This Presidents Day, Let Us Take Inspiration From Our Leaders’ Hardships

America celebrates the federal holiday known as Washington’s Birthday thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968. While we disagree on the apostrophe placement, if any, for Presidents Day, we can unify behind the idea that our chief executives have all been citizens like us and we can take inspiration from their struggles.As host of the “History Author Show,” I’m often asked who’s the best president, and I always give the same unsatisfactory answer: I don’t rate them like ice cream flavors. Each has stories that can inspire us in different seasons of our lives even as we celebrate them as a group.I’m an admirer of President McKinley’s compassion. After taking two bullets to the abdomen, he ordered that the life of his assassin be spared. McKinley rejected the Medal of Honor for himself and would have recoiled at being rated better than his commander-in-chief in the Civil War, President Lincoln.Each president faced different circumstances and challenges, so the ones we focus on may line up with where we are one day but not fit right for the next. As President Theodore Roosevelt said of favorite books, the list changes throughout a person’s lifetime.“There is no such thing as a list of ‘the 100 best books,’” Roosevelt said, “or the ‘best 5-foot library.’” There was no such list that would “satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different occasions extending over a number of years.”McKinley enlisting at 17 to defeat slavery might speak to a high schooler. Later in life, that same person might find solace from a loss in how President Pierce and his wife dealt with seeing their son — Benjamin, known as “Benny” — crushed to death and almost decapitated in a train accident before their eyes.President Grant, a chronic failure, once lost thousands of dollars entrusted to his care in a fire because he stopped to help get an old woman to safety. There’s a saying that character is doing the right thing when nobody’s watching, and for presidents, history is always watching for sacrifices like that.Presidents Fillmore and Andrew Johnson were illiterate, but swallowed their pride and asked their wives to teach them to read. Fillmore didn’t even know President Tyler was sick when he was thrust into the figurative Oval Office — the real, almost-circular work space didn’t exist until President Taft — and charged with stopping the South from leaving the Union.President Washington’s hotheaded actions on the frontier sparked the French and Indian War, as author Peter Stark told me when we discussed his book, “Young Washington.” Only through failures did Washington master his temper to become the Revolution’s “indispensable man.”President Coolidge lost his son, Calvin Jr., to a senseless death when poisonous dye from his sock leached into a blister. President Franklin Roosevelt lost use of his legs to polio, and his cousin, Theodore, planned to kill himself when he fell ill in the Amazon rather than burden his party, rallying only because his son, Kermit, would’ve dragged out his corpse, anyway.To have a cancerous tumor removed from his mouth in secret to prevent an economic panic, President Cleveland was lashed to the mast of a ship. When President Biden suffered a brain aneurysm in 1988, he was given the Last Rites. President Reagan said that whatever time he had left after surviving an assassin’s bullet belonged to God and dedicated it to ending the nuclear threat.When President George H.W. Bush was shot down over Chichi Jima in the Pacific, his crewmen were captured by Japanese soldiers, tortured, beheaded, and some eaten. President George W. Bush, who might have been crushed by his father’s shadow, partied hard right up to his 40th birthday but hasn’t touched a drop since.Like President Arthur, diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease during his term, we are all living on borrowed time and history is watching what we do with it. Each of our commanders-in-chief has overcome hardships. This holiday is an opportunity to seek them out for inspiration as we build our own 5-foot presidential libraries, knowing that reading about them is more important than rating them.

This Presidents Day, Let Us Take Inspiration From Our Leaders’ Hardships

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