Be Mine, Prez: BuzzFlash Staff Sends Their Love to Dead Presidents

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Here at BuzzFlash, we wanted to celebrate the sweetness of Valentine's Day with the approbation of Presidents' Day. Our customer service director Katy came up with the excellent idea to write love letters to U.S. presidents. Below you'll find our humble missives to former leaders of this great nation.

And feel free to add your own love letter to former a president by commenting below.

From Katy to William Howard Taft (1909-1913):

HELLO WILLY!
To: Willy Taft

There are many reasons why I want you to be my valentine.

1. chubbiest prez = more 2 luv!!
2. Those whiskers on your upper lip really tickle my fancy!
3. only person to be both prez and Chief Justice. Taft = books + looks

WILLY TAFT + ME = K-I-S-S-I-N-G

From Meg to President John Tyler (1841-1845):

A haiku for Tippecanoe... (and Tyler too):

History has judged
You're an obscure sloganeer
So, you're mine alone.-

From Marc to Grover Cleveland (1983-1897)

Dear Grover Cleveland,

How can I fit so many strong feelings into one letter scrawled over a few short pages? It seems to me, to be impossible, but hasn't that been said by letter writers throughout time?

I hope this finds you in good health, and at a time when there is no other activity afoot, perhaps after dinner when the card tables have been put away, and all others have retired. I picture you sitting alone in the library pouring over my words--so unequal to their task--wrinkling your moustache with every smile.

I know you could not be prevailed upon to visit me in Chicago this summer. The country needs you almost as much as I. Those pesky laborers are on strike again, thinking it right to bring the entire nation's railroads to a standstill for their own selfish gain. I urge you to use your position to quell this tiny act of rebellion. Heed not for the disparaging words of such people. They are the kind who only glimpse honor and honesty through the bottom of their beer mugs. You have thrice won the popular vote and twice the election for your noble office, and a rating of your approval would surely keep but forty percent at worst.

Do not be swayed by silly talk of ending our gold standard. Without gold to base our currency on, what is our money to stand for? It will be reduced to the value of the paper it's made on. And I simply refuse to return to some system of barter or whatever uncivilized societies use. Can you imagine, me going to the post office with a sack full of grain, just to pay for the stamps to send you a letter?

I hope to make the trip out to Washington sometime in the fall, so we can meet again and talk over these things in person. Until then, these little letters will have to do. Send my sincerest wishes of happiness to you and your family.

Yours Truly,
Marc

From Terry to Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)

Dear Uncle Abe,

I've admired you since I was a girl of six, but it wasn't until I read Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of you that I truly became smitten.

I'm enamored of all the qualities that you possess that we are so sorely in need of today -- your strength, your humor, your storytelling folksiness, your integrity, and your tenacity and your empathy!

I'm grateful that you led our country during one of our worst crises. I wish I could reincarnate you as our current president.

Wherever you are now, if you could help us out any way you see fit, we would all be in your debt.

Love,
Terry

P.S. Happy Birthday
P.S.S. I think you're cute.

From Jeffrey to Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877):

Dear Ulysses S. Grant,

As a former resident of the South, I was raised with an appropriate fascination with the Civil War, and it’s largely what made me think of you this President’s Day.

Most people think of a certain other president when it comes to the Civil War, a gentleman who, incidentally, happened to be president at the time said war. Some would say that President Abraham Lincoln actually began the war, though Jefferson Davis probably had a bit to do with it, as well. Lincoln, with his striking figure, reputed honesty, eloquent speeches, bipartisan cabinet (hey, that sounds like some other president we may have around these parts), Emancipation Proclamation, and most importantly, skill at wrestling, certainly has earned enough accolades. Sure, his face on the American penny means next to nothing these days, but if anyone doubts Lincoln’s obviously overinflated ego, he or she need only to make a trip to South Dakota; once Gutzon Borglum decided he needed to dedicate 60 feet for Lincoln’s head alone, he said far more about Lincoln’s apparent self-assessed value than I need further discuss here. He only persevered to maintain the Union in theory, after all. You helped make it happen.

Oh, and how. Sure, you had a few tactical maneuvers of laud against Robert E. Lee, the obviously unintelligent adversary who somehow managed to maintain a war for years with inferior numbers and fewer supplies against you and others like you. Fortunately for Lincoln, Lee’s initial misgivings about fighting against his home country gave way to his passion for his home state. If not, the war might have been an altogether brief one, and you may never have garnered your renown.

For you, President Grant, before you were endowed with such a title, came up with the great tactical hypothesis that secured the war for the Union – we probably have more people than you do, so we can just keep this going until you decide to give up. A war of attrition. How brilliant. Why bother to stake the high ground or flank an enemy when you can choose to respond by simply throwing more men at him?

Plus, having that extended war allowed you free time (time others might have spent on more expedient war tactics) to develop your extensive drinking habits and to eventually execute the famously anti-Semitic General Order No. 11. Those, coupled with your eventual surrender from the Confederates at the Appomattox Court House, sealed your legacy and helped seat you in the White House not once, but twice. You went for three, but you couldn’t have everything.

Some may say you earned a great deal of laud for your efforts toward Reconstruction and possibly moving forward civil rights, helping the U.S. overcome one of its greatest evils by bringing to a close the institution of slavery. Still, the fact that the U.S. needed another civil-rights movement almost a hundred years later and that your presidency was so plagued by cronyism and nepotism that they created a term for it –-Grantism –- far overshadows those pesky attempts at positive change. Better to focus on your war-winning ways. Because the rest, the advancements on a federal front for the better of your fellows, might have seemed foreign to the descendants of your party in the Republicans. As Michael Steele, that ever-maligned chair of the RNC , might say of all that “helpful” work, “Mistakes happen, baby.” That 41-59 majority in the Senate empowers them to look past all that and identify with the qualities certain members might more comfortably recognize as their own.

So, under-credited president of ours, this letter goes out to you. Great work. If I don’t come across you in the afterlife, I’ll probably be reminded of you in upcoming hip-hop videos; the recession has to hit them eventually, too, so maybe they’ll give the Benjamins a break. And you were always ready to weather out any threat by pouring more resources into it, with or without focus. Given the Recovery Act, and its disputed (but measured) success, it may just be a timely tactic worth revisiting.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey Joseph

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