WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- Once again, the American people have the opportunity to celebrate discounted white goods, markdowns on furniture and sales on apparel. Even in this time of economic downturn, however, it is not supposed to be that way. Monday, of course, is Presidents' Day.
Every year, on the third Monday in February, America honors the memory of Warren Harding, Franklin Pierce, Rutherford B. Hayes and other of the lesser lights the people have elected to be chief executive of what is now the most powerful nation on Earth.
How this came about is typical of the inaction and compromise that is a hallmark of American government. Presidents' Day was born of the need to tinker with the calendar without incurring any additional expense to the government in the form of additional overtime to federal workers.
Before Presidents' Day, the nation celebrated as federal holidays the February birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, who saved the union, and George Washington, the father of the country.
In 1968, as part of what has become known as "the federal long weekend act," the U.S. Congress moved Washington's birthday to a convenient Monday of the year rather than leaving it on Feb. 22, and morphed it into Presidents' Day.
Lincoln's birthday, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist.
President Richard Nixon, who probably suspected somewhere in the recesses of his mind that the country would never celebrate his birthday, seized upon this chance to secure immortality by calendar and endorsed the move. His first proclamation after the re-jiggering called for all former presidents, not just Washington, to be remembered.
The subsequent three-day weekends have been helpful to those looking for discounts on living room suites but do little to help the nation honor its first president or, for that matter, any of the others.
Consider Washington's many accomplishments. One of few professional soldiers resident in the United Colonies and supportive of independence, this Virginia planter accepted command of a rag-tag citizen's militia and kept it alive long enough for the most powerful army then on Earth to be defeated, allowing a new nation to be born.
Offered this new nation as his kingdom, Washington instead bade farewell to his troops, resigned his commission and went home to Mount Vernon, Va. An 18th-century Cincinnatus, he became a living symbol of dignity, honesty and liberty. It is no wonder that he was the near-unanimous choice of the first electors to be the first president of the United States.
As has long been his custom, U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., has introduced legislation that would restore the name Washington's Birthday to the federal holiday that this year will be observed on Feb. 17.
If his proposal becomes law, all federal agencies will once again refer to the holiday by what is in fact still its legal name. "George Washington's birthday was one of the original federal holidays," Bartlett says. "There would be no United States, no presidency at all without George Washington. He is the only president elected unanimously, not once, but twice. What's everybody's business is nobody's business."
"A generic Presidents' Day diminishes the accomplishments of America's greatest president while rewarding the mediocrity of others," he says.
The effort is a noble one. Reclaiming the holiday for Washington and Washington alone is an advance in the reaffirmation of our shared national heritage. As Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney; Bill Bennett; and others have written, American history is given short shrift in the public schools, with essential facts often bent to meet the demands of political correctness.
The restoration of Washington's Birthday is a first step toward establishing anniversaries upon which schoolchildren would study the nation's founding. New curriculums on the War for Independence, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would bring these and other essential elements of American history to life minus the anti-dead white male sentiments that color the way so much of U.S. history is currently taught.
To further honor him, the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington that used to hang in every American classroom should be put back in place. It is important that Washington, and all that he represents, be reasserted. By no means a perfect man, he was a great leader who set the standard for future presidents. His integrity allowed him to resist the impulse to tyranny that might have seduced a lesser man.
For this alone, Washington is worthy of our respect but because of all the other things he meant to America, he should not be forced to share his birthday.
(The Peter Principles is a twice-weekly column on issues in politics, culture and the media by UPI Political Writer Peter Roff.)
