Post-Inauguration Quarterbacking

I was happily able to watch President Obama's (Let's say that again! President! Obama!) whole inauguration speech at work (thanks, Mr. Prez, for keeping it around 20 minutes). Working in an office full of proofreaders (and thus professional nitpickers), we all picked up on Obama's referring to himself as the "44th man" to take the oath of office (consternation! Grover Cleveland!) but it was probably easier to go with the better-known number than to stop and explain a blip of history. After all, Cleveland was a reformist democrat who won the popular vote for re-election, but lost the Electoral College vote thanks to Republican voter fraud in Indiana. We know that never happened again… in Indiana.

As a music buff, I was caught short by Obama's exhortation "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off..." as I thought he was citing the old Jerome Kern song (Pick yourself up!/Dust yourself off!/Start all over again!).

Still and all, it was nice to hear a President use complete sentences for 20 minutes, each sentence using words already in the dictionary. Put me in mind of where I was on that day 16 years before: Standing on Pennsylvania Avenue, waiting to watch Clinton's inauguration parade, and to boo the previous Bush.

Not Stampworthy

Ranting about Star Wars stamps as I did below made me think about the topic of who has and who hasn't been honored on a U.S. Postage Stamp. What group of people is guaranteed to be placed on a stamp?

Only deceased U.S. Presidents. Gerald Ford gets one in July. Clinton, Carter and the Bushes each get one after their time on Earth is done. It's tradition, so no kvelling about the appropriateness of honoring any certain president.

Few other national office-holders are according a commemoration. The most under-represented group in this regard is U.S. Vice presidents.
By my count, there are 31 deceased people who served as Vice President without later becoming President. Of these, only one has been singled out for stampage:

• Hubert H. Humphrey (under LBJ). Humphrey's stamp wasn't even a commemorative; it was a regular issue 52-cent stamp for heavier letters.

• Elbridge Gerry, who served under James Madison, was depicted, but not named, as he was one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence and was thus shown in the John Trumbull painting, itself printed on a few stamps, …
  
• …which was not of the actual signing of the Declaration, but its presentation by the drafting committee to the Contintal Congress; Trumbull just stuck in as many of the signers as he could. But I digress…
  

So for a Veep, getting honored isn't a slam dunk. Otherwise we'd be collecting stamps of scalawags like Aaron Burr or Spiro Agnew. Still one has to wonder why the Postal Service hasn't thought to just put out a sheet of all the Veeps. They've gone through all the Presidents more than a few times.

Many other historical people may be long overdue. I only count four Supreme Court justices, although several Supreme Court rulings have been commemorated. Only eight Cabinet Secretaries and nine U.S. Senators. There's still a lot of history to be explored.