Barack Obama as James Monroe

In 1820, James Monroe won reelection, becoming the third consecutive two-term president after Jefferson and Madison. This would not happen again for 192 years with Barack Obama. The similarities with Monroe, for the most part, end there. However, what does this say about...

It is almost impossible for a presidential election to not be unique in some way. For example, the 2008 election pitted the first two major candidates not born in the continental United States, a Hawaiian and a Panamanian (but on an U.S. airbase). The Hawaiian was also the first major...

I write this blog on the heels of the new "Shakespeare" movie Anonymous, a historically inaccurate film containing at least five conspiracy theories. The protagonist is Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, praised by literary "birthers" as the true author of Shakespeare's work. The Oxfordian theory...

The upcoming 2012 election will be the one-hundredth anniversary of the spectacular 1912 presidential election. In this election, our traditional parties competed with two 3rd parties -- the Progressive "Bull Moose" Party and the Socialist Party (details will be in the slideshow below).

The last 100 years...

This blog article is a distant cousin to my recent "Unelectable Past Presidents" blog articles (part 1, part 2, and part 3).

Eight out of forty-seven vice presidents (or 17%) reached immortality as "accidental presidents" either through death or through resignation of the...

This is the third part in a three-part series. The first part is found here and the second part is found here.

Having now defaced the honor of 27 past presidents I must reveal "who is left?" and "how the photogenic executives line up with...

As stated in part 1 of this series, there is some "appearance-based superficiality" in our presidential election process that can lead to the election of bungling hacks and the exclusion of the homely but able.

Franklin Pierce, generally considered one of the most attractive presidents, was also...

Even before television, there has been some appearance-based superficiality to the presidential process. For instance, Republicans favored Warren G. Harding partially for "looking like a president." He promptly gambled away the White House china and admitted his deficiencies for the office. His greatest accomplishment was dying in office.
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