Latest / Ridiculous History / Tecumseh's Curse, Part Two: Boy, It's Tough to be President

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Tecumseh's Curse, Part Two: Boy, It's Tough to be President · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give a shout out to our
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Speaker 1: super producer, non curse enthusiast noted for that, mister Max Williams.
0:41
Speaker 2: Max shouts at clouds, Williams, I do yell.
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Speaker 3: At clouds often.
0:45
Speaker 1: Well, they've had got it coming.
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Speaker 2: They know what they are, you know, especially when those
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Speaker 2: those ones that just insist upon themselves.
0:51
Speaker 1: You know, it's high and high end mighty. I love clouds.
0:54
Speaker 1: I you know, it's a story for a different day.
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Speaker 1: But the science of how people began recognizing clouds is
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Speaker 1: itself a great idea for an episode. Folks, if you
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Speaker 1: have not heard part one of Tucumps's Curse, we cannot
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Speaker 1: wait for you to explore with us. Please tune in
1:13
Speaker 1: and listen to that episode. It gives you all the
1:15
Speaker 1: context you need to know before we get to the
1:19
Speaker 1: really juicy stuff tonight. I am Ben Bullen, joined as
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Speaker 1: always with the one and only mister Noel Brown did as.
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Speaker 2: I Yes, who Rah, I finally got it, I think.
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Speaker 2: So we'll start with our boy William Henry Harrison the
1:36
Speaker 2: max described heel of this story. As many folks might know,
1:42
Speaker 2: he did become the president, but his time in office
1:46
Speaker 2: was blissfully short, like really short, about a month short.
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Speaker 2: And while many folks believe he died because he was
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Speaker 2: a sixty eight year old man living during a time
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Speaker 2: when that in an itself could be something of a
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Speaker 2: death sentence due to a lack of modern medicine, he
2:05
Speaker 2: also had this sort of unusual hobby of just kind
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Speaker 2: of hanging out in the rain going for night walks.
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Speaker 2: I imagine that is largely what led to his downfall,
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Speaker 2: in addition to perhaps this curse in question.
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Speaker 1: There we go. Yeah, we're going to talk about the
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Speaker 1: nature of curses today because, as we said in part one,
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Speaker 1: a lot of people in the US, fellow ridiculous historians
2:30
Speaker 1: and future ridiculous historians, have heard the phrase to Cumps's
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Speaker 1: curse aka the curse of tip a Canoe, but haven't
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Speaker 1: really heard how that became a thing and why people
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Speaker 1: tend to believe in it. But it is a part
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Speaker 1: of American presidential lore that is up there with the
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Speaker 1: list that you will always see of the comparisons between
2:55
Speaker 1: JFK and Abraham Lincoln there are a lot of things
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Speaker 1: that you can stream some red string around, like events
3:03
Speaker 1: that can appear to be part of a pattern, depending
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Speaker 1: upon your belief. William Henry Harrison does he believe in curses?
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Speaker 1: We don't know he is. His presidency is most famous
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Speaker 1: for the sheer abbreviation of it. He made it. He
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Speaker 1: made it a month with the top job before he died,
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Speaker 1: and a lot of people like you said, Noel, think
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Speaker 1: it's something you could chalk up to his age at
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Speaker 1: the time he was sixty eight, or his hobby of
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Speaker 1: exposing himself to the elements. He would wander around days
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Speaker 1: and nights, regardless of the weather. It's kind of like
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Speaker 1: an inspiration for the Post Office of being honest, exactly.
3:48
Speaker 2: A bit of a goth type. Fellow Martin Kelly writes
3:52
Speaker 2: in Thought Co in his article did to comes his curse?
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Speaker 2: Kill seven US presidents? It comes to his curse, also
3:58
Speaker 2: known as the Curse of Tipic News, stems from an
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Speaker 2: eighteen o nine dispute between future US President William Henry
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Speaker 2: Harrison and Shawnee indigenous leader to come to Some believe
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Speaker 2: the curse is the reason that Harrison and every following
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Speaker 2: president up to Kennedy, who was elected in a year
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Speaker 2: ending in zero died in office. Right yeah, So little
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Speaker 2: numerology playing in here.
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Speaker 1: As well, right right, Again, the perception of a pattern
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Speaker 1: is key to this, and of course, as established earlier
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Speaker 1: in part one, the ratio of presidency survival rates is
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Speaker 1: really messed up. There's a very very small sample size,
4:37
Speaker 1: still less than fifty people, but eight of those people
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Speaker 1: have died in office. We joked that that makes the
4:44
Speaker 1: job slightly less secure than the life of a podcaster,
4:49
Speaker 1: but only just here's the issue, right, This dispute between
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Speaker 1: Harrison and tecumsa Is is a key piece of American history,
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Speaker 1: and apparently, according to true believers, it's also a beef
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Speaker 1: that led to super natural consequences. So no, Max, Maybe
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Speaker 1: we start with the concept of this curse, because despite
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Speaker 1: the name, a lot of us may be surprised to
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Speaker 1: learn that this curse doesn't come from type Canoe. Instead,
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Speaker 1: it comes from the battle at the River Thames, not
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Speaker 1: the Thames in London, which I went to recently, and
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Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, man, that's a dirty river.
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Speaker 2: Yeah it sure is. Call back to our old episode
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Speaker 2: on the Great Stink. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's still pretty
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Speaker 2: dirty to this day. But back in the day, boy,
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Speaker 2: that thing was that the Thames was teeming with absolute
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Speaker 2: filth and you know, sewage and the Yeah, this is
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Speaker 2: not that Thames, that Tames Thames different times. But Martin
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Speaker 2: Kelly once again right that during the War of eighteen twelve,
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Speaker 2: Harrison really doubled down on his anti indigenous attitudes. He
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Speaker 2: defeated the British and the tribes that had aligned with them.
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Speaker 2: As we also mentioned in the previous episode, during that
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Speaker 2: Battle of the Thames, not that Thames. This further defeat
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Speaker 2: and the loss of more land to the American government
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Speaker 2: is apparently what drove to Comsta his brother, the prophet
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Speaker 2: tanks Quatawa, to place a death curse on all future
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Speaker 2: US presidents that were elected in years ending in a zero.
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Speaker 2: Very interesting that they would choose to add that caveat
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Speaker 2: why not just all future US presidents? But perhaps that
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Speaker 2: was something in the nature of the curse itself. He
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Speaker 2: had to have some numerological elements.
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Speaker 1: It makes the pattern work, right, that's how they have
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Speaker 1: to recognize it. And also Harrison, by the way, he
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Speaker 1: is inaugurated, it is president in eighteen forty one, but
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Speaker 1: he's elected in eighteen forty, so that's why it descends
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Speaker 1: from Harrison. And I love that you're bringing up tens
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Speaker 1: Katawa because he is one of the more fascinating characters
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Speaker 1: of this piece of history to me, and agreed, yeah,
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Speaker 1: and he's also like, Okay, we said, the name for
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Speaker 1: the curse is weird and doesn't really work because it's
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Speaker 1: not based on tip of canoe and it's called to
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Speaker 1: Coumsa's curse, But Takumsa isn't the one who did the curse.
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Speaker 1: According to the story, Tensquatawa enacted the curse, placing that
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Speaker 1: on the placing this death, this supernatural death upon every
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Speaker 1: US president, as you said, only elected in years starting
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Speaker 1: or ending in a zero. And we also have to
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Speaker 1: remember a very important part about how history is made here.
