Trump faces test in speech to Congress -- Feb. 23, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When President Donald Trump delivers his first speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, he’ll see a House chamber as divided as the nation.

Dozens of Democratic members of Congress boycotted Trump’s inauguration, but they plan to turn the joint session into a mini protest. Many are bringing as guests Muslims, the disabled and other minorities who they say will be hurt by Trump’s policies.

So Trump faces a test: Will he be the combative campaigner people either love or hate or will he offer an olive branch?    

Trump gave Congress, even Republicans, the back of his hand in his inaugural address, failing to mention House Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He castigated the same politicians he’ll address Tuesday in prime time.

“Their victories have not been your victories, their triumphs have not been your triumphs,” he said. “And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”

Stephen Miller, the aide who wrote the inaugural address, with its bleak picture of 

“American carnage,” is also writing the joint session speech. This time, though, the president will present an optimistic, positive vision, officials say.

Trump, who insists he inherited “a mess,” will talk about what he’s done so far and where he plans to take the country in broad terms.

“It’s important for the American people to know that he was an agent of change; he came here to get things done, and he didn’t waste any time,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Wednesday.

“In the drafts that I’ve seen so far, it is going to be a very strong blueprint of where he wants to take this country,” Spicer said.

While Trump has signed executive orders to achieve some of his goals, he needs legislation for many of the big items on his to-do list: tax cuts, infrastructure projects, health care reform and a secure border. That means working with Capitol Hill.

But Trump’s dismal approval ratings make it easier for Democrats, and perhaps some Republicans, to keep him at arm’s length. Just 42 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, lower by far than any other president after a month in office, Gallup reports. A nationwide poll by Quinnipiac University released Wednesday found Trump with 38 percent job approval.

Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat, is leading the effort among House Democrats to bring as guests people who have faced discrimination and made positive contributions.

Langevin’s guest is Dr. Ehsun Mirza, a Pakistani-born critical care physician and naturalized citizen who is a leader in Rhode Island’s Muslim community. 

Trump’s speech is not officially a State of the Union address. The last five presidents have spoken to Congress early in their first year but have waited until the second year to deliver a State of the Union address.

After the bitter and protracted 2000 election, President George W. Bush addressed Congress Feb. 27, 2001, on his Administration’s Goals.

“Together we are changing the tone in the nation’s capital,” Bush proclaimed. He promised education would be his top priority.

“Let us agree to bridge old divides. But let us also agree that our good will must be dedicated to great goals. Bipartisanship is more than minding our manners; it is doing our duty,” Bush said.

Which reminds us that even if we like what a president says at such august occasions, we should take their words with a grain of salt.

In February 1981, shortly after he took office, President Ronald Reagan addressed Congress on his Program for Economic Recovery, calling for massive tax cuts, spending cuts on domestic programs and hefty increases in defense spending.

Warning that the national debt was approaching $1 trillion, Reagan offered a dandy word picture.

“If you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire,” Reagan said. “A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand dollar bills 67 miles high.”

But Reagan’s policies only exacerbated the debt. By the time he left office the national debt had nearly tripled. That stack of thousand dollar bills would have been 160 miles high.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Capital in confusion over Obamacare RX -- Feb. 16, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

President Donald Trump turned to House Speaker Paul Ryan the other day and said: “He’s working on Obamacare. It’s going to be very soon -- right?”

“Yes,” Ryan replied, as cameras rolled in the Oval Office.

More than a nudge from the president, Ryan could use some Lyndon Johnson-style arm twisting to make good on the Republicans’ long-term promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.   

Trump has left details of reforming health insurance to Ryan and other Republicans in Congress, but they are floundering in a sea of options.  

Trump still sounds like he’s an outsider on the campaign trail. When Humana became the latest major insurer to say it will stop selling coverage on Obamacare exchanges in 2018, Trump tweeted: “Obamacare continues to fail. Will repeal, replace and save health care for ALL Americans.”

Yet he has presented no plan of his own and the goal of replacement seems to be slipping farther into the future.

