The 1948 election wasn't a close one as it turned out. But it did illustrate how the polls can get it wrong, in this case, very wrong.

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Some people consider Warren Harding to be one of the worst presidents ever. I disagree. True, a lot of "scandals" happened on his watch, not because he was personally dishonest, but because he trusted men who were. And sure, he loved the ladies a little too much, and went offside so much that he made Bill Clinton look like a monk. But Harding still ( Read more... )

In 1952, the popular General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president, defeating the professorial Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson by a margin of 442 to 89 in the electoral college. Eisenhower was a popular President in his first term, but showed some vulnerability in his re-election potential after suffering a heart attack near the end of his ( Read more... )

The 1948 election was more of a November Surprise than an October one, but the month of October was pivotal for Harry Truman, as he refused to believe what almost everyone else in the country believed: that the election was a slam dunk for the Republicans. Instead Truman used October to fight back, and his perseverance paid off.

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For a time it looked as if racial equality might be a reality for the former enslaved persons of the deep south, for a very brief time. After the Civil War, and following the election of Ulysses Grant to the Presidency, and the passage of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the federal government and states from denying a citizen's ( Read more... )

In 1940, the Republican Party nominated a candidate who was a wealthy businessman who had never been elected to public office. (Sound familiar?) He was running against a president who was seeking to do something no president had ever done before: win a third term in office.


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Today is the birthday of one of my favorite obscure Presidents, Chester Alan Arthur. He was born on October 5th, probably 1829. (Arthur's tombstone says that he was born in 1830, but his leading biographer Thomas C. Reeves makes a much stronger case for Arthur being born in 1829, which would mean that he was born 195 years ago today).

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It was 202 years ago today, on October 4, 1822, that Rutherford Birchard Hayes, the 19th President of the United States, was born in Delaware, Ohio. Hayes was elected in the closest and most controversial presidential election ever (yes, closer and more controversial than even Bush v. Gore). In his single term he presided over the end of ( Read more... )

On July 23, 1885 (139 years ago today) Ulysses Grant, the 18th President of the United States, died at Mount McGregor, New York, at the age of 63. His love of cigars had caught up with him and throat cancer had claimed another victim.


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Lyndon Johnson was a long time Washington politician who had served in the Senate from 1949 until his inauguration as Vice-President in January, 1961. He had been the Senate Majority Leader and was known as the "Master of the Senate" before becoming Vice-President and he became President of the United States on November 22, 1963, following the ( Read more... )