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Speaker 1: Everything we discussed about ten Skawata in our previous episode
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Speaker 1: shows that he couldn't really do magic. He got exposed
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Speaker 1: as a fraud with that, with that wild attack on
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Speaker 1: Harrison's camp where he promised that he would give people
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Speaker 1: magic powers and failed, and then he skidaddled he left town.
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Speaker 1: So we want to be aware of the context, but
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Speaker 1: we also want to realize that a lot of the
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Speaker 1: people responsible for creating the lore of Tecumsa's curse. They
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Speaker 1: were asodicizing Native Americans. They were like, oh, watch out
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Speaker 1: for all this spooky Native magic, because it can't be true.
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Speaker 1: The people in the most stressful job in the US
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Speaker 1: often just sometimes die. It has to be magic.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, let's go through some of these examples,
8:55
Speaker 2: many of these biographies coming from the White House dot Gov.
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Speaker 2: Let's start with, of course, eighteen forty William Henry Harrison.
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Speaker 2: His bio actually picks up right after the Battle of
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Speaker 2: the Thames, and here's a quote from the bio on
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Speaker 2: white House dot gov. Thereafter Harrison returned to civilian life.
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Speaker 2: The Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him
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Speaker 2: for president in eighteen forty. He won by a majority
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Speaker 2: of less than one hundred and fifty thousand, but swept
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Speaker 2: a fun, fun political maneuverings here swept the notorious Electoral
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Speaker 2: College two hundred and thirty four to sixty. But before
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Speaker 2: he had been in office a single month, he caught
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Speaker 2: a cold that developed into pneumonia, and on April fourth,
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Speaker 2: eighteen forty one, he died, the first president in fact
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Speaker 2: to die in office, and with him the Whig Party,
9:50
Speaker 2: the Whig program, the Whig ideology died as well.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and the Wigs have been sort of struggling
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Speaker 1: for a while. This was kind of their death knell.
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Speaker 1: And some people Okay, So if we try to trace
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Speaker 1: back the causes of Harrison's death, if we put on
10:09
Speaker 1: our old Casey pegram Casey on the case law and
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Speaker 1: order vibes, thank you back, what we see is that
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Speaker 1: a guy named Daniel Webster, he writes a very long
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Speaker 1: inauguration speech for Harrison, and Harrison goes and gives this
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Speaker 1: speech in its entirety on a freezing rainy day in March,
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Speaker 1: or not freezing but very cold, because it was still raining.
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Speaker 1: And a lot of people will say that because he
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Speaker 1: was exposed to the elements for so long, he got
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Speaker 1: pneumonia and he took ill and died as a result.
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Speaker 1: Other people say it was still the weather. But the
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Speaker 1: weather got to him not during that inauguration speech, but
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Speaker 1: during one of his long ambulations he took later that month,
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Speaker 1: and he didn't dress appropriate leave for the elements. That's
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Speaker 1: the more popular theory because that long walk is closer
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Speaker 1: in precedent to his actual death.
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Speaker 3: I'm just gonna say it. With how this dude was
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Speaker 3: acting at sixty eight years old, it was gonna happen, right,
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Speaker 3: It just would go knocking in the rain.
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Speaker 2: A particularly good steward of his personal health, this guy.
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Speaker 1: And let's also remember that he had a very demanding
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Speaker 1: social schedule. It's all gas, no breaks. The walk theory
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Speaker 1: goes to March twenty fourth, eighteen forty one, because he
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Speaker 1: always would take a daily morning walk to the local markets.
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Speaker 1: This is also when security for the potus was way
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Speaker 1: lower than it is today. I mean, imagine if you
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Speaker 1: live in DC and President Joe Biden like comes into
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Speaker 1: the target, it just says, you know, I don't have
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Speaker 1: a shopping list, I'm just here for the vibes.
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Speaker 2: I walk over and heck with Biden's you know, advanced
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Speaker 2: age being you know easily what almost thirty over twenty
12:01
Speaker 2: years this guy's senior, he's probably almost more along the
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Speaker 2: lines of like today, what would be considered an advanced
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Speaker 2: age for a president, that this would have been considered
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Speaker 2: back in those days, so extra care, one would think
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Speaker 2: would have been taken, and that people wouldn't have been
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Speaker 2: letting this character just wander around in the muck you know.
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Speaker 1: But this is also here's the other weird thing. If
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Speaker 1: you look at the medical treatment of Harrison after he
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Speaker 1: took ill, then you see that blood letting was still
12:35
Speaker 1: very much considered legitimate medicine. No, so the doctors. The
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Speaker 1: doctors were bleeding him starting on Sunday in March twenty eighth,
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Speaker 1: and then they they eventually stopped. But blood letting for
12:54
Speaker 1: a sick person is usually not going to help. It
12:57
Speaker 1: may actively harm them.
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Speaker 2: Do we have any examples of any time that this
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Speaker 2: method actually functionally helped anybody throughout history?
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Speaker 1: I believe that there are, Well, it depends are we
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Speaker 1: talking about a lot of blood or are we talking
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Speaker 1: about small just.
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Speaker 2: A practice in and of itself. I mean, it seems
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Speaker 2: like it was based on just junk science from the
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Speaker 2: start and more kind of superstitions or things that just
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Speaker 2: weren't confirmed by any actual, you know, real research or science.
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Speaker 2: I'm just wondering if there's ever an instance where some
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Speaker 2: small amount of blood letting actually helped somebody out.
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Speaker 1: Well, there's things not really, I mean, there are examples
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Speaker 1: of the modern day, like taking someone's blood to run
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Speaker 1: blood test that can be a life saving procedure.
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Speaker 2: Sure, that's what we're talking about here, closest thing. Yeah, now,
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Speaker 2: blood work is crucial, but that again involves getting to
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Speaker 2: the root of the problem rather than that being the
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Speaker 2: remedy in and of itself.
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Speaker 1: So here's my pitch. The curse to the curse of
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Speaker 1: typical or to Comes. His curse is real, but not
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Speaker 1: the way we understand. Harrison died because his doctor was
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Speaker 1: a vampire. Okay, fair, no on the fact check us out,
14:13
Speaker 1: but this is kind of alistical. Episode two folks were
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Speaker 1: giving you more and more examples of people who supposedly
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Speaker 1: fell to to Coms his curse, and surprise, surprise, one
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Speaker 1: of the most famous guys who fell to to Comes
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Speaker 1: his curse is the famous former amateur wrestler Abraham Lincoln.
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Speaker 1: Fun fact, was also president for a minute.
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Speaker 2: The reach on that guy, Ben is, I know we've
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Speaker 2: already kind of touched on this a little bit, but
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Speaker 2: do you have any theories or Max as well, on
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Speaker 2: why this curse got lumped in with Tacumsa rather than
14:47
Speaker 2: the more spiritual leader of that kind of movement.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's because Tecumsa was the more important political figure
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Speaker 1: and so the one that would be more readily identifiable
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Speaker 1: to the American public.
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Speaker 2: So really it's just kind of a buzz thing like
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Speaker 2: almost branding that makes sense.
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Speaker 3: Right, And it was also like just in kind of
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Speaker 3: the story, it's William Henry Harrison, it's to Come, So
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Speaker 3: they are the opposites and the prophet's kinds of a
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Speaker 3: secondary character.
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Speaker 2: There actually becomes a point where the profit actively disobeys
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Speaker 2: to Comes to military strategy, where he essentially they part
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Speaker 2: ways because he's no longer of use to to Comes
15:25
Speaker 2: because he's basically cracked the bed to such a degree
15:28
Speaker 2: that he has become politically a liability for it to
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Speaker 2: COMSA at this point, right, Yeah, nobody trusts him anymore,
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Speaker 2: and it comes to his whole strategy relies on good
15:38
Speaker 2: diplomacy and good relationships.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, even people who had the prevailing racism at the
15:45
Speaker 1: time would have said to their peers, to Comesa is
15:51
Speaker 1: a competent tactician. We can work with him. You can
15:54
Speaker 1: work with him. It's almost like he's a human being.
