James K. Polk, the 11th President of the United States, died 176 years ago on June 15. He was 53 years old when he died in Nashville from a persistent illness following the long trip home, just three months after leaving the White House. He accomplished all four goals that he set for his presidency, but much of this was in penultimate fulfillment of Manifest Destiny, and for this he is disparaged, even hated, by many. And I disdain that MD impulse too, even though California and Oregon are integral to my memories.
But what really intrigues me about Polk is not something I
fully appreciated until the leadup to the 2024 Presidential election, for reasons you can probably guess.
Polk ran for president only once, won, promised not to run again, both before
and after he was elected, and kept that promise. Remarkable. Amazing.
Rutherford B. Hayes also fits the bill, but the election of 1876 is the most
controversial in our history -- 2000 and 2020 don't come close, so some would
add an asterisk to Hayes. I don’t, however, having read up on him – he was
sincere, despite the complexities of his election, and of the times,
Reconstruction. There are other near misses to Polk (and Hayes), as Patrick
Winston, a founder of machine learning, would call them: notably Buchanan and
Coolidge, and some might also add Truman and Johnson, but of these only
Coolidge fits the spirit of why I hold high these three presidents – Polk,
Hayes, Coolidge -- as undramatically stepping aside (as well as Washington, of
course, and all who followed his lead before the 22nd amendment).
So this Sunday I remember Polk, for his sins and for a quality I wish we better
respected and held up as an exemplar to our leaders. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr,
great presidential historian, wrote this, as quoted by John Seigenthaler:
"Neither Polk nor Truman was one of those creative presidents who make the
nation look at things in a new way...But both had the intelligence and courage
to accept the challenge of history. History might have broken them, as it broke
Buchanan and Hoover. Instead it forced them, not into personal greatness, but
into the performance of great things."
If you are looking for a connection to AI, which is all over my feed, talk to
an LLM about all this. Despite their flaws, these AIs are typically the only
entities that will spend an hour on presidential history with me, as well as
formal language and automata theory, geography, notably water sheds, and Moby
Dick.
