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March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review Jan. 9, 2009 / 13 Teves 5769

Bush and Obama's Presidential Meeting Unique in History

By Michael Barone


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | History was made yesterday when all the living presidents of the United States — Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush — met for lunch in the White House with President-elect Barack Obama. As noted in a Washington Post article, this was the first meeting of all living presidents since October 1981, when Ronald Reagan hosted Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter as they were assembling to attend the funeral of Anwar Sadat in Egypt. And once Obama is inaugurated, we will be in a period when there are four living former presidents — a rare time in American history.


The Post makes reference to Obama modeling himself on Abraham Lincoln, with his "team of rivals" cabinet (without noting that one 2008 rival, Bill Richardson, has been dropped from the list). But the paper does not note that when Lincoln took office, he did not have such a meeting, even though there were five former presidents living at the time. And for good reason: All five were, to varying degrees, hostile to Lincoln. Martin Van Buren, who had held office almost a quarter-century before, was nearing 80 and living in upstate New York. John Tyler was a member of a peace convention assembled in Washington but was hardly sympathetic to Lincoln; he was soon to be elected to the Confederate Congress, though he died in 1862 before it gathered. Millard Fillmore had been the American (Know-Nothing) Party candidate for president, and thus an opponent of the Republican Party. Franklin Pierce had signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, to which Lincoln was so strongly opposed that he re-entered politics and joined the new Republican Party. And the outgoing president, James Buchanan, was clearly at odds with Lincoln.


That period was one of three in U.S. history when there were five living former presidents. The others were in 1993-94, when Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush were all still living, and in 2001-2004, when Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Bill Clinton were still living. In 1993, I suggested to Ann Stock, the White House social director in the incoming Clinton administration, that it would be nice to invite all five of them to a White House event — and to do what Abraham Lincoln could not have done. I don't know whether she or anyone else in the Clinton administration tried to do this, but it never happened. Perhaps the reason was that Nancy Reagan believed that her husband was not in a condition to attend. I remember attending an event at the Reagan Library in the summer of 1994 (a suitably bipartisan one: Susan Estrich and I were on the same panel) that I hoped the former president would attend. He didn't, and no explanation was given. A couple of months later, Reagan's final letter to the public, disclosing that he had Alzheimer's disease, was released. In any case, Richard Nixon died in March 1994, and the number of living former presidents who could attend was reduced to three. And during the 2001-04 period, there was no possibility of Reagan making a public appearance.


The periods when there have been four living former presidents were March 1825-July 1826 (John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe; this period ended when Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the 50th anniversary of July 4, 1776); March 1845-June 1845 (John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Tyler); March 1857-March 1861 (Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, Pierce); January1862-July 1862 (Van Buren, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan); January 1989-January 1993 (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan); April 1994-January 2001 (Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush); and June 2004-December 2006 (Ford, Carter, Bush, Clinton). In the 19th century, logistics as well as political enmity made it unlikely that there could have been a meeting of these former presidents, and evidently there was no such meeting at the White House in 1989-93 or in 2004-06, although I believe the four former presidents all attended the Reagan memorial service at the National Cathedral in June 2004. I hope readers will correct me if I have overlooked such a meeting.


At other moments in American history, there have been no living former presidents. These periods were December 1799-March 1801, after the death of George Washington; July 1875-March 1877, after the death of Andrew Johnson; June 1908-March 1909, after the death of Grover Cleveland; January 1933-March 1933, after the death of Calvin Coolidge; and January 1973-August 1974, after the death of Lyndon Johnson. At least three of those moments were times of considerable turmoil — the foreign policy crisis at the end of John Adams's administration and the disputed 1800 election, the Great Depression, and the Watergate scandal — in which the incumbent president had no predecessor to whom he could look for advice, and in which he faced fierce opposition from his general election opponents (Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt) or from a hostile Congress. So, we're probably fortunate that Barack Obama has so many predecessors that he can turn to, although he will probably find, as his four immediate predecessors did, that Jimmy Carter will be more hindrance than help.

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