Jeb Bush’s favorite president is ... James K. Polk?

[DonViejo]

After his father and his brother, Jeb Bush said his favorite president was James K. Polk (D), the Des Moines Register reports.

Said Bush: “One of the presidents that I really admire, and he’s not — I think people rank him pretty good, the historians who look at this — is James K. Polk… He said what he was going to do and he did what he said he was going to do, and then he left.”

“Although Bush didn’t mention it, Polk is perhaps best known for presiding over the Mexican-American War, in which U.S. forces battled all the way to Mexico City and won control of what is now New Mexico and California. The territorial expansion seen under Polk is now seen as fueling the fight over slavery of the mid-1800s. Polk himself was a slaveowner.”

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http://politicalwire.com/2015/07/14/bush-picks-james-polk-as-a-favorite-president/

[monmouth4]

1. Jeb, and Rubio too, are in way over their collective heads...n/t

[underpants]

2. A warmonger and invader like his brother

Jay Mohr (comedian, actor) has a sports radio show that is very funny. He does some spot on impressions and last week he did a Pres. Polk impression. Since there is no recording of Polk's voice Mohr took comedic license - it sounded a lot like a even more flamboyant Paul Lynde. Hilarious and it wasn't ridiculing at all. It goes well with his "Alternative lifestyle Droopy" impression too.

[KamaAina]

3. I thought it was The Donald who wanted to invade Mexico

Ya gotta wonder what the Mrs. thinks of his choice.

[Octafish]

4. Jebthro's Walker side doesn't get the attention it deserves.

George W. Bush’s (and Jebthro's, too) Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Was a Slave Trader

by Simon Akam
Slate, June 20, 2013

BUNCE ISLAND, Sierra Leone—Twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight while serving in office, and at least 25 presidents count slave owners among their ancestors. But new historical evidence shows that a direct ancestor of George W. and George H.W. Bush was part of a much more appalling group: Thomas Walker was a notorious slave trader active in the late 18th century along the coast of West Africa.

Walker, George H.W. Bush's great-great-great grandfather, was the captain of, master of, or investor in at least 11 slaving voyages to West Africa between 1784 and 1792.

Scores of European merchants and American plantation owners grew rich on the trade that transported more than 10 million Africans to North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil between 1550 and 1850. Bush's family, like many others, has previously been identified as slave owners in the United States. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at least five Walker family households, George W. Bush’s ancestors by his father’s mother, owned slaves in Maryland’s Cecil County.

But this is the first time an ancestor of Bush has been directly linked to the brutal trans-Atlantic trade in which millions perished. When I queried the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which publishes ancestries of American presidents, the only other president they flagged up with definite slave dealer ancestry was Thomas Jefferson, whose father-in-law, John Wayles (1715-1773), was a planter, slave trader and lawyer in the Virginia Colony. (The NEHGS did acknowledge that there could be other presidents with slavers as ancestors.)

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history_lesson/2013/06/george_w_bush_and_slavery_the_president_and_his_father_are_descendants_of.html

[deutsey]

5. You have to admire their dogged determination to restore a beloved family tradition

[Octafish]

6. Except now the slaves have to pay rent.

And buy everything at the company store.

[deutsey]

9. True...why, it's a win-win situation!

[Solly Mack]

7. A Pig and a Polk.

I slay me.

[UTUSN]

8. polk a dem and underestimatef. jeb crow shrub's relative PIERCE

was a dud

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

10. Hipster's answer

[Uncle Joe]

11. The United States wouldn't be the nation that we are today without Polk.

He was one of the most effective one term Presidents in our history and that only because he declared that he wouldn't run for a second term.

He certainly wasn't perfect but unlike today, we didn't have perfect Presidents back then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Polk


James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th President of the United States (1845–1849). Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.[1] He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and Governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). Polk was the surprise (dark horse) candidate for president in 1844, defeating Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party by promising to annex Texas. Polk was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System.

Polk is often considered the last strong pre–Civil War president, and he is the earliest of whom surviving photographs were taken during a term in office. Many scholars and historians have commented on his interventionist foreign policy; he threatened war with the United Kingdom over the issue of which nation owned the Oregon Country, then backed away and split the ownership of the region with the UK. When Mexico rejected American annexation of Texas, Polk also led the nation to a sweeping victory in the Mexican–American War, which gave the United States most of its present Southwest. He secured passage of the Walker tariff of 1846, which had low rates that pleased his native South, and he established a treasury system that lasted until 1913.

Polk oversaw the opening of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Smithsonian Institution, the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first postage stamps in the United States. He promised to serve only one term and did not run for reelection. He died of cholera three months after his term ended.

Scholars have ranked him favorably on lists of greatest presidents for his ability to promote, obtain support for, and achieve all of the major items on his presidential agenda. Polk has been called the "least known consequential president"[2] of the United States.

Thanks for the thread, Don Viejo.