Today is Presidents Day, a Federal Holiday which merged the birthdays of the generally acknowledged two greatest Presidents in U.S. history, Presidents Washington and Lincoln. Indeed, it's hard to find any who compare to them in any fashion.
It's also a holiday that mostly isn't. Most people in the US don't get it off as ignoring holidays of all kinds has become an American thing. People don't take their vacations and they don't take off most of the civil holidays.
Christopher Columbus, who was added to the US civil holiday list when the Federal Government basically wanted to grant that Italian Americans were part of the nation in full. My prediction is that he'll come back off the civil holiday list in the near future.
Indeed, some of the civil holidays have now faded into obscurity or even controversy. The US recognizes ten Federal Holidays, three of which are actually religious holidays that are deeply ingrained in our culture, those being Christmas, New Years and Thanksgiving.* The other Federal Holidays are Martin Luther King Day (Equality Day in Wyoming), Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Columbus Day and Veterans Day. In at least my experience, people get all of the holidays off that were originally religious ones, but of the others, they only get Independence Day off as a rule. Quite a few law offices, FWIW, do get Veterans Day off recently. Columbus Day is not only rarely observed as a civil holiday anymore, it actually sparks protests by Native Americans or people who claim to support Native Americans.
The barely remembered President Millard Fillmore, whom nobody has proposed giving his own day.
Lincoln and Washington, for their part, were really great men, which doesn't make them perfect. When this day was renamed and made into a single holiday it probably should have retained both of their names, such as in Washington-Lincoln Day. A day named Presidents Day cheapens the day by lumping all of the Presidents together and thereby bringing along all the baggage that is associated with the office.
Jimmy Carter, who is a really nice guy, but who was a really ineffective President.
Of course, while not knowing it for sure, I suspect that part of the reason the day was renamed and collectively grouped is that, as time goes on, various people regard other Presidents as sufficiently great to merit their own day. Theodore Roosevelt is regarded as a great President by many, although he never faced the sets of problems that Washington and Jefferson did. Some regard his cousin Franklin Roosevelt as a great President, and FDR did man the helm during the Great Depression and most of World War Two, troubling times to say the least. In recent years I've heard mention of Ronald Reagan, who again never faced crises like this, but who did bring to an end the period of frightening inflation and whose strategy in regard to the Soviet Union helped bring it to an end. At least Gutzon Borglum thought Thomas Jefferson sufficiently great to include both him, and Theodore Roosevelt, in his masterpiece at Mount Rushmore.
All of which probably should serve to remind us that all of our Presidents have been men, as in human beings, and we've had our share of duds. Moreover, they were all flawed in various ways, some more so than others. Latter day critics and hagiographers should consider that before being too laudatory or condemnatory.
Jefferson at age 78.
Washington, like his Mount Rushmore fellow, kept slaves. Both men appear to have realized it was morally wrong, but they were sufficiently weak in character to be unable to free their desire to retain their wealth from participating in what they knew to be a moral travesty. Washington only freed his slaves upon his death. Jefferson didn't even do that, and as we know, his relationship with one of his female slaves was deeply weird.
Black Hawk.
People rarely throw stones at tragic Lincoln, but I suspect its only a matter of time. He was a militia officer during the Black Hawk War which puts him in the same camp as the vast majority of Americans of his time in being comfortable with the conquering of the continent from its native peoples and the basic destruction of their culture. Endless such examples could be found.
Andrew Johnson, the first of three American Presidents to be impeached. . .and the only one to hold that distinction until quite recently.
And in this day in our own history, in which national politics are in a period of deep stress and extreme polarization, it's easy to forget that lots of people absolutely detested prior Presidents and that this isn't unique to our own era.
Washington was reviled while he was in office by a section of the population. Jefferson had more than a few critics. Lincoln was so unpopular with thirteen southern states that they attempted to leave the Union and pitched the country into the worst war of its history, something that hasn't come close to being repeated since. Quite a few people thought Theodore Roosevelt a really dangerous radical and more than a few inside the Republican hierarchy thought he was nuts. Frankly Roosevelt was initially widely distrusted by many Republicans. And I can personally recall Reagan being detested among the college set when I was in college.
Indeed, part of the reason I think the recent shock at the acrimony that now exists in politics is around is that people have forgotten that the periods of more or less decent respectful behavior in politics are interrupted by periods of the opposite. In our own case, the long shadow of World War Two and the immediate sorting out of the early Cold War operated to keep the lid on extremism for a long time. By the late 1950s the GOP wanted the country to forget that it isolationism had contributed to the onset of World War Two and the Democrats wanted people to forget that a lot of the accusations levied at it in the McCarthy era about Democratic administrations being penetrated by Soviet spies were correct. Both parties agreed on a lot in that period out of necessity.
That started to unravel in the 1960s but even as late as the 1990s there were still a lot of older politicians around who retained roots in that period. There were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Now, the conservative Democrats don't exist and have been basically driven out of the party and the GOP is in a struggle between a conservative branch and populist branch. Politics started getting weird during the Clinton Administration and they seemingly have become more strained with each election.
Which may mean that this holiday can serve to remind us that the period of acrimony will end.
That is, if anyone actually observes the day.
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*Contrary to what Americans believe, other nations don't recognize many more civil holidays than we do. The United Kingdom recognizes fewer, there being eight, and France one more, eleven.
Of interest France, which is often noted as being "secular", includes four religious holidays on that calendar, those being Christmas, Ascension, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and All Saints Day. The UK effectively includes three those being Christmas, Boxing Day and Easter Monday.
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