Presidential Gatherings.

Happy Presidents Day!

On a search to find the most former, current, or future presidents alive together at one time, I stumbled across some presidential gatherings that I was unaware of—& some pretty definitive pictures from ones I did know about. I decided to gather them all in one place as I sought to answer my question. What follows are photographic occurrences of four or more presidents gathered at once.

When President Obama was inaugurated, he asked outgoing President Bush to host a presidential meet-&-greet in the Oval Office before the ceremonies on January 20, 2009:

Presidents G.H.W.Bush, Obama, G.W.Bush, Clinton, & Carter.

The five men would gather again on May 1, 2013, for the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library:

Presidents Obama, G.W.Bush, Clinton, G.H.W.Bush, & Carter.

Besides the opening of presidential libraries, it seems that funerals are the most common way to get presidents together. Here is picture from the funeral of Coretta Scott King from February 7, 2006. Four out of the five living presidents attended (President Ford was too ill; he would die later that year), while a sixth president—future President (then-Senator) Obama was also in attendance:

Presidents & First Ladies G.W.Bush, Clinton, G.H.W.Bush (sans Barbara), & Carter.

Here is a picture from the Nixon Funeral, from April 22, 1994, minus G.W.Bush but plus Ford:

Presidents & First Ladies Clinton, G.H.W.Bush, Reagan, Carter, & Ford.

This same group also gathered for the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on November 4, 1991:

Presidents G.H.W.Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, & Nixon.

Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, & Reagan got together lots of times, in various combinations over the years. The finest, in my opinion, comes from late 1981, after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, when President Reagan gathered with his living predecessors:

Presidents Ford, Nixon, Reagan, & Carter.

Growing up in the post-Nixon era, I was very used to the sight of four or five former presidents gathered together. However, historically, this is a relatively rare thing. In fact, when Nixon himself took office in 1972, there were no living former presidents. However, there were a few times when several gathered in the decades before. Here is the funeral for Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who died in office; his funeral was held on November 18, 1961, & had President Kennedy, future President Johnson, & former Presidents Eisenhower & Truman:

Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Eisenhower, & Truman.

The four men also attended the funeral of Eleanor Roosevelt on November 10, 1962:

Presidents & First Ladies Kennedy, Johnson, Truman, & Eisenhower (sans Mamie).

Finally, there is the inauguration of President Eisenhower on January 20, 1953, with a future President (then-Vice-President) Nixon looming eerily large:

Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, & Hoover.

That pretty much covers all of the major times four or more presidents have gathered together in modern times. I thought that the opening of Hoover's Presidential Library in 1962 might have attracted a few, but it looks like only Truman attended; by the time Hoover died two years later, Kennedy had already passed away, leaving Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, & future President Nixon, but I can't seem to confirm that all four men were at the ceremonies.

By the way, in a rare feat, the First Ladies totally outshine the Presidents in this category. Two times in the 1990s, no fewer than 6 First Ladies gathered, the first in 1991 for the opening of the Reagan Library:

Standing: Nancy Reagan & Barbara Bush.
Sitting: Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Rosalynn Carter & Betty Ford.

And the second time in 1994:

Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan,
Barbara Bush, & Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There was a brief period in 1993, when the 6 First Ladies above were alive at the same time as Pat Nixon, but I can't find any evidence of the 7 First Ladies ever gathering in one place.

Still, well done, Ladies!

* * *

Now, to get back to the original question at hand: The most presidents gathered at once. There are two contenders that predate photography. According to David McCullough in The Great Bridge, 6 past, present, & future presidents were on-hand for the opening of the Erie Canal on October 26, 1825: Former Presidents Adams, Jefferson, Madison, & Monroe, President John Quincy Adams, & future President Jackson.

New York Governor DeWitt Clinton upstages all the presidents
in attendance by performing "The Marriage of the Waters."