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Speaker 2: Almost quite but Lincoln, right, the idea that Lincoln, who
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Speaker 2: was of course elected president of November sixth, eighteen sixty,
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Speaker 2: a year ending in zero, that his downfall, his demise
16:12
Speaker 2: specifically was tied to this curse is something that you know,
16:17
Speaker 2: kind of holds in this this whole lore that we're
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Speaker 2: talking about here. On Good Friday, April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five,
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Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln is assassinated, the victim of an assassin's bullet
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Speaker 2: at Ford's Theater in Washington, d C. The assassin in question,
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Speaker 2: of course, John Wilkes Booth, who famously jumped out of
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Speaker 2: his box seat and fell to the stage and I
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Speaker 2: believe broke his leg, isn't that right?
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Speaker 1: Six simpered tarannus thus to all tybrants.
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Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, so real splashy showing there from from
16:51
Speaker 2: John Wilkes Booth, who was an actor. So I'm sorry
16:55
Speaker 2: it wasn't he jumped from from some height, right, because yeah,
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Speaker 2: balcony after the falconon, that's but Lincoln himself was also
17:03
Speaker 2: in a balcony seat. He was in a box seat,
17:05
Speaker 2: so I'm assuming that the balcony in question from Wilkes
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Speaker 2: Booth was adjacent in some way. And then he tried
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Speaker 2: to make his daring escape but kind of botched the landing.
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Speaker 3: I mean, I believe there was a lot of showmanship too,
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Speaker 3: like there wasn't any trying of like Wilkes, Booth was
17:21
Speaker 3: not trying to sneak away.
17:24
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he exclaimed that quote that you just said, like,
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Speaker 2: you know, very actively and loudly in actory fashion.
17:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, which shows you again the hazards of hiring hiring
17:38
Speaker 1: actors to do a hitman's job.
17:40
Speaker 2: Uh.
17:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why leam Neeson would actually not be not
17:44
Speaker 1: be good and have taken situation probably. Also, of course,
17:56
Speaker 1: the death of Lincoln does not have the effect that
17:59
Speaker 1: Booth wanted. It removes the possibility of a more compassionate
18:06
Speaker 1: piece between the North and the South. Now, absolutely wood.
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Speaker 2: Feud, very polarizing. Yeah, it has the exact opposite effect.
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Speaker 2: Moving on to eighteen eighty with James Garfield. Yeah, and
18:22
Speaker 2: obviously very easy to make the connection of being associated
18:27
Speaker 2: with a certain lasagna eating cat who does not care
18:30
Speaker 2: for Mondays. I'm not sure if Jim Davis named Garfield
18:36
Speaker 2: after the President unclear. I don't know if you know
18:39
Speaker 2: anything about this, Max, but not not something that I've
18:42
Speaker 2: seen any writing about.
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Speaker 3: I haven't either, But I'll say this right now, James
18:47
Speaker 3: Garfield is actually kind of cool.
18:48
Speaker 2: I actually like him.
18:49
Speaker 3: Zacherfield, which really sucks that he's on this list though.
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Speaker 1: It's weird though, because we're also looking at him in
18:54
Speaker 1: comparison to his peers and other presidents of the day.
18:58
Speaker 1: So the bar to be cool is been.
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Speaker 3: What are you saying Gilded Age presidents weren't good? You know,
19:03
Speaker 3: who are we to judge?
19:05
Speaker 1: I'm not out here trying to get cursed.
19:06
Speaker 3: Hey, I'll say's rid Rutherford B. Hayes really liked animals? Yeah, sure,
19:11
Speaker 3: which makes them probably number two of the guilded Age,
19:14
Speaker 3: which is pretty bad if they Rutherford be Hayes your
19:17
Speaker 3: number two president just because he likes animals.
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Speaker 2: And Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. But I'm just saying,
19:22
Speaker 2: like quite the painter. But yeah, no, no he was.
19:27
Speaker 2: It wasn't good enough to make it. He didn't have
19:29
Speaker 2: a career and already ahead of him. But they ought
19:31
Speaker 2: to really refer to this as the bishitted age.
19:33
Speaker 1: There we go.
19:34
Speaker 2: I love it.
19:34
Speaker 1: I love also that the English language has more than
19:37
Speaker 1: twenty more than twenty three words to describe something having
19:42
Speaker 1: shit on it or something having thrown on it.
19:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, of course, we've got certain
19:48
Speaker 2: incorrect pieces of lore around certain indigenous cultures having lots
19:53
Speaker 2: of words for snow or things that they are surrounded by.
19:57
Speaker 2: So despite that being often much over reported, it does
20:03
Speaker 2: make sense that America, somewhat mired in crap throughout our
20:09
Speaker 2: troubled history, would have so many words for that scenario.
20:12
Speaker 1: I just I'm so happy you guys use the word shitted.
20:15
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorites, the fun one twenty sethn words.
20:17
Speaker 1: But also we should mention, by the way, that in
20:20
Speaker 1: the deaths of Harrison, in the death of Lincoln, and
20:24
Speaker 1: in the upcoming death of Garfield spoiler.
20:26
Speaker 2: Alert, Actually it's kind of what the episode's about.
20:30
Speaker 1: No one at this point is claiming there's a curse.
20:33
Speaker 1: By the way, this is a very key piece of
20:36
Speaker 1: the story.
20:37
Speaker 2: We're going to get to that when it really becomes
20:39
Speaker 2: a news item, right then they go, oh, what about
20:41
Speaker 2: that thing? That'd be fun to write about. So Garfield
20:45
Speaker 2: is elected to the United States presidency in eighteen eighty.
20:51
Speaker 2: He serves nine terms up to that point in the
20:54
Speaker 2: US House of Representatives, and before being the president, he
21:00
Speaker 2: was already a pretty accomplished academic. He was a college
21:04
Speaker 2: professor and also served as the president of the Ohio
21:08
Speaker 2: State Senate. He was on the right side of the
21:12
Speaker 2: Civil War and eventually did become a major general as well.
21:16
Speaker 2: So very storied and diverse career in public life, this guy.
21:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He was a career bureaucratic, career legislature. This
21:27
Speaker 1: is the kind of one of.
21:28
Speaker 2: The good ones, though it would seem, especially given the time.
21:30
Speaker 1: This is a guy you would want to be president
21:32
Speaker 1: because of his experience. And at this point, by the way,
21:38
Speaker 1: the US public was not as dead set against college
21:42
Speaker 1: professors being president as they are now.
21:45
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, yeah, there is some division around that, the
21:49
Speaker 2: idea of like academics being too soft or something. Right.
21:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is also, by the way, one thing
21:57
Speaker 1: that's very impressive about Garfield is that he is not
22:02
Speaker 1: what we would call a NEPO baby today, right. He
22:05
Speaker 1: is not born into some bizarre dynasty like the Clintons
22:11
Speaker 1: or the Bushes or the Kennedys. He comes from a
22:15
Speaker 1: family that you would call like working class, working class
22:18
Speaker 1: to middle class. His dad dies when he's only two,
22:22
Speaker 1: and Garfield had to put himself through school. One of
22:28
Speaker 1: the tales of Garfield lore is that he was able
22:31
Speaker 1: to pay for his education by learning how to drive
22:35
Speaker 1: canal boat teams, which is and Max you noted this too.
