We Americans elect a president every four years to lead the country. They are born into this world like everyone else, mere humans. But, most of us expect our presidents to be extraordinary adults. Leaders. Intelligent. Honesty. Forthright. And they should be. They are in charge of our country, after all.
Yet, through the years, these men have shown their flaws. Yes, men. Every single one of the 46 who’ve been elected. We know their weaknesses will surface from time to time. But every so often, so do the mysteries.
Take John Quincy Adams. He believed the earth was hollow. I guess that is not so bad, as he could have believed it was flat, like so many people still do.
The most notorious mystery man was Richard Nixon. Maybe. But he sure gave it a run, with all those Watergate tapes. Between February 1971 and July 1973, Nixon secretly recorded 3,700 hours of conversations he wasn’t supposed to be recording. That Tricky Dick. These recordings included what became known as the Watergate scandal.
But here is the funny thing. When those tapes became public, and the experts gave them a long listen, it was quickly discovered that almost nineteen minutes of a conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, was “gone.” White noise on that section of the tape. The hissing of the snake in the grass if you ask me. No one knows for sure what Nixon and Halderman were discussing, but someone made very sure we would never find out.
If we drop back a few decades, to August 2, 1923, we know that President Warren G. Harding dropped dead while in office. His good wife Florence was at his side, reading him an article from The Saturday Evening Post. But here is the thing about old Warren. He was a serial philanderer, and everyone knew it. Including Florence. And after he died, Florence completely refused to allow for an autopsy to be performed. This caused those people around Washington to speculate that she had poisoned him. I guess he could have dropped dead from ordinary heart failure, but we’ll never know.
Oh, there’s more, especially when we consider James Buchanan. He has been the only bachelor president in U.S. history. During his presidency, he had his niece act as First Lady, doing those First Lady types of public appearances. But, his long-term “roommate” was a man. And this has caused many to ask if Buchanan, who started his term in 1857, could have been our first gay president? There are plenty of historians who agree that Buchanan was not only gay, but everyone knew it back in the day. Again, there is no actual proof because all of Buchanan’s personal correspondence was destroyed upon his death — at his own request.
And then there is Harry S. Truman, our 33rd president. It was during his run in office when those alleged outer-space-aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico. Whether it was true or not, he ordered a cover-up of all evidence of such landing.
We do know, for absolutely certain, that in July 1947, the military actually announced that a UFO had crash-landed in the Roswell desert. But then, the very next day, they changed their story to a big dopey nope. No way, no how. And, somewhere during all of this crashing and covering up, President Harry S. Truman turned up in Roswell to examine the crash site. So, we have to ask that question. Did Harry organize America’s most massive UFO cover-up?
That White House. Oh, if those walls could talk. Those mysteries, waiting to be heard.
In this world, we are always surrounded by the unknown.
=======
“When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.”
― Charles Baxter
=======
“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.”
― Sherman Alexie
========
“As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle,
=======
The secrets of the presidents. A whole lot of them.
