Trump Is a Russian Agent

But It's Apparently Impolite to Say So

The term fifth column got its origin in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. The Nationalists (the bad guys) were attacking the Republicans' forces (these were the good guys) in Madrid. The bad guys had four separate columns of soldiers attacking toward Madrid from different directions, and the bad guys said there was also a fifth column inside the city, ready to attack it from within.

The term has been remarkably durable, perhaps because it is so useful.

Vladimir Putin is a career KGB agent turned politician, and today one of his favorite activities is erecting fifth columns in countries where he is feeling mischievous, like the United States. So who is leading his fifth column in America? Well, Trump, of course. He has helpers, like Mike Johnson and Tucker Carlson, but let's face it: Since the beginning, Putin has been putting his money on Trump. 

And Putin desperately needs Trump's column to succeed, since his main column, in Ukraine, appears significantly lacking in tumescence.

Like the New York Daily News (see picture above), I decided that Trump was a Russian agent after the Helsinki fiasco in 2018. That was five years ago.

But what kind of agent is he? He's certainly not a trained KGB officer like Putin. There are no mysterious gaps in his resume - times when he was off at spy school in Moscow, struggling to pick up some Russian while learning sixteen ways to kill a man quietly with his bare hands.

I think it's possible that he is an unwitting agent, that he thinks Vladimir is doing all these nice things for him out of friendship. And perhaps the file Vladimir keeps on Donald is labeled "useful idiot." Donald is, after all, quite stupid - and worse, he thinks he's smart.

Or maybe he's just a venal, money-grubbing slug whose real-estate con in New York has gone sour, and Roy Cohn is no longer there to show him the way out of his self-inflicted catastrophe. But Putin is there.

I don't know what exact category to put the Donald in, but I think the label "agent" fits. And I wish people who clearly think he is a Russian agent would say so more often, in public.

See also An Inflection Point; The Correct Strategy: Fight; 7/11 - The Day the Trump White House Fell Apart.

Chestnut Street: Loading Only

Curbside Parking Here Is a Waste of Valuable Space

Chestnut street every day. (Nov. 10, 2023.)

Something good happened on October 26, 2023. It happened in Philadelphia's City Council chamber in our lovely old City Hall. I hadn't been to a City Council meeting in quite a while, but when I received notice that a certain bill was up for passage, I decided to go for a visit. 

The meeting was scheduled for 10 am to 1 pm. I knew from experience that these meetings never start on time, but I decided to show up at ten and go through the whole performance. Shortly after I arrived, members started entering the chamber and drifting toward their desks, talking to one another, and there was a general air of geniality and possibly even happiness. The socializing, and possibly horse trading, went on for some time. In the past, I had found myself somewhat impatient with this phase, but after what we've seen in Congress recently I was enjoying watching politicians knit themselves, and by extension the city, into a reasonably cohesive group.

The meeting came to order at 10:43, and in due course we got to the public comment section. Speakers addressed various bills under consideration. Connor Descheemaker, coalition manager at Transit Forward Philadelphia, spoke in favor of bill number 230489, Council Member Mark Squilla's bill to enable camera-assisted enforcement of parking violations in bus lanes and bus stops. Another supporter of the bill, Jessie Amadio, noted that prior experience showed the vast majority of people who got a ticket from a camera did not get a second ticket.

Eventually public comment came to an end, and Council turned to consideration of bills, among other business. The highly formulaic language of the voting ritual was encouraging me to nod off, but then 230489 came up for consideration. I perked up, the bill passed unanimously, and shortly afterwards Council, having completed its business, adjourned. At 12:31 pm, 29 minutes early.

I'm glad the bill passed. The cameras clearly alter driver behavior for the better. But it won't be enough. 

The Chestnut Puzzle

I have a particular concern for Chestnut street in Center City. I've been watching the stretch from Broad to 19th for a number of years (for stories, click here and here). Altering driver behavior is only part of the problem. We also need to look at the thinking and behavior of the people who run the stores and other businesses that line the street. And finally we need to look at the built environment and how we are using it.

Bus turning from 15th to Chestnut, Nov. 18, 2023.

