First Ladies

40th Anniversary Of Gerald Ford Becoming President: A Blessing For The Nation!

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It has been 40 years since Gerald Ford became President, upon the resignation of our most dangerous President, Richard Nixon, due to his impending impeachment and trial in Congress, based on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice in the Watergate Scandal.

The 25th Amendment, only ratified and added to the Constitution in 1967, allowed Ford, who had replaced the corrupt Vice President Spiro Agnew, to become our 38th President.

Ford helped to end the great national nightmare of a corrupt President and a corrupt Vice President. He was the right man for the time, well liked and well respected, and not ambitious to be President. All Ford had wanted to do in his 25 year career in the House of Representatives was to become Speaker of the House.

Suddenly thrust into the responsibilities of the Presidency, Ford showed courage and guts in his selection of Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President; the pardoning of Richard Nixon, which probably helped to defeat him in a close race for the Presidency in 1976 with Jimmy Carter; his handling of the Mayaguez Affair with Cambodia, which save captured hostages; and his brilliant appointment of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.

Ford knew how to cross the aisle, and make friends of rivals, including President Carter, with the two men becoming fast friends once Carter left office, and with Carter giving the eulogy at Ford’s funeral in 2006.

Ford also gave us one of the greatest First Ladies in American history in Betty Ford, and his moderate conservatism is what one would wish for now from the much further right wing Republican Party of 2014.

It is well worth a visit to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to the Ford Presidential Museum, as this author and blogger did a year ago, which caused him to gain growing respect for the 38th President of the United States, who showed up at the precisely proper time when the Presidency itself was under attack!

John F. Kennedy And Barack Obama Comparisons

Ronald 14 Comments

The more one studies John F. Kennedy and witnesses the Presidency of Barack Obama, the more one can see comparisons.

Both John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama represented new directions in the office of the Presidency. The following comparisons can be made between the 35th President and the 44th President.

Both of these Presidents represented a revolutionary change, with Kennedy being the first Catholic President and Obama being the first African American President.

Both of these Presidents faced the vehement opposition of the Southern states, although both won key states in the South and had most of their opposition from the “deep” South.

Both of these Presidents were charismatic and great orators of their visions.

Both of these Presidents had young children in the White House years.

Both of these Presidents had very attractive First Ladies, who added a lot to their Presidencies.

Both of these Presidents dealt with the issue of civil rights, with Kennedy focused on race and Obama on sexual orientation controversies.

Both of these Presidents engendered great hatred and were considered dangerous to the nation by critics, and the number of assassination threats grew dramatically.

Both of these Presidents had a Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson and Joe Biden, with a reputation of being exceptional legislators who knew how to get things done in Congress.

Both of these Presidents were young, and offered new hope for a new generation.

Both of these Presidents faced major challenges, Kennedy with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Obama with finding Osama Bin Laden.

Both of these Presidents faced tough times dealing with the Soviet Union under Kennedy, and the Russian Federation under Obama.

Both of these Presidents emphasized the need for health care as an important federal goal, with Kennedy unable to accomplish Medicare, but Obama able to accomplish ObamaCare, with conservatives being the crucial opposition in both situations.

Both of these Presidents promoted the concept of peace as a goal, rather than war, with Kennedy attempting moves toward ending the Cold War, and Obama attempting moves to end the war on Terrorism.

Both of these Presidents appealed to our better natures, rather than the lowest common denominator.

Both of these Presidents attempted to fight poverty and promote the middle class as the way to progress for society.

Both of these Presidents became models for young people, and gave them hope in a better America and a better world, as they were seen in an idealistic manner as overcoming cynicism common in both eras.

With Obama having about three years to go, and with constant, persistent death threats, it is hoped and prayed for that he will finish his term unharmed, and avoid the tragedy of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Let all of us wish him the best!

First Lady Poll On Presidents Day

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A Siena College poll has ranked First Ladies and their historic role as we celebrate Presidents Day.

