Thinking thinking thinking

[trinityvixen]

About every other month or so, I am prompted by some conversation or another to think back and try to list for myself all the Presidents of the United States. As those who have been unfortunate enough to be around me at the time this OCD-like behavior strikes, I cannot stop until I have listed as many as I know and then go find the usually three-four I am missing. It's usually a different set each time, too, since I tend to remember the ones I couldn't remember the last time.

The ones I forgot this time: Chester A Arthur, Willaim McKinley, and, uh, Abraham Lincoln. (Oh, and I never remember that Cleveland, in fact, counts twice. I remember him and I know he won two non-consecutive terms, just not that that counts towards 44.)

Comments

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I'm proud to say I've been able to do this since I was a college sophomore. It helps if you get some good political history books and read up about the more obscure Presidents. (Folks you never hear of, like Rutherford B. Hayes, are critically important to our history.)

It also helps if you remember the party affiliations. WH Harrison/Tyler were Whigs; the Whigs lost to Polk, the Democrat (now known largely for the TMBG song); the Whigs returned with Taylor/Filmore; then there were a pair of lousy Dems before Abraham Lincoln. And so forth and so on.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I usually start chronologically going forwards from Washington, stop at Jackson because I start forgetting the order, then go backwards from current president and stop around Hoover for the same reason.

So, that's Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, then Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt, Hoover....which gives me 20. That's not bad.

Next come the pairs that I didn't get in that list: the other Johnson, Harrison and Harrison, the other Roosevelt, Taylor/Tyler.

Then there are the other odd-balls: the assassinated ones/dead ones (McKinley, Garfield, Lincoln, Wilson, etc.) I haven't forgotten Fillmore ever because his name is RIDICULOUS. I can usually be arsed to remember the short-name ones--Polk, Taft, etc. Cleveland is unique, so the only problem I have is, again, counting him twice to get to 44. After that, it's a crapshoot of which one of Harding, Van Buren, Arthur, Hayes, Pierce that I'll forget.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Some guys are easy to pair up, which can extend the list a little bit. Martin Van Buren was Jackson's political mastermind, for example, and he followed him at the White House. Van Buren was then defeated in one of the silliest and most vapid campaigns in US history (it's where "Tippacanoe and Tyler too!" comes from). Go on and on from there.

Speaking of silly names, I just recited the list to myself, and my God, after 43 WASPy or WASPy-sounding names, "Obama" really stands out.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

See, you're applying history to it. I'm just mad that, after touring the entire country to visit these dead white guys' homesteads, houses, libraries, and grave sites, I can't remember all of them. So I get annoyed and try to remember all of them. (YAY OCD!) Remembering them historically keeps breaking down at the far corners for me (hence the Washington until mumblemumble, Obama back to grumblegrumble approach).

If you know your political history well, this shouldn't be a problem. Guess who doesn't? C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I.