22:39
Speaker 1: It's essentially helping ship stuff on rivers. So these are
22:46
Speaker 1: still during the days of the Great Mississippi river boat trade.
22:50
Speaker 2: Very mar Twaina is yeah. And there are.
22:53
Speaker 1: Statements that speak to his character. He does seem to
22:56
Speaker 1: be a guy who was really thinking through not what
23:01
Speaker 1: is good for me, but what is good for this
23:03
Speaker 1: American experiment. People were trying to make him president. They
23:07
Speaker 1: were pushing them, and they were like, Jimmy G, Jimmy G,
23:10
Speaker 1: you got to be president. And he would for a while.
23:15
Speaker 1: The candidate doth protest too much because he said, no,
23:19
Speaker 1: there's another guy. His name's John Sherman. He is way
23:22
Speaker 1: more qualified. He will be a better president for the
23:25
Speaker 1: United States. That's from Jeff Jacobee over at the Boston Globe.
23:29
Speaker 2: Well you love to see that, don't you. Someone. I'm
23:31
Speaker 2: always a little suspicious, I think, as we all are,
23:34
Speaker 2: of people who seek that level of, you know, public
23:39
Speaker 2: office and they're like working towards it, because it often
23:42
Speaker 2: seems to be a little bit self serving when you
23:44
Speaker 2: have someone that's like saying no, no, no, no, this
23:47
Speaker 2: other guy's got this better qualified, this isn't for me.
23:50
Speaker 2: You do tend to and they're pushed into it because
23:53
Speaker 2: of others seeing in them, perhaps things they don't see
23:56
Speaker 2: in themselves. That always impresses me, you know, and then
24:00
Speaker 2: strikes me as a better qualification than someone who spent
24:03
Speaker 2: their entire life working towards, you know, holding this kind
24:06
Speaker 2: of office.
24:07
Speaker 1: I think it's indicative of character. Yeah, and do we
24:11
Speaker 1: know if this was false modesty or was it a
24:16
Speaker 1: genuine case of moral values? Unclear at this point, but
24:20
Speaker 1: let's err on the side of optimism. And I love
24:23
Speaker 1: the way you put this here. Backs. Unfortunately for Garfield,
24:28
Speaker 1: despite his protest, he was nominated. He was elected. He
24:32
Speaker 1: was also elected in a year that ended with zero no. Yeah.
24:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. July second, eighteen eighty one, at a Washington railroad station,
24:45
Speaker 2: an attorney who had sought a consular post shot President Garfield.
24:52
Speaker 2: He was mortally wounded once again, even a flesh wound
24:56
Speaker 2: at this time, you know, could eventually he leads to
25:01
Speaker 2: sepsis and and death. He is mortally wounded. He lay
25:05
Speaker 2: in the White House for several weeks before passing away
25:09
Speaker 2: it succumbing to his to his wounds.
25:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and his death.
25:17
Speaker 2: They couldn't find the bullet right like, they find that his.
25:20
Speaker 1: Death is fascinating because it factors in another luminary of
25:27
Speaker 1: the day, Alexander Graham Bell has invented an induction balance
25:33
Speaker 1: electrical device. He's like the Tony Stark of this era totally.
25:36
Speaker 1: And so he tries to find the bullet in Garfield
25:41
Speaker 1: and he fails. Garfield has taken to the New Jersey
25:45
Speaker 1: shore on September sixth, and there is.
25:49
Speaker 2: A very different just this it was. It was and
25:52
Speaker 2: it was more idyllic.
25:53
Speaker 3: And they were thinking, said Garfields, that lifting up his
25:57
Speaker 3: shirt off his abs.
25:58
Speaker 2: Well, he's probably lifted up someone's lifted up his shirt.
26:01
Speaker 2: They're like, where the fuck is this poking for the bullet?
26:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this was still the time when people thought
26:08
Speaker 1: changing your weather or changing the weather you encounter could
26:11
Speaker 1: have curative effects, so like.
26:13
Speaker 2: Climates exactly, some shits and stuff like that.
26:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, taking in the air, this doesn't work. It looks
26:20
Speaker 1: like maybe he's recuperating. But that was just wishful thinking
26:25
Speaker 1: on the part of medical professionals and political supporters. What
26:29
Speaker 1: was happening is it was still slowly dying. On September nineteenth,
26:33
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one. He dies from an internal hemorrhage.
26:38
Speaker 2: That's right, he does succumb to that gunshot. So it's
26:43
Speaker 2: a slow and taking cline now exactly, I would imagine
26:48
Speaker 2: quite painful. Moving on nineteen hundred, we've got William McKinley.
26:55
Speaker 2: McKinley not so much of a hero of our story
27:01
Speaker 2: insomuch as Garfield was. At least he's considered by many
27:04
Speaker 2: to be one of the last of this era we've
27:06
Speaker 2: been describing, the bashetted Age or Gilded Age, which isn't
27:11
Speaker 2: considered to be a particularly stellar era for American history
27:16
Speaker 2: and politics.
27:18
Speaker 1: Oh, I do have to say, though, you're absolutly righting
27:21
Speaker 1: the setup. I do have to say for Garfield, I'm
27:23
Speaker 1: pretty sure that doctors killed him because they kept digging
27:26
Speaker 1: into his guts to try to find the bullet. That's
27:29
Speaker 1: exactly right. They like they were digging holes in the guy.
27:33
Speaker 1: But with McKinley something very different. He is a child
27:40
Speaker 1: of corruption, is a he benefits greatly from the corrupt
27:45
Speaker 1: election of eighteen ninety six, and a lot of people
27:48
Speaker 1: I see your note here, Max. A lot of people
27:50
Speaker 1: will tell you to this day that the actual election
27:55
Speaker 1: if it had not been rigged, would have gone to
27:57
Speaker 1: William Jennings Bryan and be absolutely clear. I one hundred percent.
28:02
Speaker 3: Agree with that, and we're gonna have that part too eventually.
28:05
Speaker 3: Right of all the presidents, we ran a bunch of
28:07
Speaker 3: all the dudes who ran a present a bunch of times.
28:09
Speaker 3: So we just will ending on the William Jennings briding part.
28:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. I got it. Uh,
28:16
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten I haven't done that one yet, Max,
28:18
Speaker 1: because there weren't any good mistranslations, but we will, we will.
28:23
Speaker 1: We will have some you could call a mistranslation of justice. No,
28:27
Speaker 1: but yeah, we have a We have Jennings coming on
28:29
Speaker 1: the way and it's going to be a banger. Also, Uh,
28:35
Speaker 1: McKinley isn't super photo Jenny McKinley looks like a meme
28:41
Speaker 1: of an evil guy.
28:43
Speaker 2: Uh, his fingers steepled, mister burns.
28:46
Speaker 1: And the like, just so you know, has drawing comparisons
28:50
Speaker 1: to the penguin. If you pull up one of the
28:54
Speaker 1: most popular pictures of McKinley, like the stuff you see
28:56
Speaker 1: on his on his Wikipedia page or on his White
29:00
Speaker 1: House dot gov entry, then he looks exactly like Colin
29:06
Speaker 1: Farrell in The Batman playing the penguin.
29:09
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, which is some pretty impressive. It was practical
29:13
Speaker 2: effects in terms of that when he was when I
29:15
Speaker 2: saw the original Batman movie, I had no idea that
29:18
Speaker 2: was Colin Farrell, uh for quite a while until I
29:21
Speaker 2: saw the credits, and they've got him appearing in a
29:24
Speaker 2: series coming up where he is that character, So kudos.
