Mencken's Musings on the Presidents

Here are some passages from H. L. Mencken's many years of journalistic excellence, commenting on five presidents from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

1. Ulysses S. Grant. "Intelligence has been commoner among American presidents than high character, though Grant ran against the stream by having a sort of character without any visible intelligence whatever. He was almost the perfect military man--dogged, devoted and dumb. In the White House he displayed an almost inconceivable stupidity. Whatever was palpably untrue convinced him instantly, and whatever was crooked seemed to him to be noble....A more honest man never lived, but West Point and bad whiskey had transformed his cortex into a sort of soup."

2. Chester Alan Arthur. Arthur was a Broadway character on the order of Jimmie Walker--fond of good living, full of humor, but with no more character than a Prohibition agent. He made, on the whole, a good president--certainly a better one than Garfield would have made. He was too intelligent to attempt any great reforms, and so the country got on very well during his term....Washington, in his time, was gayer than it has ever been since. The oldtimers there still talk about his parties."

3. Theodore Roosevelt. "He was, by long odds, the most interesting man who ever infested the White House. He was full of odd impulses, fantastic ideas, brilliant phrases. He was highly intelligent, and, for a politician, very widely read....

"Unfortunately, Roosevelt's extraordinary mentality was not supported by a character of equivalent voltage. He was, on occasion, a very slippery fellow, and he knew how to sacrifice principle to expediency. His courage, which he loved to display melodramatically, was largely bluster: he could retreat most dexterously when ballot-boxes began to explode. He seems to have had no settled convictions: he was, for example, both for a high tariff and against it. He belabored the trusts publicly but granted them favors behind the door."

4. Warren G. Harding. "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale-bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless night. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it."

And then there is this: "The whole inaugural address reeked with just such nonsense. Thw thing started off with an error in English in its very first sentence--the confusion of pronouns in the one-be combination, most beloved of bad newspaper reporters. It bristled with words misused: civic for civil, luring for alluring, womanhood for women, referendum for reference, even task for problem. 'The task is to be solved'--what could be worse? Yet I find it twice. 'The expressed views of world opinion'--what irritating tautology!"

5. Calvin Coolidge. "If anything is plain today, it must be that another Coolidge administration, if it is inflicted upon us, will end inevitably in scandal and disaster. The day good Cal is elected every thieving scoundrel in the Republican party will burst into hosannas, and the day he is inaugurated there will be song and praise services wherever injunctions are tight and profits run to 50%. There will follow, for a year or two, a reign of mirth in Washington, wilder and merrier, even, than that of Harding's time. And then there will come an explosion."

And later: "The Coolidge Administration will be worse than that of Harding for the plain reason that Cooliodge himself is worse than Harding. Harding was an ignoramus, but there were unquestionably good impulses in him....Coolidge is simply a professional politician, and a very petty, sordid and dull one. He has lived by job-seeking and job-holding all his life; his every thought is that of his miserable trade. When it comes to a conflict between politicians and reputable folk, his instinctive sympathy always goes to the politicians."

Note: Mencken's analysis is noteworthy for its use of the characteristics of intelligence and good character in evaluating presidents. However, if that is all there is, than FDR would be considered a poor president and Jimmy Carter a good one. There is a third, equally important, consideration, and that is the ability to get along with people. In a democracy this trait is the most important, and when it is taken into account FDR becomes a good president and Jimmy Carter a poor one.

The Hateful, Mean-spirited Scott Jennings

Why CNN has given Scott Jennings a prominent role as a right-wing commentator is beyond me. There are plenty of right-wing commentators who are pleasant, gregarious, and easy to listen to. Jennings, by contrast, is hateful and perpetually angry; he never smiles, never has a friendly word for any of his fellow commentators, and doesn't have a modicum of affability. He is like fingers on a blackboard, and it is no wonder that CNN's ratings are plummeting.

"Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth", by Richard Esposito

This book, published just last year, claims to be the first biography of Jimmy Breslin. To me it doesn't qualify as an actual biography, because it is more about Breslin the writer than Breslin the man. A collection of columns Breslin wrote over the years would be just as informative as this supposed biography.

Esposito's writing style can be off-putting. Consider this passage, from page 144: "This, then, is what Breslin brings to a story...It is people. Living their lives. With you. At a very painful time." Now there may be a point to this sort of staccato-like writing, but if there is, it escapes me.

