Songs for Presidents, No's. 25, 35-43

#25 WILLIAM MCKINLEY
First up is an old Charlie Poole song about William McKinley's assasination, when an anarchist stuck a bullet in the man up in Buffalo and his wife (or so the lyric goes) had to book it up to Buffalo to bid farewell to her dying groom.

Charlie Poole - "White House Blues"

#35 JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY
Sixty-some-odd years later, another President was struck down by a bullet - this time in Dallas. (What's up with Presidents being assassinated in shitty American cities?). Roger McGuinn & co. lamented their fallen leader with an update of this traditional folk song:

The Byrds - "He Was A Friend Of Mine"

#36 LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON
As we escalate another quagmire war, forcing down a military fix when a diplomatic negotiation better serves the situation, let's pay tribute to "Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" No more wars like this please.

MC5 - "The Human Being Lawnmover"

#37 & #38 RICHARD MILHOUSE NIXON & GERALD RUDOLPH FORD
No assassinations here in the explicit sense, but in the way of decaying morality and an assassination of checks & balances, the rule of law & of general human deceny. Hunter Thompson wanted Bobby Kennedy's campaign slogan to be "Richard Nixon represents the dark side of the American Dream," and indeed after '68 and '72, that dark side has been spinning into the wool that now covers our eyes.

With Nixon out & Ford in, James Brown penned a song to help heal the nation's wound, to get us out with old & in with the new. In 1981, Chrissy Hynde would write a song that surely had nothing whatsoever to do with Tricky Dick, but the lyrics are as spot-on as could be.

James Brown - "Funky President (People It's Bad)"

The Pretenders - "Bad Boys Get Spanked"

#39 JIMMY JAMES EARL CARTER
Was he actually a real president? I can't answer that, but I am sure that everyday he sat in his Oval swivelchair he was longing to be back there, among the cats and dogs, and the pigs and the goats...

The Kinks - "Animal Farm"

#40 RONALD WILSON REAGAN
A rollin' country ballad from the Drive By Truckers about how hard everyday life can get when sons 'a bitches like Reagan get voted in to man the ship.

Drive By Truckers - "Putting People On The Moon"

#41 & #43 GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH & GEORGE WALKER BUSH
During Mission of Burma's 20 year sabbatical, singer/guitar-man Roger Miller penned a song about the Bush 41 invasion of Iraq, drawing the proverbial lines in the sand to implicate the U.S. government's role in establish Saddam The Dictator, only to later knock him down. When MoB reformed in 2002, at the height of the Bush 43's pre-Iraq 2 fear-mongering/intel fixing, they recorded Roger's song for their ONoffON LP, complete with a morbidly appropriate children's chorus to counterbalance the world-weariness behind the lyric.

Here's a "dub" remix from a 2003 EP, which centers more around the children's vocals more than the album version.. because really it is a family affair, isn't it?

Mission Of Burma - "Wounded World" [Dub Remix, Four Hands EP]

#42 WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON
In the latter part of the 20th century, Bill Clinton was the Hurdy Gurdy Man. 'Nuff said.

Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity.
'Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Comes singing songs of love

Here's a Hurdy Gurdy cover, courtesy of the Butthole Surfers.

The Butthole Surfers - Hurdy Gurdy Man

#43 GEORGE WALKER BUSH
Presidents/Presidents' Day enthusiasts will tell you it's about the office, not the man. Today marks our 7th holiday with Junior: 7 down, 1 to go. On his second to final holiday, 2 American soldiers were killed and 17 injured when a suicide bomber rammed his truck into an American base in Iraq. Two other suicide bombers tore though an open-air market in downtown Baghdad today, killing over 60 people and injuring over a hundred others. The bombings happened less than 15 minutes after American troops patrolling the area did a security check on the market, as part of the Baghdad security crackdown behind George Bush's Surge.

Presidents are called upon to serve many roles - leaders, Commander-in-Chiefs, policy-makers, philosophers, orators, diplomats, negotiators, and even & especially politicians. In 2007 we're left with a president who's a politican first and a politican last, who's abandoned any responsibility to the dignified ideas we've ever had of "the Office" that we celebrate today. (And of course it was the promise of restoring this responsibility that predicated his original White House bid in the first place).

Now we need a leader to step up to re-restore some virtue of responsibility and to clean up the mess... before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

Whomever you might be, Sir or Madam, we welcome you.

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - "Counting Down The Hours"