you know what those national treasure movies are good for? they remind me of how much i love the presidents of old. i used to love abe and jefferson exclusively. abe is who i aspire to be and jefferson is who i am. (so yieah okay, i aspire highly and am not content to simply find mirrors of myself in, say, literary characters. in fact, i don’t think i have yet found a literary character i see myself in.) jackson was a jerk. teddy was more amazing personality than president (though he was so many miles above so many others). fdr was brainy but eltist. his wife is still the best first lady ever. jfk never got the chance to grow up. wilson is a good-looking snob. brainy but a snob. truman deserves a lot more credit than he was given for completely pwning the end of ww2. lyndon deserves more praise than censure for holding shit together as best as he could. stop bitching about nixon because he’s so thoroughly americana through and through. clinton rode off of luck half the time and was clever enough to take advantage properly. dudes, it wasn’t hoover’s fault (too much). reagan was smart but only about certain things and those were the only things he did good at. dammit bush jr., you just made me sad and frustrated.
the most curious thing of all is that i used to think of washington as mr. vanilla bland. then the recent election furor brought all the fawning over the oval office to a rise again and a tidbit here and a tidbit there has shown me that washington seriously kicked ass. not just as a soldier boy no, but as a brain that exercised amazing common sense. i am in awe of that. i now add another prez to my list of prez idols.
two peeps who were way too smart to take the office and i wish they did: ben franklin and colin powell.