I have recently read a biography of another journalist which is more successful. That book is "The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken", by Terry Teachout. The Mencken biography flows smoothly the whole way through, following Mencken's life from birth to death, as a biography is supposed to. It reads like a novel, and held my interest from start to finish. Teachout writes as well as Esposito writes poorly.

As a side note, I have recently read Breslin's book "Can't Anybody Here Play This game", about the 1962 New York Mets season. It is a brilliant piece of writing. Breslin can write with the best of them.

"King George III: A Biography of America's Last Monarch", by John Brooke

This is a comprehensive and sympathetic 387-page biography of George III, published in 1972. I will highlight several aspects of it which stand out to me.

The main thing which stands out is the trouble George had getting along with his Prime Ministers. While today the Parliament chooses the PMs, and the monarch only rubber-stamps the pick, in George's time the monarch chose the PM, picking out someone they think that they can work with, and that the members of Parliament can work with also. George had to deal with six different PMs during the 1760s, the first decade of his reign. Then in 1770 he appointd Lord North, who lasted for twelve years. Then there were three in quuick succession, until William Pitt the Younger took over in 1783 and lasted eighteen years. Then in the decade of the 1800s there were five PM changes. In 1811 Parliament passed the Regency Act, which provided for the future George IV to act as regent due to his father's illness, bringing an end to the effective reign of George III. The picture that emerges is one of constant turmoil, except for the two eras of relative stability with Lord North and the younger Pitt.

My second takeaway is the insight the author provdes concerning Britain's handling of the American War. The author believes that historians have been too critical of Geroge III for "losing" the American colonies. He states that war with the American colonies was inevitable, and "The real charge against the British government is not that they unnecessarily provoked war but that they did not make preparations for war while the Americans were yet weak." He says that "From a military point of view it would have been better for Great Britain to have taken up arms in 1766 rather than in 1775." Brooke concludes: "Far from reproaching George III for having lost the American colonies, subsequent generations should be grateful that he preserved the British constitution with all its possibilites of peaceful change. America was a small price to pay for that blessing."

It is striking to me that Lord North repeatdly tried to resign as Prime Minister because of how poorly the American War was going. But the King refused to accept the resignation, for he had noone else to turn to. Brooke states that "There was no one on the Government benches of North's stature: no one who could repel the attacks of Fox and Burke as North did night after night: no one who could labour as North laboured and still preserve his geniality and good temper and the respect and liking of the House."

A third takeaway is the conflict between the heir apparent and his Monarch throughout the 18th century. In every case the heir apparent (oldest son) csme into severe political conflict with his father (or his grandfather, in George III's case, as he outlived his father and succeeded his grandfather in 1760). Brooke explains this odd phenomenon: "It was the unavoidable lot of the heir apparent that he was excluded from all responsibility...This was perhaps the reason why the heirs apparent of the Hanoverian kings went into opposition. Politics gave them something to do and provided an outlet for their energies."

A fourth takeaway is the devotion Geroge III showed to his wife. Unlike other monarchs, he avoided mistresses and fathered an amazxing fifteen children with his wife. By contrast, Geroge's oldest son, the future Geroge IV, detested hs wife and "it was widely believed that the Prince and Priincess slept together only on their bridal night."

My fifth and last takeaway has to do with the King's illness, which at the time was diagnosed as "insanity", or, in today's parlance, "manic-depressive psychosis". Brooke analyzes the available historical evidence and says that "the diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis does not explain the facts of the King's illness as the historian knows them." His conclusion is that the diagnosis of porphyria "does not violate the facts of history...On the basis of present evidence we can say that the King was not mentally ill. The myth of King George III's insanity is exposed."

On a scale of one to ten, I would give the book a seven for readability, but a ten for its educational value. George III's reign was an impressive one, especially for his strong support of science and the arts.

"Strangers on a Train", by Patricia Highsmith

This is a 1950 novel by the underrated writer Patricia Highsmith, made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock the following year. I will discuss both the book and the movie.

I became aware of this author only recently, due to the Netlfix limited series "Ripley", based on Highsmith's 1955 psychological thriller, "The Talented Mr. Ripley". The book "Strangers on a Train" is 90% or more based on what the characters are thinking, which might cause one to ask, how could Hitchcock make this into a movie, as there is little actual action. The opening scene in which the two main characters meet on a train is very faithful to the book. After that, Hitchcock veers off on his own.

