Saturday Q&A

If you like questions about the past being distorted, this is the day for you.

Q: When Joe Biden began his speech to the joint session of Congress, he addressed the women seated behind him as "Madam Speaker; Madam Vice President." Shouldn't the proper form of address have been "Madam Speaker; Madam President" since the vice president is seated on the platform not as first in the line of succession to the presidency but rather in their constitutional role as president of the Senate?

This is a minor point of protocol, and had President Biden addressed the VP as "Madam President," it probably would have caused no end of comments and questions. Still, it would have been a useful discussion to have had because of the VP's dual role as a member of the executive and also the legislative branches of the U.S. government. P.Z., Great Falls, VA

A: Both the White House and the Senate have folks whose job it is to deal with these sorts of questions of protocol (the Chief of Protocol and the Sergeant-at-arms, respectively). And it was decided long ago that the VP is only styled as "Mr. President" or "Madam President" when they are: (1) in the Senate chamber, and (2) presiding over the Senate. Neither condition was met during Biden's speech, as it was in the House chamber and Kamala Harris was not presiding.

---

Q: There were about 200 Members of Congress in attendance for Joe Biden's speech on Wednesday. I assume they were split close to 100-100 Democrats and Republicans and that the four leaders determined which members of their caucuses would be allowed to attend. But were there any criteria used to determine who would get a ticket to that event? It wasn't by seniority, as I saw Lauren Boebert (R-CO) there. And it wasn't by likability, as Ted Cruz (R-TX) was there. D.M., San Francisco, CA

A: Note that it was 200 people in the room; only about 140 of them were members of Congress. Anyhow, tickets were distributed to the leaders of each chamber, and it was up to them to figure out how to distribute them. The Democrats largely went based on seniority, the Republicans chose a "first come, first served" policy. That said, we suspect that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) specifically set a ticket aside for Boebert, hoping she would do some rabble-rousing. She tried, dramatically unfurling a space blanket (shiny silver) and putting it over her lap, so as to draw attention to what is happening at the border (space blankets are distributed to detainees). However, Boebert's stunt largely flew under the radar.

---

Q: Joe Biden said that it was 40 years since a president's son served in the military. Was he talking about George H. W. Bush? Because my math says that is 32 years ago. M.G., Indianapolis, IN

A: Let us start by noting that Biden's exact quote was this: "I'm the first President in 40 years who knows what it means to have had a child serving in a warzone." So, not only does Bush 41 not make sense, timeline-wise, but he also doesn't make sense warzone-wise, since Bush 43 "served" entirely in the United States.

Instead, Biden was clearly referring to Jimmy Carter, whose son Jack served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War (though he was discharged after being caught smoking some wacky tobaccy).

---

Q: I was interested to note that in your item with the reviews/takeaways after President Biden's address to Congress, you included David Gergen among the "left-leaning" commentators. I'm curious as to how you've come to the conclusion that someone who served in three different GOP administrations (Nixon, Ford, Reagan), and in one of the most moderate (or even conservative) Democratic administrations in generation (Clinton) as being "left-leaning." In fairness, I wouldn't exactly call Gergen a reactionary or rabid right-winger either. If anything, he's probably as centrist a political/media figure as there is these days, though maybe with an ever-so-slight lean to the right. D.F., Norcross, GA

A: If we had included a "centrist" section, we would have put Gergen there. But that was implausible because: (1) It would be hard to find enough commentators who qualify, and (2) we already had a lot of excerpts that day, and did not want to add more.

So, we had to decide whether to put Gergen in left-leaning or right-leaning. He seems to have drifted ever so slightly leftward in the past 5-10 years as the Republican Party has gone hard rightward. That, plus the tone and tenor of his comments, and the fact that he was writing for CNN, persuaded us that it was more correct to put him in "left-leaning." We almost added a brief note along the lines of "Gergen is really more centrist than left-leaning," but that post was already close to 8,000 words, so we didn't.

---

Q: In light of Tim Scott's "response speech" tonight, what do you think his chances are of being the GOP nominee for president in 2024? As a follow up, how do you think a presidential candidate Scott would fare against Joe Biden? Would Biden have to step down and hand the reins over to Kamala Harris in order to give the Democrats any hope of winning against a Black GOP candidate? R.H., Anchorage, AK

A: We don't think his chances are very good at all. There are a great many ambitious folks who are maneuvering right now to try to land the GOP nomination, and he's not among them. That means he's not rounding up potential campaign staffers, or donors, or pressing the flesh with key movers and shakers.

