Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

While any of us who voted in the most recent Presidential election most likely has some firm opinions about Donald Trump, I am not sure anyone knows what this immodest, narcissistic, arrogant, in-your-face New Yorker will bring to the table the next four years.

We didn’t find any redeeming words of wisdom in his inaugural address last Monday.  We are certain of one thing, however.   He sure thinks a lot of himself.   

In my library I have a book of the inauguration speeches of the presidents, beginning with George Washington’s first inauguration address in New York on Thursday April 30, 1789.

There have been insightful commentary and words to live by from the men who have led our nation since Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown in October 1781.   

Inaugural speeches, for the most part, have called for overt unity and patriotic loyalty.  There is that objective, too, to try to make the world a better place for all mankind.   

Some, like John Fitzgerald Kennedy, have presented inspiring and memorable oratory that will live forever.  On that cold winter day in January 1961, JFK came with the call for all Americans to “pitch in.” 

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” he said.   

With Trump being the second President to be elected to nonconsecutive terms, it has always been interesting to revisit the times of the White House years of Grover Cleveland, a Democrat.    The 22nd and 24th President was caught up in a scandal about fathering an illegitimate child which allowed his Republican detractors to come with this chant: “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?  Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.”

Often when those stories of such impropriety come up, I think about how the French view such things.  I remember that when one French President died in recent years that both his wife and his mistress attended his funeral.

And now that Donald Trump has gotten elected to the White House again, we could say that we are entering an “anything goes era.”   But that would be inaccurate.

As far back as the times of Old Hickory, President Andrew Jackson married Rachel Donelson who, as it turned out, was not legally divorced and had run away from her husband to take up with Jackson who was then accused of adultery and bigamy.  What if there had been network television back then?  The talking heads would have talked their heads off.

Trump’s claim that the election was stolen four years ago, as weak as his argument seemed to be, wasn’t the first such accusation.  Some still maintain that there was something fishy about what took place in Chicago in the 1960 election between Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

In Georgia, we had our own interesting episode in 1946-47 when Gene Talmadge was elected governor but died before taking office. 

Ellis Arnold, the incumbent governor, stayed around.  Melvin E. Thompson, the first elected lieutenant governor in state history, remained in limbo, and Herman Talmadge, Gene’s son, claimed he had enough write-in votes to succeed his father.  Georgia had three governors for a brief period of time.

It required a ruling by the State of Georgia Supreme Court to determine that Thompson was the rightful governor but there was consternation at the state capitol for weeks.

During the time when Lester Maddox was governor and I traveled out of state, I would be embarrassed to tell folks I was from Georgia. How proud could you be of a governor who rode a bicycle backwards and sold ax handles to his supporters to beat up on black people who dared enter his restaurant and order a barbecue sandwich.

Not sure who is the rightful owner of the quote, but nothing has ever been more correctly uttered in our history: “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”