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TIPPECANOE AND DUBYA, TOO
Bush meets the Shawnee Prophet
Al Gore is vacationing in the Virgin Islands. The only cabinet he has to worry about filling is the one that holds his scotch. And he is absolved from having to pardon his former boss.
Still, I'm sure Gore still seethes over the results of the 2000 election, which he lost despite getting more votes popularly and electoral-collegiately. He should take solace, however, in the fact the he can run again in 2004. History suggests George W. Bush, the loser who will be president in a few weeks, may not be around to oppose him.
Dubya was elected in a year ending in zero. For the past 160 years, every president but one elected in a year ending in zero has died in office.
General William Henry Harrison defeated the Shawnee tribe at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Among those slain in said battle was Tecumseh, the Shawnee Chief. Legend has it that Tecumseh's brother, the Shawnee Prophet, vowed to avenge the chief's death.
"White imperialist swine," quoth the Prophet, "I hereby put a curse on you. When one day you are elected president, you will die in office. And your successors will die in office, in twenty year intervals, until your nation is no more."
(Note: I'm taking liberties here because I don't speak Shawnee, the Prophet never wrote down the curse, and, let's be honest, it's a legend).
In 1840, true to the prophesy, Harrison was elected president. A few weeks after taking the oath of office, he died of influenza contracted during his rain-drenched inauguration.
Two decades later, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Honest Abe did not live to see his second term of office or the second act of "Our American Cousin."
(John Wilkes Booth, incidentally, was brother to Edwin Booth, the leading American thespian of the day. For an approximation of what went down in Ford's Theatre, imagine President Clinton being offed by, say, Daniel Baldwin).
1880's compromise candidate, James Garfield, was killed just four months into his presidency by a deranged acquaintence, Charles Giteau. An insatiable francophile, Guiteau was miffed that Garfield did not name him ambassador to France.
William McKinley met his maker in Buffalo, N.Y., of all places, also the victim of an assassin's bullet. Anarchist Leon Czolgosz, pride of Detroit, stode up to the President while he was delivering a speech, whipped out a revolver, and blew him away.
The election of 1920 went to Warren G. Harding, who later this month will finally lose the "Least Intelligent President Ever" label he has worn for the past eighty years. His administration corrupt, he died in San Francisco under a cloud. Rumors that Harding -- whose womanizing put Valmont to shame, to say nothing of John F. Kennedy and Clinton -- was poisoned by his wife were not debunked until years later by historian Robert H. Ferrell in his The Strange Deaths of Warren Harding.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1940 election, which by then was, for him, old hat. He died two years into his fourth term.
In 1960, JFK was elected Chief Exec. Three years later, he was gunned down by Gary Oldman and Joe Pesci -- all because Clint Eastwood was too yellow to take the fatal bullet. Or so Oliver Stone would have us believe.
John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, 1980's President-elect; the attempt neither killed Reagan nor impressed Jodie Foster.
Some say that by living through his eight years in office, the Gipper broke the Shawnee curse. I say, the guy was brain-dead for most of his second term, and that should qualify. Either way, you gotta admit, it's a hell of a coincidence, especially when you consider that only one president not elected in a year ending in zero -- 1848's Zachary Taylor -- died in office.
That brings us to 2000. Will Dubya survive the Curse of the Shawnee Prophet? Or will it be Dick Cheney running against Hillary in '04?
Either way, Al, you're better off in St. Thomas.
By Greg Olear
010901