Here's an interesting case. Around 5 pm on November 18, I found myself standing at the intersection of 15th and Chestnut, where I took this picture of a bus trying to turn from 15th onto Chestnut. There was a car stopped at the curb in the left-hand traffic lane of Chestnut, very close to the intersection and in front of a fire hydrant. The bus driver was having great difficulty making this turn, which means that traffic was backing up on both 15th and Chestnut. The driver of the car stopped at the fire hydrant clearly had no intention of moving his car unless there was an invasion by Martians - or perhaps Godzilla was marching toward him on Chestnut.

So he stayed put. It was, after all, only a Septa bus. And the bus driver worked and worked, and eventually got the bus around the corner.

It turns out there was a reason why the driver of the car was where he was. He was at the end of a line of double-parked cars extending almost the full block of 1400 Chestnut. There are two hotels on this block, and the entire block is either no stopping or valet parking. All of the curbside space was full of parked cars that were showing no signs of going anywhere. Next to them, in the left-hand traffic lane, was the string of double-parked cars. There were a number of valiant parking enforcement officers trying to cope with this situation, but they were not making a lot of progress.

(An early reader suggested I explain that this block, like several others on Chestnut in this area, has sidewalk bumpouts at crosswalks. That's why the car next to the fire hydrant is next to the curb, rather than next to a parked car.)

I suppose the cars may have been there because there was a teleporter at that location that was taking people to an event in Camden. Or perhaps they were attending an event at one of the hotels, and the valet parking system had simply broken down. I don't know.  

I do know that Chestnut street was not functioning very well that night. And the double-parked drivers were simply pawns. 

Emergency Vehicles and Traffic Jams 

Here's a rainy day shot. This is what it looks like out where the rubber hits the road.

Dec. 3, 2023.

Traffic jams are more than an annoyance; they can be life threatening. Imagine you've had one too many hamburgers at Five Guys and you're experiencing a myocardial infarction. How long will it take an emergency vehicle to reach you?

Use the Genius of the Grid: Activate the Alleys

One of the things that simply stupefies me about Philadelphia is our abysmal misuse of our alleys. If you look at the layout of the streets, and the way older buildings were built, it's apparent that alleys were originally intended to be much more than linear dung heaps. Rear access was clearly important for a variety of uses, and if you look at the number of bricked-up windows and doors, it's evident that buildings were meant to have a meaningful relationship with these little streets. There are even quite a few buildings that have front facades facing the alley.

And there is definitely some decent architecture. Here's an example of rear access in the grand manner.

1800 block of Sansom.

There are several imposing rear entrances in this neighborhood, but this one is in a class by itself. And it's still in use.

A number of these blocks see a fair amount of dropping off and picking up. Here's a UPS driver on the 1700 block of Stock Exchange Place. He's going going door to door on the north side of the street, knocking on rear doors and handing off packages. Not exactly rocket science, but you'll notice that he is not blocking a bus lane.

Dec. 14, 2023.

Most of these alleys don't get a lot of sunlight at street level, but if you can pick your eyes up from the muck at your feet for a moment, there are some interesting views available higher up.

It's at moments like this that I find myself comparing us to the shepherds in old Rome, in the centuries after the aqueducts were cut, herding their flocks among the grassy ruins.

Arch of Constantine and Colosseum with sheep grazing. 

(The picture above is a 1656 etching by Stefano della Bella in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is in the public domain.)

Some People Don't Have Rear Access

The man standing in the truck bed and his crew are unloading construction materials for yet another redo of the old Valiant building, next to Boyds. He's in the bus lane, and he has no options. The parking/loading lane across the street is full, and there doesn't appear to be any viable rear access.

November 20, 2023.

Chestnut is not a large street, and I think it's time we faced up to the fact that we need to focus on the two main things: buses and loading. There are more than 3,000 off-street parking stalls in garages within 1.5 blocks of this location. Curbside parking on this stretch of Chestnut is a waste of valuable space.

As we saw with the car parked in a traffic lane in front of a fire hydrant at 15th and Chestnut, increasing the number of loading zones is not a cure-all. But at least we would be moving toward a rational design for the limited amount of space available; and with competent management, including buy-in from the local merchants, maximizing the space for loading zones should dramatically improve the performance of Chestnut street.

See also Unblocking the Bus Lane on Chestnut, Taming Chestnut Street, Small Streets Are Like Diamonds, What Should We Do With the Humble Dumpster? Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?

