Presidential History Buffs

If you were to be asked which American president you are most like, wouldn’t you naturally associate yourself with one of our better known chief executives? Anyone with a healthy ego, I think, would prefer to be compared with a Lincoln, a Washington, an FDR, a Reagan. But . . . Millard Fillmore?

That was the determination of a presidential quiz I took recently on the social networking site Facebook called “Which president are you?” Granted, the quiz was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but still, couldn’t the end result have been a little bit more ego-stroking? The application developer who created the quiz warned that the answer might be surprising. That was an understatement! I mean, with questions such as “You’re in a bar and a fight is about to break out. What weapon do you use?”, and the responses to choose from listing such objects as “a bottle of Bordeaux” and “hot sauce,” I suppose I shouldn’t have taken the test too seriously (being the thoughtful person that I am, I ticked off “your intellect”). But curiosity got the best of me, and I plowed through the 10 questions (some of which were actually relevant to the topic, such as “How many branches of the federal government are there, and how many do you think there should be?” and “What is the most important issue facing the president today?”).

Anyhow, my answers led to the conclusion that I was the modern-day incarnation of our 13th president. After I got over my initial indignation, I read over the summary that purported to explain why one of the most forgettable leaders of our country and I were cut from the same cloth. Like Millard Fillmore, I apparently was “a great compromiser. “You can negotiate deals between both sides of a fiercely divided party quite well. Although this means you can’t openly have strong opinions about things, it keeps people from losing their heads.” The summary went on to say, “Though having attention thrown upon you is disliked, you can handle it well. You are compatible with Jimmy Carter or Henry Clay.”

Oh, great! Now I was being identified with another mediocre president, the one who failed to resolve the Iran hostage crisis, as well as with a politician whose most significant legislative achievement only served to postpone the inevitable resolution to the slavery question.

But the more I thought about it, the qualities I was said to share with Fillmore and the others didn’t seem so bad after all. And, interestingly, the description of these personality traits turned out to be fairly insightful. I’ve always considered myself phlegmatic, a temperament that embodies, among other qualities, diplomacy, open-mindedness and reserve.
In Fillmore’s case, receptiveness to others’ ideas led the way to his approval of the Compromise of 1850, the bill crafted in the Senate by fellow Whig Henry Clay that admitted California as a free state and abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia, but also left open the question of slavery in the New Mexico territory to “popular sovereignty” and required the return of runaway slaves under the aegis of the Fugitive Slave Law. While Fillmore personally abhorred slavery, he recognized his duty to “give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.” Although neither North nor South was completely placated by the Compromise, the legislation helped allay tensions and preserve peace for a few more years.

Fillmore’s inclination to avoid expressing extreme viewpoints extended to his foreign policy (where he enjoyed some success in opening up new markets in the Far East for American manufacturing). He didn’t believe in U.S. imperialism, opposing efforts by some in the United States to annex Hawaii—though he did apply the Monroe Doctrine principles to the island when the French tried to seize it. “Our true mission,” he declared in his Second Annual Message to Congress in 1851, “is not to propagate our opinions upon other countries our form of government by artifice or force, but to teach my example and show by our success, moderation, and justice the blessings of self-government and the advantages of free institutions.”

A century and a quarter later, Jimmy Carter followed the same philosophy when he successfully brought Anwar Sadat and Mechachim Begin together at Camp David to hammer out a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.

So maybe being pegged for a Carter or a Millard Fillmore isn’t the worst label that could be attached to someone. Not that I still wouldn’t want to be Lincoln or Roosevelt!