Time was when today’s federal holiday was just called George Washington’s Birthday, and observed on Feb. 22.
But along came a few zealous and inspired politicians who sought to simplify the calendar of holidays and give federal employees a few more three-day weekends in the process.
So Congress set out to enact legislation (HR 15951) that would designate the third Monday in February of each year as a federal holiday, whether or not it fell on the 22nd. The law passed in 1968 and became effective in 1971.
Today, Feb. 20, civil servants are reaping the benefits of their own making, while the average American citizen is working for wages that are most assuredly being paid at a straight-time rate.
According to the Office of Personnel Management, today’s holiday is still officially known as Washington’s Birthday even though is has become popularly known as “President’s Day.”
It has become a day for honoring all men who have served in the capacity or for that matter, incapacity as president.
With help from a few pundits and historians, let’s examine those men who deserve to be honored and then question the real absurdity behind President’s Day by honoring those who have, for the lack of a better phrase, been unsuccessful.
More than 125 years ago, historian Henry Adams wrote that the American president must “resemble the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.”
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. said “the Constitution offers every president a helm, but the course and the port constitute the first requirement for presidential greatness. Great presidents posses, or are possessed by, a vision of an ideal America. Their passion is to make sure the ship of state sails on the right course.”
Ranking the top five presidents is not such a difficult task either. In fact, it is relatively simple. They are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Harry S. Truman.
According to Richard Brookhiser, “George Washington established presidential etiquette, believed in the idea of a federal union, was approachable and made a point of visiting all 13 states while in office.”
Above all, Washington was a great leader. He knew politics and war, and knew who to trust and when to trust them.
Lincoln believed in union and freedom, Jefferson believed in democracy and Roosevelt guided the nation through the Great Depression, asking Congress for “… broad Executive powers to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”
Truman was a man who made prompt decisions with a firm hand. According to Terry Eastland, journalist and publisher of The Weekly Standard “The authors of The Federalist understood the presidency as the unique source of energy in government, and they identified as ingredients of energy the structure and the power of the office.
Truman’s presidency is a study of ‘energy in the executive’ – energy that often benefited the nation.” Truman indeed lived up to the expectation of presidential leadership.
But somewhere between the top five and the bottom five, are 33 other presidents. Some were good, but not great, and some were not so good, but not bad.
However, not all deserved to be honored today. Having said that, and with no additional explanation needed, there are indeed at least five presidents who should be considered complete failures.
In fact, to even mention their names among the 38 other presidents could almost be considered gross irreverence.
They include, Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, James Buchanan and Jimmy Carter.
We have become a nation of the absurd holidays by casting aside core values and everything that is genuine and replacing them with trinkets.
George Washington would be appalled.
We should be appalled.

Author