The Guy Haines chacter, an architect in the book, becomes a famous tennis player. Guy's fiancee is depicted in the movie as the daughter of a U.S. Senator, and her sister becomes a central charcter in the movie, probably my favorite character. I was surprised to discover that the sister is played by Hitchcock's daughter. She is totally delightful, because she provides an element of childlike wonder and honesty amidst all of the deception and intrigue going on around her.

In the book the bad guy, Bruno, self-destructs in the end due to his alcoholism, and Guy self-destructs due to his guilt over what he has done. The movie ending is much more upbeat. Guy resists Bruno's urging him to carry out his end of the supposed "bargain" and kill Bruno's father, and Guy and his new wife face the future with their marriage intact.

The Verdict (Dir: Don Siegel, 1946)

Sydney Greenstreet burst onto the movie scene in 1941 with his Oscar-nominated perormance in The Maltese Falcon. Now, five years later, he finally gets top billing in The Verdict, a wonderful murder mystery, and he is magnificent in the role. Peter Lorre also shines as Greenstreet's co-star.

Greenstreet plays Scotland Yard Superintendent George Grodman, who finds out at the start of the film that he has sent an innocent man to the gallows, resulting in him losing his job to the smug, pompous John Buckley. When another murder occurs, we watch as Buckley tries hard to solve the crime.

The pacing of the movie is good; it moves right along and holds our interest nicely. Grenstreet dominates the film, but Lorre is also good for semi-comic relief, and Joan Lorring is absolute dynamite as showgirl Lottie Rawson.

There are a number of viable suspects, but everything is explained in the shocker of an ending.

Ten Famous People Who Spectacularly Self-destructed

1. Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde's self-destruction stemmed from an ill-advised libel case he filed. In 1895 Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for libel, the Marquess having accused Wilde of being a sodomite. As the defendant's part of the case was getting started, his counsel was prepared to present a parade of young men with whom Wilde had had carnal relations. Wilde's counsel accordingly dismissed the case.

But this was not the end of it. The information the counsel for the Marquess had put together was forwarded to the authorities, and Wilde was arrested for sodomy! His first trial ended in a hung jury, but on retrial he was convicted and served two years in prison.

2. Alger Hiss. The Hiss self-destruction was quite similar to Wilde's. The case arose in the anti-Communist hysteria of the post-WWII period. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was holding hearings trying to identify Communists and Communist sympathizers in the U.S. One Whittaker Chambers testifed that Hiss had been a Communist in the 1930s. Hiss denied this, and challenged Chambers to repeat his allegations away from the protected confines of the HUAC committee room. Chambers did so, on "Meet the Press", and in August of 1948 Hiss sued him for libel.

The Justice Dept. initially determined that no criminal charegs were warranted. But in November, after some pre-trial discovery in the libel case, and some investigative work by Congressman Richard Nixon, a grand jury was convened and Hiss was indicted on two counts of perjury, alleging that he lied when he said he didn't see Chambers after January 1, 1937, and when he said he never turned over any documents to Chambers. Hiss was convicted after his second trial, the first having hung 8-4 for conviction, and he served 44 months in prison.

3. Douglas MacArthur. The MacArthur self-destruction also came about in the environment of the post-WWII red scare, though it didn't involve any court case. MacArthur's administraton of post-war Japan was known for its wisdom and humaneness, and of course his exploits in the Asian theater during WWII had made him a household name. His downfall was due to his acts of insubordination during the Korean War, when he repeatedly ignored orders from the Joint Chiefs of staff and tried to involve Red China in the war. His basic idea was that World War III was necessary to combat the Communist menace.

President Truman finally fired MacArthur in April of 1951, and MacArthur returned to the U.S. Upon his return, MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress, and was interrupted by applause 30 times in his 34-minute address. One representative shouted out, "We heard God speak here today. God in the flesh, the voice of God!" "Life" magazine reported that the audience was "magnetized by the vibrant voice, the dramatic rhetoric and the Olympian personality of the most controversial military hero of our times". His biographer, William Manchester, says that MacArthur was "lucid, forceful, dignified, and eloquent; though he clearly thought his message urgent, his delivery was unhurried and rhythmic. All his life had been a preparation for this moment."

This speech represented the high point of MacArthur's popularity, and it was all downhill for him after that. Letters and telegrams to the White House were running twenty to one for MacArthur and against Truman, whose approval rating plunged to 23%, still an all-time low for a sitting president. After the speech, a joint Senate committee immediately began an inquiry into MacArthur's actions. MacArthur tetified, followed by seven weeks during which the administration methodically rebutted MacArthur's position. Manchester says that "One by one, officers who admired MacArthur seated themselves before the Senators and sadly rejected his program for victory." Manchester goes on to state that "Against this array of fact and expertise, the general's Republican defenders had little to offer but a welter of party loyalty and conservative intuition."

