When I went past the Grand Lake movie theatre, in Oakland, CA the marquee proclaimed, "Happy Democratically Elected Presidents Day". This really got me to thinking, that I should only respect those Presidents who were democratically elected. I suppose President Hayes is out (since he got into office at the end of reconstruction on the Hayes-Tilden compromise). After reading John Adams by David McCollough, I know that things really weren't democratic at the founding of the country, since slaves counted as 3/5ths a person but couldn't vote and really the electors could choose whoever they wanted. And then women couldn't vote until the 19th amendment. And Jim Crow laws kept blacks from voting well into the sixties. So by my reckoning, Richard Nixon might be the first democratically elected president in this country. How scary is the thought that I would celebrate the election of that idiot. Maybe I'll just skip remembering President's Day altogether.