The Face of Fascism

And Then They Dropped the Mask

Halloween decoration, Asbury Park, 2023.

I remember reading, years ago, an article with the title "Fascism with a Smile." This would have been back around 1980, when Reagan was elected president. The idea was that Americans did not respond well to the shout-and-pout style of a Hitler or a Mussolini. After all, one of the things Nixon had going against him was the fact that he was so obviously a darkly angry man. Let's call it, in retrospect, fascism with a scowl.

I remember having some reservations about this idea. After all Senator Joe McCarthy did seem to have a grumpy side, and for a while it looked like he was running the country.

However, Reagan did seem to be on to something with his geniality, and his widespread popularity clearly helped him get away with some pretty amazing stuff. And I think, at least partly because of Reagan and his smile, I was unprepared for the popularity of the Former Guy and his sneer, at least with a segment of the population.

And now I think we have come to the final act of a Shakespearean tragedy or, perhaps better, one of the history plays about the Wars of the Roses. But certainly not a comedy. It puts me in mind of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Mr. Gray does not age, but a picture of him does. Gray enjoys a long life of dissipation and the portrait becomes uglier and uglier. Then Gray dies, and all the ugliness moves from the portrait to his face.

Hmm. What if Dorian Gray is not just the Former Guy, but the entire Republican party? 

In the last few years we have seen the reveal, and it turns out that the scowl, the smile, and the sneer were all masks. If you want to know what was always behind the masks, go back to the top of this story. I have seen no truer portrait of the monster that we are up against. 

See also How the Ship Sinks, Angry and Ridiculous, Trial by Combat, The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office.

The Traffic at J'aime

Why Do We Think Cars Rule?

The view from J'aime.

The intersection of 17th and Pine brings together several of the many strands that make up Philadelphia. On the northwest corner there is a shop that repairs violins; just next to it is a shop that frames pictures. On the southwest corner is a residential building. On the northeast corner is a large parking lot. And on the southeast corner is a relatively new coffee shop that also serves amazing pastries. Its name is J'aime, and I enjoy sitting with a coffee at one of the outside tables and watching the world go by.

Past those four corners flow three threads of traffic: people ride in cars and trucks; they ride on bikes and scooters; and they walk. I was particularly struck by the number of people walking on Pine, which on this stretch is an overwhelmingly residential street - not a lot of stores to attract foot traffic.

When we moved here from Manhattan in 1979, my wife and I were astonished by the lack of foot traffic on the sidewalks in Center City. Well, no more. 

However, there's no doubt that motor vehicles dominate my visual field at ground level. They're big, of course - Americans do love their SUVs and their pickup trucks, and every year they seem to get bigger and taller. Beyond a suspected epidemic of elephantiasis, there are simply a lot of them. Even in the middle of the day, when the number of cars moving on the street can be very light, there are always the parked cars, and they generally fill not just the parking lot but also the parking lane. You simply can't get away from them. 

This surfeit of mechanical eye candy leaves me looking for some relief, and I do find myself gazing up toward the sky with some regularity, which is where the photo at the beginning of this story came from.

By contrast, bikes and walkers tend to underoccupy the visual space. They're relatively small; they're also quiet, and they don't smell of burned and unburned fuel. Bikes in particular have a habit of hiding in plain sight. Coming at you, they almost disappear, and viewed from the side they pull the same trick. (For more on the ways that bikes tend not to impose themselves on us, click here.) 

This imbalance of visual weight led me to question the sway cars hold over the street. Might it at least partially be bluster? I found myself wondering about the actual balance among the three threads at this little crossroads overseen by a small cafe.

Recently I studied the traffic on the South Street bridge, focusing on the eastbound rush during the afternoon, and came to the surprising conclusion that cars were probably in the minority. So I decided to count again.

Oops. Motor vehicles on Pine are in the majority during the afternoon rush. Would you care to guess their margin of victory? It was 6 percentage points. Cars and trucks were 53 percent of the traffic, and bikes, scooters, and pedestrians made up 47 percent. I bet you thought cars were winning by a bigger margin.

I'd been hoping for cars to be in the minority again, but there you have it.

