The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Okay, let’s see a show of hands. Who thinks, like Donald J. Trump does, that he’s the greatest president in our nation’s history? C’mon, now, don’t be shy, we can’t see your faces, much less your hands. Who thinks Mt. Rushmore should have another face carved into the mountain even if we have to erase one of the other, lesser, presidents to get Donald’s face up there? Really? Nobody?

All right, put your hands up if you think the Trumpster was the worst president in American history. I got mine up, just so you know I’m not hiding my biases. And I’m smiling this morning after watching him board the helicopter and then Air Force One before jetting off to nurse his wounds and cheat at golf in Mar-a-Lago. It feels like a weight lifted off finally after four long years and maybe we can breathe easy again. Okay, okay, you can put your hands down now, both of them. Later we’ll tabulate the votes and get back to you with the results. Course, as you know, half the country will assume this poll was rigged. Probably by the Lizard People.

It’s been awhile since my high school history classes. It’s even been awhile since I taught history in 8th grade. Most of the presidents get pretty short shrift in those textbooks. I mean, how much do you know about Millard Fillmore? Not much, I’m betting, maybe not a bad prez, mostly just forgettable. Herbert Hoover left us with the Great Depression, but I’m not sure we can blame the guy for that. Not totally, anyway. Gerald Ford I do remember. Although, really, I can’t remember much, not that that makes him a bad president, just the poor guy who filled in when Nixon resigned instead of being impeached. William Henry Harrison was president about one month before dying of typhoid or pneumonia or god only knows what. Can’t really say he was the worst, just the shortest, which, considering who just left office, I’d say might have been a small blessing.

You go down a list of Presidents, you probably couldn’t rate them high or low or in the middle. Lincoln we like, Jefferson too, Andy Jackson some like but he wasn’t one of my favorites, sort of a proto-Trump, a raging racist, a bully, a man who didn’t care much for the rule of law if the rules got in his way. Which they did.

But Donald J. Trump. History will not be kind. Impeached twice, the king of emoluments, nepotist-in-chief, dog whistler, bully with or without the pulpit, liar extraordinaire, anti-media, a demagogue of a sort I don’t think we’ve seen prior and hopefully won’t see again. In the final days of his four year reign he pardoned cronies and crooks, refused to concede a democratic election and finally called for his faithful to storm the Capitol where a pitched battle ensued that resulted in people killed but not, as per the plans of some who breached the building, to take Senators and Representatives hostage, possibly even assassinate them. Oh, and did I mention the 400,000 dead from the virus he did virtually nothing to stop from wreaking havoc on his minions?

Does all this make him the worst president in our two and a half century history? I think we all know the answer. And no, it’s not the Lizard King.

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