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On this President's Day

• Feb 19, 2007 Posted by Jeff Tiell

  On this President’s Day, who is your favorite president? Take a moment to think about that and then write back so we can all see. For me, it’s Abraham Lincoln – hands down.

   

  Of course, there have been many U.S. presidents I admire. And there have been some I could do without. How about you?

   

  Lincoln, for me, was the most special. Yes, one can cite chapter and verse his leadership during the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address not to mention other achievements.

   

  But what emerges most for me is his personal strength in the face of enormous adversity – and I don’t just mean the Civil War. Indeed, his story, as we all know, was not one of an easy journey. History books tell us that he suffered some kind of melancholy; he had to weather the storm of his child’s death while in The White House; he lost multiple elections before getting to The White House; he barely made it to his second term as president.

   

  His achievements, as we know them today, were not readily apparent back then.

   

  So, here we are on this President’s Day as we watch the next presidential contest begin. The candidates are aggressively jockeying for position, endorsements, and donations – long before they will ever ask anyone for a single vote.

   

  On this President’s Day, I wonder what potential do these individuals hold? What standards should we apply to them? What personal journey will they be on? If Lincoln were to run today, he probably would not make it given our emphasis on packaging and the like. What, if anything, should that tell us about any of the current candidates? About ourselves?

   

  Lincoln’s journey was made up of seemingly endless ups and downs. Through it all, he somehow kept on going. He engaged his rivals and often won their admiration; he gained the respect and devotion of the men who made up the Union Army, even while they themselves endured enormous hardship.

   

  Somehow Lincoln kept persevering. He must have had a keen sense of what he valued and was important to him; and he must have held enough humility to hear the voices of others and to know when to engage them and to examine his own path. If this holds any truth, then what should we be thinking about today?

   

  More to the point, on this President’s Day, who is your favorite president?

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• Yet to Come...
  Feb 19, 2007 | Valerie Dale | valerie_dale@yahoo.com 

  I think my favorite president is yet to come. The past 5 years have seen the unraveling of so many essential threads of our democracy; our rights to privacy, our right to free speech, our extension of rights to those at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, to name just a few. Our beacon of freedom and leadership in the global community has dimmed. But always I have faith and hope in our American spirit, in our national character, to work our way out of the darkness and back into the light. I believe there is a man right now, who if elected, will be able to lead our labors to regain who we were and to better our national (and international) character. Happy President's Day!

• Favorite President???
  Feb 19, 2007 | Richard Puffer | dpuffer@coker.edu 

  I was about to write it is easier to decide you most un-favorite but that is not true either. Since there are no rules about having to choose I am going with a few:

  Washington -- it is his legacy upon which all others build and when the decision had to be made, he said -- the presidency is the people's and he went back to the farm. That saved our Republic because there were many wanting to crown him.

  Lincoln -- for all the reasons Rich noted though there was a down side to the way some of the individual freedoms were relegated to the back burner -- which, for me, is as scary as war.

  Roosevelt(s) -- both. They personified leadership and set a high bar for the leadership traits we expect from our presidents.

  Eisenhower -- He was able to stop the Korean conflict before it became a world war. He was able to help not only the U.S. but Europe get back on an economic footing that gave us some unprecedented quality of life over the past few decades -- and he warned us very clearly about special interests who have no interest in our interests.

  Johnson -- he opened the country for all with support of the Civil Rights acts nearly 100 years after it should have been done in the first place and he had the personal guts to say he could not run again because of his wrong war decisions. That type of personal accountability has been missing a great deal since...

  And, I like and liked the first President Clinton but his failure to fess up put a stain on his presidency (pun intended).

  We ask a great deal of our presidents. My major hope as we struggle through what will be a year-long election is that we remember in November 2008 that there are a significant number of GOOD people who are sacrificing to help us, help ourselves again become the world's beacon. Let's try to throw the mud back in the face of the mudslingers and stick to the questions that will make a difference for us, our children, our neighbors and our the rest of the village we call "the World."

• Jimmy Carter
  Feb 19, 2007 | Tanya Renne | tanya@orchidsuites.net 

  You've got the advantage over me given your history knowlehde but I'd say of presidents in recent memory (forgetting Bill Clinton's amazing rhetorical gifts) Jimmy Carter has my vote for his passion and resilience in working to understand the bring authentic engagement to issues.

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