There is a reason why Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president four times.  Yes, on the domestic front he inspired hope, but most of his “New Deal” economic policies at best were ineffective and at worst actually prolonged America’s economic depression.   And, yes, he was a great war leader, but he had already been elected president three times before his war leadership even came into play.

The reason for FDR’s political success was quite simply that he was a master politician and gifted communicator, who could disarm his political opponents and puncture their ideological and political balloons with a skill few politicians have ever matched.  No better example of this skill can be found than his appearance, this week (Sept. 23) in 1944, before the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, while campaigning for re-election (once again).  After giving his prepared remarks Roosevelt addressed a rumor, spread by his Republican opponents, that on his return trip from the Aleutian Islands earlier that year, Roosevelt discovered he had accidentally left behind his dog Fala, and had ordered a Navy destroyer to return to the islands and fetch his beloved Scottish Terrier — costing the taxpayers $20 million.

In a half-amused, half- indignant voice, FDR responded, “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons … they now include my little dog Fala.  Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers, in Congress and out, had concocted a story that I had left him behind … and had sent a destroyer back to find him at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars, his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself … But I think I have a right to resent, and object to, libelous statements about my dog.”

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This week (September in 1974, President Gerald Ford, who had become president of the United States in August upon the resignation of Richard Nixon, announced to the country that he had granted “a full, free and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon” for all offenses Nixon committed related to the Watergate break-in and cover-up, which had led to Nixon’s resignation.  “The long national nightmare,” Ford said later, “is over.”

And as it would turn out, so was Ford’s chance for another presidential term. According to numerous historians, politicians and political pundits, the reaction to Ford’s pardon ensured that he would be defeated for president, as indeed he was by Jimmy Carter in 1976.  In fact, when Ford called Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill to inform him of his decision to pardon Nixon, the speaker told the president, “You are never going to get elected if you do that.”

The national outrage that followed Ford’s announcement was in part attributable to the sense that Nixon was escaping well-deserved punishment for the two-year drama he had put America through. But there was also the strong suspicion that Ford and Nixon had made a secret deal — Nixon’s resigning the presidency in return for a pardon from President Ford — which Ford vehemently denied, even swearing under oath before the House Judiciary Committee that he had done no such thing.

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This week (May 11) in 1846, U.S. President James K. Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war against Mexico because, as he put it, “Mexico has … invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil.”

That was, to put it mildly, inaccurate.  For years Mexico and the United States had been arguing over possession of the Texas territory, historically a part of Mexico, whose residents in 1846 were mostly Americans.   Because those Americans had repeatedly petitioned Congress to annex Texas, Polk’s predecessor, President John Tyler, finally submitted a resolution to Congress annexing Texas, which Congress narrowly passed, infuriating the Mexican government.  Then Polk added insult to injury by arguing that not only was Texas part of the United States, but its true border with Mexico was the Rio Grande River, not the generally acknowledged Nueces River.  This increased the size of Texas, at Mexico’s expense, by another 150 miles to the south.

What is more, Polk previously had sent a military force under General Zachary Taylor into this disputed territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers, which was such a provocation that Mexico promptly attacked Taylor’s force, spilling the “American blood” that Polk mentioned in his war message.  American blood it may have been, but “American soil” it was not.  Indeed, Polk’s claim to the Rio Grande border was based on a treaty with Mexico that its former leader, Lopez de Santa Anna, had signed while in a Texas prison, which explains why the Mexican government repudiated it.

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