There is also no particular reason to believe that he would pull a significant number of Black voters over to the Republican column. Do you know what percentage of the Black vote Scott got in 2016? He got 8%. In the special election in 2014, he got...9%. It is true he was running against Black candidates both times, but the fact is that, like nearly all voters, Black voters care far more about a candidate's political positions than their skin color (particularly in presidential races). Most Black voters, even in South Carolina, find Scott's political program to be odious. And that is before he told a national audience that the U.S. is not a racist country.

---

Q: We can hope that Joe Biden and the Democrats succeed in passing the bills that will put $6 trillion into improving life in this country. However, we all know that the success of these programs depends on the quality of the design and implementation of them. Are there any good guidelines for the Democrats to follow based on previous major programs like the New Deal and the Great Society? I worked for Model Cities programs in the mid 1970s in San Francisco and I witnessed a good deal of wasted money and more than a little corruption. One great exception was a language-learning program run by a South American immigrant woman who was extraordinarily capable and dedicated. She was extremely honest and hardworking and hired people like herself. I suspect the quality of the people involved may be the key. How do you control for that? D.K., Iowa City, IA

A: We would say that Franklin D. Roosevelt is the more useful source of lessons here. He very much believed in the notion that states are "laboratories of democracy." So, most of the ideas he pursued had already been implemented with success in at least one state (or, failing that, in some other western democracy). He also tended to start smaller when it came to New Deal projects, and then go big once he had proof of concept (compare the TVA, founded 1933, which hired about 1 million people for public projects, to the WPA, founded 1935, which hired about 8 million). FDR took the same basic approach to delegation; if someone did well with a project, they got a bigger project next, and so forth.

---

Q: You guys seem pretty good at researching historical numbers, so I'm hoping you can help sort this out.

The Democrats are proposing bills that spend trillions of dollars over the next decade or so, and Joe Biden has announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the next few months so he can end that war just short of the two decade mark. This has me wondering, what has the Afghan war (and the Iraq war if you feel so bold) actually cost the U.S. government? I assume there's a wide range of estimates because accounting for specific projects in large organizations, like the entire U.S. government, is much harder than you might think.

The public had no idea what the "war on terror" would cost at the outset, but I'm curious to know how the cost of those government actions compares to what the Democrats are currently proposing with knowledge aforethought. M.H., Seattle, WA

A: You are right that it's not easy to figure out the exact costs of wars. One issue is figuring out the financial burden the war imposed on portions of the federal government beyond the spending in the actual theater of war. To take one small but clear example, how much of the Secretary of Defense's salary should be charged to the war? Or, how much of the operating cost of Fort Bragg, where many soldiers trained, should be charged to the war? Another issue is future costs. How much interest will be paid on the money borrowed to fund the wars? How much will the government spend on health care for veterans of the war, going forward?

The leader in wrestling with these questions is the Watson Institute at Brown University, which has an ongoing effort called the Costs of War project. They estimate that the direct cost of the Afghanistan War (i.e., money spent on troops and bombs and equipment in Afghanistan) is $933 billion and the total cost will end up being $2.261 trillion; the direct cost of the Iraq War is $757.8 billion and the total cost will end up being $1.1 trillion, while the direct cost of the entire "war on terror" is $1.959 trillion and the overall cost is $6.4 trillion. The careful reader will note that $6.4 trillion is in the general ballpark of how much the three Biden initiatives will cost. A slogan like "Better to spend the money on America than on endless wars" could prove useful.

Note that some analysts place even higher price tags on these various conflicts. For example, Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, who are both heavy-hitter academics, have put the cost of the Iraq War at $3 trillion.

---

Q: I guess this is an obvious question. Now that we have new numbers for Congressional delegations, what impact do you see on the electoral college in 2024? What would the 2020 election look like with the new EV numbers? R.L., Alameda, CA

A: It is true that, in a close election, every EV counts. But the new apportionment didn't change the math all that much. If the 2020 election had been conducted with the new apportionment, Joe Biden would have won 303-235, losing only three EVs.

