The GOAT in the American presidential arena must go to William Henry Harrison. This is not because of his accomplishments, but for what he didn’t do. He basically did no wrong. On March 4, 1841, he gave the longest inaugural address in history lasting almost two hours. He did this in the bitter cold without a hat or coat, caught pneumonia, and died 31 days later.
During this “killer speech,” he pledged to limit himself to one term. He declared that the power to make laws belonged solely to Congress. He pushed for reform of civil service appointments and argued against the mass firing of government workers to reward political allies. This was common practice under the “Spoils System” of the era. He argued against strict partisanship as this could shift the power away from the people. He promised to limit his veto power for times when proposed legislation was clearly unconstitutional and not just contrary to presidential opinion.
Had President Harrison fulfilled his term and held to his pronounced ideology, he would have been the polar-opposite of Donald J. Trump. He would have been Trump’s doppelganger whose only similarity would be the presidential mantle. Harrison despised the executive tyranny of Andrew Jackson who repeatedly defied the Supreme Court and constitutional norms and pioneered the spoils system of political patronage.
Harrison and Trump have one more similarity beyond their title. They both came from wealthy families and campaigned as rugged, relatable, everyday “men of the people.” Harrison was perhaps the first to create an image-making machine to work against his wealthy Virginia aristocratic origins, to rebrand himself as a humble, frontier-dwelling war hero. His campaign was called “Log Cabin and Hard Cider.”
Trump pulled off his rebranding with anti-establishment rhetoric posing as an existential threat to the political status quo. Unlike Harrison, Trump leveraged his billionaire background as proof he was smart and couldn’t be bought. Little did people know that billionaires are often never satisfied with their obscene wealth and, like other addictions, that thirst for wealth is insatiable. He could be bought, over and over.
The Trump constituency also failed to realize that clever and smart are not interchangeable. A smart person works through complicated problems with logic and reasoning. A clever person looks for short cuts that may work for a time but, as they were fashioned without proper planning, those shortcuts often fall apart over time. A smart person would not have invaded Iran without a strategy to avoid the pitfalls of the Strait of Hormuz.
While William Henry Harris is the GOAT, the question remains, is Donald John Trump the WOAT? He has some heavy competition in James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Franklin Pierce, all of whom were politically pro-slavery. Then there is Warren G. Harding who became synonymous with scandal and corruption.
DJT is not pro-slavery but, for him, a healthy dose of racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism is a good thing. Where DJT fully has the upper hand, is in the scandal and corruption arenas. Harding and his political allies were involved in bribes and interest free loans for the use of naval oil leases, the embezzlement of millions from WWI veterans, kickbacks for construction contracts, black market medical supplies, bribes from bootleggers, and the improper sale of German assets. Such corruption, even allowing for inflation, pales next to the billions the Trump family alone has grifted from the American taxpayers.
On the scandal front, Harding only had two mistresses and one child out of wedlock. Both mistresses were adults. Compared to DJT, Harding gets a Disney PG rating. We need look no further than the Epstein files to show that Trump wins the scandal challenge hands down.
It remains to be seen if DJT can eventually walk away with the presidential title of WOAT but, barring some last minute Anakin Skywalker-Darth Vader reversal of evil intent, I think he has this one in the bag. I’m afraid that this Ebenezer Scrooge could be visited by a hundred and three ghosts and would emerge on Christmas Day stealing the goose, foreclosing on the town, and kicking Tiny Tim down a flight of stairs.
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