As a House member, Tom Price, the new Health and Human Services secretary, offered a plan, one of many. None of the other plans has galvanized widespread support even within the GOP, let alone with Democrats. It’s unclear what Senate Republicans will accept.  

Ryan went door-to-door, trying to build a consensus around his “Better Way” plan, but Republicans even disagree on timing -- repeal and replace at the same time or repeal first and take time on a replacement.

Trump has said repeal and replace will be “essentially simultaneous.”

But Ryan told reporters this week that reform “affects every person and every family in America,” and a deliberate, “step-by-step approach” is needed for stability.

House Republicans received plan options at a party caucus before they headed home for the week-long Presidents Day break.

Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 35 to 40 of the most conservative Republicans, wants to repeal the law now and is backing a plan by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Paul’s plan would undo most of the Obamacare rules, rely on expanded health savings accounts, allow people to buy insurance across state lines and join associations to increase purchasing power.  

Paul would also jettison the Medicaid expansion that was a state option under the Affordable Care Act. That’s a sticking point. It’s always easier to give people a benefit than take one away.

Before he left office, President Barack Obama urged Democrats not to “rescue” Republicans in their efforts to replace Obamacare. House Republicans voted scores of times to repeal Obamacare since the law was enacted in 2010 without a single Republican vote.

Despite the years of controversy over Obama’s signature law, it appears many Americans remain surprisingly uninformed. More than one in three either thought the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare are different programs or didn’t know whether they are the same or different, a poll by Morning Consult reported last month.

The Trump administration is taking actions that actually could make the law more palatable to critics. 

The Internal Revenue Service is relaxing a key enforcement mechanism scheduled to take effect this year. The IRS was to withhold tax refunds from people who failed to comply with the mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a tax penalty. Instead, IRS will process returns and refunds as usual.

In addition, HHS just proposed new rules aimed at stabilizing the exchanges to encourage insurers to keep offering coverage and customers more plan choices.     

Obama promised Americans if they liked their doctors or their health insurance plans, they could keep them. The claim turned out to be false and was a source of anger that motivated many voters.

Trump promised to get rid of Obamacare and put something better in its place while retaining the law’s popular provisions. 

People hate paying higher insurance premiums – which they blame on Obamacare even though premiums were rising before the law. But they like keeping children under 26 on their insurance plans and not being denied, or priced out of, coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions.

It’s a curious turn that, for the time being anyway, Republican dithering on Capitol Hill means Trump is keeping Obamacare alive.  

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Still celebrating Washington's birthday after all these years -- Feb. 9, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Historians trace the first public celebration of George Washington’s birthday to the harsh winter of 1778 at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War.

That’s when fifers and drummers from Proctor’s Continental Artillery band played for the general at his quarters.

For the first holiday in honor of Washington’s birthday, though, Americans can thank the French.

In 1781, Count Rochambeau granted the French Army in Rhode Island a day off and held a parade to celebrate Washington’s birthday. In those halcyon days before tweets, Washington thanked the count in a letter.

“The flattering distinction paid to the anniversary of my birthday is an honor for which I dare not attempt to express my gratitude,” Washington wrote.

Celebrations continued, but President Washington suffered the slings and arrows of a critical press. A newspaper writer blasted the Washington birthday celebration in Philadelphia in 1793 as a “monarchical farce” that exhibited “every species of royal pomp and parade,” Ron Chernow writes in “Washington: A Life.”

The federal government first gave its employees in Washington a legal day off to celebrate Washington’s birthday in 1879. Some were paid, others not. The government extended the paid holiday to federal employees everywhere in 1885.

History does not record, to my knowledge, when -- or why -- the first American decided to buy a mattress to celebrate the birth of the Father of our Country.

We tend to blame the 20^th century for cashing in on Washington, but the practice started even while he was alive.  

“George Washington surely holds the record for the number of times the image of a historical figure has appeared on goods made for the American home,” art historian William Ayres wrote in an essay on the commercialization of the Washington image from 1776 to 1876 in “George Washington: American Symbol.”

Moderns, prodded by the tourism industry, made Washington’s birthday into a three-day weekend. 