After the hearings, MacArthur spent a full year traveling around the country giving rabble-rousing speeches. But the result was that MacArthur's star gradually dimmed, as people got tired of his constant bad-mouthing of Truman and the Truman administration. People were interested in the future, while all MacArthur was doing was re-litigating past personal grievances. Manchester says that "each time he took a swipe at Truman he descended a little". The crowds gradually dwindled, civic leaders started walking out of his speeches, and local leaders started calling him a "demagogue". In particular, MacArthur's keynote address at the 1952 Republican conventon was a complete dud.

MacArthur lived out the rest of his life in relative obscurity in a New York hotel. He finally died in 1964 at the age of 84.

4. Avery Brundage. Avery Brundage was president of he International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1952 to 1972, and prior to that had been president of the United States Olympic Committee since 1928. Growing up in the 1950s, I used to often see his name in the sports pages, usually in the context of his relentless advocacy for amateurism in Olympic sports.

Besides his fetish for amateurism in sports, Brundage had a hstory of anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, and misogyny. Despite this history, he was selected as IOC president in 1952, the only non-European to ever hold the post. Part of his appeakl was that he was independently wealthy and served for free, even paying his own expenses.

Brundage's problem was that he was unable to adjust to the changing times. He condemned the Black power demonstration of the two U.S. sprinters in Mexico City in 1968, and then refused to cancel the 1972 games after the massacre of Israeli athleetes in Munich. Historan Alfred Senen sums up Brundage's legacy: "After Munich, Brundage departed the Games, which had grown beyond his comprehension and his capacity to adjust. The NOCs and the [ISFs] were revolting against his arbitrary administration; violence had invaded his holy mountain and was giving every indication of returning; despite all his efforts to reach out to the world through athletics, he stood accused of bigotry and both race and class prejudice, not to mention the denunciations proclaiming him politically naive ... Few mourned his departure from the Olympic scene."

In 1973 Brundage, who had long expressed his wish to marry a German princess, did in fact marry a German princess who wass 48 years his junior, his longtime wife having died two years earlier. Brundage died in 1975 at the age of 87, leaving a decidedly mixed legacy.

5. Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael dropped out of college in 1940, and spent the '40s living a Bohemian lifestyle while struggling to support herself as a free-lance writer. She got into movie criticism in the 1950s, and became nationally famous in 1965 when her first book of movie criticism, I Lost it at the Movies, became a surprise bestseller. This first book of movie reviews was followed by five more: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang(1968), Going Steady(1969), Deeper into Movies(1973), Reeling(1976), and When the Lights Go Down(1980). I enthusiastically bought and read these books, and still have them in my own personal library.

Her downfall can be traced to a scathing review of When the Lights Go Down by Renata Adler, a writer who, like many of us, had always admired Kael's reviews; but when Adler took a closer look after being commissioned to write a review, she found that it was "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless." Adler's 26-page tour de force is included in her 2017 collection of non-fiction, After the Tall Timber". Adler states that "It is overwhelmingly clear...that one thing Ms. Kael has ceased to care about is films. She hardly praises a movie any more, so much as she derides and inveighs against those who might disagree with her about it." Adler documents in great detail how "Ms. Kael's quirks, mannerisms, tics, and exscesses have...taken over her work so thoroughly that hardly anything else, nothing certainly of intelligence or sensibility, remains."

I am unable to dispute a single word in Adler's epic takedown. In retrospect, it is obvious that over the years Kael grew to love being in the limelight and basked too much in her fame, causing her writing to become more and more over-the-top, at times bordering on the hysterical. By the time she died in 2001, at the age of 82, her star, which once had burned so brightly, had completely faded.

6. Howard Cosell. Howard Cosell was a successful New York lawyer when he decided to switch careers and go into sports broadcasting in the 1950s. He started with radio and expanded ito television, becoming a mainstay on ABC's Mondday Night Football when it debuted in 1970. You either loved or hated Cosell's brash, bombastic, pompous style, but you couldn't ignore him.