We just don't see all that much of an impact, then. The cost/benefit analysis of investing resources in Florida, or Texas, or California doesn't change because their EV tally changed slightly. It's possible the most noticeable result could be that, after new maps are drawn, Nebraska (which, along with Maine, allows its EVs to be split), won't have a competitive congressional district anymore. If that happens, then Nebraska will go from getting a little bit of attention from presidential campaigns to getting none.

---

Q: Assuming D.C. statehood does become a reality, I would need clarification on how to send a letter. If I send a letter to the White House, would it still be Washington, DC? If I send a letter to someone at Georgetown University, would the city still be Washington, but a new two letter postal abbreviation for the 51st state? R.H.D., Webster, NY

Q: I originally come from the Tarheel State.

If D.C. is admitted as the 51st US state, what would the nickname for the state be? What about the state tree, flower, and bird?

Who makes these decisions? B.S.M., Chicago, IL

A: As to postal code, it would obviously need a new one. If D.C. does become a state, and if it does stick with the "Douglass Commonwealth" name (neither of these things are guarantees), our guess is that its postal code becomes "DS." It has to be "D" and one of the other letters in "Douglass," and "DS" is much more easily distinguishable from "DC" than "DO" when sorting mail. There are a number of states where the USPS went with first letter/last letter instead of first letter/second letter, including Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, and Pennsylvania.

In terms of "official" stuff, that's the province of the state legislature (or, in D.C.'s case, the city council). They've already chosen an official bird (the Wood Thrush) and an official tree (the Scarlet Oak). They don't have an official flower yet, but they do have an official fruit (the cherry). They also, it may surprise you to learn, have an official dinosaur. It's not Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), though. It's the Capitalsaurus. Really.

D.C. does not yet have an official nickname, but they have plenty of unofficial ones. Most of those have to do with being the capital, like "The Federal City" and "Nation's Capital," which would no longer make sense in the event of statehood. They presumably won't go with any of the unflattering nicknames, like "Murder Capital of America" (which isn't even true anymore) or Hollywood for Ugly People. Among the nicknames remaining, the one that makes the most sense is "The American Rome."

---

Q: You have brought up the idea of a Constitutional Court for the U.S. several times. According to the Constitution, such a court could be established by Congress but it would have to be inferior to the Supreme Court.

How would this work? Would a plaintiff have a choice of presenting an appeal to the constitutional court and if denied relief could they then go to the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court could then overturn the decision of the Constitutional court. Who determines whether the subject is of a constitutional nature? It would seem that the Supreme Court would have to be stripped of its appellate jurisdiction totally. J.C., New Port Richey, FL

A: You may be assigning too much significance to the word "inferior."

The Constitution gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction over "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." And that latter part doesn't actually mean any case where a state is involved, only those that cross state lines. So, for example, when Linda Brown sued the Topeka Board of Education, that was not covered because she was a resident of Kansas.

Meanwhile, the Constitution also grants Congress the power to create whatever other courts it sees fit and to dictate those courts' jurisdictions (outside of the handful of things listed in the previous paragraph). This means that Congress has the power to take away most of the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction (which is properly known as jurisdiction-stripping). It would be entirely legal for the Congress to say that SCOTUS gets to hear all the cases specifically assigned to them by the Constitution and the Constitutional Court has final jurisdiction over everything else. It's estimated that only 3% of federal cases would be the Supreme Court's purview, if this were to happen.

---

Q: What's going on with the Arizona "recount" right now? Is the state government involved? If not, how did the auditing company get hold of the ballots? J.H., Studio City, CA

A: We've avoided writing about it because it's such an obvious sham. But since you ask, a firm called Cyber Ninjas has been hired by the Arizona Senate (which is Republican-controlled, of course) to review the ballots a third time. Just the name alone should give pause, but it goes far beyond that. If you wrote a screenplay where the antagonist was as flimsy as Cyber Ninjas is, nobody would buy it because they would find it unbelievable. To wit:

• The president of Cyber Ninjas says he expects to find that Donald Trump won the state by 200,000 votes. Not exactly the way a dispassionate, evidence-driven approach would begin.
  
  
• Cyber Ninjas is not an Arizona firm (they are based in Florida) and has zero reputation among professional elections officials. Nobody has ever heard of them.
  
