February 19, 2006
Don't Call It President's Day
By David
M. Shribman
Shout it
from the rooftops: Monday is not Presidents Day. It's Washington's
Birthday.
Only it isn't
Washington's Birthday either, not really. The father of our country
was born on Feb. 22, and Monday is only Feb. 19. What gives?
This February
holiday is a real mess. Back in the middle of the last century,
when Americans didn't hate all their politicians for the mere
character flaw of being politicians, we celebrated two holidays.
Every American schoolchild knew that Abraham Lincoln was born
on Feb. 12 and that Washington's birthday (with the car sales
that made it famous) was 10 days later. Two presidents, two holidays.
Made a lot of sense: the president who helped found the Union,
the president who helped save it.
Then we had
to go and get efficient, which was good for winter business but
which wrung all the poetry out of February.
In 1968,
a year in which virtually nothing good happened, Congress started
to fiddle with the nation's holidays. Unable or unwilling to move
American troops out of Vietnam, and unable or unwilling to move
Americans away from violence, the lawmakers instead started moving
holidays, the idea being that most of them should be on Monday
so as to assure three-day weekends.
Three years
later, with a Republican (Richard M. Nixon) in the White House,
the birthday of the greatest Republican ever (Lincoln) disappeared,
which was an irony and a shame. Nixon himself referred to the
new holiday as Presidents Day, though in law if not in the popular
mind it remained Washington's Birthday, which was an irony and
a shame because by definition the third Monday in February can
never be Feb. 22. Do the math and you will see what I mean. (The
proof for the theorem governing the latest possible date for Washington's
birthday is 7 x 3 < 22.)
Somehow this
horrible Presidents Day name stuck, maybe because, as David Eisenhower
(both the grandson and the son-in-law of a president) put it in
a conversation last week, "This has the air of a pre-emptive
strike to avoid awkward resolutions in Congress to create other
presidential birthday holidays." Chester A. Arthur Day, anyone
(Oct. 5)?
But there
are three problems with the way things are today -- or, rather,
the way things will be on Monday.
Problem No.
1: No proper celebration of Washington, who exemplified several
American ideals, including the notion of the citizen-soldier,
the idea that American presidents shouldn't be royalty, and the
concept that leaders ought to step away from office after a decent
interval. The coupling of restraint and power is a lesson all
of our leaders would do well to learn.
Problem No.
2: No proper celebration of Lincoln, whose humanity and decency
represent the best of America and are a reminder that it is possible,
in the White House as in life, for a leader who makes hard choices
to have a soft heart. Lincoln was always our greatest president,
but Doris Kearns Goodwin's monumental new biography of him in
power is reminding many Americans of why.
Problem No.
3: It's not proper to celebrate mere power. That, essentially,
is what a holiday named Presidents Day does. It honors all presidents,
which, when you think of it, honors the fact of achieving the
presidency more than it honors any achievements in the White House.
Apply that
reasoning, and John Quincy Adams is rewarded and remembered not
for his role in sculpting the Monroe Doctrine (which he did before
he went into office), and not for anything he did in office (like
proposing a high tariff that Southerners would term the Tariff
of Abominations and that would contribute to the crisis of the
Union and the ascendancy of the secessionist ethic), but merely
for sealing a "corrupt bargain" to win the presidency.
Not the stuff of a holiday.
Nor, even
in our zeal to have a day off from work, can we soberly argue
that all presidents deserve honor. James Buchanan surely does
not; he did little to nudge the nation away from civil war and
a lot to nudge it toward armed conflict. Nor Warren G. Harding,
who let the good times roll and the '20s roar but who is a role
model for nobody, unless perhaps you are a contestant in the World
Series of Poker. Nixon is enjoying a bit of a realpolitik renaissance,
but a lot of Americans who were alive during Vietnam and Watergate
will never forgive him. George W. Bush has a long wait for the
verdict of history, but as long as there are early-21st century
Democrats alive, there will be Americans who deplore him.
It's important,
if for nothing else as a cultural lesson to the kids who have
the day off from school, to insist that the mere achievement of
high office or high prestige is not itself worthy of celebration,
even if the climb to office or to a position of prestige was difficult
or ennobling. It is what someone does with that forum that matters.
We remember
President Thomas Jefferson, for example, not for his triumph in
the tough battle of 1800 but for making the Louisiana Purchase
and for commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition. We remember
Franklin Delano Roosevelt not for defeating Herbert Hoover in
1932 but for reviving the nation's spirits, and eventually its
economy, in 1933.
We remember
William Henry Harrison for, well, nothing. He won office, to be
sure, but he died a month after his inauguration. He had an unpretentious
way, a cultivated intelligence and a solid military record. He
was a fine man, but there have been millions of fine men in American
history, and being a fine man doesn't make him deserving of a
holiday, or a fraction of a holiday.
A new Working
Paper (beware that phrase, as you will see as you continue to
read this sentence) prepared by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
concludes that Americans have enjoyed "a dramatic increase
in leisure time" since 1965. The period the Fed economists
examined is eerily congruent with the period since Washington
started ruining the February holidays. No matter. Americans like
a midwinter break, and I'm not here to spoil the fun. Just don't
call it Presidents Day.
Copyright
2006 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
