Coming to Terms

In October, I read an article (can’t find the link) that said being a President is a dangerous job; after all, one in four Presidents die while in office. I even parroted this statistic to others a few times. Later, I did some research, and, well this isn’t exactly true. And even if it was, it skews the intent of the message somewhat.

Let me explain…

First of all, eight men have died while serving as President. As of this writing, there have been 43 Presidents (I’m including Cleveland twice, because that’s the law). If you do a little math, you’ll see that’s not 1 in 4. It’s not even 1 in 5. It’s 1 in 5.375. But wait! Maybe the writer of that article meant to say that 1 in 4 Presidents didn’t finish the job. There’s a subtle difference here, but by phrasing it this way, we can also include Nixon, who didn’t finish the job he was elected to do…but certainly lived to tell about it (he lived for 19 more years). And then there’s Bush Jr. Perhaps we shouldn’t count him at all, because he hasn’t finished the job…yet. So, if exclude W as a President, and include Nixon as someone who didn’t finish the job, this means 9 out of 42 Presidents didn’t succeed in seeing out the end of their term. This still isn’t 1 in 4, but it’s a hell of a lot closer: It’s 1 in 4.666666666666666666666666666666.

But I still have some problems with this. First of all, is it really fair to say 9 out of 42 presidents failed to finish their term when some of those people only became president because their predecessor died or resigned? I mean, Ford only became president because Nixon resigned. If Nixon hadn’t quit, there wouldn’t have been a President Ford. So maybe we should exclude from our list VPs who rose to the office of Presidency upon the death or resignation of their President. But then I think we should add back in Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and LBJ because, even though they initially rose to president due to death, they still did get elected in their own right later. So if we exclude the 5 people who only finished out a term that was not theirs, we find that 9 out of 37 Presidents did not make it to the end of their term. This, my friends, is very close to 1 in 4.

But wait! The whole premise is flawed here.

I mean, sure, it’s fair to say JFK didn’t finish the job the country asked him to do, but can we say the same about FDR? The man was elected to the Presidency four times, and he did manage to live through three of them. For my money, a guy who lives out three terms is more successful than someone like, say, Carter, who was only elected once.

So, instead of looking at how many men survived their presidency, I propose we look at terms. That is, when the populous/electoral college/congress/Supreme Court asks a person to become president (whether for the first, second, third or fourth time), do they manage to stay in office for those four years*?

Since 1789, there have been 55 presidential terms**. During that time, 37 different men have been elected to the position. The question is: how many of those terms were completed successfully? Or, put differently, how many of those terms were completed by the same man who started them?

Let’s find out by utilizing the greatest tool known to humankind: the list.

[BIG SURPRISE: THIS SHITTY BLOG PROGRAM DOESN'T ALLOW FORMATTED LISTS. OH WELL.]

As you can deduce, the answer is that 45 of the 54 completed terms have been successfully carried out by the person selected to do the job.

Now for some trivia: There have never been back-to-back unsuccessful terms.
The closest the nation ever came to this was in the 1840s. The 14th term was not successful (William Harrison died in office). Neither was the 16th (Zachary Taylor died in office). Kudos to James Polk for staying alive during the entire 15th term.
When was the longest streak of successful terms? The answer, by a comfortable margin, is: right at the beginning. The first 13 terms were successfully completed by the first 8 men elected to them. The second-longest streak is currently happening: the last seven terms have been successful. And, unless the rapture occurs in the next 60 days, Bush Jr. will bring that total up to eight.




*Any list of President’s requires, by law, at least two footnotes. So here’s the first one: Washington’s and Roosevelt’s first terms were both shortened slightly due to altering the date of subsequent inaugurations. Therefore, these two terms were not a full four years. I’m still counting them as successful, though.

**And here’s the second one.

Letter to the CEO

Here is an email I sent to the CEO of my company two days after the election:

Dear XXXXXXX:

Thank you for the email sent out on Monday, reminding us of the importance of the election and urging us all to participate in the democratic process. In view of that email, I wanted to take the opportunity to tell you how things went in my department.
I was assigned several training samples to run through a method on Election Day. Due to the nature of the testing, I could not delay running the samples, nor could I split the work between two days. So, I awoke before 4:00 in the morning and got to work immediately upon arriving. I worked straight through without any breaks or lunch time. I realized the polls were open until 8:00 in my state, but I feared the lines would be long or that some other issue would arise at the poll.
But at least I was able to vote. A co-worker began testing over 100 samples that day (about double the normal number). These samples needed to be pulled for testing two, four and twelve hours after their initial drop into shakers. As you can imagine, this made for a very long day for my co-worker. He arrived at work shortly after I did and was still on the clock after 11:00 PM. He was never given the opportunity to vote.
Other co-workers arrived late or left early (cutting into their workdays and wages) in an effort to find the best time to vote. Still others did not participate in their usual carpooling (increasing their gas expenditures) so as to be freed up to visit the polls at an opportune time.
As this is a company that encourages us all to take the opportunity to vote, I think the above examples (all from one department) are inexcusable. No one should have to choose between wages or voting and no one should be so overtaxed with their workload on Election Day that they are unable to leave long enough to go vote.
One of my favorite benefits working at XXXXX is the time off for holidays, which is generous in comparison to other local corporations. Each year, we are granted eleven days of paid time off to celebrate certain days as we see fit. I propose that, in election years, one of these eleven days be assigned to Election Day. In this year, for example, we were given paid time off for Presidents' Day - a day most employees would probably not mind working. Again, I'm not implying that I did not appreciate having that day off, but given the choice, I would have opted to have Election Day off instead.
If assigning Election Day off is impractical, I recommend offering employees a Floating Holiday so that those who feel the need can use this on Election Day.
I know you are busy and I thank you for taking the time to read this. It is a pleasure to work here at XXXXXXXXX.

(No reply received as of 19Nov08.)

A Good Question - Part Two

The other religion-centered question that was posed to me was this:

What kind of negative influence did the religion have on you?

This question, asked by a relative, was not asked in the spirit of sincere inquiry, but as a challenge. The reason for the challenge was because of something stupid I said. See, I was first asked why I would decide to leave the religion and, further, make my findings available on the web. My answer was two-fold: I left the religion because it is not true and because it has had a largely negative influence on my immediate family.

I’m not sure why I allowed my answer to ramble. The first part (because it’s not true) certainly would have sufficed. For example, if someone says: “Why don’t you believe the Earth is flat?”, a full, complete answer would be: “Because it’s not true”. You shouldn’t have to supplement it with “And because believing it’s flat is bad for my health.”

Nevertheless, that’s what I said, and that’s what my family member decided to jump on. I was soon reminded, however, that it’s impossible to ever point out to a Witness that their religion has a pernicious effect upon its members. This is because all evidence provided is dismissed into one of two categories: 1) You can’t blame the actions of some elders/pioneers/Bethelites on the religion as a whole. And 2) Your claim isn’t that bad.

Let me explain this with examples.

First, when I argued that one member of my family was subjected to child abuse at the hands of her (elder) father, my relative said: “Oh come on, you can’t point out what he did to his children and say that that’s a problem with the religion. He was acting out of line with what the religion teaches.” But this is a total cop-out. Matthew 7:16 declares “By their fruits you will know them”, and Jesus claimed that the identifying mark of his true disciples would be that they have love among themselves. Additionally, Witnesses love pointing out how united they are, so even if I was to grant that some elders have acted out of line with the official doctrine, this only serves as evidence that they are not united.
It’s funny, really, because as I ran down a litany of offenses elders have committed against my family, the person with whom I was talking knocked them all down as exceptions, aberrations, to the religion at large. Again: cop out! If I could list off a dozen elders that pushed their own opinion, abused their kids, empowered pedophiles, were over-eager to disfellowship, pushed their own opinions or caused members of my family to leave the meeting crying…then who’s to say those are the only twelve elders like that in the whole world?
My brother-in-law once compared the religion to a job, and I think his description was apt. Allow me to use it here: if your supervisor molested your kids, would you continue to work for him? And if you quit, would you keep silent about it?

Second, other arguments I threw up were swatted down as “not that bad”. It’s hard to qualify this. Especially in the mindset of a Witness, there is almost nothing a person could endure as a Witness that qualifies as “that bad”. For instance, many Witnesses died in Nazi-sponsored concentration camps. To a Witness, this is well worth it, as such people are practically guaranteed a place in paradise (sorry, no virgins in this paradise – quite the opposite, some Witnesses think that resurrected folks will be prohibited from sex). So, when I complained of being an outcast in school, not celebrating my birthday, wasting time in a pointless volunteer work and subjecting myself to the whims of elders, Witnesses just chalk this up to the kind of life we must endure in this wicked world. They argue that not celebrating a birthday isn’t that big of a deal (and maybe it’s not) and, further, that by not celebrating one’s birthday, a person is helping cement their relationship with Jehovah. And while most Witnesses would sympathize with being an outcast at school or work, they would say that such things are persecution orchestrated by the devil & that God will reward us appropriately in due time.

At any rate, I ended this portion of the conversation by stating that the negative influences were not what caused me to leave. It was, plain and simple, the fact that the religion is not true.

In a future post, perhaps, I will cite specific cases of how the religion was detrimental to my life.