  
• The firm claims that they will discover "new" information about voter intentions by subjecting ballots to ultraviolet light. UV is generally used to reveal the presence of blood, urine, semen and saliva. So if they do find anything, we suppose that does say something interesting about voter intentions.
  
  
• Cyber Ninjas' president wants to conduct the recount with nobody watching, so as to protect "trade secrets."
  
  
• Consistent with that, the ballots have already been in Cyber Ninjas' hands and out of public view. In other words, there is no longer a clear chain of custody, and anyone and everyone could have potentially snuck a few thousand or a few hundred thousand ballots into the pile.

In short, Cyber Ninjas (and the Republicans in the Arizona Senate) already know the outcome they're shooting for, they are just trying to find a way to get there. Needless to say, one cannot take any of their findings seriously. And even if you do take them seriously, it does not matter because the state's result was certified, its EVs were cast, and Joe Biden was inaugurated. The only result, if Cyber Ninjas returns with "shocking" findings, will be to further undermine some Americans' faith in democracy and the voting progress, and to further encourage extralegal violence like the insurrection.

---

Q: Most news reports now seem to prefer "riot" to describe the events of Jan. 6. Although at the time "insurrection" or "insurrection attempt" seemed to predominate. Do you have an opinion on the correct description of the Jan. 6 events? S.C., Geneva, Switzerland

A: We take the view that not all riots are insurrections, but all insurrections are riots. So, better to use the more precise name that happens to apply in this circumstance, just like it's better to refer to a canine as a "dog" and not as a "mammal."

---

Q: You had an item about former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke potentially running for Congress from Montana in 2022. Zinke was investigated by the Department of Justice for behavior similar to what got Albert Fall sent to prison in the Teapot Dome scandal. But you wrote that unlike Fall, "Zinke was allowed to resign, and then the matter was largely dropped because the leader of the executive branch was not interested in punishing one of his own."

However, I checked the list of people pardoned by Trump, and Zinke wasn't on it. Do you think it's likely that Zinke will be charged with a federal crime before the 2022 election? If not, are there any state crimes he could be charged with? And if he does face criminal charges, would that derail his campaign, or could it be helpful to him by creating a backlash of sympathy? D.R., Yellow Springs, OH

A: We will say three things:

1. Donald Trump's administration left the Department of Justice with an awful lot of potential projects, and some of those are clearly more pressing than others. Just because we haven't heard that Zinke's going to be put under the microscope does not mean that he's not on the to-do list.
   
   
2. At the same time, we have no idea what kind of evidence the DoJ has. Fall took a fall because he palled around with sleazy folks (like Edward Doheny) who were more than happy to throw the Secretary under the bus. Are Zinke's associates equally willing to sing? Who knows? (Oh, and note that the main library at USC was funded by and named for Doheny, despite his being a crook. Feel free to keep that in mind when judging the moral character of the university.)
   
   
3. Finally, it could be that Zinke would have been allowed to slide, but that trying to return to Congress (which could entail his gaining access to sensitive economic or national security information) will cause the DoJ to decide they better go after him.

---

Q: What is known, or will it someday be publicly known, just how critically ill President Trump was when he was hospitalized for Covid? W.F., Chambersburg, PA

A: Probably not for a long time. Trump could release that information himself, or authorize someone to do it for him, but that seems improbable. Alternatively, someone in the know could leak the information, but any doctor who did so would lose their license and would be at risk of prosecution, while a Trump friend/family member seems unlikely to break his confidence.

Assuming none of these things come to pass, then HIPAA protects Trump's privacy for 50 years after his death. So, anyone who manages to outlive him by half a century might finally get their curiosity satisfied. And even then, somebody would have to go to the trouble of digging it up and leaking it.

---

Q: The letter from J.C. in Binan, Philippines, last Sunday made me curious. Could you provide the old and new definition of "evangelical" they mention (or outsource the task to J.C.)? Sorry, reading E-V.com and at least a part of the articles you link leaves no time for checking on Wikipedia. J.K, Seoul, South Korea

A: We asked J.C., and this was the reply:

I don't want to make myself in to more of an expert than I am. I graduated from Fuller Seminary, an "evangelical" institution, but I am not a religious scholar; this is just my understanding.