The Count

I did my count on the afternoon of Thursday, November 9, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm. I counted 184 bicycles, 18 scooters (including 2 people on skateboards and 1 person on inline skates), and 194 pedestrians. For a total of 396. Cars and trucks totaled 443.

I was interested in traffic that was using Pine street. I excluded traffic that came into the intersection from 17th street and left on 17th street. Anything turning from Pine onto 17th or from 17th onto Pine got counted. 

At least that was the plan. I'm pretty sure I undercounted the pedestrians. Daylight saving time had ended the previous Sunday, November 5, but I failed to include a sunset at 4:49 pm in my rather impromptu plans. Pedestrians are small, and they don't have headlights. I don't think I'll be scheduling any more nighttime traffic counts.

Also, my view of the northern sidewalk was intermittent because of the intervening motor-vehicle traffic.

However, I didn't miss 47 pedestrians, so I do think motor vehicles are in the majority here. But I don't think they rule. Sane politicians pay attention to 47 percent minorities. 

Improvement Opportunities

And indeed the City has made a number of improvements here designed to make life safer for people who aren't riding around encased in two tons of metal. A few years ago the bike lane was moved from the right side of the street to the left, making it easier for a driver to see bikes in the lane. The Pine and Spruce lanes have also received a number of flex posts near intersections, and at strategic points the asphalt surface of the lane has been painted green.

These bike lanes were originally installed on the right side of the street, removing one of the two lanes  that had been devoted to motor-vehicle traffic, and thereby removing the abrupt lane changes from one car lane to another that can be so heart-stoppingly dangerous on streets with two lanes of motor-vehicle traffic. (The lanes were originally installed as a pilot in 2009 and updated to their current look in 2019, after the 2017 death of cyclist Emily Fredricks.)

There are still a bunch of ways to make things better on this street. More flex posts and better enforcement of the bike lane would be excellent.

And the sidewalks. Philly's sidewalks are legendary for their poor condition, and I can testify from personal experience that the irregularities in the pavement are frequently very hard to see at night. It's true that maintaining sidewalks is the responsibility of the property owner, but since that is not working well, it seems appropriate for the government see what it can do to help make things better. (For an interesting set of ideas from parking guru Donald Shoup, click here. Philadelphia has already settled a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act that focused on sidewalk curb ramps.)

But, as I've been saying for years, I think the main improvement opportunity lies in the parking lane. The problem is convincing motorists, and their elected leaders, that they should share the lane. 

The arrival of streeteries - dining shelters located in the parking lane - was the first large-scale demonstration that there were alternative uses for the parking lane. But transportation planners have known since the beginning of cars that free parking is an astonishingly inefficient use of scarce curbside space. 

In many of the more crowded parts of Philadelphia, it is possible for residents to purchase residential parking permits for $35 a year. This is the functional equivalent of free.

Economists like to talk about opportunity costs. At the corner by J'aime, if a resident is not parked in a spot, someone else can park there and pay the meter. Or the City could make some loading zones. There are a few in this neighborhood, but not nearly enough. Which of these uses are more valuable, and to whom? I think those are interesting questions.

For many years, the pressure on the City was to expand curbside parking. And the City accommodated motorists. Back then, the conventional wisdom was that everybody either owns a car or wants one, and I think the City just assumed the expansions would be universally popular. 

Some of the things the City did actually violate state law. There are many examples of parking zones extending to the crosswalk, when the state requires a substantial setback to preserve sight lines. Now there is a move to "daylight" these intersections, so that everybody has a few more precious seconds to react to a dangerous situation that may be developing. 

Beyond all that, I find it frustrating that motorists expect to park for free. They pay the dealer for the car and the insurance company for insurance. They pay for registration, inspections, and a driver's license. They pay for oil and gas and maintenance. They pay tolls on bridges, tunnels, and fast roads. These are considered costs of ownership. But parking should be free.

So we're capitalists down to the last drop of window-washing fluid, but then all of a sudden the government owes us a free parking spot. The chalk makes a funny sound when I try to write that on the blackboard.

See also Barnacles at the Curb, What We Lost, Flex Posts on Pine and Spruce, Cars and Bikes - the Back Story,  Quo Vadis, Philadelphia?

Echoes of the Spanish Civil War

They're All Over the Ukraine Story

Salaria Kea. From the Tamiment-Wagner Collections, NYU.