29:28
Speaker 2: It's called acting, and also with the aid of some
29:30
Speaker 2: really good makeup effects.
29:32
Speaker 1: Oh you know. I was also tremendously impressed with not
29:37
Speaker 1: Robert de Niro, Robert Downey junior in Oppenheimer.
29:40
Speaker 2: That's what I've heard. I haven't been yet, that.
29:41
Speaker 1: Guy from in the beginning. It was. It was fascinating,
29:44
Speaker 1: so well done.
29:45
Speaker 2: Rob.
29:45
Speaker 1: It's tough to make a living as an actor, and
29:47
Speaker 1: I wish you continued further success.
29:49
Speaker 2: A big fan of practical effects versus like the CGI types.
29:53
Speaker 2: Even you know, I'm sorry not to get off track,
29:55
Speaker 2: but in The Maestro, a lot of a lot has
29:57
Speaker 2: been made of Bradley Cooper's nose. This is a fund
30:00
Speaker 2: as prosthetic knows. But when you really go back and
30:03
Speaker 2: look at footage of Leonard Bernstein, that feature really does
30:07
Speaker 2: sell the role. It really does. They did quite a
30:11
Speaker 2: good job of it, and I can understand why they
30:13
Speaker 2: decided to go that route.
30:14
Speaker 1: And so this idea of this tendency to always look
30:18
Speaker 1: kind of villainous in photographs, it's what our pal Max
30:22
Speaker 1: calls James C. Calhoun's syndrome. We're an audio podcasts. We
30:26
Speaker 1: also want this journey to be your own. So take
30:29
Speaker 1: a look at James Calhoun and let us know if
30:32
Speaker 1: you agree.
30:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, James C. Calhoun, the dude so messed up that
30:36
Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson looked at him and said, like, dude, you're
30:38
Speaker 3: fucked up man, right, Like you know you're bad. If
30:42
Speaker 3: Andrew Jackson is uncomfortable with the things you're.
30:44
Speaker 1: Doing, Andrew Jackson calls you problematic, you might it might
30:47
Speaker 1: be time for some self inventory. So McKinley is openly
30:52
Speaker 1: a pro business president when he's first elected in eighteen
30:56
Speaker 1: ninety six in that corrupt election, because the corporate power
31:00
Speaker 1: that be want a guy who will accede to their rule. Right,
31:04
Speaker 1: that's what corporate powers historically want. They want all the
31:09
Speaker 1: advantages of a democracy or of a stable government, and
31:14
Speaker 1: they want all the disadvantages or obligations of that government
31:18
Speaker 1: to fall on the people rather than the companies. That's
31:22
Speaker 1: not a hot take, and it's not I mean, I
31:25
Speaker 1: wouldn't even ascribe morals to it. It's just what those
31:29
Speaker 1: organizations are built to do. The biggest event of McKinley's
31:32
Speaker 1: presidency is the Spanish American War, and like to Cumsa's curse,
31:38
Speaker 1: the name is confusing. The Spanish American War did not
31:42
Speaker 1: take place in Spain. It was not fought in the
31:45
Speaker 1: United States. It was in Cuba, in the Philippines, in
31:49
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. It was a one hundred day war across
31:53
Speaker 1: these areas, and it greatly expanded the overseas holdings of
31:58
Speaker 1: the US. That's right.
32:00
Speaker 2: And McKinley would then go on to run against once
32:04
Speaker 2: again William Jennings Bryan and win reelection in nineteen hundred
32:09
Speaker 2: ding ding Ding, ending with zero. So here is where
32:14
Speaker 2: the curse comes into the discussion. And here's a quote
32:18
Speaker 2: from the White House gov Bio. His second term came
32:22
Speaker 2: to a tragic end in September nineteen oh one. He
32:25
Speaker 2: was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan
32:28
Speaker 2: American Exposition when a deranged anarchist wow shot him okay,
32:35
Speaker 2: fair enough shot him twice. He died. He succomb to
32:39
Speaker 2: his wounds eight days later, again presumably a painful demise.
32:46
Speaker 2: His death led to Theodore Roosevelt then becoming the youngest
32:51
Speaker 2: president in American history. Yeah, yeah, there's no trivia before you.
32:58
Speaker 3: Everyone was six since JFK. JFK is the youngest elected president, right.
33:03
Speaker 1: And Theodore is the youngest to actually assume the presidency.
33:08
Speaker 1: So then we have it all right, and still at
33:10
Speaker 1: this time, by the way, spoiler, folks, nobody's talking about
33:13
Speaker 1: to comes his curse. It comes his old beans. No
33:16
Speaker 1: one cares about this dude, right now. Fast forward nineteen
33:19
Speaker 1: twenty one of the also rands of the American presidency,
33:24
Speaker 1: Warren G. Harding. He has a quote from his own perspective,
33:31
Speaker 1: his own retrospect, where it gives us a sense of
33:36
Speaker 1: how sort of BEAYIESI and blase his presidency was. Here
33:39
Speaker 1: goes America's president. Need is not heroics but healing, not
33:44
Speaker 1: nostrums but normalcy, not revolution but restoration, not agitation but adjustment,
33:51
Speaker 1: not surgery but serenity. Not the dramatic but the dispassionate experiment,
33:58
Speaker 1: but equipoise, submergence, in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
34:07
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, wow, that's the real snoozer. Unlike his predecessor, however, McKinley,
34:15
Speaker 2: Harding was pretty clearly very pro commerce, very pro business,
34:22
Speaker 2: and he had a much more presidential vibe. Let's just say.
34:26
Speaker 2: An Ohio admirer Harry Doherty started to promote Harding for
34:32
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenty Republican nomination because he felt as though
34:37
Speaker 2: he looked like a president really great, you know, bona
34:41
Speaker 2: fides for doing the job not right. And one time
34:47
Speaker 2: he told his then Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, if
34:52
Speaker 2: you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you,
34:56
Speaker 2: for the good of the country and the party expose
34:59
Speaker 2: it publicly?
35:00
Speaker 1: Would you bury it? And Hoover's like, do the right thing, dude,
35:03
Speaker 1: go public and then Harding's like, I don't want.
35:06
Speaker 2: To though, No, no, I'm good.
35:09
Speaker 1: Oh and he dies in August of nineteen twenty three
35:12
Speaker 1: in San Francisco heart attack. No one says there's a curse.
35:16
Speaker 3: But Calvin Coolish becomes president, which is Calvin Coolidge episode.
35:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did, we did, Calvin Coolidge.
35:22
Speaker 3: It's kind of cool.
35:23
Speaker 1: We did a hoover damn episode two. I mean, we're
35:26
Speaker 1: running through the hits here.
35:27
Speaker 3: We're building over twenties presidents. We've talked about all of them.
35:30
Speaker 2: They don't really do anything fair. Well, we're out of
35:34
Speaker 2: the twenties now and into the forties, the Roaring forties now.
35:37
Speaker 2: I think it's the roarings over by this point. Franklin
35:40
Speaker 2: Delano roosevelts, this one's a little bit longer. So we're
35:45
Speaker 2: going to do our best to kind of be as
35:47
Speaker 2: pithy about it as we can. We have mentioned before
35:51
Speaker 2: that this president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was president so many
35:56
Speaker 2: times that it were it caused the laws on how
36:00
Speaker 2: many times one can hold this office to actually be changed.
36:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. Look, often in these divided political times, people hate
36:11
Speaker 1: to uh to point out or to be reminded that
36:14
Speaker 1: the New Deal absolutely saved the United States. They hate question, Yeah,
36:19
Speaker 1: they hate to get jobs.
