Presidents

The 1840 presidential election featured the slogan, “Tippicanoe and Tyler too!”. Tippicanoe referring to presidential candidate William Henry Harrison. Must have been a good slogan since they won. Harrison was an old man who talked too long in the wrong weather and died a month into his term without doing anything. That’s where the controversy among historians lay.

“I say that he’s a non-entity as far as a historical figure. he didn’t do anything so he doesn’t bear any consideration”, said the eminent historian Wilbur Classic.

“I say that’s his very greatness. There are no controversies surrounding his Presidency, What other President can claim that”, argued Professor Theodore Tango.

“He didn’t do anything because he spent his whole Presidency in a coma!”, countered Dr. Donothing.

“Then you agree with my statement”, responded Tango.

“It was the election of Lincoln that set off the Civil War. The South so feared him as an abolitionist that they felt they had to dissolve the union”, Wilbur Classic told the panel of historians.

“It was dissolving the union that caused the war. Lincoln wouldn’t have sent troops into the South otherwise”, argued Professor Theodore Tango.

“Oh, I don’t know. He had a lot of mental and emotional problems. He might have done it as a preemptive strike”, countered Dr. Donothing.

“You’re the one with mental and emotional problems if you believe that. Jeez, he only wanted the South to remain in the Union on general principles. It’s not like the South amounted to anything but a bunch of elitists, dirtpoor rednecks and slaves”, replied Professor Theodore Tango.

“Then I propose that Lincoln was, as they say, a dummy”, Wilbur Classic told the panel.

“Dummy? What sort of word is that to use here at Harvard?”, replied Professor Theodore Tango.

“Franklin Deleano Roosevelt was a confidence man, tricking the voters into thinking he had answers to the economic disaster when he didn’t have any idea what should be done. In fact, the depression got worse under him and it wasn’t until Adolf Hitler started his war-like actions that the depression ended”, said the eminent historian Wilbur Classic.

“Yes, a case could be made for that, I suppose. You seem to be saying that, historically speaking, FDR lucked out”, replied Dr. Donothing.

“I object to that!”, Professor Theodore Tango heatedly exclaimed. “The use of a term such as ‘lucked-out’ lowers the standards of this panel. He simply was the right man in the right place at the right time”.

“The 1952 election was a certainty from the time Eisenhower announced. It was a personal victory for him. Plus, the country had just elected the Democrats in five straight elections”, said the eminent historian Wilbur Classic.

“I believe the country needed a rest after the Great depression, The New Deal, World War Two and the Soviet threat. In that, Eisenhower was a very good, if not, in fact, a great President”, added Dr. Donothing.

“Ike was an old fuddy-duddy who accomplished nothing unless you count Richard Nixon as an accomplishment”, snorted Professor Theodore Tango.

“Id say, and my studies bear this out, that Kennedy was helped more by gaining Catholic voters than he was hurt by losing anti-Catholic voters”, said the eminent historian Wilbur Classic.

“Well, of course you’d say that. It was your study that got published. That doesn’t make you right. Most Catholics were going to vote for him because he was a Democrat. He had to put someone like LBJ on the ticket to off-balance that”, argued Professor Theodore Tango.

“Off-balance? What’s that mean, off-balance. He simply chose a Southerner to offset his being a Northeasterner. That’s a common practice”, argued Professor Theodore Tango.

“No, putting a crude man like Lyndon Johnson on a ticket with an urbane, sophisticated man like Kennedy was an attempt to win a landslide victory”, said the eminent historian Wilbur Classic.

“This is the John F. Kennedy School of Political Science. You shouldn’t slander Kennedy...unless you have a long-term contract”, Professor Theodore Tango mentioned.