(cross-posted on politicalmammal.com).
In December, I received a message from a clerk at the Supreme Court asking whether I could customize our Visual History of the Supreme Court as a present for a Justice. I was happy to do so, and delivered a special version to him in time for the holidays. Because of this, I recently got a chance to take a private tour of the Court. To be honest, my main curiosity about the Court building was not about the room where the Justices hear the arguments. I had had the good fortune of watching my brother-in-law argue a case there some years ago. Rather, I was really interested in seeing something I had read about, the basketball court on the top floor of the building. I really wanted a chance to take a shot at one of the hoops up there.

So I waited patiently through the mundane aspects of the tour, the marble, the statuary, the special chairs for the president and other visiting dignitaries, the decorated ceilings, the beautiful law library rendered somewhat obsolete by computers, the symbolic carvings, the portraits of former justices, and all the fancy rooms and corridors. The clerk was very poised and knowledgeable and I imagined him as a judge or elected official down the road. It was nice to see that my posters were still on sale at the gift shop. I asked the clerk how the court would rule on the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, but he gave me no indication. He did say that the Justice was very happy with the print and that they had framed it nicely.

Finally we arrived at the basketball court, next to a weight room on the far less elegant, comparatively grungy top level of the building, and I felt more at home. Without seeking formal permission, I sought out a loose basketball, headed to the free throw line, and, though wearing my down coat, I took a shot.

I had years of preparation for that moment. I had often stayed after school in 2nd grade to play basketball on the cracked concrete court at Flatirons Elementary school in Boulder, Colorado. I played countless hours of one on one with my brother and three-on-three with the neighbor kids at the backyard court up my alley on 10th Street. As far as I know, I still hold the season record for highest free-throw shooting percentage in the after-school basketball league at my elementary school (9/12 or 75%). We had some makeshift hoops over the years in Vermont as well. And clutch free-throw shooting is apparently a family tradition. I remember my dad telling me that he won a free-throw shooting contest at his Brooklyn high school. My basketball preparation also included being a substitute my junior high school team and intramural play in high school, college, and graduate school, not to mention playing Sunday morning to this day with a fine group of increasingly long-in-the-tooth guys. Unfortunately I’ve been really struggling with my shot lately.

Anyhow, despite the intense pressure of the moment, I swished my shot.

My friend Mark, who accompanied me on the tour, is my witness.

So I now have a real claim to fame. A perfect shooting percentage at “the highest court in the land.”

What we say:

Calvin Coolidge, a laconic conservative and former governor of Massachusetts, called for limited government, an isolationist foreign policy, tax cuts, and reduced spending. He signed restrictive immigration laws, decreased income tax rates, and vetoed farm relief bills. Coolidge was popular and served during a time of economic prosperity.

Though immensely popular at the time of his presidency, Coolidge’s reputation suffers when linked to the Great Depression. His refusal to act during a Midwestern bank failure, coupled with his inaction to aid the agricultural sector and the growing disparity between rich and poor are seen as paving the ground for the eventual collapse of the stock market and spread of the depression throughout the entire country.

The ‘Roaring Twenties’ and Coolidge are inexorably linked. Coolidge’s support of business allowed the American economy to boom, which impacted and was impacted by the cultural, social, and artistic explosion of the same decade. Coolidge, however, was out of office for less than eight months before the Wall Street collapse occurred, and though Herbert Hoover is often blamed for the Depression, under Coolidge the stage for the collapse was set.

What we say: James Garfield, a former senator from Ohio, sought to unite party factions with a balanced cabinet.  He was assassinated two months into his term.

James Abram Garfield’s largest accomplishment was his decision to choose Chester Arthur as his vice president, who would go on to sponsor civil-service reform.  Given his short term, Garfield did get a nominee appointed to the Supreme Court.  The in-fighting within the Republican Party during Garfield’s election was revealed in Garfield’s cabinet’s nominees and in his assassination – his assassin reportedly screamed his support for the Republican faction opposed to Garfield.

20% off and Cyber Monday

Black Friday may be over, but today is Cyber Monday.  Save 20% on your print today by using the same code: BF111!

