Happy President’s Day

Today is the holiday known as Presidents’ Day as well as Washington’s Birthday or Washington and Lincoln’s Birthday.  It also happens to be my friends from college Suzanne and Rena’s birthday too!  Seems like a good enough reason to celebrate.

When I was a kid we had both Washington’s Birthday off and Lincolns even though they both fell in February.  Then along came the Martin Luther King birthday day — off in January and Washington and Lincoln got lumped together because the government was just giving away too many holidays!

Who knows when the next politician or great social leader is going to appear and be worthy of a holiday?  Seems like with all the media we have on people it is going to be tough for anyone else to be clean enough to warrant getting a day of their own.

I am not in the mood to reward any politicians except for one who might be able to bring back the art of negotiation and compromise.  That seems like a tall order given the polarization of the parties.

It seems to me that President’s Day is a lower ranking Holiday than most and I wonder if that is because since it is now named for all the President’s we are averaging how worthy they all were.  I have not heard of anyone lobbying for a national holiday for Pierce, Tyler or Harding.  According to a ranking done by great American Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. there are only three Presidents who rank in the “Great” rating, Lincoln, Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  There are seven in the “Failure” ranks, Pierce, Grant, Hoover, Nixon, Andrew Johnson, Buchanan and Harding.  These rankings were not Schlesinger’s opinion alone, but a poll taken of a large group of famous University Historians and scholars like Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Have we diluted the importance of the original day by honoring all the Presidents no matter how effective they were?  My suggestion is we lump President’s Day together with Martin Luther King’s birthday and have one holiday called Great Leader’s Day.  Anytime someone comes up that we are thinking we should honor we could throw him or her into that day.   No discussion needed, just jump on in.

This would free up a lot of congressional time not arguing and voting on new holidays so they could spend time actually solving real problems.  Not that I actually think congress is capable of solving real problems.  I just want to take away all the excuses for wasting time on things like ‘Flag Burning,” deciding if we need “Emergency Chiropractors,” or a “Jay Walking Database” – real bills –look it up.

So today is Great Leaders and Great Friends birthday to me.  One day is no different than the next to a middle aged woman without full time employment I just like a reason to celebrate without argument.