There is also the first State of the Union by President Martin Van Buren on December 5, 1837, which also had 6 past, present, & future presidents: President Van Buren, former President John Quincy Adams (then a congressman), & future Presidents Polk (then Speaker of the House), Fillmore (who was a congressman), Pierce & Buchanan (who were both senators).

Only one problem. The State of the Union address was delivered by paper starting with Jefferson in 1801 until Woodrow Wilson reinstated the practice of reading it in-person over a century later. So unless there was some state ceremony in that time period that required all those men to be there, we can't say for sure there was anything more than the definite potential of 6 presidents gathered (guess "The Little Magician" wasn't so magical after all).

President Martin "Coulda Shoulda Woulda" Van Buren.

So it looks like the Founding Fathers have done it once again.

Unless, of course, Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes the 45th President, which would add her to both the Nixon funeral & the opening of the G.W.Bush Presidential Library as a 6th—as well as the Coretta Scott King funeral as a record-breaking 7th.

Not to jinx anything.

Obama 2012: Second Terms of Endearment.

It's often said that the eskimos have over 100 words for snow. After this election season, I feel that pragmatic liberals such as myself probably have 100 words for "cautiously optimistic." I think I may have used that phrase at least as much as "please" & "thank you" & definitely more than second-stringers like "happy birthday," "let's watch TV," or "dude, this makes James A. Garfield look like Calvin Coolidge."

Suffice to say that after the defeat of John Kerry's so-called "loss" in 2004, I never again would take up any of that "when we WILL win" junk that made Bob Dole sound like the scrappy old white guy that he was in the '96 election. (& no one need be reminded that Bob Dole lost too.)

But now that the dust has settled & the race has been decided by everyone except Karl Rove's superego (pun intended), it is safe for me to finally unveil what I was REALLY thinking (very loudly) every time I spoke those two hollow words: cautiously optimistic.

Thus, I bullishly call my reasoning:

Why I Thought Barack Obama Was Going to Get Re-Elected All Along.

1. Party stalwarts almost always beat compromised choices. Whenever it comes down to somebody that one party is genuinely behind — think Reagan in 1984 or Bush in 2004 or Obama in 2008 — vs. a compromised choice — think Mondale in 1984 or Kerry in 2004 or McCain in 2008 — it usually comes down on the side of party favorite. This only makes sense. Pundits can sit around & rationalize all day about why their candidate could/would/should/will win (& Fox News certainly did that with Mitt Romney), but the fact is that at the end of the day, someone who's a true party consensus leader will turn out the base. It always feels better to vote FOR somebody than AGAINST somebody else, which in this case worked to Obama's advantage.

2. Barack Obama is the greatest campaigner of his generation, if not of all-time. Love him or hate him, Barack Obama ran what may have been the finest political campaign in 2008. & I study this stuff. I imagine the only people who could give him a run for his money would be JFK in '60, Reagan in '80, & Clinton in '92, but that's about it. So the Republicans weren't just going up against a decent candidate — like, say, an LBJ or a Harry Truman. They were going up against THE BEST. I think a lot of people really underestimated this fact. & indeed, outside of one major folly — that lackluster, if not utterly bizarre first debate performance — Obama ran a campaign that was nearly has smooth as the one from four years earlier. Meanwhile, Romney's campaign was a ramshackle mess, with gaffes & miscalculations running ramped, outside of that week or so following that first debate. Romney would've ran the lesser campaign against any decent competitor, but going up against Obama made him look downright amateur.

3. The media built the election up into a horserace that it never truly was. Again, I first learned my lesson in 2004. After Kerry won the first debate, it was then decided that Bush won the second debate, & that the third was — surprise, surprise — a "draw." I later read an interview with John Kerry in which he said he thought he had won all three debates. I had to agree. But biases are biases. At any rate, after the first debate, the usually unflappable David Gergen on CNN said, "Now we have a horserace," as though he had been waiting for the exact right moment to use that phrase. Meanwhile, the Romney campaign sent out emails proclaiming that victory was in sight. After the first debate, Romney was propped up as the neck-in-neck contender, even though his first debate "surge" was clearly dissipating after about a week or so. As one pollster I read commented, if this was truly neck-in-neck, Romney would be coming out on top just as often as Obama, yet Obama almost always maintained a (however slight) upper-hand. Even more to the point, Romney was never really up in Ohio, without which there was practically no way in which he could win the electoral map. & as Obama proved last night when he won Colorado, he had enough wiggle room to win the electoral map WITHOUT Ohio, Florida, OR Virginia. Which itself is rather staggering. The short version is, nobody stays glued to a campaign when it looks like a definite landslide. & first & foremost, our media is driven by ratings & print sales.