The highest ranking in order are:

Eleanor Roosevelt
Abigail Adams
Jacqueline Kennedy
Dolley Madison
Michelle Obama
Hillary Clinton
Lady Bird Johnson
Betty Ford
Martha Washington
Rosalynn Carter

Laura Bush, Pat Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower, and Bess Truman were all judged to have played an inadequate role as First Lady, although many First Ladies stayed in the background, and only since the 1960s has the role expanded, with the earlier major exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, who stands way above the rest of the list.

Surprisingly, Mary Todd Lincoln, Lucy Hayes, Frances Cleveland, Edith Roosevelt, Helen Taft, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, Grace Coolidge, and Barbara Bush were not listed as among the most influential, while one could argue that at least Edith Bolling Galt WIlson and Barbara Bush belonged in the top ten, more so than Martha Washington and Dolley Madison.

Most Influential First Ladies In American History

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The role of First Lady, the wife of the President, has evolved over time, and in recent decades, it has been extremely difficult for a First Lady to conduct herself as Jane Pierce or Bess Truman did, which was, basically, to avoid the public spotlight and any major duties.

First Ladies have had their own causes in recent decades, and a few earlier First Ladies had a major impact on their times and their husbands.

So if we were to list 15 First Ladies who had a major role in American history, we would list the following in a chronological list:

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams
Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison
Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham :Lincoln
Lucy Webb Hayes, wife of Rutherford B. Hayes
Frances Folsom Cleveland, wife of Grover Cleveland
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, second wife of Woodrow Wilson
Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy
Lady Bird Johnson, wife of Lyndon B. Johnson
Betty Ford, wife of Gerald Ford
Rosalynn Carter, wife of Jimmy Carter
Nancy Reagan, wife of Ronald Reagan
Barbara Bush, wife of George H. W. Bush
Hillary Clinton, wife of Bill Clinton
Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama

If one was asked to list the five most powerful and significant First Ladies in ranked order, a good list would be as follows:

Eleanor Roosevelt
Hillary Clinton
Betty Ford
Lady Bird Johnson
Michelle Obama

This author welcomes discussion of the lists mentioned above!

Centennial Of Gerald Ford’s Birth: A Time To Honor Our 38th President!

Ronald 3 Comments

Today is the centennial of President Gerald Ford’s birth, and a moment to celebrate and honor our 38th President.

Gerald Ford will never go down as a great, near great, or above average President, being ranked right in the middle of our 43 Presidents, but he made a vast difference to our nation.

Gerald Ford demonstrated decency, humanity, courage, conviction, and decisiveness when such attributes were needed.

Gerald Ford became President by accident, having had no desire or ambition to be President, but steadying the ship of state after the Watergate Scandal led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Thank goodness the nation had found out about the corruption and venality of Vice President Spiro Agnew, forcing his resignation, and the implementation of the 25th Amendment, just passed and ratified six years earlier.

Nixon picked Ford as Agnew’s successor due to his popularity with both his Republican colleagues and the respect and high regard that he was held in by the opposition Democrats, who controlled both houses of Congress.

Ford had served 25 years in the House of Representatives from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and had been the Republican leader in the House for nearly nine years, when he was tapped for the Vice Presidency.

Ford had always had the ambition to become Speaker of the House one day, if only the Republicans were to gain control of the House, which they did not do for 40 years from 1955-1995.

Ford had to “walk on eggs” for the eight months of his Vice Presidency, being there to help Nixon but not be too closely associated with him, and he acted totally in an appropriate manner.

Gerald Ford was a likeable “regular guy”, and graced us with his First Lady, Betty Ford, a truly elegant woman who dignified and added to the role of First Ladies during her two years and five months as a woman of principle, courage, and openness not typical of most earlier First Ladies.

Gerald Ford served only two years, five months and eleven days, a total of 895 days in the Oval Office, the fifth shortest duration of any occupant in the Presidency, with shorter terms of Warren G. Harding, Zachary Taylor, James Garfield, and William Henry Harrison.

Ford faced tough challenges with the decision to pardon Richard Nixon; The Mayaguez Affair with Cambodia; the difficult Recession of 1974-1975, the worst since the Great Depression; the challenge for the 1976 Republican Presidential nomination by former Governor Ronald Reagan; and the difficult election campaign against former Governor Jimmy Carter.

