Presidents Day was originally established as a compromise meant to honor the men that most consider to be the greatest presidents in American history: Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Initially, they both had holidays on their respective birth dates—Feb. 12 for Lincoln and Feb. 22 for Washington—but Congress combined their two holidays into one (to better fit into the workweek) that would celebrate not just them, but every Commander in Chief in United States history: Presidents Day.

Many have become disillusioned with the political climate from the past election cycle and the mudslinging that characterized it. The Prep News sat down with U.S. History Teacher Tom McCarthy to investigate the origins of the often overlooked holiday and how it could tie into the present day. 

“We had a close election, but it was a decisive victory in the popular and electoral vote for Biden,” said history teacher Tom McCarthy. “Yet people still are carrying on that there’s QAnon, or people saying that on March 4, Trump’s going to be president, and I have to scratch my head. We don’t have a tradition of this. We have had hard-fought campaigns and some terrible mudslinging in the early 19th and then the 20th century; you can point to any number of election years. There’s been some nastiness, but at the end of it, it’s like, okay, that person is the winner, and we have to get behind this person.”

Presidents are gifted with the trust and confidence of the oldest democracy in the world. When times are rough, people expect the President to be the mature guiding hand for the nation. Presidents Day is a day to spotlight that admiration.

“As a country, I think sometimes we put the President in too big of a spotlight, and I don’t mean Biden, and I don’t mean Trump uniquely,” said McCarthy. “I think, going back to Franklin Roosevelt, people expected Roosevelt to do something in the troubles of the Great Depression, and Congress passed legislation without even reading it. And when Buchanan lost the election to Lincoln in 1860 and Lincoln wasn’t sworn in for four months. Buchanan said, ‘I don’t want to do anything that may hamstring the new president’ and during the time, seven states seceded. When we get, like an FDR and then he does stuff, people expect the President to do things, you know if we have an economic downturn. ‘What’s the president doing to address my unemployment to address my finances?’ Whereas if things are cruising along economically, very few people say, ‘Oh, thank God president so and so made this possible.’”

For McCarthy, the office’s respect began with Washington and continued through Lincoln and well into reconstruction. 

“When he (Washington) died, he was lauded as first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. People had his picture on their walls, well into the late 19th century,” said McCarthy. “And then after Lincoln’s death, probably starting in the 1880s and 1890s era after reconstruction, people would have side by side pictures of Washington and Lincoln.” 

When asked if the current political climate could hurt people’s perception of the presidency, McCarthy  expressed confidence that the office’s esteem would prevail in the long run.

“Did your parents ever tell you when you were a little kid, you can be anything you want, including the President of the United States?” said McCarthy. “I use that as an example, and I think that’s a truism: they’re people telling kids, ‘this girl, this boy, could grow up to be President of the United States.’ We still believe that it’s the highest job in the land, even though it’s a temporary job filled by someone who lives in public housing.”

McCarthy also stresses the importance of leaving the revered political figures of the past in the past. 

“It’ll be a different world in four years,” said McCarthy. “People who rejected Trump might embrace him, and people who embraced him might reject him. Things are just too fluid to say, ‘Oh yes, I was raised in a family of Democrats, and I will always vote Democrat’ or ‘I was raised in a family of Republicans, and I’ll always vote Republican.’ I just think the spotlight is never going to get off the President anytime soon. I would hate to be in that position.

McCarthy used an example he learned studying behind retired Gettysburg College Professor Gabor Boritt, one of the premier Lincoln scholars in the United States. During a discussion about the 1970’s, a man asked Boritt whether Lincoln would have supported busing poorer black students into better-funded schools in majority-white neighborhoods or be against it. 

“He (Boritt) thought for a minute, and in his broken English—because he’s originally from Hungary—said that Lincoln would say, ‘what is bus?’” said McCarthy. “In other words, it’s out of the context of his times and when he first said that, it pestered me all afternoon. (People may ask) ‘What would Reagan say today?’ Reagan would say, I don’t know, I haven’t been around the last 30 years to wrap my head around these problems.” 

Even though McCarthy is a fan of  history and specifically American presidents, he stressed that they have very little to do with the daily lives of the average American. 

“Most of the time presidents’ decisions, I think, have very little to do in my day-to-day life,” said McCarthy. “When Father Gibbons says, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have an asynchronous day,’ that’s a more important decision on how I do my job as a teacher than anything Biden might announce at 12 noon today. I just think people focus on them too much, and 24/7 news doesn’t help that at all.” 

For other avid historians, the news is also lacking in contribution and celebration of Presidents day.

Four days before Washignton’s birthday and four days after we observed Presidents Day, McCarthy called on the school community to be more considerate of others and their political opinions. 

“I don’t think Americans, for a number of years now, have been very much into reflection,” said McCarthy. “If ever Jesuit education is countercultural, the whole notion of reflection is just that (countercultural). Think before you speak, listen to someone, and actually consider what they say instead of being ready to pounce and react to it.”