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act in 1968, effective in 1971, celebrating Washington’s Birthday on the third Monday in February; Memorial Day on the last Monday in May and Veterans Day on the fourth Monday in October. Veterans were outraged, and the last was moved back to Nov. 11.

“It will enable families who live some distance apart to spend more time together. Americans will be able to travel farther and see more of this beautiful land of ours. They will be able to participate in a wider range of recreational and cultural activities,” LBJ said at the signing ceremony.

He didn’t mention shopping.

How the third Monday in February became known as Presidents Day is a bit of a mystery. Some blame President Richard Nixon, but his 1971 executive order does not mention Presidents Day.

Congress, in a rare stroke of genius, never officially changed the holiday from George Washington’s Birthday to Presidents Day.  

Most states adopted Presidents Day, even though it dilutes the Washington connection. Illinois has holidays for Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday Feb. 13 and Washington’s on Feb. 20 this year. Virginia sticks with George Washington Day. Alabama commemorates both Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s birthday on Feb. 20, even though Jefferson’s birthday is in April.

One enduring birthday tribute to Washington is the reading of his 1796 Farewell Address on the Senate floor. His letter from “a parting friend” warns the young nation against geographical divisions, political parties and foreign interference in domestic affairs.  

The address was read in 1862 during the Civil War in hopes of building morale, and every year since 1896 a senator has read aloud the entire address – 7,641 words. It usually takes about 45 minutes and often the senator reads to an empty chamber. 

Cynics say the reading is a charade since the Senate ignores Washington’s wisdom.

But his words draw us back to what matters, especially in times that pull us apart.

“The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity must always exalt the just pride of patriotism,” he wrote.

“With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together.”

Happy birthday, Mr. Washington.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

`Hidden Figures' inspires with herstory -- Feb. 2, 2017

By MARSHA MERCER

In the splendid movie “Hidden Figures,” astronaut John Glenn is about to blast into space and become the first American to orbit the Earth when he makes a request.

“Get the girl to check the numbers,” he tells NASA.

Katherine Johnson is the “girl” whose mathematical prowess Glenn trusts more than IBM computers to calculate the flight trajectory. She verifies the numbers and Glenn rockets into history on Feb. 20, 1962.

The story seems too good to be true, a Hollywood fabrication, but Glenn did ask for Johnson to do the math, NASA confirmed.   

“Hidden Figures” tells the story of three black women mathematicians who worked in the NASA Langley Research Center in Jim Crow Virginia of the early 1960s.

Even though President Barrack Obama in 2015 gave Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, most Americans were unaware of the hundreds of women whose calculations helped put America into space.

Now, special screenings around the country during Black History Month are introducing girls and boys to women who love math and persevere against formidable odds, undaunted by discrimination and unfairness.     

Based on real people and facts, the movie was inspired by Margot Lee Setterly’s proposal for the book “Hidden Figures.” Producer Donna Gigliotti was so impressed she bought the movie rights before the book was completed.

Growing up in Hampton, Va., Setterly knew Johnson and heard stories about working at NASA from her dad, a research scientist. What seemed like no big deal in her hometown was largely unknown elsewhere.  

At times funny and others sad, the movie lets the brilliance, determination and patriotism of the women unfold in sharp contrast to the era’s benighted attitudes about race and women’s roles.

As TV news brings the civil rights movement into their living rooms, the women struggle to thrive in an environment where the work areas, lunch rooms, restrooms and water fountains are all segregated and promotions rare.  

Setterly, a 1991 University of Virginia graduate who worked on Wall Street and published an English language magazine in Mexico, began her research in 2010.

“It probably took three years of just research for me to just figure out how to tell the story -- really digging into these different strands of Virginia history, the history of these women,” she told collectSPACE.com, a space history and memorabilia website.

Her hard work paid off. “Hidden Figures” tops the Feb. 5 New York Times bestseller lists for combined print and e-book nonfiction and paperback nonfiction.

The film, a box office blockbuster, won the Screen Actors Guild award for feature cast ensemble and has been nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture and best writing for an adapted screenplay.