"Evangelical" is a term that has changed a lot over the years. At one time, centuries ago, it just meant "Protestant." When I was growing up, it meant "Christians who take the Bible seriously, but not necessarily literally," and was contrasted with self-proclaimed conservative "fundamentalists." I would have called myself evangelical back then. But now, I would say that the term evangelical has morphed to be the same as fundamentalist—conservative, often exclusionary folks who are trying to spin their movement more positively. I would no longer refer to myself as evangelical.

And to make things more confusing, the term still just means "Protestant" in Europe, and doesn't have the more narrow meaning we give it in the States.

---

Q: Given your penchant for saying that various politicians are "to the right of Attila the Hun," could you give some indication of how conservative Attila the Hun actually was? The comments that I found on the web about this were either flippant or not necessarily the most well-informed. G.B., Manchester, UK

A: It's necessary to distinguish between Attila the Hun the historical figure and Attila the Hun the legendary villain. The historical figure lived 1,500 years ago, and there is much about him that is not known. However, by standards of a military conqueror, he appears to have been a reasonably decent fellow and a reasonably beneficent leader.

The problem is that Attila's people did not see much value in maintaining a historical record. The Romans, with whom Attila did battle, felt differently. And so, it was the Romans (and their admiring successors) who largely defined Attila for posterity, particularly in the Western world. And since he was the enemy, they turned him in to a militaristic, cruel, dictatorial proto-fascist.

A crude parallel is the distinction between the historical figure Vlad the Impaler and the legendary villain Dracula. Although Vlad was, by all evidence, much more of a monster than Attila was, and therefore much more richly deserves to be remembered poorly.

---

Q: In regards to the 1619 Project, I was wondering if the resident historian could provide some perspective on the project and the apparent controversy. D.B., Palatine, IL

A: The 1619 Project was launched by The New York Times, who cooperated with a number of scholars and activists in order to do so. The general idea is that slavery has been downplayed and sanitized in America's schools (fair) and that students should learn more about that unhappy part of the nation's past (also fair).

There are two groups of people who dislike the 1619 Project. The first is political conservatives, who love the idea of American exceptionalism, and who hate the idea that some Americans, past and present, might have gotten an upper hand by virtue of their skin color.

The other group is...professional historians. Not all of them, but many of them. Back in 2019, not long after the project was launched, a quintet (a squint?) of historians—Victoria Bynum, James M. McPherson, James Oakes, Sean Wilentz, and Gordon S. Wood—sent a letter to the Times expressing their concerns. These folks are giants of the field, and are not exactly a bunch of McConnell clones. Wilentz, in particular, is known for his left-wing politics (if you doubt it, read his takedowns of George W. Bush and Donald Trump). They received a response, in the pages of the Times, from New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein, who explained to them that they really don't understand the history as well as he does. You can read the original letter and the response here.

The basic issue here is that the 1619 project has, in many ways, crossed the line from "good history" into "advocacy." Silverstein's primary goals here are to sell newspapers and to win journalistic prizes (and indeed, the Times got a Pulitzer for this). He is neither knowledgeable about good historical practice, nor is he invested in that as an important thing. Most of the folks the Times recruited to work on the project are similar; they value "message" over "fealty to the historical record."

There are quite a few ideas about slavery that are advanced by the 1619 project, but that simply aren't correct. For example, the project presents slavery as a uniquely American phenomenon, ignoring the slavery that existed in the Americas more than a century before English colonization and that existed in Europe for millennia before English colonization. The project asserts as fact that protecting slavery was a major reason the U.S. declared independence from Britain in 1776. This is unsupported by the evidence, and doesn't even make sense, since the British didn't abolish slavery until the 1830s. The project presents Abraham Lincoln as a white supremacist, which is both facile and presentist, and leaves no distance between him and, say, Nathan Bedford Forrest or Jefferson Davis on race/slavery.

Put briefly, nearly all historians support the broad goals of the 1619 Project, but also feel that it is merely replacing one distorted narrative with another, and would like to see things dialed back. Slavery was more than bad enough that it is not necessary to invent fictions to make the case.

---

Q: As a historian, what do you think was the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War? P.M., Albany, CA

A: The obvious answer is the 9/11 attacks, which not only killed 3,000 people, but also led directly to several long and costly wars, allowed the reach of the "security state" to grow dramatically, made American politics more polarized, and encouraged Islamophobia specifically and xenophobia more generally. It also laid the groundwork for the election of Donald Trump.

