AUGUST—A FATEFUL MONTH FOR PRESIDENTS

By Edwin Cooney

Exactly four weeks ago today, President Barack Obama faced a government debt limit crisis the outcome of which threatened the faith and credit of the United States as well as the ultimate political fate of the president himself.

Notice that I used the word “fateful” in my title, not fatal. A fateful event is, of course, a significant event or turning point in one’s personal or professional life. Everyone, presidents included, experience significant or fateful events every month of the year, but August, it seems to me, has been particularly fateful in the personal or political life of every president since Woodrow Wilson. See what YOU think!

For Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914 was a bad day at the office and a worse day at home. The Twenty-Eighth President’s main areas of expertise and accomplishments were in domestic policy. On that day, President Wilson faced the necessity of becoming a significant player in foreign affairs as well -- for World War I had just broken out in Europe that day. Could he keep us out of the conflict? It was certainly hard for him to know. In fact, it was almost impossible for the president to be optimistic about much of anything that day.

Woodrow Wilson, a man with a strong religious faith, prayed desperately for two things that August. One of them was for peace in Europe. Even more fervently, one can be sure, Woodrow Wilson was praying that his beloved wife Ellen Axson Wilson might live to strengthen him as he grappled with the affairs of state.

Of course, not even the greatest among us always receives the answers they hope for from their prayers, not even the President of the United States of America. The lights went out in Europe that August 4th and two days later Ellen Wilson lost her battle with a kidney malady known as Bright’s disease. She had just turned 54 years old that May 15th. So devastated was the president that he told his closest advisor and friend Edward M. House that he hoped to be assassinated.

How Ellen Wilson’s death affected the president is certainly speculative, but it is highly likely that had she lived our history would have been different. In December 1915, the president married Edith Bolling Galt who, as the second Mrs. Wilson, almost single-handedly ran the Executive Branch of the government during the president’s debilitating illness in the fall of 1919. Is it likely that many other people could have managed the flow of paper work, regulated the decision-making process and successfully shielded the seriousness of the president’s illness from the Cabinet as well as from a special congressional investigatory team sent to the White House by Congress as she did? I suggest that it’s possible, but not likely.

Thursday, August 2nd, 1923 was a day of relaxation for a harried and haggard president, Warren G. Harding. Troubled by his knowledge of the Teapot Dome Scandal brewing within his administration, President Harding had undertaken a trip to Alaska that summer. He was resting at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco around 7:30 that evening following an attack of indigestion. His wife Florence (whom he often referred to as “the Duchess”) was reading to him from a magazine. The article she was reading was a favorable commentary on him and on his administration. “That’s good,” he said, “go on reading.” Mrs. Harding finished the article and left the room. Nurse Ruth Powderly discovered the president dead just seconds later.

For Vice President Calvin Coolidge, August was the month in 1923 when he became President. Shortly after two a.m. at his remote summer home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, Coolidge got the word that President Harding had died. His father, a justice of the peace and a notary, swore him in as the country’s thirtieth president at 2:48 on the morning of August 3rd, 1923. The only witnesses were Grace Coolidge, a congressman and two reporters. By August 2nd, 1927, “Silent Cal,” a man who loved to play practical jokes, smoke big black cigars, and ride a mechanical horse, had had enough. His retirement statement from politics was short: “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.”

Presidents Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were all born in August: August 10th, August 27th, August 19th and August 4th respectively. For Presidents Johnson and Clinton, two days in August forever tarnished their careers. In LBJ’s case, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution on August 7th, 1964. That congressional act, vigorously advocated by LBJ, eventually bogged down the administration and the nation in Vietnam to the nation’s distress and to the president’s political doom. For Bill Clinton, August 17th, 1998 was the day he was forced to concede that he had in fact been involved in an improper relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. As a result, he would become the nation’s third president to face impeachment by the Congress and the second president to be tried in the U.S. Senate.

On August 2nd, 1943, Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy, who had previously injured his back playing college football, suffered further spinal damage when his PT-109 torpedo boat was rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. Twenty years later, as president, he suffered an even worse August tragedy when his infant son Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born on August 7th, lived only until August 9th.

August 10th, 1921 was the day that changed FDR’s life forever. He was at Campobello, New Brunswick where he and Eleanor vacationed every summer. The day before, he and his boys had fought a forest fire on a nearby island after which FDR took a dip in the frigid Bay of Fundy to cool off. He then jogged home. Feeling achy and chilly, he went to bed that night without eating supper. He awakened the next morning to discover that his legs couldn’t support his weight. It was polio, originally misdiagnosed as a blood clot. His life was forever changed, but many believe that his misfortune eventually turned out to be to America’s benefit. FDR’s paralysis, they insist, made “The Squire of Hyde Park” more sympathetic to the needs of the less fortunate than he had been – hence he created the New Deal.

On August 22nd, 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower was successfully nominated for election to a second term as president and the same was true for Ronald Wilson Reagan on the same date in 1984. However, both saw their effectiveness and their presidential reputations markedly wane in their second terms.

August 14th, 1980 for Jimmy Carter and August 19th, 1992 for George Herbert Walker Bush were the dates that these presidents were successfully re-nominated. However, both would lose their re-election bids.

August 6th and 9th, 1945 saw the catastrophic results of President Harry Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, respectively. The proud Japanese would surrender on August 14th, 1945. The man from Independence, Missouri, whom Joseph Stalin would refer to as “that noisy shopkeeper” (Truman once ran a haberdashery), fortunately remains the only man in the history of humanity to make that age-altering decision.

August 9th, 1974 was the day Gerald R. Ford found himself America’s Thirty-Eighth President thus faced with the monumental task of ending “…our national nightmare” known as Watergate. President Richard M. Nixon, as he tearfully left office that day, made this powerful observation: “Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."

On Monday, August 29th, 2005, President George W. Bush was in Coronado, California celebrating the 30th anniversary of Victory in Japan (V-J Day). He took along his guitar anticipating a fine old American country hoedown. Instead, Hurricane Katrina visited New Orleans catching the president and his administration ill-prepared, however well-intentioned. Although he’d remain president for nearly three years and four months more, Bush’s reputation as America’s mighty protector against terror and national tragedy was gone. His popularity faded, he headed toward the lower end of presidential ranking from where he looks up today at both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

President Obama’s ultimate political fate seems largely to depend on the super congressional committee designed to adjust the fiscal costs of government significantly downward so that we and future generations may afford to live in safety and security. President Obama’s attention to detail and his ability to compromise and persuade will no doubt make or break his August presidential fate.

The person who reaches the top of that greasy pole of American politics to become our president directs and faces passions that are more intense than they have ever been throughout human history. Nothing a modern president ever says, writes, or does will escape either someone’s warm applause or eardrum-puncturing jeers. Twenty-First Century presidents are likely to face more intense opposition than have any past chief executives.

Finally, if recent history is any indicator, my guess is that, for good or ill, the act that determines the fate of many future presidencies will likely occur in August! Would you bet against it? I certainly wouldn’t!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY