#president clinton museum

[janesadek]

The William J. Clinton Presidential Library

TRAVEL THERE – ANOTHER PRIMARILY PRESIDENTIAL DESTINATION If you follow my tags, you’ll find 19 posts about Primarily Presidential Destinations. I’ve got at least that many more on my wish list. The William J. Clinton Presidential Library was not on that list, but that’s only because I hadn’t really thought about it. I’d never been much of a fan and Little Rock was not someplace I was dying to…

[alwaysbewoke]

McCarty was born on March 7, 1908, in Shubuta, Mississippi. She was raised in nearby Hattiesburg by her aunt and grandmother. McCarty, who never married and had no children, lived frugally in a house without air conditioning. She never had a car or learned to drive, so she walked everywhere, including the grocery store that was one mile from her home. When she was 8 years old, McCarty opened a savings account at a bank in Hattiesburg and began depositing the coins she earned from her laundry work. She would eventually open accounts in several local banks. By the time McCarty retired at age 86, her hands crippled by arthritis, she had saved $280,000. She set aside a pension for herself to live on, a donation to her church, and small inheritances for three of her relatives. The remainder—$150,000—she donated to the University of Southern Mississippi, a school that had remained all-white until the 1960s. McCarty stipulated that her gift be used for scholarships for Black students from southern Mississippi who otherwise would not be able to enroll in college due to financial hardship. Business leaders in Hattiesburg matched her bequest and hundreds of additional donations poured in from around the country, bringing the total endowment to nearly half a million dollars. The first beneficiary of McCarty’s largesse was Stephanie Bullock, an 18-year-old honors student from Hattiesburg, who received a $1,000 scholarship. Bullock subsequently visited McCarty regularly and drove her around town on errands. In 1998 the University awarded McCarty an honorary degree. She received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, and President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal. McCarty died of liver cancer on September 26, 1999, at the age of 91. In 2019 McCarty’s home was moved to Hattiesburg’s Sixth Street Museum District and turned into a museum.

x

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 10, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 11, 2024

Former president Trump has always approached debates as professional wrestling events in which the key is not to explain policies or answer questions, but rather to demonstrate dominance over your opponent. In 2016 the Democratic nominee, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, had a hard time countering this strategy effectively because of the many expectations of what was appropriate behavior for a female presidential candidate. In 2020 and then again in the June 2024 “debate,” Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s stutter made it difficult to counter Trump’s scattershot attacks.

The question for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in tonight’s presidential debate was not how to answer policy questions, but how to counter Trump’s dominance displays while also appealing to the American people.  

She and her team figured it out, and today they played the former president brilliantly. He took the bait, and tonight he self-destructed. In a live debate, on national television. 

The Harris campaign began the day trolling Trump with a new campaign ad featuring the pieces of former president Barack Obama’s speech at the August Democratic National Convention that concerned Trump. “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire”—the ad cuts to a photo of Trump in a golf cart—“who has not stopped whining about his problems.” Then a clip of Trump shows him complaining about Harris’s crowds, before Obama notes Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” complete with Obama’s hand motion suggesting Trump’s sizes were small. “It just goes on, and on, and on,” Obama says, before the ad shows empty seats and people yawning at Trump’s rallies.

“America’s ready for a new chapter,” Obama says to the overflow crowd cheering at Chicago’s United Center during the Democratic National Convention. “We are ready for a President Kamala Harris!” At the end, even Harris’s standard statement, “I’m Kamala Harris and I approved this message,” sounds like a challenge.

This morning, the Harris campaign began running the ad on the Fox News Channel. 

At the same time, they began running Philadelphia-themed ads across the city on billboards, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and on food trucks and taxi cabs, sidewalk art, and digital projections making fun of Trump’s fascination with crowd sizes. They showed, for example, a full-sized Philadelphia pretzel labeled “Harris” alongside a piece of one that looked like an upside down U labeled “Trump.”

The taunting might have been behind Trump’s demand for loyalty from Republican lawmakers this afternoon, telling them to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his way on the inclusion of a voter suppression measure in the bill to fund the government. The right has often relied on threats of government shutdowns to try to get their way, but such shutdowns are never popular, and even moderate Republicans are leery of launching one just before an election.

Nonetheless, Trump tried to lock them into such a shutdown, reiterating in a post this afternoon the lie that undocumented immigrants are voting in presidential elections. “If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET. THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN—CLOSE IT DOWN.” 

Throughout the day, the Harris campaign placed posts on social media showing Harris looking crisp and presidential and Trump looking old and unkempt. And then, for ten minutes in the hour before the debate, the Harris campaign held a drone show over the Philadelphia Museum of Art showing campaign slogans and then turning the words “MADAM VICE PRESIDENT” into “MADAM PRESIDENT.” 

Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported today that Trump’s advisors were concerned ahead of the debate about whether they would get “happy Trump” or “angry Trump,” worrying that a frustrated Trump would engage in the vicious personal attacks that turn voters off. They expressed relief that having the microphones muted when it was not a candidate’s turn to speak would prevent Harris from irritating him with fact checks and snark of her own. Conservative lawyer George Conway noted that it was “[i]nteresting how one campaign is extremely concerned about the emotional stability of its candidate, and how the other is not.”

Harris’s attacks on Trump, including her campaign’s subtle digs at his masculinity, appeared to have accomplished what they set out to. When the two came out on stage, he went straight to his podium, while she strode across the stage, moved into his space, held out her hand, introduced herself and wished him well: “Kamala Harris. Have a good debate.” He muttered in response, “Nice to see you.” Then she took her own spot at the podium. When the debate opened, it was clear that Harris was the dominant figure and that her opponent was “angry Trump.” He would not look at her during the debate.

In her first answer, Harris tried to set out both her own story as a child of the middle class and how she intended to build an opportunity economy for others, lowering food and housing costs and opening the way for more small businesses. It was a lot, quickly, and she looked a little nervous.

Then Trump spoke and it was clear he was going off the rails. His first comment was to suggest Harris was lying, and then to insist that his proposed tariffs will solve everything, although he has the way tariffs work entirely backward: they are paid by the consumer, not by foreign countries. As he followed with a long list of his rally lies, Harris started to smile.  

From then on, he continued to produce rally stories full of wild exaggerations and attack Harris with lies in what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale called “a staggeringly dishonest debate performance from former president Trump.” "No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency,” Dale said. “A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true. This wasn't little exaggerations, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality." As Harris spoke directly to the American people, growing stronger and stronger, Trump got wilder and angrier and told more and more crazy stories. 

And then, about ten minutes into the debate, Harris baited him. She invited the American people to go to one of his rallies, where “he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about ‘windmills cause cancer.’ And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” 

Trump lost it. He defended his rallies, said Harris couldn’t get anyone to attend hers and has to bus in attendees (in reality, her rallies are packed and he is the one who reportedly hires attendees), and then, in his fury, repeated the lie about immigrants eating pets. When a moderator fact-checked that story, he fought back, saying he heard it on television.

And from then on, Harris kept baiting him while explaining her own policies directly to the camera, and he took the bait every single time. He ran down every rabbit hole and appeared unable to finish a thought. Notably, he refused to say he would not sign a national abortion ban and admitted that after nine years of promising one, he had no health care plan (he has, he said, “concepts of a plan,” and if they pan out, he’ll let us know in the “not too distant future”). 

He threatened World War III and repeated that the U.S. is “a failing nation.” He told a long story about threatening “Abdul,” the leader of the Taliban; in fact, the leader of the Taliban since 2016 is Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. In response to Harris’s statement that foreign leaders thought he was a disgrace, Trump answered that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who destroyed his country’s democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship, says he’s a good leader. New York Times columnist David French wrote: “It's like she's debating MAGA Twitter come to life.”

The debate moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC, asked solid questions and corrected the most egregious of Trump’s lies. But as he continued to interrupt and yell at Harris, they increasingly gave him leeway to do so. This meant he spoke more often and for more time than Harris; MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle reported that he spoke 39 times for a total of 41.9 minutes, to her 23 times for a total of 37.1 minutes. But the extra time did him no favors.

By the end of the evening, Harris had delivered a clear message about her hopes to move the country forward beyond years of using race to divide people who have far more in common than they have differences. She promised to develop an economy that will build small businesses and support a growing middle class, while protecting rights, including the right to make reproductive decisions without the intrusion of the state. And she showed the nation that Trump can be baited, that he lies freely and incoherently, and—perhaps crucially—that he is no longer the dominant politician in America.  

Immediately after the debate, the Harris campaign continued their demonstration of dominance. Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon released a statement recapping Harris’s strength and Trump’s angry incoherence. She concluded: “Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”

Then things got even worse for Trump. 

Music phenomenon Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, telling her 283 million Instagram followers that she felt she had to because of Trump’s earlier reposting of an AI image of her seeming to endorse him. That, she said, “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

After explaining why she was supporting Harris and Walz and urging her fans to do their own research, Swift signed off: “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[girlsdressingrooms]

Iris Barrel Apfel, Decorator and Fashion Stylist

(August 29, 1921 – March 1, 2024) 

Ms. Apfel was one of the most vivacious personalities in the worlds of fashion, textiles, and interior design, she has cultivated a personal style that is both witty and exuberantly idiosyncratic.

Her originality was typically revealed in her mixing of high and low fashions—Dior haute couture with flea market finds, nineteenth-century ecclesiastical vestments with Dolce & Gabbana lizard trousers.

With remarkable panache and discernment, she combines colors, textures, and patterns without regard to period, provenance, and, ultimately, aesthetic conventions. Paradoxically, her richly layered combinations—even at their most extreme and baroque—project a boldly graphic modernity.

Iris Barrel was born on Aug. 29, 1921, in Astoria, Queens, the only child of Samuel Barrel, who owned a glass and mirror business, and his Russian-born wife, Sadye, who owned a fashion boutique.

She studied art history at New York University, then qualified to teach and did so briefly in Wisconsin before fleeing back to New York to work on Women's Wear Daily, and for interior designer Elinor Johnson, decorating apartments for resale and honing her talent for sourcing rare items before opening her own design firm. She was also an assistant to illustrator Robert Goodman.

As a distinguished collector and authority on antique fabrics, Iris Apfel has consulted on numerous restoration projects that include work at the White House that spanned nine presidencies from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton.

Along with her husband, Carl, she founded Old World Weavers, an international textile manufacturing company and ran it until they retired in 1992. The Apfels specialized in the reproduction of fabrics from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and traveled to Europe twice a year in search of textiles they could not source in the United States.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute assembled 82 ensembles and 300 accessories from her personal collection in 2005 in a show about her called “Rara Avis”.

Almost overnight, Ms. Apfel became an international celebrity of pop fashion.

Ms. Apfel was seen in a television commercial for the French car DS 3, became the face of the Australian fashion brand Blue Illusion, and began a collaboration with the start-up WiseWear. A year later, Mattel created a one-of-a-kind Barbie doll in her image. Last year, she appeared in a beauty campaign for makeup with Ciaté London.

Six years after the Met show she started her fashion line "Rara Avis" with the Home Shopping Network.

She was cover girl of Dazed and Confused, among many other publications, window display artist at Bergdorf Goodman, designer and design consultant, then signed to IMG in 2019 as a model at age 97.

Ms. Iris Apfel became a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin in its Division of Textiles and Apparel, teaching about imagination, craft and tangible pleasures in a world of images.

 In 2018, she published “Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon,” an autobiographical collection of musings, anecdotes and observations on life and style. 

Ms. Apfel’s apartments in New York and Palm Beach were full of furnishings and tchotchkes that might have come from a Luis Buñuel film: porcelain cats, plush toys, statuary, ornate vases, gilt mirrors, fake fruit, stuffed parrots, paintings by Velázquez and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a mannequin on an ostrich.

The Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History in Boynton Beach, Florida, is designing a building that will house a dedicated gallery of Ms. Apfel's clothes, accessories, and furnishings.

Ms. Apfel’s work had a universal quality, It’s was a trend.

Rest in Power !

[deadpresidents]

What's been your favorite Oval Office layout?

I liked President Clinton's Oval Office because I feel like the colors really popped out at you, especially with the blue carpet:

Clinton's Oval Office also kind of reminds me of the Bartlet Oval Office in The West Wing, although the Oval Office in The West Wing was always super dark for some reason. I know some readers are going to be surprised that I didn't choose LBJ because LBJ is always my answer when it comes to favorites, but the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s decorations weren't great. It is funny, however, to see the giant TVs -- one for each of the three television networks at the time -- that LBJ had in his Oval Office because he was such an information junkie (LBJ also had a teletype machine installed in the Oval Office so he could get news reports immediately):

I also really liked George W. Bush's Oval Office, but it would have been better with a bit more color. My favorite color is blue, so I would definitely have wanted to see more blue in Bush's Oval. But I do like the rug that President Bush used, which was also used by President Reagan.

For those who are interested, it looks like the awesome White House Museum website, which disappeared for a while, is now being hosted here. You can see photos of how the Oval Office was decorated for various Presidents ever since the West Wing was built.

Also, here's a great photo of a completely empty Oval Office (stripped of everything, including carpets) as it was being cleaned during the transition between Presidents on Inauguration Day:

[californiastatelibrary]

.

Today, Jan. 30 California celebrates Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution. Where does Fred Korematsu come in? Mr. Korematsu was an American civil rights activist who stood up to the U.S. government’s wrongful incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast during World War II. Even without support from his family or community, he disobeyed the government’s orders, and as a result, spent over two years in various prisons and wartime incarceration sites. His case went to the Supreme Court, and in 1944, the Court ruled against him, claiming the mass incarceration was a “military necessity.” Nearly 40 years later, the government finally issued apologies and reparations to the camp survivors who remained, and in 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded Mr. Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

In the same year (1998), California also launched the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. The program, managed by the California State Library, funds projects that educate the public about civil liberties injustices carried out based on an individual or group’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation (including, but not limited to, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II). Over 400 projects have been funded since the program’s birth, including video and audio broadcasts, books, graphic novels, photo collections and exhibits, museum displays, arts performances, material preservation, educational guides, websites, public art and monuments, and more. To learn more about the program, visit library.ca.gov/grants/civil-liberties.

[usnatarchives]

Pelé and President Ford, 6/28/1975 (NARA IDs 12082700 and 6829578).

RIP Pelé

Brazilian soccer legend Edson Arantes do Nascimento (aka Pelé) died today at age 82. After retiring from a dazzling and historic international soccer career, he played for the New York Cosmos (1975-1977) and is widely credited with sparking American interest in the game. 

In his role as a soccer global ambassador, Pelé was a frequent visitor to the White House.

Pelé and Nixon (5/08/1973, NARA IDs 194508 and 1552580).

See the “Memoranda of Conversation” from this meeting (excerpt):

Pelé and Reagan (10/14/1982 NARA ID 75852465).

Pelé, Reagan, and Brazilian President José Sarney (9/1/1986, NARA ID 75855009)

Pelé and Clinton (10/15/1997, NARA ID 81122856)

See related: 

In Memoriam: Pelé (1940-2022), National Archives News

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!, Pieces of History blog

Soccer in the National Archives and Sports in the National Archives, National Archives News special topics pages

All American: The Power of Sports exhibit, National Archives Museum, Washington, DC, through 1/7/2024.

[racefortheironthrone]

Who do you consider to have been some of the most important / formative mayors of New York?

This is a great question, and actually rather difficult to answer, because for the longest time both Tammany Hall and the Whig/Republican machine tended to prefer mayors who were dull but reliable non-entities. Starting in 1824, NYC was divided into wards that elected Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen to the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Assistants, who together made up the bicameral Common Council. This led to a system whereby the real political action was shunted to the local level, where the ward's Aldermen and the ward boss (and his precinct bosses) ran the show.

The downfall of Boss Tweed led to some reforms, with the bicameral Common Council replaced by a unicameral Board of Aldermen who were elected from larger State Senate districts or at-large, as part of the Whig Party's drive to dilute the power of Tammany's Irish Catholic voting base. This would change somewhat when the five boroughs were consolidated into Greater New York in 1898, which added the borough presidents and the Board of Estimate into the mix, and then again in 1901 and so forth.

However, the overall trend was a weak mayor system where real political power was fairly evenly distributed between aldermen (who were not only the city's legislatures but were also represented on the Board of Estimate through their President), the borough presidents, the mayor, and the comptroller.

So the major players in NYC politics tended not to be mayors:

Dewitt Clinton was incredibly transformational, but despite serving three terms as mayor his real mark on New York was as governor where he was the driving force behind the construction of the Erie Canal.

Andrew Haswell Green, the "Father of Greater New York," was responsible for the creation of Central Park, the New York Public Library, the Bronx Zoo, The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Riverside, Morningside, and Fort Washington Parks, Columbus Circle, and the consolidation of Greater New York - but he never served as mayor. The original Robert Moses, Green's political power came from his leadership of the Central Park Commission, the Greater New York Commission, a six-year stint in the Comptroller's office, and his position on a number of NGOs.

But if we're talking transformative mayors, there is one name that rises above all the rest: Fiorello goddamn LaGuardia.

There had been other reform mayors before him - Seth Low had established the Civil Service, John P. Mitchel brought scientific management to city government - but none of them had ever been able to get re-elected. Unlike the wealthy WASP reformers, LaGuardia knew how to beat Tammany at the ethnic politics game. Tammany's strength had always been in the Irish wards of the city, and while they had tried to divide-and-rule by promoting the naturalization of Russian and Polish Jews in return for them voting for Irish-American politicians in the Lower East Side while noticably neglecting the naturalization of Italians, the emergence of second-generation Jewish and Italian voters meant that this strategy had run its course.

Born to a Sephardic mother from Trieste and a lapsed Catholic father from southern Italy, Fiorello had an astonishing knack for transcending ethnic political boundaries in New York City - he spoke Italian, German, Yiddish, and Croatian, but he was also a progressive Republican and Episcopalian (which meant he could speak middle-class WASP too). LaGuardia won the 1933 mayoral election by bringing together a Fusion coalition that brought middle class German-American Republicans together with Italians and Jews, a coalition that he would expand in 1936 by bringing socialists, unions, and black voters together into the American Labor Party.

Over his twelve years as Mayor, LaGuardia was almost pathologically active (in a way that's oddly reminiscent of Henry II), transforming almost every aspect of New York City:

Jobs for the Unemployed:

LaGuardia's immediate mission as mayor was to fight the Great Depression that had had left a third of the City unemployed. He did this by forming an enduring alliance with FDR in which the New Deal would provide NYC with unpredecented level of federal support in exchange for NYC becoming the New Deal's model city - the first of the "Little New Deals." In his first hundred days in office, LaGuardia convinced FDR to give New York City a full 20% of the Civil Works Administration's work relief budget. This put 200,000 New Yorkers back to work - and this would only be the beginning of New York City's experiments with direct job creation.

As part of Fiorello LaGuardia's "Little New Deal," LaGuardia's new Parks Department employed 70,000 workers - paid for by CWA and later WPA money - to rebuild New York City's parks, constructing the Central Park Zoo and 60 playgrounds in the first year.

When the New Deal created the Works Progress Administration in 1935, LaGuardia once again lobbied FDR to put NYC first in line. This culminated in some 700,000 New Yorkers - a tenth of the city's entire population - getting jobs through the WPA and other New Deal programs. Together with the Parks Department, LaGuardia and Robert Moses would mobilize this workforce to completely transform the city.

Public Works:

This is where we have to discuss Fiorello LaGuardia's fateful decision to make Robert Moses his master builder. While Moses was in the process of becoming the "Power Broker" before LaGuardia - he had already been made president of the Long Island State Park Commission and chairman of the New York State Council of Parks - LaGuardia enabled his ascent to the heights of power by making him Parks Commissioner, Commissioner and then Chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority, Commissioner of the NYC Planning Commission, and Chairman of the Emergency Public Works Commission.

The pact between them was simple: LaGuardia would give Moses the public appointments he needed to consolidate public works across the city and would steer New Deal public works money through Moses' agencies, and in exchange Moses would be LaGuardia's master builder with a mandate to "build it quickly and build it well." This was not an easy task, because Robert Moses was a political enemy of FDR and FDR tried to bar him from being given any WPA or PWA funding, but the mayor was able to persuade Roosevelt that it was more important that LaGuardia's proposed $1 billion public works program for NYC be carried at speed and administered efficiently.

As LaGuardia's workhorse, Moses would oversee almost all of NYC's public works, including the West Side Highway, the future FDR Drive, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, the LaGuardia and future JFK Airports, and Jones Beach Park, among others. LaGuardia would also construct the Sixth Avenue Subway line, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel without Moses (who was completely uninterested in mass transit and who always preferred bridges to tunnels).

In addition to these major projects, LaGuardia with and without Moses built the city's first municipal power plants, 37 sewage treatment plants, 9 fire houses, 142 elementary schools and 22 high schools, half of NYC's then-23 municipal hospitals, eight District Health Centers to provide preventative, specialized, and public health immunization care, and the first 14 of the City's public housing projects.

City Government:

To dismantle Tammany's patronage system, he began to massively expand the civil service to eliminate patronage jobs, and then when Tammany beat him on a government reform bill in 1934, he simply kept pushing. He pushed through the LaGuardia Reform Charter of 1938 that abolished the Tammany-dominated Board of Aldermen and replaced it with a City Council elected by Single Transferrable Vote, established the Board of Estimate as a central administrative body with powers over the city budget, public contracts, franchises, and land use - crippling Tammany's ability to raise money through graft and kickbacks.

To transform New York City into a "strong mayor" model, he undertook a campaign of transforming independent agencies scattered across the five boroughs into a system of unified citywide departments or public authorities that answered directly to the mayor and gave him unprecedented state capacity. In 1934, he formed the Parks Department and the New York City Housing Authority; in 1936 he formed the Department of Buildings and the City Planning Commission; in 1938, he restructured the Department of Welfare to run the city's social welfare programs and a massively expanded public hospital system; in 1940, he took over the IRT (operating the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and the BMT and IND (operating the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, L, M, N, Q, R, W, and Z lines), unifying the NYC subway system for the first time.

To deal with police corruption, LaGuardia appointed Lewis Valentine to purge the NYPD so that the mayor could use it (and Thomas Dewey) in a crusade against the mafia's gambling, racketeering, and vice operations. This marked a rare period of honesty and effectiveness in the NYPD, although after WWII the system of protection rackets and mafia corruption would eventually re-establish itself.

Ironically, this exhaustive list of accomplishments really made it hard for later mayors to distinguish themselves, because mostly their task was completing, managing, or mis-managing the system that LaGuardia had built. After LaGuardia I would say that Robert Wagner Jr. (established public sector collective bargaining, created CUNY, Lincoln Center, Shakespeare in the Park, and dealt the killing blow to Tammany) and John Lindsay (see my previous post, but chiefly scatter-site housing, the civilian complaint review board, and the Knapp Commission on police corruption) are on my list of formative mayors.

After them, there have been long-serving mayors and good mayors, but unfortunately not the two combined.

[dqllgarden]

just made my coworker explain watergate to me and we were talking about other presidents and BILL CLINTON DID WHAT AND WHY IS HER CUM STAINED DRESS IN A MUSEUM

[todaysdocument]

Five Presidents chat at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on April 25, 2013. 

Collection BHO-WHPO: Records of the White House Photo Office (Obama Administration)

Series: Presidential Photographs

Image description: Presidents George H. W. Bush, Carter, Obama, Clinton, and George W. Bush, as well as First Ladies Barbara Bush, Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama are all outside the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. They are casually chatting. 

[misfitwashere]

September 10, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 11, 2024

Former president Trump has always approached debates as professional wrestling events in which the key is not to explain policies or answer questions, but rather to demonstrate dominance over your opponent. In 2016 the Democratic nominee, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, had a hard time countering this strategy effectively because of the many expectations of what was appropriate behavior for a female presidential candidate. In 2020 and then again in the June 2024 “debate,” Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s stutter made it difficult to counter Trump’s scattershot attacks.

The question for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in tonight’s presidential debate was not how to answer policy questions, but how to counter Trump’s dominance displays while also appealing to the American people.  

She and her team figured it out, and today they played the former president brilliantly. He took the bait, and tonight he self-destructed. In a live debate, on national television. 

The Harris campaign began the day trolling Trump with a new campaign ad featuring the pieces of former president Barack Obama’s speech at the August Democratic National Convention that concerned Trump. “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire”—the ad cuts to a photo of Trump in a golf cart—“who has not stopped whining about his problems.” Then a clip of Trump shows him complaining about Harris’s crowds, before Obama notes Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” complete with Obama’s hand motion suggesting Trump’s sizes were small. “It just goes on, and on, and on,” Obama says, before the ad shows empty seats and people yawning at Trump’s rallies.

“America’s ready for a new chapter,” Obama says to the overflow crowd cheering at Chicago’s United Center during the Democratic National Convention. “We are ready for a President Kamala Harris!” At the end, even Harris’s standard statement, “I’m Kamala Harris and I approved this message,” sounds like a challenge.

This morning, the Harris campaign began running the ad on the Fox News Channel. 

At the same time, they began running Philadelphia-themed ads across the city on billboards, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and on food trucks and taxi cabs, sidewalk art, and digital projections making fun of Trump’s fascination with crowd sizes. They showed, for example, a full-sized Philadelphia pretzel labeled “Harris” alongside a piece of one that looked like an upside down U labeled “Trump.”

The taunting might have been behind Trump’s demand for loyalty from Republican lawmakers this afternoon, telling them to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his way on the inclusion of a voter suppression measure in the bill to fund the government. The right has often relied on threats of government shutdowns to try to get their way, but such shutdowns are never popular, and even moderate Republicans are leery of launching one just before an election.

Nonetheless, Trump tried to lock them into such a shutdown, reiterating in a post this afternoon the lie that undocumented immigrants are voting in presidential elections. “If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET. THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN—CLOSE IT DOWN.” 

Throughout the day, the Harris campaign placed posts on social media showing Harris looking crisp and presidential and Trump looking old and unkempt. And then, for ten minutes in the hour before the debate, the Harris campaign held a drone show over the Philadelphia Museum of Art showing campaign slogans and then turning the words “MADAM VICE PRESIDENT” into “MADAM PRESIDENT.” 

Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported today that Trump’s advisors were concerned ahead of the debate about whether they would get “happy Trump” or “angry Trump,” worrying that a frustrated Trump would engage in the vicious personal attacks that turn voters off. They expressed relief that having the microphones muted when it was not a candidate’s turn to speak would prevent Harris from irritating him with fact checks and snark of her own. Conservative lawyer George Conway noted that it was “[i]nteresting how one campaign is extremely concerned about the emotional stability of its candidate, and how the other is not.”

Harris’s attacks on Trump, including her campaign’s subtle digs at his masculinity, appeared to have accomplished what they set out to. When the two came out on stage, he went straight to his podium, while she strode across the stage, moved into his space, held out her hand, introduced herself and wished him well: “Kamala Harris. Have a good debate.” He muttered in response, “Nice to see you.” Then she took her own spot at the podium. When the debate opened, it was clear that Harris was the dominant figure and that her opponent was “angry Trump.” He would not look at her during the debate.

In her first answer, Harris tried to set out both her own story as a child of the middle class and how she intended to build an opportunity economy for others, lowering food and housing costs and opening the way for more small businesses. It was a lot, quickly, and she looked a little nervous.

Then Trump spoke and it was clear he was going off the rails. His first comment was to suggest Harris was lying, and then to insist that his proposed tariffs will solve everything, although he has the way tariffs work entirely backward: they are paid by the consumer, not by foreign countries. As he followed with a long list of his rally lies, Harris started to smile.  

From then on, he continued to produce rally stories full of wild exaggerations and attack Harris with lies in what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale called “a staggeringly dishonest debate performance from former president Trump.” "No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency,” Dale said. “A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true. This wasn't little exaggerations, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality." As Harris spoke directly to the American people, growing stronger and stronger, Trump got wilder and angrier and told more and more crazy stories. 

And then, about ten minutes into the debate, Harris baited him. She invited the American people to go to one of his rallies, where “he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about ‘windmills cause cancer.’ And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” 

Trump lost it. He defended his rallies, said Harris couldn’t get anyone to attend hers and has to bus in attendees (in reality, her rallies are packed and he is the one who reportedly hires attendees), and then, in his fury, repeated the lie about immigrants eating pets. When a moderator fact-checked that story, he fought back, saying he heard it on television.

And from then on, Harris kept baiting him while explaining her own policies directly to the camera, and he took the bait every single time. He ran down every rabbit hole and appeared unable to finish a thought. Notably, he refused to say he would not sign a national abortion ban and admitted that after nine years of promising one, he had no health care plan (he has, he said, “concepts of a plan,” and if they pan out, he’ll let us know in the “not too distant future”). 

He threatened World War III and repeated that the U.S. is “a failing nation.” He told a long story about threatening “Abdul,” the leader of the Taliban; in fact, the leader of the Taliban since 2016 is Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. In response to Harris’s statement that foreign leaders thought he was a disgrace, Trump answered that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who destroyed his country’s democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship, says he’s a good leader. New York Times columnist David French wrote: “It's like she's debating MAGA Twitter come to life.”

The debate moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC, asked solid questions and corrected the most egregious of Trump’s lies. But as he continued to interrupt and yell at Harris, they increasingly gave him leeway to do so. This meant he spoke more often and for more time than Harris; MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle reported that he spoke 39 times for a total of 41.9 minutes, to her 23 times for a total of 37.1 minutes. But the extra time did him no favors.

By the end of the evening, Harris had delivered a clear message about her hopes to move the country forward beyond years of using race to divide people who have far more in common than they have differences. She promised to develop an economy that will build small businesses and support a growing middle class, while protecting rights, including the right to make reproductive decisions without the intrusion of the state. And she showed the nation that Trump can be baited, that he lies freely and incoherently, and—perhaps crucially—that he is no longer the dominant politician in America.  

Immediately after the debate, the Harris campaign continued their demonstration of dominance. Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon released a statement recapping Harris’s strength and Trump’s angry incoherence. She concluded: “Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”

Then things got even worse for Trump. 

Music phenomenon Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, telling her 283 million Instagram followers that she felt she had to because of Trump’s earlier reposting of an AI image of her seeming to endorse him. That, she said, “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

After explaining why she was supporting Harris and Walz and urging her fans to do their own research, Swift signed off: “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”

—

[austin-in-taiwan]

July 15 - Taipei - Chiang Kai-Shek memorial, Shilin night market

Today was another very eventful day with tons of Taiwanese history and food! However, we did have a free morning today. How did I spend it? Since the time difference is +12 hours compared to home in Florida, I woke up at 8 AM to watch the Argentina v Colombia Copa America final. If you know anything about this final, you would also see that it not only went into overtime (+30 more minutes of gameplay) but also was delayed an hour and a half because of fans without tickets storming the stadium to try to get in. So, unfortunately, I spent my entire morning trying to watch this game. However, I filled the rest of my day with great food, and the itinerary was exciting, so that made up for it.

Jacob, Jack, Andy, and I went to a nearby beef noodle shop that was recommended by an Uber driver the night before. It was really good (picture below)! After that, we had an hour-long classroom session, during which I did some reading about the Chiang Kai-Shek personality cult!

Then, we traveled to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. It was one of the most amazing memorials I've been to. We were even able to catch the changing of the guards, which is very similar to one in Virginia at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Chiang Kai-Shek's statue was comparable to the Lincoln Memorial in terms of size and his position (sitting down). Downstairs, there was also a very cool exhibit about his life, and it included both a section praising him and one talking about his negatives!

After that, we traveled to the Grand Hotel! The view was absolutely stunning. A wall was filled with pictures of famous people who had visited and events that had occurred there. President Eisenhower, Reagan, Nixon, and Clinton had all visited the hotel before.

Finally, we ended our day at the Shilin night market. I tried numerous foods, including bao buns, peanut roll ice cream, a Korean cheese hotdog, pork skewers, and green tea. All in all, it was a great dinner, and I really enjoyed the Shilin market!

Academic Reflection

Throughout the guided tours and the reading I completed, I learned much about Taiwan's history, especially Chiang Kai-shek. I knew very little about Chiang Kai-Shek before today. All I knew was that he was a leader of Taiwan! So, after doing some independent research, I learned about his involvement in the Republic of China, WWII with China, the Chinese Civil War, his relocation to Taiwan, and his legacy as a leader here. Furthermore, from the article in my textbook for this program, I learned some fascinating information about how Chiang Kai-Shek developed a personality cult. Despite the absence of specific agencies or direct orders from him instigating this, several independent organizations played a role in its emergence. Competitions among artists were held to create statues and paint portraits of him, roads were named in his honor, and his photos were displayed in schools and military institutions, which also took part in celebrations dedicated to him. These collective efforts and many more fostered this "personality cult" for Chiang Kai-Shek among the Taiwanese.

Throughout the tour, I also learned a lot about the history of Chiang Kai-Shek and Taiwan from our tour guide, Peter, and the museum. First, I learned how Taiwan has transformed into a democracy after Chiang Kai-Shek and his son's rule (they both ruled until they died). It was super interesting to see how Taiwan is rated a much better democracy than the US (the US didn't even break the top 20 democracies in the world). Furthermore, I learned how the view on Chiang Kai-Shek is very split. Many people still praise him (probably party as a result of the personality cult), but also there are now many people who condemn him for his authoritarian style of rule, cultural suppression, and especially the 228 incident ( a violent crackdown on anti-government protests in 1947) which lead to thousands of Taiwanese civilians deaths.

[dumbestthingiveeverheard]

Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 7/25/2023

Fifth Place: The Babylon Bee

Today, the right-wing satire website ran the article "Scientists Unveil Periodic Table Of Genders." Even ignoring the fact that this is the millionth or so time they've run a joke similar to this--you do realize what this implies, right? That the side in favor of transgender rights and who affirms non-binary identities have science on their side while you guys don't. In fact, this is even quite similar to a pro-transgender rights meme I saw posted a few years back.

Fourth Place: Matt Gaetz

The Hill reports today "Gaetz introduces legislation to end ‘unqualified’ birthright citizenship." Of course, given birthright citizenship has been upheld by the Supreme Court, repealing it would require a Constitutional Amendment, not just an act of Congress--something Matt would know if he took even the basic class on how our government works.

It should also be noted that Matt is trying to use this bill “to reflect the original intent of the 14th Amendment’s ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ clause,” which refers to a part which quite literally reads that citizenship applies to everyone “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”  If the original intent of that language was not that everybody born in the United States is automatically a citizen, which was the understanding held by the Senate when the Amendment was passed (as seen by a Senate Judiciary Report regarding the Amendment) and by then-President Andrew Johnson, then somebody should really have told those who wrote it to use different words.

This is a small aside, but one thing you'll notice if you listen to the rhetoric the right pushes on the Constitution is that they always seem to think the people who wrote it put some Asterix next to each part that implies something they wish it didn't which the rest of us are just too blind to see but totally shows the amendment is counter to everything they don't like. Although I am not going to sit here and pretend like the left can be guilty of the same thing--especially regarding the Second Amendment--it is not only worth pointing out that the right does it far more, but also that the right does it exclusively to take away the rights and freedoms of American citizens--or, in the case of Matt right here, to take away the status of citizen from millions of people.

Third Place: Hillary Clinton

Regarding the recent heat wave sweeping the country, the former Secretary of State wrote on Twitter:

Hot enough for you? Thank a MAGA Republican. Or better yet, vote them out of office.

First off, why the MAGA Republicans specifically? Don't Reagan and Bush Republicans also have a great deal of responsibility? How about Gingrich Republicans--you know, the ones who literally did everything possible to stop the environmental progress your husband's second in command tried to make!

Let's not forget that this is the same woman who dropped references to Climate Change from her speeches during her 2016 Presidential Campaign after Bernie Sanders endorsed her, who refused to endorse a carbon tax, and who encouraged other countries to embrace fracking as Secretary of State.

Second Place: Greg Gutfeld

It's not everyday the Auschwitz Museum feels the need to condemn something said on cable news, but Gutfeld's provided just such an occasion. Specifically, the organization criticized the Fox News host's use of Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search For Meaning while defending Florida's educational standards which say that slaves learned useful skills during their enslavement, in response to the Jewish Jessica Tarlov bringing up a hypothetical similar situation related to the holocaust. His statement was the following:

Did you ever read Man’s Search for Meaning? Vik Frankel talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility, utility kept you alive!

Can we just talk about the implication that the Jews who died in the Holocaust did so because of lack of skill? What the fuck, Greg?

Winner: Ron DeSantis

I am honestly starting to believe that the DeSantis campaign is run by people who really don't want DeSantis to be President. Remember that ad late last month which called Donald Trump to much of an LGBT ally that was put out by a pro-DeSantis Twitter account? It turns out the DeSantis campaign made that ad internally and then gave it to this account in hopes of passing it off as something done by a crazed supporter. Said ad was mocked all across the internet both for the idiotic claim that Trump was some stern fighter for the rights of LGBT people and also because DeSantis was trying to run to the right on an issue that many Americans no longer agree with the right on.

At this point, all one really has to do if they one to debunk the idea of a DeSantis nomination is point out how badly Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Ted Cruz all did when they ran on platforms rather similar to DeSantis back in 2008, 2012, and 2016 respectively. The fact is that every Republican Presidential Primary for the past decade or so has featured one candidate who is the preferred President of the nutjobs and, although they do a good job being second place, they never progress past that. The average American--fuck, the average Republican--does not want what these people sell, and the reason is because they understand that hating other people isn't going to improve their lives, while hate is the only thing these people offer.

Ron DeSantis, you've done the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[bigboxcar]

Mugshot Monday - "Presidential Pets" coffee mug by The Unemployed Philosophers Guild with Morning Glory Signature Blend by Peace Coffee

Happy Presidents' Day to those who celebrate!

I have the day off so I'm lounging this afternoon drinking coffee in my Presidential Pets coffee mug.

It's a curated list of presidential pets who lived in the White House for 4 or 8 years depending if their owner survived re-election, or not.

When I think of presidential pets, the first one that comes to mind is "Socks", Bill and Hillary Clinton's cat. The second pet I think of is "Bo", Barack and Michelle Obama's rad dog.

I really don't know my presidential pets and I found some of the pets on the mug very interesting:

Calvin Coolidge had a racoon named Rebecca.

Thomas Jefferson had a mockingbird named Dick.

Theodore Roosevelt had guinea pigs named Admiral Dewey, Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, and Father O'Grady.

My favorite--JFK had a pony named Macaroni!

Jimmy Carter gets the best name for a Siamese cat: Misty Malarkey Ying Yang.

Only Donald Trump, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson did not have a single presidential pet while they were in office. Very vary suspect, don't you think?

Here is every pet on my Presidential Pets coffee mug:

Admiral Dewey, Bishop Doane, Dr. Johnson, Father O'Grady, and Fighting Bob Evans (Theodore Roosevelt)

Barney (George W. Bush)

Bo (Barack Obama)

Dick (Thomas Jefferson)

Emily Spinach (Theodore Roosevelt)

Fala (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Him and Her (Lyndon B. Johnson)

Jack (Abraham Lincoln)

Laddie Boy (Warren G. Harding)

Macaroni (JFK)

Major and Champ (Joseph R. Biden, Jr.)

Millie (George H. W. Bush)

Misty Malarkey Ying Yang (James Carter)

Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection (Benjamin Harrison)

Old Ike (Woodrow Wilson)

Old Whitey (Zachary Taylor)

Pauline Wayne (William Howard Taft)

Polly (James Madison)

Rebecca (Calvin Coolidge)

Rex (Ronald Reagan)

Siam (Rutherford B. Hayes)

Socks (William J. Clinton)

Sweettips (George Washington)

Washington Post (William McKinley)

The mug impressively displays these 24 presidential pet illustrations and serves as a great introduction to the subject. If you'd like a more comprehensive list, check out the Presidential Pet Museum website.

Cheers to all the presidential pets! 🐕 🐈 🐎 ☕️

See also my 720+ photos from the Mugshot Monday project here: www.MugshotMonday.com– Every Mug Has A Story

[cpw-nyc]

Election at 20: assessing the high school satire's brutal politics

Charles Bramesco Tue 23 Apr 2019

There’s a big M Night Shyamalan twist in the final minutes of Election, Alexander Payne’s searing 1999 high school satire. Tracy Flick, the irritating overachiever indelibly played by a breakout Reese Witherspoon, is a Republican.

