The headline, of course, is facetious. It’s rare when someone actually asks me: “who should I vote for?” If I was an orthopedic surgeon, I’d probably get lots of: “I’ve got this nagging pain in my knee, it comes and goes…” from friends and family. My doctorate, though, isn’t in medicine, it’s in history. And my specialty is presidential history. You’d think more folks would ask my opinion about presidential candidates…but, I digress.
In those instances when folks do seek my counsel about whom to vote for, my answer always begins with: “what are your priorities? What matters to you most?” If someone in 2024 identified his/her top concerns as: 1) ensuring the border remains porous so that anyone wanting to enter the U.S. may simply waltz right in; 2) treating transgender Americans no differently than anyone else – allowing biological men to play in women’s sports, and having unisex bathrooms and locker rooms everywhere, including schools; and 3) abolishing police departments throughout the country, then I’d encourage that person to vote for Kamala Harris. Not that Harris necessarily supports those positions, but they would advance considerably more under her than under Donald Trump. Accordingly, I’d advise that person to vote for Harris, even though that choice differs from mine.
Along those lines, if your top issue is: “not renaming bodies of water,” then Donald Trump is in fact the worst president in history, because unless I’m missing something, he is the biggest violator. Not only did he change the name – at least as officially recognized in the United States – of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, but now he’s done the same to Lake Ontario: it’s now Lake America.
If the Gulf name change is any indicator, “Lake America” tee shirts will pop up throughout the United States, except of course in progressive strongholds. MAGA Nation will wear them proudly, to taunt those on the left who are irate. The TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) sufferers, in turn, react as if Trump repealed the Thirteenth Amendment and reinstituted slavery.
Fully aware of his particularly unhinged segment of his detractors, Trump eggs them on. His decision to rename both bodies of water is twofold: first, he wants to be remembered for easily identifiable changes that will make it into history books. Adding a new branch of the armed forces – the Space Force – (which he did) is one such example. Making Daylight Savings Time permanent (which he hopes to do soon) would be another. A second reason, though, is to taunt his critics, and to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for vengeance against nations he believes treat us unfairly – in this case, Canada. To further irritate all of the above, Trump quipped that now that we have a gulf and a lake, maybe we should add an ocean: “maybe I’ll change the name of the Atlantic or the Pacific, maybe I’ll change them both.”
Trump’s doubling down on those who have it in for him is not unlike Jack Johnson, who, a little over a century ago, became the first black heavyweight boxing champion, to the horror of multitudes of American whites for whom color mattered. Eminently aware of the hateful racism against him, Johnson’s doubled down in Trumpian fashion. He married a white woman, and often kept company with various prostitutes, all of them white women, with whom he paraded around in public, one on each arm. Embittered Caucasians pitted a slew of white opponents against him, but Johnson didn’t just beat them – he toyed with them. He embarrassed them, he made them look like infants trying to compete with an adult. That infuriated the Johnson-bashers even more so, much to his delight.
in 1913, Johnson’s haters got their revenge: they convicted him under the Mann Act, which made it a crime to transport women across state lines for “immoral purposes” (Johnson had traveled with a white woman from Pennsylvania to Illinois). During his appeal, Johnson fled the country for seven years, fighting in various arenas throughout the world, adding to his already outstanding accolades. By the time he returned to the United States, served some time in jail, and resumed boxing here, he was 48 years old, well past his prime, losing more often than he won. His record of 68 wins and 11 losses doesn’t do justice to what an incredible fighter he was, arguably one of the top five heavyweights of all time. I, for one, think he would’ve likely beaten any heavyweight of the modern era, with the exception of Muhammad Ali.
The next black heavyweight champion, Joe Louis, would not surface until a generation later. Unlike Johnson, Louis was nearly universally beloved. Racism still existed (and still does), but 30 years is a long time for things to improve. Also, Louis carried himself as a gentleman, and so he didn’t add fuel to the fire. Finally, when Louis defeated Adolf Hitler’s protégé, Max Schmelling, the only colors America saw were red, white, and blue.
As for the Mann Act, it was amended in the 1970s and 1980s, now limited to forbidding the transportation of women across state lines explicitly for illegal sexual acts, not for the vague “immoral purposes.” Many condemned the perpetual misuse of the Mann Act to target people for personal reasons. Over time, more and more Americans came to realize that White America’s harsh racist treatment of Johnson was not a reaction to his brash, taunting behavior, it was the other way around. But for all the talking, no one took any action until one president issued Johnson a posthumous pardon. That president is Donald Trump.