While working on the next set of prints, we wanted to take time out of our day to offer a fantastic deal for the holidays, (known in consumer talk as “Black Friday”).  Buy any print Friday, November 26^th through Monday, November 29^th and get 20% off.

We’re starting to ramp up a bunch of specials for the holidays, but this is one of the best. Check out the promotions page often – we will post new deals there, and let you know how long everything will be running.

Also, if you’re a student looking to purchase for your dorm room or as a gift for your parents – or if you spent time slaving away on a campaign, check out the promotions page because we now offer student and campaign worker discounts of 10% to any print.

Friday-Monday.  20% off.  Just use the code BF111, and get your SmartArt for the holidays.

Millard Fillmore: 13^th President, 1850-1853

What we say: “Millard Fillmore, a New York Whig, took office after Taylor’s death.  Fillmore supported the Compromise of 1850, but its Fugitive Slave Act cost him northern Whig support and the nomination.”

Millard Fillmore was nominated to be Zachary Taylor’s Vice President on the basis of his anti-slavery views.  Upon Taylor’s death, and Fillmore’s ascension to President, slavery issues consumed much of Fillmore’s time.

He supported the Compromise of 1850, working to pass it and believing it to be in the interest of the Union it was passed.  Both pro- and anti-slavery factions disliked portions of the bill, such as the refusal guarantee slavery in the southwest and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and instead of receiving credit, Fillmore faced grumbling anger.

Fillmore’s other accomplishments were to send Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan, though Perry did not ‘open’ Japan until Pierce took office, and to initiate the White House library.  His two-star ranking comes because of his work to keep the status quo in effect with slavery.  The compromise of 1850 averted the question of slavery, but it came no closer to solving the question.  Fillmore is a good symbol of an era of Presidents who were incapable of solving the issue.

The final president in this low tier is Herbert Hoover.

Calvin Coolidge’s decision not to run for a second full term left Hoover the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination in his party. In the election of 1928, Hoover was the first Republican to pioneer a “southern strategy,” and attacked Democratic candidate Al Smith on his Catholicism and his position in favor of the repeal of Prohibition.

Hoover is most often remembered as the president who presided over the start of  the Great Depression, but he did not cause the Great Depression, nor did he fail to act in response to Black Tuesday. He ranks among the worst presidents today because his actions in fact led a worsening of the Depression.

Hoover did fear too much government involvement, but by all accounts, two major pieces of legislation passed in response to the stock market crash – the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Davis-Bacon Act – were largely policy failures. Attacking Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which had immense popularity across the nation, Hoover was soundly defeated by Roosevelt in 1932.

The legacy of Andrew Johnson has run the gamut from excellent to abominable. In the early twentieth century, the Republican Party of the 1860s was seen as beholden to business. In that light, Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, was viewed as a “man of the people” and held in high esteem. A century later — by the 1960s — he was reviled as a president with southern sympathies who held back the civil rights movement.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Johnson was the only Southerner in Congress to remain loyal to the Union, and seems to have held the continuation of the Union as his highest priority in his work toward rapid North-South reconciliation after the war. To this end, he staked out a centrist path and kept his distance from the Radical Republicans. This move, however measured, inevitably placed him ideologically closer to the former Southern opposition than Northerners would have preferred.

President Johnson’s most marked failure was his lack of action in addressing the social and economic status of recently-freed slaves: it took significant effort from the Republican Congress, without much help from Johnson’s administration, to pass the Freedman’s Bureau and other laws.

This 1867 Harper's Weekly illustration, "The Georgetown Election," mocks President Johnson's (left) stance in opposition to suffrage for freed slaves.

Johnson did oversee the purchase of Alaska and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and forced the French out of Mexico (where France was attempting to establish a satellite state and exploit the nation’s resources). France’s withdrawal ended the reign of Maximillian I of Mexico, the Austrian archduke installed by France.

Even considering these foreign policy accomplishments, Johnson’s failure of domestic post-war leadership and his disregard for civil rights places him squarely in our bottom tier of presidents.

For what it’s worth, the Congress at the time agreed — there were two formal efforts to impeach President Johnson: the first, in 1867, failed to pass the House; the second, in 1868, passed the House but failed (by a single vote) to receive the required two-thirds majority in the Senate.