Ford also faced the unbelievable threat of two assassination attempts within seventeen days in September 1975, fortunately ducking bullets twice in an heroic manner.

Ford stood out as a moderate conservative who always could work across the aisle with his rivals, the Democrats, something that would not be admired today by the Tea Party Movement element which has damaged the heritage, tradition and future of the Republican Party.

If Gerald Ford were here today, he would be shocked at the social conservatism of the religious Right and the venal attacks on Barack Obama by conservative ideologues, and would probably not be accepted in the GOP of 2013 as legitimate!

Gerald Ford outlived Ronald Reagan by six weeks, and remains, as of now, our longest lived President, and it is appropriate to wish him a happy 100th birthday!

And I am thrilled to announce that later this week, I will be visiting the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with my younger son, and am thrilled that the timing is such as to coincide with the Centennial of Gerald Ford’s birth! I am looking forward to learning more about the historical contributions of our 38th President, who deserves our respect and thanks!

The 2016 Presidential Campaign Has Begun: The Massive Assault On Hillary Clinton

Ronald 6 Comments

For anyone who wonders when the Presidential Election campaign of 2016 will begin, it is now clear that it has begun this month, May 2013, with the Republican Party unwilling to change its image, policies or beliefs, and setting out to destroy the candidate who is favored by 65 percent of the American people, former First Lady, US Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton!

Hillary Clinton is accustomed to massive assaults on her character, her ethics, her public record, as she became the most attacked First Lady in American History, with possibly the exception of Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who like Hillary Clinton, represented a fundamental set of principles and values that terrified conservatives and Republicans in the 1930s, and again in the 1990s.

So Hillary Clinton, a very tough lady, must decide if she is willing to take the heat, venom, poison, and utter contempt that she will have visited on her over the next three and a half years. Her husband was vilified from DAY ONE, and yet managed to produce a record far superior to earlier or later Bush Presidencies.

Hillary Clinton, if she decides ultimately to run for the White House, will have to deal, also, with the reality that when and if she becomes President, she will not have a restful day, but that is par for the course, as it was for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and now Barack Obama.

But as long as the American people continue to see her as the first woman President, who see her as a visionary who will fight the good fight against the Right Wing hate machine on Capitol Hill, on Talk Radio, and on Fox News Channel, as well as powerful pressure groups that work against the interests of the masses of the American people, she will triumph and make the Republicans like it, and if they do not, she will have the personality to condemn them openly, and not be as “nice” as Obama has been, to his own detriment!

A Rare Moment: Five Presidents And Five First Ladies Photographed Together!

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For those of us who are Presidential junkies, the only time we see a group of Presidents and First Ladies together in public is at openings of Presidential libraries, and at funerals of Presidents and First Ladies.

Since these do not happen very often in either regard, today’s gathering of five Presidents and five First Ladies at the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library at the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, was an exciting moment, no matter how one feels about the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Seeing Jimmy Carter looking hale and hearty; George H. W. Bush in a wheelchair in obviously poor health although only being less than four months older than Carter; Bill Clinton his usual talkative, charismatic self; George W. Bush being very positive, despite the clear cut failures of his time in office; and Barack Obama, always good with saying the right things, was fascinating!

Seeing Rosalynn Carter and Barbara Bush looking good, considering their advanced age; Hillary Clinton looking ready to run for President any time now; Laura Bush being her usual sweet self; and Michelle Obama looking always as an elegant lady, was also very inspiring!

Of course, Nancy Reagan, while not mentioned, was absent, as she is in her early 90s and not in good health.

And we saw the two daughters of Lyndon Johnson and of Richard Nixon, along with the daughter of Gerald Ford, but no other Presidential children, other than the two daughters of George W. Bush, of course! But only Michael Reagan, the adopted son of Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, was present, not the son and daughter of Nancy Reagan, Ron Jr. and Patti. And neither was Caroline Kennedy, or the other children of Gerald Ford, and none of the children of Jimmy Carter, or the Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea!

In any case, for those who are into photographs of a group of Presidents or First Ladies, today was a very good day!

