profiled — he has made history, after all.

What's the best portrayal of a President in the movies? Smith says Henry Fonda in "Young Mr. Lincoln," but, as Smith notes, that film doesn't depict Lincoln as President.

The old film, directed by John Ford, has a murder trial at its center: Lincoln’s first real case as a lawyer in Springfield, Ill.

So you can put that film on your list of best depictions of lawyers. Smith notes that like "Young Mr. Lincoln," the new Lincoln movie concentrates on a brief slice of Lincoln's life. But the slice in Spielberg's movie is a grand achievement: the 13th Amendment. The choice of a grand or a little-know incident is going to make a big difference in the type of movie it is, and also Spielberg isn't John Ford. Nevertheless, both Henry Fonda and Daniel Day-Lewis are dreamy.

"Look, if you colonists have been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own."

I didn't write this on my own. In fact, I didn't write it at all. Meade wrote this:

Lord North: Look, if you colonists have been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by colonists and yeomen who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.

George Washington: Without our consent, we reject your taxes.

Lord North: There are a lot of smart people out there in the New World. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking British subjects of the Crown out there.

Thomas Jefferson: Stop coercing us, Lord North. Your Acts are intolerable.

Lord North: If you yankees were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great King somewhere in your life. Some members of Parliament helped to create this unbelievable Royal Navy system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in French and Indian Wars and the East India Company.



Alexander Hamilton: The King is your king. He is only our king by our agreement.

Lord North: If you've got a medical practice or silver smithery or a cabinetmaking business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The printing press didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the printing press so that all the pamphleteers could make money off the printing press.

Sam Adams: Hey, Lord North, shove your Stamp Act where the sun don't set.

Lord North: All right, all right - everybody just calm down. In politics, we all tolerate a certain amount of spin. I understand these are the games that get played in political campaigns. Although when folks just, like, omit entire sentences of what you said, they start kind of splicing and dicing, you may have gone a little over the edge there, you pesky Americans.

"53% of American Adults agree that the United States is a nation with liberty and justice for all..."

Rasmussen learns.

Forty percent (40%) disagree and say the United States is not like that....

Still, 79% of Americans say that if they had a choice to live anywhere in the world, they would still choose to live in the United States. Just 11% disagree, while 10% more are undecided.

For the first time since 2006, more Americans now consider Thomas Jefferson the greatest Founding Father. Thirty-five percent (35%) name Jefferson, the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, as the most important Founder, while 32% feel that way about George Washington.  In a distant third is Benjamin Franklin with 11%, John Adams at 10% and James Madison with just one percent (1%). With the exception of Franklin, the others constitute the first four presidents of the United States.

Most Republicans (56%) and Democrats (58%) believe America is a nation with liberty and justice for all. Adults not affiliated with either political party are evenly divided on this question.

GOP voters are more likely to name Washington as the greatest Founding Father, while Democrats and unaffiliated voters lean more towards Jefferson.

America, love it or leave it. That's the old saying, popular with right-wingers back in the Vietnam era. There was a lefty response — what was it? — America, love it and change it? Something like that.

GOP voters are more likely to embrace the long American tradition and see it in a positive light. It's always been good, always exceptional. The City on a Hill. They pick George Washington.

Democratic voters are more the love it and change it type....



... and that tends to draw you to Jefferson, with the strong association to the revolution — to the Declaration — and not to the Constitution. He was in France when the Constitution was drafted, and his stay there continued until 1789, the year the French Revolution began.

Only after his return to America in 1789 did Jefferson's rhetoric about the revolution become more heated...

The execution of aristocrats by popular tribunals led to nervous arguments in America and Jefferson's famous letter on which he falls into arguing that the revolution's glorious ends justified apocalyptic means: "My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to the cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam & Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than as it now is."...

When Jefferson wrote these words, he did not know that Louis XVI had been executed... By the end of the year... Jefferson concluded that the French people were not yet "virtuous" enough to accept a sudden republicanism after so many years of superstition and despotism and that Louis XVI could have been retained as a limited monarch, thus staving off "those enormities which demoralized the nations of the world, and destroyed, and is yet to destroy, millions and millions of its inhabitants."

What's your American orientation, Washington or Jefferson? Or will you give the 1-percenter his due? I mean James Madison. What would he have had to have done to get more than 1% in that poll?

Now we have photographs of the under-attended, supposed-to-be-huge Obama rally in Ohio.

The whole point was to get dramatic pictures of the awe-struck masses — the youth who adore the dear leader!

