Something for the weekend. It is a political season and so we take a look at If The Johnnies Get Into Power, a campaign song of the James Garfield campaign in the election of 1880. For a generation Republicans would “wave the bloody shirt” against Democrats, conjuring up the bogeyman of the terrible things that would happen if the Democrats, Confederate loving traitors!, elected a President. In the South Democrats would return the favor, using hatreds born of the Civil War and Reconstruction to keep the South a one party section of the nation. Not the most edifying period in the political history of our nation.
Here is a video of the great Johnny Cash singing a song about the assassination of James Garfield:
Garfield was maybe the only President to go from the House to the Presidency although he had been made Senator elect by the Ohio legislature. He had a strong civil rights position and also was a mover for Civil Service reform. Ironically he was assassinated by a psychotic office seeker. Something to ponder given that Jimmy Carter abolished the Civil Service Commission and replaced it with the toothless Office of Personnel Management. Now we have an increasingly partisan (and unionized) bureaucracy (including the States) which are the biggest contributors to the Dems.