The End Of The Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign

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The boom for Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the United States has been derailed permanently by the news that her concussion, suffered a few weeks ago, led to a blood clot behind her right ear, between her skull and her brain.

This wonderful woman has worn herself out, setting an all time record for travel for a government official in any position, nearly a million miles in four years. It is hard to imagine any business man or woman having traveled as much, and certainly, not worldwide, as Hillary has done.

Hillary is now 65, and needs a long period of rest and recreation to recover from this dangerous medical condition, and for her to imagine herself running for President after this event would require her to be suicidal in nature!

Retiring from the State Department, Hillary Clinton can pursue a more relaxed life of being a famous public citizen, and she can write her memoirs of her recent years in public life since being First Lady; can deliver well paid speeches all over the nation, but at a relaxed pace; join her husband’s Clinton Initiative and do good for human rights around the world; and enjoy whatever number of grandchildren daughter Chelsea produces over the coming years!

For her to decide to go through the “living hell” of campaigning for two years or more; coming under constant attack by fellow Democrats and, more significantly, Republicans (who have a long history of attacking the Clintons in the most vicious manner, often forgotten as the years have gone by); then facing the torment of the fall campaign, with non stop campaigning and dissection by the news media; and then facing the stresses and burdens of the Presidency from age 69 to 73 or 77—this would be enough to shorten her life considerably, and increase the chances of her death in office, if not before!

Hillary Clinton is very ambitious, hard working, and dedicated! She is a wonderful public servant who has contributed a great deal as First Lady, US Senator, and Secretary of State.

Let her retire and rest, and sometime in 2014, the logical and sensible and sane event would be a public announcement that she is NOT running for President; that she had her chance, and that at her advancing age and health situation, that she will continue to be a public figure, but no longer be part of the political battles!

Hillary Clinton deserves our respect and support as she makes other contributions, under much less scrutiny and publicity and stress, and lives the good life with her husband, daughter, son in law, and any grandchildren, able to share the rest of her life with her! The American people have gained enough from her to allow her to leave the political debates and controversies, but with the certainty that she will go down as one of the very best Secretaries of State, one of the top few First Ladies, a significant United States Senator, and a great promoter of human rights!

Could Michelle Obama Be The Next Hillary Clinton? Illinois Poll Supports Her For Senate Seat Of Mark Kirk In 2016

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First Lady Michelle Obama is rumored to be a possible candidate for the US Senate seat of Mark Kirk in 2016, when the man who took over President Obama’s Senate seat by election in 2010 comes up for reelection.

Michelle Obama has evidenced absolutely no interest, but who can say for sure, considering that her daughters will be four years older, and more on their own, as compared to now, and with her mother and the President able to assist, if need be.

It must be pointed out that Mark Kirk has, sadly, been recovering this past year, his second year in the Senate, from a massive paralytic stroke, and this could affect public opinion ratings for or against him, depending on what happens in the future. And it could make him decide to retire at the end of his term in 2016.

But Illinois voters right now vastly favor Michelle Obama over Kirk, for whatever it is worth.

Certainly, Michelle Obama has demonstrated that she is very smart, articulate, and a great contributor to the position of First Lady, much like Hillary Clinton before her, who ran for the Senate in the last year of President Bill Clinton’s second term.

So who can say for sure what the future might bring?

Barack Obama’s Greatest Asset: Michelle Obama

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President Barack Obama’s greatest asset, as he moves into full campaign mode this week at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, is his wife, the First Lady, Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama has shown true grace, dignity, and class as First Lady, and has added much to the stature of that unelected office.

Highly intelligent, dedicated and committed to her husband and the issues she cares about, and warm and genuine to all she meets, Michelle Obama has played a role under her husband matched only by a few First Ladies—including Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford, and Hillary Clinton.

Michelle Obama will start off the convention tomorrow night with the first major speech, and she will set the stage for what is to come, including the keynote speech by San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro; the nominating speech by former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday night; and the acceptance speeches of Vice President Joe Biden and President Obama on Thursday evening.

This convention will be a time to celebrate all of the great accomplishments of President Obama, and for making a case to give him a second term in office to continue and complete the work he has begun, and add to his contributions to the American people and nation!