4. Polls can be manipulated, but ethnic demographics cannot. One of my favorite jokes of this election was the SNL Weekend Update in which Seth Meyers was reporting Romney's stubborn supposed lead in the Gallup poll. "That's right," Meyers said, "Out of all of the people who still have landlines & answer the phone when it's an unrecognized number, Romney is winning." It was a telling observation. So much was written about polls & how they are manipulated (or fabricated) by one side or the other, but often the "mainstream" polls were getting it wrong by under-sampling the African-American & Latino vote. Obama won the former at his taken-for-granted-but-still-rather-amazing ~90% or so, but just as important was the fact he won the Latino vote at 70%. The 2012 election marks the first time that Latinos broke into the demographic double-digits, comprising a full 10% of the electorate. (& everyone knows it's only gonna go up from here.) By championing programs like the Dream Act — & not having to pander to his base about immigration law that is about as up-to-date as a spaghetti western — Obama held the distinct advantage over Romney. That sound you hear is all Republicans scratching their heads trying to figure out how to better embrace the Latino voter while still not betraying their party base, or as I like to call it, 1952.

5. History is on Barack Obama's side. It's conventional wisdom among American History junkies that all of the great presidents were reelected for a second term: Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, & Reagan. Heck, even "near-greats" like McKinley, Truman, Eisenhower, & Clinton were as well. Excluding 3 of the biggest failed presidents — Grant, Nixon, & George W. Bush — there is a pretty direct correlation between greatness & getting reelected. The only real outliers are James K. Polk, who could've been reelected but held to his campaign promise of not seeking a second term (find me a candidate today who's willing to do THAT!), & JFK, who almost certainly would've won a second term (especially if he had run against Goldwater), but did not live to do so.

Thus, if Obama was & is going to be as great as some people want him to be (myself biasedly included), he was going to need a second term. Part of this is just conventional wisdom — in the world of the political arena, eight years is a lifetime longer than four — & it takes a lot of time to get stuff done. & with the type of vision Obama has always maintained, he was going to need all the time he could get. (He shrewdly gave himself an "incomplete" when asked how he thought his presidency would be ranked so far.)

Well now, I am pleased to announce, he has gotten it. & no small feat at that: He lost only 2 states from his landmark 2008 victory (the traditionally-Republican Indiana & North Carolina — although the latter of which he just barely lost) & held on to the 3 major battleground states of Ohio, Florida, & Virginia (not to mention keeping lesser-but-still-significant battleground states like Romney's native Michigan & Paul Ryan's native Wisconsin...oh yeah, Nevada & Colorado too). In the popular vote, Obama is the first president since Reagan to receive over 50% of the total vote tally for each of his two terms. & he is the first Democrat to do so since FDR.

So despite all the nitpicking, etc., about the "closeness" of this election, Barack Obama won, & did so decisively. The catch is that the first term is always the glory term & the second is the hard one — thus, Lincoln's assassination, Wilson's 14 Points, Nixon's Watergate scandal, Reagan's Iran contra scandal, & Clinton's impeachment hearings all happened in the latter half of each respective president's administration. However, Obama has the experience & wisdom to weather through his second term better, beginning, hopefully, with a Congress that is not solely out to defeat him (& America) by making him a one-term president & willing to use some compromise on their part to get there.

For Barack Obama is now a two-term president, & God knows he's earned it.