By 1985 Cosell's star had faded, and he was taken off ABC's announcing team for that year's World Series, and was fired from ABC. What happened to Cosell is similar to Pauline Kael's fate, in that he fell in love with his public persona, and exaggerated it until he became a caricature of himself. I personally trace his downfall to an appearance on Barbara Walter's interview show in early 1984. When Barbara asked him how he wanted to be remembered, he said, "That's easy. That he was a good husband, a good father, and a good grandfather." Walters asked, "Nothing about carer?", and Cosell responded, "No, it's not important." To me this established his whole broadcasting career as a big fraud, as he had spent his entire career bragging about how he had single-handedly transformed sports reporting from unabashed adulation for the home team to critical, objective analysis; he always claimed that he had introduced journalism to sports reporting. And now he is saying it's "not important"? I cry foul.

Cosell's fall from grace actually took place gradually throughout the first half of the 1980s. Boxing had been his first love and had made him famous during the 1960s, but after announcing a one-sided fight on November 26, 1982, he decided that he was done with boxing forever. Similarly, football was the other sport which had made him famous, but he quit his Monday Night Football gig in August of 1984. In his book I Never Played the Game, Cosell claimed that he never watched an entire MNF game during the 1984 season. He added that "I watched enough to know, however, that the telecasts were dreadful. There was never a story line, only discussions of play upon play upon play. No perspective. No reportage beyond the game. No humanization of the players. Only feeble attempts at humor, trying to prove they could prosper without me. There wasn't a skilled performer among them." Cosell proceeded in his book to criticize all three of the new team--Frank Gifford, Don Meredith, and O.J. Simpson. Not content with that, he also criticized his replacement on the half-time highlights of the prior day's games, saying that they "were a joke. I had turned them into one of the most popular moments on television. My replacement, Jim Lampley, couldn't match my delivery."

The unrelenting criticism of other sportscasters in I Never Played the Game really sealed Cosell's fate. It left him estranged from his former broadcasting colleagues, and, like MacArthur, he retreated to his New York apartment, rarely leaving home and rarely having any visitors, until he died in 1995 at the age of 77.

7. Sarah Palin. When Sarah Palin was picked to be John McCain's running mate in 2008, she seemed poised to become the next right-wing superstar. She had incredible good looks, loads of charisma, and strong conservative credentials.

However, she started self-destructing almost immediately. When Katie Couric interviewed her, Palin was unable to answer even the simplest of questions. When asked "What magazines do you read", the best she could do was "Whatever comes across my desk." After her defeat in the 2008 election, she resigned her governorship the next year, citing a slew of ethical complaints against her. She tried her hand as a FOX analyst, but got cut loose at the end of her contract period, as the network came to realize that she had nothing worthwhile to say.

In 2017 Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for accusing her of "political incitement" in the run-up to the 2011 shooting of Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The case finally came to trial earlier this year, and the jury unanimously found against her.

In 2022 Palin ran for Congress from Alaska and lost to a Democrat, even though Alaska is solidly Republican. During the campaign the man hired to prep Palin for her VP debate with Joe Biden in 2008 was interviewed on one of the news networks, and said that when he had asked Palin what her position on NATO was, she responded, "What's NATO?"! Her self-destruction had become complete.

8. Alan Dershowitz. In a famous article in the late 70s, Esquire magazine called Dershowitz the "best lawyer in America". His many successes during the next three decades supported this honor.

But after the turn of the century Dershowitz started to self-destruct. His fanatical, over-the-top advocacy for the state of Israel cost him much of his credibility. What little honor he still had left was destroyed in January of 2020 when he joined the Trump defense team for the second impeachment case. Dershowitz argued that proof of a crime was needed to impeach a president, a totally lame position, and the opposite of his position in the Clinton impeachment, when he had said just the opposite. To cement his dishonor, he lobbied President Trump for clemency for his past clients still in federal custody, and his efforts played a role in at least twelve clemency grants.

9. Rudy Guiliani. Rudy Guiliani's star burned brightly during his career as a U.S. Attorney and then as mayor of New York City. But when he undertook to help President Trump steal the 2020 election, he completely self-destructed. Today he is a pathetic figure, respected by nobody. He currently faces contempt of court charges for his failure to turn over assets to the Georgia election workers whom he has defamed.

10. Joe Biden. Joe Biden self-destructed twice. The first time was when he ran for president in 1988, and he had to leave the race in disgrace after he was discovered to have engaged in plagiarism of a British labor leader, and to have lied about his law school record.

Biden managed to rehabilitate himself after this debacle, only to self-destruct again when he decided to run for re-election in 2024, after promising to be a "transition president". The pathetic debate performance which sealed his fate was a fitting end to a career by a guy who finished third-from-the-bottom in his class at a third-rate law school.