Oscar winner Octavia Spencer who plays Johnson’s supervisor, Dorothy Vaughan, was nominated for best supporting actress.

R&B star Janelle Monae plays Mary Jackson, who goes to court for the right to attend segregated night classes so she can pursue her dream of becoming an engineer. Kevin Costner is understated as Al Harrison, the decent boss who respects Johnson.

While some events and characters are fictionalized, the crux of the story is true, said director Theodore Melfi, who consulted during production with Setterly and NASA chief historian Bill Barry. Melfi took Taraji P. Henson, who plays Johnson, to meet the real Johnson, 98, to get a feel for her bearing and character.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor to NASA, hired five white women as human “computers” in 1935 and brought in black women in the 1940s. Male engineers had done the calculations, but they hated spending their time that way.

“They realized the women were much more accurate, much faster and did a better job – and didn’t complain. And you could pay them less,” Barry said in a broadcast to schools. “That actually got put in a memo: `Isn’t this great? They do this great work and they’re cheap.’”

Great the work was, and so is “Hidden Figures.” There’s nothing cheap about the film. 

You could say seeing Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson as role models is pure gold – Oscar gold.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Trump's war on facts a losing gambit -- Jan. 26, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

I am 5’10,” speak French like a native and play the piano flawlessly. Oh, and Donald Trump just released his tax returns and resigned as president.

Not one of those facts is real. They’re falsehoods, fibs, fantasy. OK, whoppers.   

They would be lies -- and I a liar -- if I intended to deceive you. I don’t. Like most Americans, I respect facts, evidence and truth, which is more than you can say for President Trump.

Trump’s revolution showed its disdain for science by scrubbing the White House web site of all mention of climate change and gagging the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A president has every right to change policy, but stopping the free flow of facts is wrong. It goes against the grain of our history.

Long before the American Revolution, John Adams, later our second president, said in 1770: “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Americans have prized truth in our leaders, sometimes honored in the breach more than in the observance, since George Washington. The myth of the boy, his hatchet and the cherry tree -- “I cannot tell a lie” – gave generations a role model.  

In the 20^th Century, Jimmy Carter won the White House promising: “I’ll never tell a lie.” People rolled their eyes, but Carter’s earnestness was refreshing after the lyin’ Nixon years and Watergate scandal.

Politicians and presidents do lie, of course, but we’ve never had a president like Trump, who wields fake facts as emotional prods to rile up his followers.  

Trump tried for years to prove the lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and said Hillary Clinton and her 2008 campaign started the rumor – claims that were repeatedly debunked and yet built him a following.

He backed off last September when the lie began to impede his path to the White House, still insisting that Clinton started it.

Trump won despite his loose affiliation with truth during the campaign. As president, he has turned to alternative facts.

“Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts” that the crowds at Trump’s inauguration were the biggest ever, despite photo evidence to the contrary, Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump aide, said last Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

Chuck Todd, the show’s moderator, replied, “Alternative facts aren’t facts. They are falsehoods.”

The phrase, alternative facts, was a chilling reminder of George Orwell’s “1984,” a novel published in 1932 that envisions a dystopian future where the Ministry of Truth subverts facts and history. This week, “1984” jumped to No. 1 on Amazon.

Sales of  “1984” have soared 9,500 percent since the Trump inauguration, and publisher Penguin is rushing out a reprint of 75,000 copies.

The Amazon Top 20 included “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis, about the election of an authoritarian president wonderfully named Buzz Windrip, and “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley, also a dark view of the future where an authoritarian regime quashes thought.  

If Trump’s alternative facts were as benign as his wish for longer fingers or thicker hair, we could ignore them. But he’s no longer a billionaire private citizen with kooky ideas or a candidate crying “rigged election” in case he loses.  

Unable to let go of his baseless claim that he would have won the popular vote were it not for up to five million people illegally voting for Hillary Clinton, the president tweeted his call for a “major investigation” into voter fraud.

No matter that state election officials insist there’s zero evidence of widespread fraud. Voter fraud is one of Trump’s unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

It’s “a longstanding belief he’s maintained,” Sean Spicer, White House Press secretary, told reporters.

