Inaugural Addresses

This New Yorker article asks the question "Have Inaugural Addresses been getting worse?" and then gives an interesting account that runs from Washington to the present. Lincoln probably gave the best inaugural -- not once, but twice -- while William Henry Harrison may have given the most consequential (Harrison purportedly caught a cold during his two hours of oratory, and he died a month later).

I learned a lot about President James Abram Garfield, who had been President only a few months when he was shot. Poor doctoring may have led to Garfield's death almost 80 days later.

Garfield was an extremely accomplished man. He was an ordained minister, a teacher, a Civil War general, a mathematician, and the only man in U.S. history who was simultaneously a U.S. Representative, Senator-elect, and President-elect. Legend still holds that he could write in Latin with one hand while he simultaneously wrote in Greek with the other. More's the pity the nation didn't have a chance to see exactly what our 20th President could have done.