36:20
Speaker 2: It helped improve infrastructure, so many positive things resulted from that.
36:25
Speaker 1: They hate to be reminded that the US came very
36:28
Speaker 1: close to insolvency in this regard, and Della knows saved it. However,
36:35
Speaker 1: another thing people don't like to admit, even especially Onike
36:41
Speaker 1: the left aisle of political discourse. Here, Franklin D. Roosevelt
36:46
Speaker 1: came very very close to becoming a dictator, and so
36:50
Speaker 1: the law had to be changed.
36:52
Speaker 3: What I didn't realize until honestly a couple of years
36:55
Speaker 3: gone up, and you have been studying presidential history for
36:58
Speaker 3: most of my life, is I was thinking young. He
37:01
Speaker 3: still was when he passed away. He was in the sixties.
37:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, very young for president. He could have.
37:04
Speaker 3: Gone like twenty more years at that job, which he
37:08
Speaker 3: probably would have.
37:10
Speaker 1: He would have, yeah, and he would have become a
37:12
Speaker 1: similar to like a strong man dictator, would have been
37:15
Speaker 1: very dangerous for the country, to be.
37:16
Speaker 2: Honest, I see what you're saying there, Ben, and I
37:19
Speaker 2: totally understand the need to change the lodges for president.
37:22
Speaker 2: Was there anything particularly dictator ish about his behavior? He
37:28
Speaker 2: is regarded as positive? Okay, there was.
37:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
37:31
Speaker 3: He tried to was it, try to expand the Supreme
37:33
Speaker 3: Court from nine to twenty three? Yes, he didn't like
37:36
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court and stuff. He did some.
37:38
Speaker 2: Stuff, So a mixed bag, a complex individual. Obviously accomplished
37:43
Speaker 2: some very very positive important things, but then got it
37:46
Speaker 2: maybe a little too big for his breaches.
37:48
Speaker 3: There's a lot of like, you know, preaches Andrew Jackson's
37:51
Speaker 3: obviously a horrible human being, but he was Andrew Jackson.
37:54
Speaker 3: People always want to come out say he's a terrible president.
37:57
Speaker 3: There's lots of people is terrible. But he's a very
37:58
Speaker 3: impactful president, very impactful present.
38:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that. We also know he
38:04
Speaker 1: was following the footsteps of his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt,
38:08
Speaker 1: most famous for inspiring the stuff Teddy Bear, and he
38:13
Speaker 1: rose through the Senate. He was definitely a silverspoon boy
38:17
Speaker 1: by the way he rose through the Senate. In nineteen ten,
38:20
Speaker 1: he becomes Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He gets the
38:24
Speaker 1: VP nomination in nineteen twenty. In nineteen twenty eight, he
38:28
Speaker 1: is the governor of New York. He is elected amid
38:31
Speaker 1: the absolute terrible pandemonium of the Great Depression in nineteen
38:36
Speaker 1: thirty two, which.
38:37
Speaker 2: Is also how we know dictators often come to power,
38:41
Speaker 2: you know when countries there are under states of duress
38:46
Speaker 2: and they are seen as the only person that can
38:48
Speaker 2: carry the country through.
38:51
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, I mean this is in these times of instability.
38:57
Speaker 1: The public, if they're well, matter what kind of government
39:01
Speaker 1: they have in times of instability, the public will increasingly
39:04
Speaker 1: question the status quo. Right Like the French were starving
39:08
Speaker 1: and they said, is there a God? Is there a
39:13
Speaker 1: real reason that the monarchy should be in charge? Are
39:16
Speaker 1: they even qualified? And they decided the monarchy was not qualified.
39:20
Speaker 1: I would say they were also correct in that estimation.
39:23
Speaker 1: This is around the time, by the way, that a
39:26
Speaker 1: bunch of rich corporate interests conspire to overthrow the United
39:33
Speaker 1: States government and start a fascist regime. This was called
39:38
Speaker 1: the Business Plot. Today, no one was officially convicted because
39:43
Speaker 1: Congress was The Congress members were for the most part
39:48
Speaker 1: puppets of big corporations, of banking interests. But shout out
39:51
Speaker 1: to absolute peace of craps Medley Butler, who was a
39:55
Speaker 1: Curmudgeont who saved the country as we know it. Check
39:59
Speaker 1: out our our show Let's Start a Coup for more
40:02
Speaker 1: at that. But these are very uncertain types. Okay, FDR's president.
40:07
Speaker 1: He launches this thing called the New Deal. And to
40:10
Speaker 1: be clear to our earlier point, the New Deal program
40:14
Speaker 1: saved America, but they were intensely undemocratic, like the way
40:18
Speaker 1: they were pushed through the public loves him though that
40:22
Speaker 1: the haves hate him. The have nots love him. He
40:25
Speaker 1: gets re elected three more times, nineteen thirty six, nineteen
40:30
Speaker 1: forty ending in a zero and nineteen forty four. So
40:35
Speaker 1: he's at the wheel of power through the Great Depression
40:37
Speaker 1: and then through most of World War Two, and he
40:41
Speaker 1: has a lot of health problems as a result. We
40:44
Speaker 1: were talking in part one about how just four years
40:46
Speaker 1: in that job will absolutely wreck you. Oh yeah, this
40:50
Speaker 1: guy has been wrecked four times.
40:54
Speaker 2: He's been through the freakin' ringer. His health really had
40:58
Speaker 2: begun to deteriorate in on it April twelfth, nineteen forty five,
41:02
Speaker 2: while having a little sabbatical I guess at Warm Springs, Georgia,
41:07
Speaker 2: he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage.
41:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sure did, and with him a unique part
41:17
Speaker 1: of American history also expires. Fast forward to one of
41:28
Speaker 1: the most famous presidents to die in office, to be assassinated,
41:32
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy. John Fitzgerald Kennedy in nineteen sixty. He's
41:36
Speaker 1: really interesting in terms of election because he's a president
41:40
Speaker 1: at the dawn of what we could call the entertainment age, right,
41:44
Speaker 1: you know, this is the famous presidential debate where people
41:47
Speaker 1: listening on the radio thought Nixon one, and people watching
41:50
Speaker 1: television thought Kennedy one. He's kind of a celebrity, sort
41:55
Speaker 1: of a proto Kardashian already when he is elected president.
41:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of theater involves, and not
42:02
Speaker 2: the same kind of theater that that ended up taking
42:05
Speaker 2: Lincoln's life. This is very much a public kind of
42:09
Speaker 2: persona era, you know, because of the nature of television broadcasts.
42:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and because of this dual existence as an American
42:22
Speaker 1: celebrity and as an American statesman, he occupies very unique
42:26
Speaker 1: place in the mythos of the US. Now, if you
42:31
Speaker 1: look at just the boxes you want to tick for president,
42:34
Speaker 1: he's he's got everything right. He's he's a Massachusetts boy.
42:39
Speaker 1: He graduates from Harvard, He's in the Navy, he sees
42:43
Speaker 1: combat in World War Two. He comes up working as
42:46
Speaker 1: a Democratic Boston area congressman. He moves up to the Senate.
42:51
Speaker 1: He's a blue blood, so he knows the people in power.
42:54
Speaker 1: He's intimately related with their families. He becomes a vice president,
42:59
Speaker 1: or he's nominee for the VP position in nineteen fifty six,
43:03
Speaker 1: doesn't work out. Eisenhower wins reelection and then he gets
43:07
Speaker 1: in a high profile contest against Eisenhower's VP, Richie Nixon.