It’s encouraging that some powerful Republicans in Congress want no part in investigating this particular longstanding belief of Trump’s.  

“I don’t see any evidence,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters. “But the president has 100,000 people at the Department of Justice, and if he wants to have an investigation, have at it.”

Facts are stubborn things, and people want a president whose facts they can trust. Playing fast and loose with truth is no way to govern.

As someone who hates to lose, Trump should realize this gambit won’t win.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Beat the press? A new president arrives -- Jan. 19, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the lull before the inaugural storm, I walked around the Capitol and admired the refurbished dome gleaming in the sun.

School kids snapped selfies, guards chatted amiably among themselves and groundskeepers shoveled mulch. Except for cell phones and increased security, not much has changed on Capitol Hill since my first presidential inauguration five presidents ago.

Then as now many in the nation’s capital were apprehensive about an incoming 

Republican president with show business ties. The avuncular Ronald Reagan, though, had served two terms as governor of California.     

Avoiding school groups winding around the Supreme Court building, I ducked into the Library of Congress to visit America’s treasures. Thomas Jefferson’s library? Check. The Gutenberg Bible? Check.

The Herblock Gallery’s selection of 10 political cartoons reminds visitors that political and social conflict are not new. For more than five decades, Herbert L. Block, a politically independent editorial cartoonist, lacerated the powerful and championed the ordinary citizen. Block, who won three Pulitzer Prizes, died in 2001.

The Herblock exhibit changes every six months. The current exhibit, through March 11, shows cartoons from1966, during the Vietnam War. Some of the issues still resonate: gun control, electronic surveillance, the struggle between factions of the Republican Party and campaign finance.

A brilliant cartoon titled “Backlash” represents President Lyndon Johnson unintentionally killing the Great Society by pursuing the expensive war. Herblock shows LBJ, wielding a large sword, labeled “War Costs” inadvertently lopping off the head of a man labeled “Great Society Hopes” standing behind him.

I was thinking of Herblock’s sharply drawn cartoons when President Barack Obama in his last presidential news conference told reporters: “You’re not supposed to be sycophants; you’re supposed to be skeptics.”

Perspective is often keen in retrospect. Obama’s relationship with the White House press corps over the years was civil but strained. He promised transparency, but his administration had an abominable record with Freedom of Information Act requests.

The administration stiffed one of every six FOIA requests, setting a record for the number of times an administration claimed it could not find documents requested, an Associated Press investigation revealed last year.

Obama preferred one-on-one TV interviews and speeches to news conferences. When he did have news conferences, he called only on reporters on a list. His long answers meant fewer questions could be asked.

Now comes billionaire businessman President Donald J. Trump, whose combative style toward the news media is legendary. No president likes negative stories, of course, but most have the self control to keep their anger under wraps.

Trump has been openly hostile -- calling out reporters and yanking their credentials during the campaign, dismissing reports as fake news and refusing to answer questions from news outlets he deems unfair.

Trump’s team is considering whether to evict reporters from the West Wing, where they’ve been working since the William McKinley administration. Also under consideration: dropping live TV coverage of daily press briefings, started during the Clinton administration. Critics say the format encourages grandstanding and posturing by reporters. Imagine that.

Most Americans probably have little sympathy for reporters being ousted from the briefing room, but Obama endorsed having reporters onsite and not across the street.

Offering indirect advice to his successor, Obama told reporters: “Having you in this building has made this place work better. It keeps us honest; it makes us work harder.”

It’s not as though reporters wandered around the White House at will, dropping into Cabinet meetings. They are on a very short leash, limited to the press staff area.

Obama recognized belatedly that part of the job as president is shaping public opinion.

“There were big stretches, while governing, where even though we were doing the right thing, we weren’t able to mobilize public opinion firmly behind us to weaken the resolve of the Republicans to stop opposing us or to cooperate with us,” he said in a recent interview with CBS.

Obama said he will be glad to be a consumer of news rather than its constant subject.

Trump has a knack for shaping opinion, although he succeeded in the election in gathering more people against him than for him.

