Hoover Wins!

Since we have a new ex-president, I was curious to know how long ex-presidencies have lasted — that is, the amount of time between leaving office and dying. I consulted the World Almanac (a paper resource!) and compiled the following rankings of ex-presidencies by length, from longest to shortest. Ex-presidents in bold are still alive. Looks like Ford can move up to the #2 spot, and Carter to the #4 spot, if they hang on until at least the spring of 2002. (Do I have nothing better to do with my time?)

Herbert Hoover — 31 years 7 months
John Adams — 25 years 4 months
Gerald Ford — 24 years
Martin Van Buren — 21 years 3 months
Millard Fillmore — 21 years
Jimmy Carter — 20 years
Harry Truman — 19 years 11 months
Richard Nixon — 19 years 8 months
James Madison — 19 years 3 months
John Quincy Adams — 18 years 11 months
Thomas Jefferson — 17 years 4 months
William Howard Taft — 17 years
John Tyler — 16 years 10 months
Franklin Pierce — 12 years 7 months
Ronald Reagan — 12 years
Rutherford B. Hayes — 11 years 10 months
Grover Cleveland — 11 years 3 months (after his 2nd term)
Theodore Roosevelt — 9 years 10 months
Ulysses S. Grant — 8 years 4 months
Andrew Jackson — 8 years 3 months
Dwight Eisenhower — 8 years 2 months
Benjamin Harrison — 8 years
George Bush — 8 years
James Buchanan — 7 years 3 months
James Monroe — 6 years 4 months
Andrew Johnson — 6 years 4 months
Lyndon Johnson — 4 years
Calvin Coolidge — 3 years 10 months
Woodrow Wilson — 2 years 11 months
George Washington — 2 years 9 months
Chester A. Arthur — 1 year 8 months
James K. Polk — 3 months
Bill Clinton — 6 days
William Henry Harrison — 0 days
Zachary Taylor — 0 days
Abraham Lincoln — 0 days
James A. Garfield — 0 days
William McKinley — 0 days
Franklin D. Roosevelt — 0 days
John F. Kennedy — 0 days

We Deserve a Break Today

Remember how the Republicans always used to accuse Clinton of co-opting their themes? Well, the Associated Press reports that the Republicans have been doing some co-opting of their own. They’ve been mentioning “the politics of personal destruction” so often lately that the phrase has become a cliche. According to the article, Clinton coined the phrase in 1994, but since the beginning of the 2000 campaign, Republicans have been using it seven times as often as Democrats.

To me this just seems to be more evidence of the lack of creativity in political discourse and the corporatization of just about everything. “Ahh will fahht for yew”; “I’m a uniter, not a divider”; “cross that bridge to the 21st century.” Hey, apparently it works. God, we’re a stupid species.

This morning I was waiting at the subway station, sitting at the end of a row of benches, reading the latest issue of the New Yorker. A woman was sitting next to me. At one point I looked over and noticed that she, too, was reading the New Yorker, and I felt an immediate solidarity with her. I mean, diversity is a great thing, but sometimes it’s nice to run across someone who obviously shares so many qualities with you. What is it about the New Yorker?

Now, if we had been reading the same article… that would have been something.