Early in my historical reading I developed a special interest in the Spanish Civil War. It was such an obvious rehearsal for what was to come (perhaps you've heard of World War II). And as in a rehearsal, the performance was still seeking its final shape.

Later on, say in 1945, everybody seemed to agree, at least in public, that fascism was a very bad thing. And yet the surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, when they came home from their war in Spain, were generally viewed with distrust and often had difficulty getting jobs. Then, when the conventional wisdom on fascism coalesced in their favor, they were called "premature anti-fascists."

In other words, we still don't like you, even though you were right. And we're still in charge.

I do love those little moments when the controlling narrative goes a bit sideways, and some of the seams appear hastily stitched.

I also thought the war produced some amazing books: George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Andre Malraux and his monumental L'espoir, Ernest Hemingway and For Whom the Bell Tolls. 

I know I'm not supposed to like Hemingway, but reading him taught me a lot about how to write. I concede I didn't learn much useful about how to live (I've never been terribly interested in fishing). An English teacher did manage to coerce a sixteen-year-old boy into writing a paper on Hemingway's women. I did manage to come to the conclusion that his women weren't real.

Recently this brilliant insight came in handy while I was reading Sarah Watling's description of Hemingway's relationship with Martha Gelhorn, in Watling's new book on the Spanish Civil War, Tomorrow Perhaps the Future (2023). It struck me that Hemingway actually expected real women to be like the women in his books.

Watling's book focuses on foreign women who come to Spain to help the Republic survive an insurrection led by a dissident general who had backing from many of the country's traditional elites, and who also received crucial support from Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, while the western democracies sat on the sidelines.

Her focus on women is a very happy angle of approach. Malraux's L'espoir (the word means hope in English) is basic to understanding the people who supported the Republic. But this hope was not an exclusive possession of the men, and Watling has some great stories to tell.

Some of the participants are or used to be famous - Gelhorn for instance. And then there's Salaria Kea, an African-American nurse who left a steady job at Harlem Hospital to serve in a medical unit that was attached, more or less, to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Later, when asked why she went, Kea said, "And why shouldn't I go and help the world?" (Watling, p. 197.)

My personal favorite is the story of the two photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro and their intense romantic and artistic collaboration. There is a sad ending along with a great many unforgettable photographs.

But the main thing Watling's book does for today's reader is point to the perils of getting it wrong in Ukraine.

The lesson here is simple: If we drop the ball in Ukraine we will very quickly find ourselves on the front lines of a much wider - and possibly nuclear - war. Do the right thing.

See also What Happened in Ferrara?

Living with Bikes

And Rethinking Our Streets

Spruce Street.

Bikes are here, and they're going to stay. What's it like living with them?

Depends on who you ask.

Opponents generally fall into a few overlapping groups: the car lovers, the bike haters, the anti-gentrifiers, and the people who dislike change in any form. Some people may actually belong to all these groups.

I sometimes say of these people that they all want things to get better, but they don't want anything to change. This may be unfair.

Fitler Square.

On the other side, the one arguing for change, there is an interesting coalition that has gathered around the concepts of Vision Zero (nobody should die in a traffic crash) and Complete Streets (streets should be safe, useful, and pleasant for everybody).

Not so many years ago, bike advocates were fighting a lonely battle for bike lanes. They were relatively isolated, and they were not united: Some cyclists continued to believe in vehicular cycling - the concept that bikes are vehicles (which, legally, they are) and that, rather than changing the design of existing roads, cyclists should always exercise their rights in the same space as all other vehicles. In other words, always ride in traffic with cars and trucks and buses, no matter how crowded the street, how fast the traffic, how erratic the drivers. (For more on vehicular cycling, click here and here and here.)

Logan Square, near the Franklin Institute.

Vehicular cycling, as a movement, basically stopped the development of bike lanes in this country for several decades. Vehicular cycling still seems to have a few adherents and sympathizers, but I think it's fair to say that the bicycling movement is now controlled by people who want bike lanes. They want bike lanes a lot.

But, until recently, they were an isolated group, and the opponents were extremely effective in preventing or diluting positive change. Then along came Vision Zero.

Vision Zero got its start in Sweden, where it was adopted by the parliament in 1997. It spread fairly quickly to the United States, and Philadelphia officially adopted the program in 2016 (it had already adopted Complete Streets in 2009).