Beloved Dictator was never a good campaign theme, and — I love America! — it blessedly doesn't work. Not in the long run. It's tempting to laugh at Obama and his people for thinking they could make it work and for falling on their faces in Columbus, Ohio.

But I'm thinking: Good for us. In America, we don't idolize politicians.

A reading for Sunday morning: "... banish these thoughts from your Mind..."

A letter written to [George Washington] by Colonel Lewis Nicola... detailed the weakness of a republican form of government as they had experienced it, their desire for "mixed government", with him at its head, and their belief that "the title of king" would be objectionable to but few and of material advantage to the country. His reply was peremptory and indignant. In plain terms he stated his abhorrence of the proposal; he was at a loss to conceive what part of his conduct could have encouraged their address; they could not have found "a person to whom their schemes were more disagreeable"; and he charged them, "if you have any regard for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature."

"Oh, it's Presidents Day. Some people have the day off."

My outburst, on glancing at my Twitter feed this morning. Excuse me for not sufficiently valuing the generic President of the United States, but I remember when we knew exactly which day Abraham Lincoln was born on and that it was a different day from the one George Washington was born on. We had Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday, and we paid tribute to them separately and individually. I'm not trying to be an insufferable old fogy here doing a back-in-my-day routine, but without a day off, which I don't have, Presidents Day means nothing to me. It seems to me we talk about Presidents — past, present, and future — every damned day. How about a day when we don't think about the government?

Here's a Talking Heads song: "Don't Worry About the Government."

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Here's a Bob Dylan lyric: "I'm on the pavement, thinking about the government."

"May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths..."

"... and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy."

Gallup: "Americans Say Reagan Is the Greatest U.S. President."

Lincoln comes in second. Third? Bill Clinton!

Obama is 7th, with 5%.

There's a partisan quality to the numbers. If you look at Republicans, it's Reagan, Washington, Lincoln. Democrats' top 3 is: Clinton, Kennedy, Obama. (FDR and Lincoln tie for 4th.) Independents put Lincoln first (and then Reagan, then Clinton). Actually, I think the main thing going on here is people are being asked to come up with the name of a President, and they don't have that many names floating around in their heads. It's always safe to say "Lincoln." Beyond that, they're rooting around in the decades they remember personally.

AND: Set your DVR. It's the big Chris Matthews special, "President of the World: The Bill Clinton Phenomenon": "Bill Clinton's position in the world continues to grow. He's part dignitary, part humanitarian, part politician, part international statesman, and somehow, greater than them all..." Sounds like the old Matthewsian leg is all a-tingle.

"The Top 100 Influential Figures in American History."

I'm going to click through all this, beginning with Herman Melville at #100 — he's "the American Shakespeare." Come with me. #99 is Nixon! Why's Nixon only 99? I know. He's ugly. And we hate him. Have to click to 86 to get to the first woman. It's Mary Baker Eddy, who, of course, influenced health care reform. Another lady at 81. It's Margaret Mead, famous for being had by 3d world pranksters. Nothing more American than that. A woman at 77: Betty Friedan. I never read her book. I thought it was for my parents' generation. My — my my my — generation transcended sex roles. We were star dust, we were golden.

Frank Lloyd Wright is 76. Architects may come and architects may go, and never change your point of view. Not Frank. He'd sock you in the head with a low-hanging roof as soon as look at you. He was from Wisconsin. That's important. So was Georgia O'Keeffe, who might be on this list. She's a woman, you know. 20 bonus points for being a woman? Here's Jane Addams at 64. Another woman. And I, your humble female blogger, would like to register a complaint against my high school speech teacher who rejected my proposal to do a speech on the topic of Jane Addams. He said she wasn't important enough. I used to want to be a social worker.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is 53. The only judge so far. Another woman at 51: Margaret Sanger. (A "thoroughgoing racist" says Jonah Goldberg.) Not too many Presidents. After Nixon, you have to wait until #44 for another President. It's Lyndon Johnson. I call him "LBJ." Works better in rhyming chants. LOL! It's Eleanor Roosevelt at #42. "She used the first lady’s office and the mass media to become 'first lady of the world.'" Women playing the media to focus attention on themselves. Yeah, I guess that's a big deal in American culture. She's responsible for that? All right then. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. #41. The power of novels. Rachel Carson is #39. She saved the eagles... and the mosquitoes. Susan B. Anthony is 38. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is #30. Women's rights. Earl Warren is 29. A second judge. Eisenhower is 28. A third President. Eli Whitney deserves to be 27: "His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery."