And, though he complains he has received the worst media treatment in American history, Trump only now starts living in the media glare and intense scrutiny of the presidency.  

As Reagan would say, stay tuned.

(C) Marsha Mercer 2017. All rights reserved.

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Canaries, anyone? Our presidential inaugurations quiz -- Jan. 12, 2017 column

At noon on Jan. 20, Donald John Trump will take the 35-word oath of office and become the 45^th president of the United States. The oath is prescribed in the Constitution, but much of what happens during the peaceful transfer of power is rooted in tradition. Get ready for the big show and test your H.Q. – Historical Quotient – with our 10-question quiz. Answers are below.

1             1) Presidential inaugurations used to be on March 4. Why are they on Jan. 20, a day that’s often snowy and bone-chillingly cold?

A.   Washington was rainy and muddy in March, and carriages got stuck.

B.   The Supreme Court picked it.

C.   The 20^th Amendment says so.

D.   It’s when Jupiter aligns with Mars.

2)  Which president gave the longest inaugural address and what happened?

A.   Bill Clinton spoke so long that when he said “in conclusion,” everybody cheered.

B.   Despite a snowstorm, William Henry Harrison in 1841 spoke for an hour and 45 minutes without a hat or coat. He caught pneumonia and died a month later.

C.   Ronald Reagan told so many stories about his old Hollywood days that Nancy Reagan unplugged his microphone.  

3              3) Who gave the shortest inaugural address?

A.   Abraham Lincoln

B.   Franklin Roosevelt

C.   George Washington

                4) How did Thomas Jefferson at his 1801 inauguration break with his predecessors?

A.   Jefferson wore the clothes “of a plain citizen without any distinctive badge of office,” a newspaper reported, unlike the elegant suits with swords favored by Washington and Adams.

B.   Jefferson walked from his rooming house to the Capitol, rather than being driven in a liveried coach.

C.   Both A and B 

5               5) What do canaries have to do with Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration?    

A)  Canaries – roasted in cream sauce – were served at the inaugural luncheon.

B)   At the frigid inaugural ball, hundreds of canaries in cages were suspended from the ceiling as decoration. The birds froze to death and dropped onto the heads of dancers below.

C)   First lady Julia Grant’s hat was covered with canary feathers, setting off the first fashion trend by a first lady.

6) Who was the first president to ride to and from his inauguration in an automobile?

A.   Warren Harding in 1921, a Packard

B.   William McKinley in 1897, a Stanley Steamer

C.   William Howard Taft in 1909, a Pierce-Arrow

                7) Which president wore a ring containing a lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair to his inauguration?

A.   Barack Obama

B.   Teddy Roosevelt

C.   Ulysses S. Grant

D.   Nobody. This is fake news.

8              8) Match the president with the theme of his inauguration -- Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

A.   “Celebrating America’s Spirit Together”

B.   “Crusade America”

C.   “An American Journey: Building a Bridge to the 21^st Century”

D.   “Forward Together”

                9) Whose inaugural address was the first to be broadcast on TV?

A.   Dwight Eisenhower

B.   John F. Kennedy

C.   Harry S Truman

               10) When a citizen tried to wish this newly inaugurated president joy in the White House, the president smiled and said: “I would advise you to follow my example on nuptial occasions when I always tell the bridegroom I will wait until the end of the year before offering any congratulations.” Who was the president?

A)  John Calvin Coolidge

B)   Thomas Jefferson

C)   Franklin D. Roosevelt

Answers

1) C -- Ratified in 1933, the 20^th Amendment states: “The terms of the president and vice president shall end at noon on the 20^th day of January . . . the terms of successors shall then begin.”

2) B

3) C – Washington’s second inaugural address was the shortest in history at 135 words. FDR’s fourth inaugural address was 559 words, and Lincoln’s second was 700 words.

4) C

5) B

6) A

7) B – strange but true.

8 – A Bush, B Eisenhower, C Clinton, D Nixon

9       C – in 1949.

10   B

     SOURCES: National Archives, American Presidency Project, www.history.com, Thomas Jefferson Foundation – Monticello, White House Historical Association

--Compiled by Marsha Mercer