James Garfield, lower left. Chester A. Arthur, upper right.
From a print by the Temple Publishing Company hanging on my wall.

By Bob Gaydos

“I’m not fit to be president!”

The declaration thundered off the TV screen.

“The beauty of America,” came the reply. Quietly, presciently, yet setting off all sorts of alarm bells in my head.

In that one brief exchange, the creators of the Netflix series “Death by Lightning” rocketed across a century and a half. Of course. The beauty of America. Anyone can be president. Well, unless of course, she is a woman.

In fact, the four-part series offers an enlightening and entertaining account of two men, each of whom had no plan, intention or desire to be president yet both wound up in the office within months of each other.

It took one man’s death for the other to get there, that man being James A. Garfield, one of America’s least-known presidents and, from what the creators of the series tell us, one who could have been one of the best. If not for Charles J. Guiteau, the disgruntled, office-seeking lunatic running around with a gun, and an incompetent White House physician who, in removing the bullet, created the infection which actually killed Garfield.

The other man is the one who cried out about being unfit to be president, Chester A. Arthur. He was right, but it didn’t matter that he was a drunk and a laughable symbol of the spoils system of politics in America. He was the vice president, the next in line.

“The beauty of America,” was summed up succinctly by Senator Roscoe Conkling, of New York, in the Netflix series. I don’t know if Conkling, kingmaker, powerbroker and bitter rival of Garfield, ever uttered those words, but the writer sure grasped the moment.

Arthur was on the ticket in 1880 because New York, Arthur’s home state, had all the people, power and money, while Garfield, a farmer, had the message people wanted to hear. He went to the nominating convention to put someone else’s name up for president and gave such a stirring speech — he was an abolitionist when Republicans were proud to be abolitionists — that he was nominated because nobody else could get enough votes. The political art of the deal in practice.

Arthur, who oversaw the port of New York, including how the money flowed through it, wound up on the ticket as vice president in exchange for New York support of Garfield. Politics impure and simple.

But Arthur’s saving grace, to my mind, was that, when the reality of the moment hit him, he was well aware he had no business being anywhere close to the Oval Office, much less being president. While politics might be fine in that he could get rich, have fun and have power over people through control of who got the jobs and money, when it came to the presidency, he was, he declared, “unfit,” a word that carries a ton of weight considering the prestige and power of the office.

Would that were the case today. Money still controls politics, even more so since the Supreme Court decided to allow corporations to donate as much as they want to candidates who will do their bidding. Citizens United. A terrible ruling

The “beauty” of America today is that anyone can still become president, provided he has enough money behind him. Fitness, as Donald Trump and the hollow shell of what is now the Republican Party have shown, is irrelevant.

Arthur overcame his debauchery enough so that he signed into law the Civil Service system to protect government employees from the spoils system of politics which brought him to the presidency. While not regarded as a great president, neither was he a disaster. In fact, he confounded his critics in his brief term with a remarkably adequate job. A man aware, at least, to be humbled by what fate had bestowed upon him.

And no, while glaringly unfit, Trump, supported by the super rich, is also not humbled by his position, but rather clearly, even proudly, unaware of how unfit he is, not merely for the presidency, but for any office of public trust. He has, accordingly, assembled a cabinet of unfit misfits, liars and cheats incapable of doing even a merely acceptable job: Hegseth, Bondi, Patel, Kennedy, Noem, Zeldin (New York’s sorry contribution to the group), Lutnick, Gabbard, McMahon, Bessent, et al. Even Marco Rubio, who once wanted to be president, has shown himself to be unfit in so many ways.

Chester A. Arthur, for all his faults, knew instinctively what many Americans have forgotten or chosen to ignore. It is an honor and a privilege to be the president of the United States of America. But, so long as money is the route to all power, the beauty of America will also be the curse of America. Yes, absolutely anybody can become president.     Unless she’s a woman.

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Editors note: For the history buffs out there, to the left of Arthur in the print is Andrew Johnson, who also came to the presidency via assassination. That of Abraham Lincoln. To the right of Garfield in the print are Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. This picture was published in the Baltimore News-American a long time ago.