Presidential Spotlight '09 (BH)

There's never been a better time to be President of the United States.  Gut-punching fiscal paralysis, blood-curdling climatic threats, rising nuclear states, potential global catastrophes of one sort or another at every turn.  There are so many ways a president can be remembered today, simply by presiding during a time of such unparalleled soul-crushing desperation.  It almost seems unfair.  So it is my honor to pay homage to one not so lucky.  Someone who led the nation through less perilous times.  Someone, in short, doomed to be forgotten, were it not for me, today.  So take a moment, won't you please, and remember with me the inimitably forgettable administration of:

CHESTER A. ARTHUR

Nobody wanted the guaranteed-to-be-dull oval office of the early 1880s.  The excitement of the Civil War was fifteen years gone, the field day of post-war, Reconstruction era turbulence was shutting down in favor of the mundanity of westward expansion and general economic security, and every presidential hopeful knew the real possibilities wouldn't arrive until the following decades, with the advent of cruel sixteen-hour work days and wider dalliances with bloody international conflicts.  No, the 1881 to 1885 slot was the kiss of death, historically, with little in the way of national misery to leverage into political greatness.  

So all politicians laid low, hoping to repel attention away from any possible consideration for the highest office.  However, nobody worked harder to avoid the presidency than Chester A. Arthur.  He did everything that was expected of him, never changing course, nor flouting authority, lest his challenges be read as the required will to power of a man destined for leadership on the national stage.  Instead, he blended in with the rest of his graduating class, aspiring to teaching positions, perhaps taking the bar, occasionally accepting posts as the Quartermaster General of the State of New York.  But even as Arthur was slowly absorbed into the machinery that was the Republican party, he refused to contradict the dark impulses of its leadership, for fear of calling attention to his own potential leadership skills.

Arthur's fortune rose considerably when newly elected President James Garfield offered, and he accepted, the office of vice-president, the most negligible job in the land, virtually guaranteeing an eight-year wave of welcome anonymity that would drop him on the doorstep of the more promising '90s.  Thus, he contented himself to ride out the dry years under the cloak of high-profile invisibility.  Little did he know the intensity of President Garfield's own disgust with his new role as leader of the dullest decade to that point in American history, a self-immolating hatred that drove him to successfully mastermind his own assassination.  Less than a year into his presidency, Garfield lay in decline, a bullet in his body, and sweet freedom from Executive ennui only a last gasp away.  When death finally arrived, it was up to the begrudging President Arthur to bring color to the hopeless gray of the decade.

Despite his strenuous efforts, Arthur failed.  Burdened by the lack of any general domestic unrest to radicalize, or any foreign bloviations to sensationalize, he turned inward, to his own party.  To the indignation of the Republicans, the onetime saluting toady at the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of civil service reform.  Once a squawking defender of the corrupt spoils system, the reborn Chester Arthur pulled the reformers to his bosom.  Surely this would spark a fury that would lead to worker riots that he would then have to send in troops to stamp out, thus ensuring the necessity of bringing his name up often in future history classes.  It did not.  All it gave him was a small dust-up and the sleep-inducing Pendleton Act.  

Desperate for any opportunity to manufacture historically significant conflict and strain, Arthur turned to the dead horses of lowered tariff rates and immigration law.  Non-starters both, and with the end of his first term looming, he decided to go his predecessor's route, and off himself.  But lacking the courage to arrange his own murder, he instead crafted a story of having contracted an incurable kidney disease.  Perhaps, he thought, the outpouring of heartfelt well-wishes from the country would catapult him into the hall of beloved presidents.  The plan backfired when he lost his party's nomination for reelection and the following year died of an actual incurable kidney disease.

Today, Chester A. Arthur is best remembered for being "that president named Chester".  The greatest insult to Arthur's tireless stabs at historical relevance came from publisher Alexander K. McClure, who recalled, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired... more generally respected."  A dusty epitaph for the dustiest of forgotten administrations.

For more information on Chester A. Arthur, please visit your local library and get distracted for three hours reading a year's worth of plastic-bound Entertainment Weeklies.

Comments

[bobby]

I've successfully wittled readership down to just me. And it took Chester A. Arthur to do it.

[Jiff]

I actually liked this. Sorry for the late commenting. You have a way of writing that, sometimes, makes me think, "Wait... this might be serious."

Best moments:
-"that president named Chester"
-sleep-inducing Pendleton Act
-three hours reading a year's worth of plastic-bound Entertainment Weeklies

[bobby]

Yeah, I went too dry again. Took a not-so-subtle premise (a president needs terrible times to be considered great) and drowned it in a sea of text-book speak. Try this: read it with Colbert's voice in your head. Seems to help keep me awake when I read it.

[FluidIce]

So you're saying I have to read a Chester A Arthur spotlight twice in my life?

[bobby]

He'd be thrilled, yes.

[bobby]

Ran across this randomly, from a State of the Union speech by C.A. Arthur. Wanted to present it as exhibit A on the subject: "I had a boring presidency." But mostly, I just want to know, why can't we start talking like THIS again?

"We might else recall with unalloyed content the rare prosperity with which
throughout the year the nation has been blessed. Its harvests have been
plenteous; its varied industries have thriven; the health of its people has
been preserved; it has maintained with foreign governments the undisturbed
relations of amity and peace. For these manifestations of His favor we owe
to Him who holds our destiny in His hands the tribute of our grateful
devotion."

[Jiff]

I remember when this blog had thriven.

[Chris]

I now have more information that no one would believe I took the time to read. Time to write some more...you know...between scripts.

[Bonbon]

Oh my heavens, I suppressed my laughs so as not to wake the chitlins and tears came outta my eyeballs!! SO FUNNY! I'm glad this little gem-of-a-psst got recommented on or I'd have never seen it so deep in the archives of 3CT!

Author! Author!