President’s Day Is About Making Money

If corporate America could find a way to justify having Christmas, New Year, and Thanksgiving fall on a Monday, they would do it in a minute. The truth is, they would do anything to increase their already bloated profits.

When this author was a young man, many years ago, in elementary school, he and his peers were proud to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12, and President Washington’s birthday on February 22. Students had studied enough history to know that they both deserved to be honored. President Lincoln saved the Union and made slavery a crime. President Washington, the first president, led the nation to victory in the Revolutionary War.

Americans no longer celebrate these two great men. Their birthdays have been forgotten, lumped together with the other forty-four presidents. Capitalistic society decided to create another three-day weekend, and there is now President’s Day.

This author has a big problem with this change. Lincoln and Washington deserved to be honored. However, the majority of the nation’s presidents do not. They were failures: mistakes made by American voters.

I remember 13 presidents. I was born while Truman was still in the White House, but my first memory was in 1956 when I was 10 years old. I watched the second nomination of Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Republican Convention. I was hooked on politics: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This author can tell you one thing if he were to grade each of these 13 men, not one of them would receive an “A.”

Throughout history, the discussion of who were the worst presidents continued until 2021. There is no doubt that Donald Trump will always be the worst. It can be no other. No other president committed such a large number of Constitutional violations and was impeached twice for his crimes. No other president refused to lead his people in the fight to save lives after he was warned about the threat of an approaching pandemic. No other president intentionally divided the nation’s people for his own advantage. No other president organized and executed a failed coup, attempting to overthrow a democratic election.

However, there will forever be a battle for second-worst. This author knows his own choice, which will remain private, based on one thing: “What did he do or not do for the people of our country,” his primary purpose.

In this author’s lowly opinion, only three of the men who wore the title of President of the United States deserve a grade of excellent, once again, based on their efforts to improve the lives of all Americans.

The greatest presidents were not Washington or Jefferson: both men owned slaves, and therefore failed their primary directive. This author would have considered America’s second president, John Adams, one of the greatest. However, he did not trust the opinions of the American people. He was an elitist. He was under consideration because he did not choose to own slaves, and his service was highly respected.

The disturbing truth is that over 25 percent, 12, of the chief executives owned slaves.

The greatest president was undoubtedly Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From 1932, until his death in 1945, Mr. Roosevelt focused on the needs of the American people. Among his greatest achievements was the Social Security Act, signed into law on Aug. 14, 1935.

Over the 75 years this author has been alive, he has observed many situations where older Americans would have become homeless without their monthly Social Security checks. Having chosen careers in life that did not offer adequate retirement benefits, this situation includes myself and my wife. We have no other income than Social Security.

Although President Roosevelt opposed American involvement in WWII, he prepared the nation for the possibility. After the cowardly attack

on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, the nation was forced to engage the “Axis of Evil,” and the military efforts were paramount in the defeat of Germany and Japan.

He will forever be referred to as “the people’s president.” Especially unique and likely never to be repeated in the 21st century.

Nearly a tie for the greatest president of all is, of course, Abraham Lincoln. His fight to save the Union was undoubtedly the primary reason the nation continues to celebrate today’s holiday. His signing of the Emancipation Proclamation began the fight for equality for all Black men, women, and children.

This author can only imagine what Mr. Lincoln might have accomplished during a second term if his life had not been shortened by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865.

This leaves only one other consideration: Theodore, “Teddy” Roosevelt.

A cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Teddy” began the protection of the nation’s national resources. Serving his country between 1901, and 1909, his many accomplishments included expanding the powers of the presidency and of the federal government in support of the public interest during clashes between big business and labor. He steered the nation toward an active role in world politics, particularly in Europe and Asia. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, and he secured the route and began construction of the Panama Canal.

American presidents are historically flawed. Many focused on their personal agendas and not the welfare of the nation’s people. When Americans honor all of them on a single day in February, we ignore those who are deserving of praise and respect. I may be alone, but I find it reprehensible that this holiday was created for the sole purpose of enhancing the bank accounts of the nation’s millionaires and billionaires.

“The Truth Lives Here”

Op-ed by James Turnage
Edited by Jeanette Vietti

Sources:

Britannica: Theodore Roosevelt’s Achievements; by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
USA Today: Who does Presidents Day honor? (Washington? Lincoln?); by Mike Snider
History: How Many U.S. Presidents Owned Enslaved People?; by Evan Andrews

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