John Adams at 25? Come on? Is HBO/David McCullough the arbiter of history? But yeah, he was President. Truman is 21. A 5th President. Man, get a David McCullough biography about you to cement your historical importance. Andrew Jackson is 18. A 6th President. Reagan's 17. That's 7. Theodore Roosevelt is 15. The 8th Prez on the list, and the 2d of what I predict will be 3 Roosevelts. James Madison is 13. The 9th President, a Founding Father. Ulysses S. Grant gets to be 12. A 10th Prez. And he won the war. Woodrow Wilson is #10 and the 11th President on the list. Martin Luther King Jr. is only #8. John Marshall is #7, the 3d judge. Ben Franklin is 6, deservedly. Another Founder at 5: Alexander Hamilton. FDR snags #4 and is the 12th President on the list. Jefferson is #3, so you know who ##1 and 2 are. And Lincoln beats Washington for the top spot. A total of 15 Presidents.

The final count for women was 10. 10 out of 100. (I think.) Fair enough. I'm not going to say there should have been more. If they'd counted femaleness as a plus factor, they'd have had to "plus-factor" a lot of other groups, and they didn't. Not one Native American?! That's politically incorrect.

ADDED: Actually there were a couple more Presidents, Polk and John Quincy Adams. I'm noticing this leaning over Meade's shoulder as he clicks through. Sorry. My effort was studiously haphazard.

Why Did David Brooks sit through an entire dinner with some Republican Senator's hand groping his (Brooks's) inner thigh?

I think the reason Brooks put up with the senatorial hand for so long is that he had decided to see if he could get the goods on the Senator. He was waiting for more, something distinct and reportable. A whispered proposition, perhaps. What a scoop it would be if that hand would scoop his scrotal sac! But this impromptu sting required Brooks to give zero encouragement, and the Senator was (presumably) waiting for a signal. Brooks also failed to nudge the amorous gentleman aside, in the obvious, ordinary way, and therefore, insanely, the 2 men spent the dinner in the silly hand-on-inner-thigh position. What rich comedy!

So Brooks didn't get his scoop, but he did flutter back to his NYT perch and peck out a column about dignity that a lot of Times readers seemed to love. (It topped the "most emailed" list for a while.) He expatiated about the good old days when men like George Washington displayed their thighs in tight silk knickers... I mean displayed high standards of dignity. But there is still hope, he tells us:

[I]t’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism because there is the fact of President Obama. Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

Yes, yes, there is the fact of President Obama. The fact of President Obama stirs hope in our loins. That man is the very embodiment of dignity and —d'oh! — there he is exemplifying looking at a girl's ass!

Justine Lai paints herself having sex with each of the Presidents, beginning with George Washington.

"I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated."

"I think I’m closer to Benjamin Franklin than to George Washington..."

"I’m a contributor to my country and to my times. If it turns out that there’s a moment when it makes sense to run, then I’ll run. But if I end up never being able to run, then it won’t devastate me."

Deep Glamour interviews Manolo (the shoe-blogger).

Manolo tells us what makes shoes glamorous, what makes Manolo glamorous, how to make the glamorous conversation, and so forth. Manolo keeps himself glamorous in part by hiding his real persona. But I suspect he's a lawyer. Look at his definition of glamour:

Glamour is the peculiar and elusive characteristic that combines, in unspecified and unspecifiable proportions, the qualities of charisma, style, beauty, desirability, confidence, rarity, and mysteriousness. In fact, it is almost impossible to fully define what makes something glamorous. As with the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of obscenity, we have trouble defining glamour, but know it when we see it.

And I think I know lawyers when I see them... always fawning over Potter Stewart. (Potter wasn't glamorous. Who are the glamorous Supreme Court Justices? Other than John Roberts.)

Manolo thinks George Washington is glamorous:

Tall, handsome, wealthy, mysterious, and possessed of real charisma. This is the test of true glamour: If your countrymen wish to make you king, you are probably glamorous. If you then refuse to be made king, you are indisputably glamorous.

I meant is. Not was. The next question is "Can glamour survive?," and of course, the answer is yes. Some of the most glamorous people are dead. And, as Manolo says, citing Marilyn Monroe, "dying young is the surest way of maintaining one's glamour indefinitely."

Ah, but to be glamorously old. Do that well. That's impressive.

I call Barack Obama to account for picking another bland, midwestern pretty boy.

(This is assuming the choice is Evan Bayh.)