Andy Young: The forgotten decade

By Andy Young

Ordinarily people like me (English-speaking heterosexual white males who don’t practice a non-Christian religion) should be the last Americans to complain about prejudice.

That established, I’m no crackpot conspiracy theorist, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent one of my demographics is quietly being subjected to the worst type of discrimination.

It’s clear my age-alike peers and I are being victimized by an insidious plot. But who (or what) is behind it? The government? The Illuminati? The Russians? The Dallas Cowboys? Whoever they are, their plan has been diabolically effective.

In elementary school we were told that anyone could grow up to be America’s president. George Washington and John Adams, both of whom were born in the 1730s, were proof of that.

As decades elapsed, a wide variety of straight white males (and occasionally their families) took up residence in the White House, including Thomas Jefferson, who was born in the 1740s; James Madison and James Monroe (1750s). and John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson (1760s). William Henry Harrison represented the 1770s, Martin Van Buren and Zachary Taylor the 1780s, and John Tyler, James Polk, and James Buchanan the 1790s. Millard Fillmore (1800) was technically born in the 18th century as well, but for this essay a given year’s first two digits are the only significant ones.

The 19th century’s initial decade saw the births of Andrew Johnson (1808) and Abraham Lincoln (1809), confirming what should have been obvious: the inherent fairness of having at least one American commander-in-chief born every decade. But then came a presidential-birth-free ten-year stretch, the eighteen-teens. Thankfully people born between 1810 and 1819 probably weren’t aware of the historical injustice they’d suffered, given the nation’s limited history at the time. But fairness returned with the 1820s (Ulysses Grant and Rutherford Hayes), and at least one future American chief executive was born in the 1830s (James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland), 1840s (William McKinley), 1850s (Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson), 1860s (Warren Harding), 1870s (Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover), 1880s (Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman). 1890s (Dwight Eisenhower), and nineteen-aughts (Lyndon Johnson).

The nineteen-teens were teeming with future presidents (Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and John F. Kennedy), and Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush were both born in 1924. The 1930s got skipped, but understandably, given the domestic (Great Depression) and foreign (rise of Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan) situations during that particular decade. Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, Trump and Biden were all born in the 1940s, and a youthful (during his presidency) Barack Obama was born in the 1960s.

But speaking for 1950s natives everywhere, where’s our president?

It looks increasingly likely that when it comes to presidential births, the 1950s are destined to be snubbed, since neither Donald Trump (1946) nor Kamala Harris (1964) qualifies.
 
The youngest 1950s natives will be 69 years old in 2028, when the leading presidential hopefuls will likely include Ron DeSantis (born 1978), Corey Booker (1969), Nikki Haley (1972), Pete Buttigieg (1982), Ted Cruz (1970), Bernie Sanders (1941), Gretchen Whitmer (1971), and J. D. Vance (1984).

At least the eighteen-teens (John Fremont in 1856) and the 1930’s (Michael Dukakis in 1988) each got a major party presidential candidate. Not only has no 1950s native ever gotten the Republican or Democratic nomination, the only 1950s-born vice-president nominee was John Edwards, a man best remembered for cheating on his cancer-stricken wife. Can’t our decade do better than that?

To my fellow 1950s natives, we’ve been hornswoggled. That fairy tale that claimed anybody can grow up to be president? Balderdash.

None of us ever had a chance.

Curse you, Dallas Cowboys! <

Andy Young: All about dead presidents

By Andy Young

Don’t let the headline fool you.

This column has nothing to do with those two-and-a-half inch by six-inch pieces of green paper that a few people over the age of 50 still use to purchase things. This essay concerns America’s actual presidents, or more specifically the 39 of them who are no longer living.

When June 1 dawned and Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter were still breathing, it continued one of the most unnoticed but remarkable streaks in American history.

Since the nation inaugurated its first chief executive in 1789, no American ex-president has ever died during the calendar’s fifth month. That’s 235 Mays (and counting) without a single presidential death.

There are two other months when no former president has died, but August’s and September’s streaks come with asterisks. Warren Harding succumbed to a heart attack on Aug. 2, 1923, while James Garfield (Sept. 19, 1881) and William McKinley (Sept. 14, 1901) were both felled by assassins. But each of them was a sitting president when he died, so August and September remain technically unsullied by the demise of any former chief executives.

While May remains a safe haven for America’s ex-commanders-in-chief, the two months that follow it are extraordinarily perilous ones. A half-dozen ex-presidents died in June, specifically Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, Ronald Reagan, and a trio of Jameses (Madison, Polk, and Buchanan). And the following month is even deadlier: seven presidents (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant) expired during July.

Ironically the deadliest day for ex-presidents is July 4. Three of them (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826 and James Monroe in 1831) have died on the nation’s nominal birthday. Dec. 26 (Harry Truman in 1972 and Gerald Ford in 2006) and March 8 (Millard Fillmore in 1874 and William Howard Taft in 1930) are the only two other dates to have marked the end of more than one ex-presidential life.

Five former White House occupants died in January: John Tyler, Rutherford Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Lyndon Johnson. Next up on the presidential death-by-month list, with four each: March (Fillmore, Taft, Benjamin Harrison, and Dwight Eisenhower) and April (William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon). December (George Washington, along with the aforementioned Truman and Ford) and November (Chester Arthur, John F. Kennedy, and George H. W. Bush) follow with three each. Two presidents died in the months of September (Garfield and McKinley), October (Franklin Pierce and Herbert Hoover) and February (John Quincy Adams and Woodrow Wilson).

New York is clearly the most dangerous state for ex-presidents: nine of the 39 no-longer-extant chief executives expired there. Seven more died in Washington D.C., four had their lives conclude in Virginia, and Texas, California, and Tennessee have each had three presidents die inside their borders.

The longest America has gone between presidential deaths was 26 years, six months, and 20 days, which was the time span between George Washington’s demise on Dec. 14, 1799, and the deaths of Adams and Jefferson on the nation’s 50th birthday, 9,698 days later. The second-longest death-free span was the 7,760 days that transpired between the passings of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

So, what exactly can be learned from all of this painstaking research? Maybe nothing. However, if I were a current or former president of the United States who was interested in continuing to stay alive for a while longer, I think I’d steer clear of New York and Washington D.C. for the next couple of months. <