43:14
Speaker 1: Oh Richie, boy, there's the debate.
43:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
43:18
Speaker 1: Oh, also people don't like him because he's Catholic.
43:20
Speaker 2: Oh that's a big deal, right. Yeah. We didn't even
43:22
Speaker 2: think about that as being an issue necessarily, but at
43:24
Speaker 2: the time it was super divisive. He did win by
43:27
Speaker 2: a pretty narrow margin in the popular vote and became
43:29
Speaker 2: the first, very first, as you say, Roman Catholic president,
43:32
Speaker 2: and his relatively short time I mean not as short
43:36
Speaker 2: as some of the presidents on our list, but still
43:39
Speaker 2: pretty short time in office. It was a very important
43:43
Speaker 2: time in American history. We had things like the Bay
43:47
Speaker 2: of Pigs, the beginning of the Vietnam War, the Cuban
43:51
Speaker 2: Missile Crisis, of course, the civil rights movement, and he
43:56
Speaker 2: was at the center of all of this. Therefore, you know,
43:59
Speaker 2: at the center of a lot of very divisive historical
44:02
Speaker 2: moments that kind of like stacked up upon one another.
44:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And he was beefed up heavily with the
44:10
Speaker 1: CIA due to the rampant corruption of the CIA and
44:15
Speaker 1: their ideological myopia. You can learn more about that and
44:19
Speaker 1: the fantastic series with our pals Rob Ryder and Solidad
44:23
Speaker 1: O'Brien called Who Killed JFK. For my money, it's the
44:26
Speaker 1: best podcast out there about those events.
44:29
Speaker 2: Heck, one of the best just sources out there. I
44:32
Speaker 2: mean the level of research. There's stuff in that podcast
44:35
Speaker 2: that you really haven't seen reported or discussed in the
44:38
Speaker 2: way that they report and discuss it just about anywhere else.
44:41
Speaker 1: And similar to other presidents on the comes to Curse list,
44:46
Speaker 1: he dies early in office. It's November twenty second, nineteen
44:50
Speaker 1: sixty three. He is struck by assassin's bullets as his
44:54
Speaker 1: motorcade strolls through Dallas. He's the youngest man elected pres Again,
45:00
Speaker 1: that's an important distinction. Is also, as history proves, the
45:05
Speaker 1: youngest to die there are, so he's probably one of
45:09
Speaker 1: the most famous. But there are a couple of other
45:12
Speaker 1: things where people will tell you the curse was broken,
45:16
Speaker 1: and one of those is Ronald Reagan. Let's flash back
45:20
Speaker 1: to Let's flash back to the times when Ronald Reagan
45:26
Speaker 1: could remember he was president.
45:28
Speaker 2: That's right on February sixth, nineteen eleven. He is born
45:33
Speaker 2: to Nell and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois. As we know,
45:38
Speaker 2: he was kind of really more so, I would say
45:41
Speaker 2: even than Kennedy. He was our really first kind of
45:45
Speaker 2: celebrity president because he was, in fact, much like a
45:48
Speaker 2: lot of the politicians that we're seeing in this whatever
45:51
Speaker 2: era we're in right now, an actor, a public figure
45:56
Speaker 2: unrelated to politics, who then was able to capitalize on
45:59
Speaker 2: that notaray and parlay that into a victory in the
46:05
Speaker 2: public service.
46:06
Speaker 1: People tell me is an absolute snack pack.
46:08
Speaker 2: Real smoke shot.
46:09
Speaker 1: And what campaigns are learning at this point, or what
46:12
Speaker 1: the king makers in the US are learning, is that
46:15
Speaker 1: they can leverage parasocial relationships. The average American voter is
46:20
Speaker 1: not going to know a ton about policy. They're going
46:22
Speaker 1: to vote for someone that they see themselves in, someone
46:26
Speaker 1: that seems familiar, someone that they think they could hang
46:30
Speaker 1: out with. And so Ronald Reagan, despite not being qualified
46:35
Speaker 1: as qualified as many other presidential candidates, he is much
46:40
Speaker 1: more recognizable.
46:42
Speaker 2: It goes back to that quote, I'm now it's giving
46:44
Speaker 2: me which president. This is associated with the idea of
46:46
Speaker 2: he looks like a president. You know, not only am
46:50
Speaker 2: I a president, but I also play one on TV?
46:52
Speaker 2: You know. I mean, that's like we're starting to see
46:54
Speaker 2: that that capital, that social capital, and that parasocial relationship
46:58
Speaker 2: you're talking about Ben is almost more more important to
47:00
Speaker 2: the king makers than actual political savvy and or qualifications.
47:05
Speaker 3: And it's interesting because it's like this popped my head
47:07
Speaker 3: when y'all were talking about this. But it's like if
47:10
Speaker 3: you really look at like William Henry Harrison when we
47:12
Speaker 3: started this episode of it's like, hey, this guy might
47:14
Speaker 3: not be a good president, but you know what he
47:16
Speaker 3: did this popular thing which in that time was killing
47:19
Speaker 3: Laty of America. But it's kind of like throughout this history,
47:23
Speaker 3: it's just it might look different, but it's the same
47:26
Speaker 3: thing that are getting these people elected.
47:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And so it's a good observation. Also, he
47:32
Speaker 1: apparently breaks the curse because he is the governor of
47:38
Speaker 1: California and he gets re elected in nineteen seventy. In
47:41
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, some members of our audience may recall, Ronald
47:46
Speaker 1: Reagan becomes the president. This point we got to talk
47:49
Speaker 1: a little bit about the curse because, as you may remember, folks,
47:53
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan almost got assassinated. John Hinckley Junior attack to
48:00
Speaker 1: Reagan in the while leaving the Hilton Hotel in DC.
48:05
Speaker 1: Hinkley fires a twenty two caliber revolver at the President,
48:10
Speaker 1: he does hit him. Reagan is wounded indirectly. A bullet
48:14
Speaker 1: ricochets off the limo and it hits him right under
48:17
Speaker 1: the left, right under the left armpit. And then there
48:20
Speaker 1: are other I think there are three other people who
48:24
Speaker 1: are wounded during the shooting. And because of the high
48:28
Speaker 1: energy and the chaos and all the you know, ur
48:31
Speaker 1: endorphins are flowing and stuff, Reagan doesn't even notice that
48:35
Speaker 1: he's been shot until he starts to cough up blood.
48:39
Speaker 2: But he recovers this assassin too. Just as a side note,
48:43
Speaker 2: wasn't he the guy who's obsessed with the actor Jody Foster?
48:47
Speaker 1: I believe that's correct.
48:48
Speaker 2: And then I think partly he was doing this to
48:51
Speaker 2: like impress her.
48:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, he also I'm still in the dark about this.
48:56
Speaker 1: I don't know how it happened. But he's no longer
48:58
Speaker 1: in jail. Binky had the juice to get out of
49:02
Speaker 1: jail for trying to kill the president.
49:04
Speaker 2: How does that work?
49:05
Speaker 1: He has a YouTube channel.
49:08
Speaker 2: Could good on him? He sim of his YouTube dollars.
49:11
Speaker 1: He's a musician. He went on tour. I think replaces
49:14
Speaker 1: that's right, But.
49:16
Speaker 2: Some of his dates had been canceled because it's just
49:19
Speaker 2: being a little a little problematic, perhaps, you know, to
49:23
Speaker 2: capitalize in the notoriety of being someone that attempted to
49:26
Speaker 2: kill the president.
49:27
Speaker 1: But how did he get out? That's I feel like
49:30
Speaker 1: that's a one way ticket up the river for the
49:32
Speaker 1: rest of your life.