Throughout the film, Payne prefers to think about politics in the abstract, as an illusory choice between interchangeable versions of the same bullshit. Odious civics teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) explains democracy as having the option to select either an apple or an orange, represented with two identical circles on his chalkboard. The closest thing that this comedy of bad morals has to a hero is Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell), who galvanizes the student body with a promise to dissolve the school government in toto if elected class president.

Payne narrows his blanket contempt for the two-party system in only one moment, just short of the credits. After McAllister has torpedoed his professional and romantic lives by sabotaging Tracy’s campaign for office at Carver high, after the scandal’s dust has died down, he engineers a second act for himself in New York City as a museum guide. He encounters Tracy years later in Washington DC, where he glimpses her getting into a limo as a staffer to the fictitious Representative Mike Geiger, identified as a Nebraska Republican. A minor detail, perhaps, but for a character as invested in the trajectory of her own future as Tracy, it’s a significant one. Payne doesn’t like picking sides, he’d rather withdraw in disgust, so it stands out that he picks one for her.

In her school days, Tracy Flick is “political” in the same holistic, imprecise sense that Burning Man attendees can be “spiritual” without subscribing to any formal religion. She’s invigorated by the nuts and bolts of the voting process, and as is the case with all of her numerous extracurriculars, she throws her entire self into running for class president. But the dirty secret about résumé-padders like Tracy is that their only real commitment is to the act of staying involved. It’s not like dictating lunch block policy requires a nuanced platform, and still her stump speech goes heavy on upbeat vagaries over substance. She imitates the habits of studied politicians, hitting her cadences and singling out her working-class constituents to score pathos points.

Which makes it all the more curious that posterity has cast Tracy Flick as an avatar for liberalism. At the time of the original release in 1999, audiences already knew to read Tracy as a stand-in for Hillary Clinton; Witherspoon herself has reinforced the comparison, claiming just last year that she would never portray Clinton in a movie because she already had. Clinton herself has told the star that even 20 years out, people still ask her about Election all the time. These details were foregrounded in essays around the 2016 lead-up to the Presidential vote, pieces with titles like The Very Uncomfortable Experience of Rewatching Election in 2016 and Hillary Clinton, Tracy Flick, and the Reclaiming of Female Ambition.

These articles identified Tracy Flick as a vessel for a determination and self-sufficiency that frightens men when not actively offending them, a reading more than borne out by the film’s active interest in exposing the ugliest, pettiest sides of the adults undermining and taking advantage of her. (She’s introduced mid-affair with a lecherous married teacher; later, McAllister fetishizes her severity during sex with his own wife.) Tracy’s been wronged, the argument goes, devolving into a cudgel that male commentators can use to trivialize preparedness and perfectionism in distaff candidates. Tracy’s only sin, by the ethical calculus of this reappraisal? “She cares, about her own interests and those of everybody else, so insistently, and so aggressively – indeed, so ambitiously – as to blur the line between the two.”

That’s a generous assessment of a character who thinks to herself: “Now that I have more life experience, I feel sorry for Mr McAllister. I mean, anyone who’s stuck in the same little room, wearing the same stupid clothes, saying the exact same things year after year for all of his life, while his students go on to good colleges and move to big cities and do great things and make loads of money – he’s gotta be at least a little jealous. It’s like my mom says, the weak are always trying to sabotage the strong.” She’s smug and annoying and surprisingly entitled for someone resentful of the upper class, and yet she has the upper hand by not being a serially dishonest pedophile. Tracy doesn’t have to be good for the men around her to be worse.

That’s the disillusioned soul of the film, entrenching it within the cynicism of the 90s and estranging it from the hopeful revisionism of modern discourse. Election hones itself into a war of attrition between an actively terrible person and one who is just obnoxious enough to keep an audience at arm’s length. A foil for Tracy arrived in the form of Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, another irrepressible go-getter with an eye for climbing the governmental ladder. Except that her always-on energy and tireless devotion to work earned her lots of friends as it boosted her up the chain of command, a fittingly optimistic rework for the hope-fueled Obama administration and Clinton candidacy. What makes Election special, and thoroughly alien to entertainment in 2019, is its refusal to give Tracy any leeway. If she’s going to gain the political foothold she so desperately craves, she will have to shack up with the neocons to do so. Bleak, sure, but at least Payne’s honest.

Office Space at 20: how the comedy spoke to an anxious workplace

Read more

[deadpresidents]

Will all the presidents who are still alive right now be buried at their presidential libraries when they die?

John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and Lyndon B. Johnson is buried in a family graveyard near the LBJ Ranch, but every other President since Herbert Hoover has been buried on the grounds of their Presidential Library or Museum (Gerald Ford's Presidential Library and Presidential Museum are in separate locations and he's buried at his Museum), so that's the most likely scenario for the Presidents who are still living today.

Jimmy Carter will be buried in the yard of his longtime home in Plains, Georgia (which is a National Historic Site) instead of his Presidential Library in Atlanta.

Bill Clinton will be buried on the grounds of his Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. This is actually where Clinton's grave will eventually be located:

For many years, George W. Bush was going to be buried at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin and he and former First Lady Laura Bush had even chosen their plot already. However, following the death of Bush's mother in 2018 and her burial at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, the former President and his wife decided that they will eventually be laid to rest at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, located at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

We don't know where Barack Obama or Donald Trump will be buried. Obama is building his Presidential Center in Chicago, but it is apparently against the law for people to be buried anywhere other than cemeteries in Chicago.

President Biden also has not revealed any plans about where he will eventually be buried. However, nearly all of President Biden's immediate family members have been buried at the parish cemetery of St. Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic Church near Wilmington, Delaware, including Biden's parents, his first wife Neilia and infant daughter Naomi (who were killed in car accident in 1972), as well as his beloved son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015. Considering how tight-knit Biden's family has been, I would not be surprised if that will someday also be the President's final resting place.