April Fools By Jamie Kirkpatrick

Harry Truman was my first President. I don’t remember much about him. After all, I was only two months old when he held up that newspaper headline that said “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN,” so not much about the little haberdasher from Missouri made its way into my infant skull.

Ike was next. Like everyone else, I liked him: his golf spikes, his love for playing bridge with Mamie, his passion for Western novels. I even saw him once when he came to Pittsburgh in 1959 with Nikita Khrushchev, riding up Forbes Avenue, smiling and waving from the back seat of his convertible. I was with my fifth-grade teacher at the time. “Why is the President with that bad man who wants to drop a bomb on us?” I asked. I don’t remember her response, but it just didn’t make sense why President Ike would look so happy sitting next to such a bad man.

Things changed. I grew up in a Republican household, but I was smitten with John F. Kennedy. He was handsome, athletic, funny; he had a pretty wife. That’s when I began to wean myself away from the Grand Old Party. I had nothing against it per se, but Kennedy’s opponent that year scowled a lot and perspired under pressure, so I presumed that all Republicans scowled and sweated.

I was at boarding school when President Kennedy was assassinated, in fact, the same school he had once attended. I remember every second of that day: my trip to the laundry, the faces of the ladies who worked there as they stared at the television, my own shock and the tears that ran down my cheeks that afternoon as I sat alone in the chapel. To this day, it may well have been the seminal moment of my life.

LBJ came next. I didn’t much like him: too many jowls and he was President only because my hero had been murdered. However, there were some good things about him—his commitment to civil rights, for example—but in the end, he was too engulfed in Vietnam, and the Chicago police were cracking too many protestor heads. I wavered.

I had come of age. For the first time, I could vote in a Presidential election. But I didn’t much like any of the choices: the scowler/sweater, the bigot from Alabama, and LBJ’s Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey. He seemed nice enough, just uninspiring. I voted for him anyway.

The next go-round it was ABN: anybody but Nixon who was still sweating, still scowling.  I liked George McGovern and his running mate, Sargent Shriver, had, like me, Peace Corps credentials. I lost again.

In 1976, I think I voted for Jimmy Carter, but I’m not sure. I sure would vote for him today: what an amazing post-Presidency!

I entered the wilderness: I bet on John Anderson in 1980 and lost. I lost again in 1984 when I cast my vote for Jesse Jackson instead of Walter Mondale. Lost again in 1988 with tank-riding Mike Dukakis. But in 1992, things finally went my way with the Arkansans. I remember thinking I had finally crawled out of the desert and could take a shower.

Eight years is not a long time in politics. Soon enough, the worm turned again when George Bush beat Al Gore by a hanging chad. Four years later, he beat John Kerry. Once again, I was back in the desert, only this time with some dubious types who got us into deserts of their own making in Iraq and Afghanistan because we were told they had weapons of mass destruction. Only they didn’t.

Then, just when I was beginning to think I would never be smitten again, along comes Barak Obama and I was back on the winning side.

I felt good about my chances in 2016, but I underestimated the man. Hilary underestimated him, too, and went down in flames. All of a sudden, I was back in the desert. No; not a desert; an alternate universe which made absolutely no sense. Nothing could be worse, or so I thought…

Joe Biden was a good and decent man. I was happy when he prevailed in 2020. But by the summer of 2024, it was apparent to me, he was fading. I thought Ms. Harris would prevail, but once again, I underestimated the man and the fervor of his base.

And so here we are, sitting in a chat room full of frat boys, playing with our phones, smeared with shade, on a ship of April Fools. Sigh.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His most recent novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon and in local bookstores.