As You Were 
A hardy perennial as President’s Day approaches is the nation’s great editorial voices lamenting the sad spectacle of Americans swarming the malls rather than making pilgrimage to stately presidential homes and memorials.
The economy should knock out retail worries this year, and pilgrimages have their own troubles.

President’s Day’s origin, such as it is, […]

Who Would Sarah Shoot?  
The thrilling details of Sarah Palin’s Secret Service code name have been revealed to an anxious public, usually accompanied by boilerplate explaining how pretty Denali National Park is.  Passed over in Palin’s moniker acceptance is her slap at our martyred 25th president.
Denali is the Native Alaskan  name for Mount McKinley, the […]

On to Buffalo!
William McKinley’s last use in a contemporary campaign was Karl Rove’s mad scheme to present George W. Bush as the Big Mc of our generation, achieving solid Republican rule by persuading the scruffies to vote against their interests.
It worked with Bush, at least as far as the minstrel show 2000 […]

The Stump, In Happier Times
Washington State now boasts the replica of a structure built for a Presidential event which never occurred, standing proudly at a different location.
The “McKinley Stump” is in Chehalis Washington’s evocatively named Recreation Park. It stood in various parts of town 100 years, but […]

For you all you Presidential who-went-where-when obsessives, The 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry/ Civil War Musings blog has a roundup on Presidential visits to the Antietam battlefield near Washington.
With the special bonus of extensively documenting future President McKinley’s participation in the battle, where he heroically shuffled coffee to the front lines under […]