With that said, the 9/11 attacks (and, for that matter, the Capitol insurrection) may have badly damaged the country but they did not cause its collapse. One could argue that the worst attack was the one with the greatest chance of overthrowing the Constitution and the federal government. The only time since the Civil War that the U.S. government was in real trouble in this way was the 1930s, when domestic suffering was very bad, and many Americans could not help but notice that many European countries had overthrown their governments and moved on to something different.

This context is what makes the Business Plot of 1933 so concerning. A group of prominent and wealthy conservatives approached the popular Marine Corps general Smedley Butler and proposed to organize an army, to overthrow the government, and to support Butler's installation as a fascist dictator. We'll never know exactly how viable the plan was, or if it would have worked if Butler had gone along. Fortunately, the country did not have to find out, as Butler went before Congress and blew the whistle.

---

Q: I have been watching with fascination and shock the current series "Atlantic Crossing" on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. The story of Norwegian Princess Martha's sojourn in the Washington DC area while her country was occupied by Nazi Germany and her intricate relationship with FDR is compelling. But there are anachronisms and mistakes that boggle the mind and pose questions for a historian.

First and biggest, the series shows Roosevelt making his "garden hose" speech on lend-lease in early 1941 on television! I have read that FDR appeared in a crude video broadcast, local to the New York City area, shortly before his death in 1945. The idea of widespread TV in the United States before Pearl Harbor is fantasy.

It also shows Roosevelt chewing on Churchillian cigars. In all the photographs that I have seen, he smoked only cigarettes through the famous holder. I have never seen any picture of him with a cigar. Did FDR ever smoke cigars?

The series also shows Roosevelt drinking whiskey from an "old-fashioned" glass. I have read that his drink of choice was a traditional martini, and that he loved to shake a full tumbler of them. Is there any record of FDR drinking straight whiskey?

Is someone on the creative end of this Anglo-American-Norwegian production in need of an urgent history lesson? M.M., Plano, TX

A: We haven't seen the series, and so we can only go based on your description. They're not completely wrong on any of these things, but they are taking some rather substantial dramatic license.

Beginning with the cigars, men of that era customarily smoked them on celebratory occasions, even if it was not their normal means of consuming tobacco. And so, FDR certainly smoked the occasional cigar to commemorate the birth of someone's child, or perhaps an important political or military victory. But he did not do so regularly; as you point out, his preference was for cigarettes in his signature holder.

As to whiskey, he did drink it straight sometimes. He was famous for being a connoisseur of fine liquors and of cocktails. So, when he was presented with a more-than-100-year-old bottle of bourbon, he might well have cracked it open and had a snort. However, his preference was generally for the mixed drinks. In addition to martinis, he often ordered Bermuda rum swizzles and Manhattans made with whiskey.

As to TV, the technology was actually developed in the 1920s. The big radio conglomerates, fearing competition from the new medium, persuaded Congress to pass a law making it illegal to air television commercials. With no viable way to make money, TV was largely a hobby/project for amateur and professional scientists. And the only city that had enough sets to make TV broadcasts worthwhile was New York City (which had maybe 10,000 of them by 1930). So, many of the "firsts" in TV history (first sporting event on TV, first concert on TV, etc.) happened in the 1930s, and were broadcast from and to New York City. On April 30, 1939, FDR became the first president to appear on TV when he opened and dedicated the New York World's Fair (you can see it here, but this is the newsreel footage shown in theaters and not the TV broadcast as there was no way to preserve TV broadcasts back then). That is, as far as we know, his only appearance on TV. He most certainly did not give the Lend-Lease address on TV. The first president who is regarded as having given a formal speech on TV (as opposed to a brief dedication, like FDR) is Harry S. Truman, who did so from the White House on October 5, 1947.

---

If you wish to contact us, please use one of these addresses. For the first two, please include your initials and city.

• questions@electoral-vote.com    For questions about politics, civics, history, etc. to be answered on a Saturday
• comments@electoral-vote.com   For "letters to the editor" for possible publication on a Sunday
• corrections@electoral-vote.com To tell us about typos or factual errors we should fix
• items@electoral-vote.com            For general suggestions, ideas, etc.

To download a poster about the site to hang up, please click here.

---

Email a link to a friend or share:

---The Votemaster and Zenger