49:33
Speaker 2: One would think he must have some friends in high places.
49:35
Speaker 3: According to his work at Pedia page twenty sixteen, a
49:38
Speaker 3: feral judge rule that Hinckley could be released from psychiatric care.
49:42
Speaker 1: Right, but he got into psychiatric care because he had
49:46
Speaker 1: very good, expensive lawyers. I'm just saying the thing is fishy. Yeah, agreed. Yeah,
49:51
Speaker 1: but Reagan survives.
49:53
Speaker 2: He does survive, He recovers fully and returns to the
49:56
Speaker 2: White House after twelve days away. And I think that
50:01
Speaker 2: some of this plays into some of the political fiction
50:07
Speaker 2: of Aaron Sorkin.
50:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, shout out West wing Uh. And with this,
50:13
Speaker 1: the not not just the belief in t comes his curse,
50:16
Speaker 1: but its hold over the American public is broken. George W.
50:21
Speaker 1: Bush Uh never gets assassinated. A guy throws shoes at
50:26
Speaker 1: him once, and that's in Middle Eastern culture. You have
50:30
Speaker 1: to realize that the shoe was picked on purpose, because
50:33
Speaker 1: it's wearing.
50:34
Speaker 3: A rabbit hole in that Yeah, that guy. That guy
50:36
Speaker 3: is interesting.
50:37
Speaker 1: He's fascinating.
50:38
Speaker 2: Well, it's also interesting is in that clip the way
50:42
Speaker 2: that Bush ducks that shie.
50:45
Speaker 3: By the second By the second one he's actually laughing
50:47
Speaker 3: at which is because.
50:48
Speaker 1: He realizes it's not a gun or a bomb. But also,
50:52
Speaker 1: you know, George W. Bush is very interesting because he
50:55
Speaker 1: is a blue blood from Connecticut who managed to successfully
51:00
Speaker 1: impersonate an awe shucks Texan like with the with the
51:05
Speaker 1: commitment of the to the bit that would make Andy
51:08
Speaker 1: Kaufman not an.
51:10
Speaker 2: Approval completely agree, nodding in approval over here.
51:13
Speaker 1: Paint No, he does he his bathtub painting.
51:17
Speaker 2: Is It is interesting too, how because of the perhaps
51:22
Speaker 2: even more egregious behavior of subsequent presidents that his legacy
51:26
Speaker 2: has sort of been reevaluated in a lot of ways,
51:29
Speaker 2: Like George W. Bush is not seen as the warmongering
51:33
Speaker 2: sociopath that he was at the time.
51:35
Speaker 1: You know, don't don't worry.
51:37
Speaker 3: There is some subtle knocks I have on him in
51:40
Speaker 3: an upcoming brief we're talking about his painting.
51:42
Speaker 1: He does a lot of he does you have to
51:45
Speaker 1: say it. He does a lot of charitable work. But
51:47
Speaker 1: then you if you are someone who is a bit
51:49
Speaker 1: more conspiratorial minded like me, I'm fine, I am self
51:54
Speaker 1: aware here. Uh, you could ask how much of a
51:59
Speaker 1: president he has actually was and combarrassed to Dick Cheney
52:02
Speaker 1: by far the most powerful VP of American history.
52:05
Speaker 2: Power behind the throne.
52:06
Speaker 3: He was very much the police Clap of presidents. And
52:09
Speaker 3: I know Plice Clap was his brother, but still I
52:12
Speaker 3: think police clap is so cringe and that it affects
52:15
Speaker 3: the whole family.
52:16
Speaker 1: It's still very, very difficult, of course to be president,
52:18
Speaker 1: especially in this entertainment age where the president is supposed
52:22
Speaker 1: to be seen as a celebrity as much as a
52:26
Speaker 1: master of state craft. And it's a very sad thing.
52:29
Speaker 1: But I think at this point, what we're proving is
52:32
Speaker 1: that in the case of every president who is alleged
52:35
Speaker 1: to have died as a result of to comes his curse,
52:39
Speaker 1: what we see is the idea of the curse. Is
52:44
Speaker 1: the idea of the curse is often applied in retrospect,
52:48
Speaker 1: and there are a couple times where it appears that
52:51
Speaker 1: someone predicted it. I think in nineteen sixty a journalist
52:56
Speaker 1: named Ed Cortoba or Coderba hinted about this president's dying
53:02
Speaker 1: at twenty year intervals in office, and that came true
53:06
Speaker 1: when Roosevelt died and when Kennedy was assassinated. However, given
53:11
Speaker 1: the ratio of deaths in the presidential office, the odds
53:17
Speaker 1: are pretty favorable. You know what I mean. This is
53:20
Speaker 1: a game that you could gamble on and seem somewhat
53:23
Speaker 1: prescient by acting.
53:25
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, completely agree. Now, it makes a lot of
53:27
Speaker 2: sense that this would be something that would captivate the
53:31
Speaker 2: public imagination, and you know, in no small part because
53:35
Speaker 2: of you know, the press and the way it was
53:38
Speaker 2: chosen to be reported, and this.
53:40
Speaker 1: Idea of this idea of hexing and curses and so on,
53:46
Speaker 1: it originates again in the exoticization of Native American communities,
53:53
Speaker 1: and the reason they were exoticized so much is to
53:56
Speaker 1: further rationalize the horrible way they were treated by the
53:59
Speaker 1: American govern from it makes someone seem less human, and
54:02
Speaker 1: then the things you do to them are therefore less
54:05
Speaker 1: in humane.
54:06
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. And again we talked about how it
54:10
Speaker 2: was a very proactive choice to call this to comes
54:16
Speaker 2: this curse and not like the curse of the prophet.
54:20
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry, I keep having a hard time. It's tenskwatawas.
54:24
Speaker 2: Maybe he doesn't have the same ring to it. He
54:27
Speaker 2: was not considered to be as important a figure as
54:30
Speaker 2: to comes to. Therefore, revisionist history prevails.
54:33
Speaker 3: Especially because that's not even his real name. He changed
54:35
Speaker 3: his name as an adult.
54:36
Speaker 1: Right right. His real name was Dave Davidson.
54:40
Speaker 2: The third True Facts, True Facts, also the first American meteorologist.
54:44
Speaker 1: No one fact checked us on any of that, by
54:46
Speaker 1: the way, Thank you very much. Speaking of thank you,
54:49
Speaker 1: thanks again to our super producer and research associate for
54:52
Speaker 1: this episode, mister Max Williams.
54:55
Speaker 2: Alex Williams, who composed this banging theme that you hear
54:59
Speaker 2: in your very ear right now. Christopherrasciotis, Eves, Jeff Cots,
55:04
Speaker 2: Gabe Luesier.
55:05
Speaker 1: Yeah here in spirit, Gabe Lucier, How you doing, Gabe
55:08
Speaker 1: Hope tuning in? Shout out to his show This day
55:11
Speaker 1: in History Class. Big thanks to sort of the Ronald
55:16
Speaker 1: Reagan of our podcast, Jonathan Strickland, he'll love that one.
55:20
Speaker 1: And of course A J.
55:21
Speaker 2: Bahama's Jacobs and no big, big thanks to you man.
55:26
Speaker 2: This was this was a good two partner. I really
55:28
Speaker 2: enjoyed this couldn't agree more. Thanks to you as well, Ben.
55:32
Speaker 2: Thanks to you out there, ridiculous historians. We'll see you
55:35
Speaker 2: next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
55:44
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
55:48
Speaker 2: favorite shows.