18th Street, near Rittenhouse Square.

Vision Zero and Complete Streets have attracted a wide range of reformers - bicyclists, pedestrians, people who want better mass transit, people who want breathable air, people who want to stop global warming, people who want our streets to be attractively designed and even welcoming to passersby, people who don't want their child hit and killed by a speeding car. (There was a particularly gruesome crash on Roosevelt Boulevard in 2013. For stories, click here and here.)

And so the movement for bike lanes morphed into something much larger: the movement to reimagine our streets.

Many people, including important journalists, have completely missed or largely misunderstood what this new coalition, built around Vision Zero and Complete Streets, is trying to do. I think this is because they don't know the history and therefore do not have a good grasp on the context.

I have two favorite misconceptions: first, the idea that cars own the curb. Second, the stereotype that bicyclists are all skinny white guys in spandex.

Pine Street.

The idea that curbside parking is in the Ten Commandments is ahistorical. Curbside parking, as opposed to loading, was illegal until the arrival of cars in the early twentieth century, The laws changed, but the underlying reality has not. There are many better uses for the curb than the storage of automobiles. (For more, click here, here, here, here, and here.)

It can be disconcerting to open the pages of your favorite newspaper (or, more likely, scroll through on your phone) and find a respected journalist simply assuming that all street design must take place without affecting curbside parking (for one example, click here).

Grays Ferry Triangles, 23rd and South.

As for the spandex stereotype, have a look at the photographs in this story. Bicyclists are a large, very diverse group. 

I'll add one more error in the conventional wisdom surrounding bicycling. It's not just for recreation. (It never was, but that's another story.) People today commute by bike, they use a bike to take the kids to school, they go to the grocery store by bike. I could go on, but I'm going to stop before I get snarky. I do find it frustrating that people, not just the person in the street, but people who are paid to inform themselves before they write a story, are still stuck with these wrong ideas.

Pine Street.

Recently, though, I do find myself less frustrated than I was a few years ago. It's because I sense the beginning of a long-term shift in attitudes. Let me tell you a story.

When I was in my early teens, I thought it might be fun to join my school's track team. During spring vacation, it occurred to me that I should do a bit of training, to prepare for the upcoming season. We lived in Manhattan, and I decided I should go run some laps every morning around the Central Park reservoir. 

So one morning I got up early and put on some tennis shoes (this really was a long time ago, and my other option - penny loafers - struck me as a bad idea), and I walked over to Central Park. It never occurred to me to run on the sidewalk. I'd never seen anyone run on the sidewalk. Everybody always walked. When I got to the cinder track around the reservoir I did run and occasionally sprinted, and I enjoyed myself. It was a cool, overcast day. There was virtually nobody else on that cinder track, just as the sidewalks in the early morning had been very sparsely populated.

Fast forward forty years. I'm lying on a grass slope in Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, waiting for the New York City Marathon to start. I'm on my back, with my eyes closed, feeling very comfortable. There are several groups of people near me. To my left, people are speaking quietly in German. Above my head they are speaking Italian, and to my right they are speaking French. 

And then it is time to get up and head to the start. The two Frenchmen who had been to my right shake hands, looking one another in the eye. One says "Bon voyage," and the other says "Bon voyage" right back. And so it was.

For its first six years (1970-1975), the New York City Marathon was confined entirely to Central Park, for fear of disturbances to automotive traffic. Then, in 1976, it was allowed to expand to all five boroughs of the city. I ran the New York City Marathon in 2003, 2006, and 2009, and I would count my life significantly poorer if I had not had those experiences.

Things can change. Acceptance takes time. When it comes to reimagining our streets, I think we're on that path. A few years ago, we had yet to find it.

Just as bike lanes are part of the Complete Streets project, so are open streets. Here's a de facto open street a few blocks from Liberty Place. I'd like to see a lot more of these.

Smedley Street.

See also Reimagining Our Streets: Bikes Will Lead, But They Will Not Be Alone; It's the Road Design, Stupid; What We Lost; Why Did It Crash? The Bicycle Boom of the 1890s.

Presidents Who Died in Office

You Don't Have to Be Old to Die

Harrison served in the War of 1812.

Eighteen percent of our presidents have died in office. We've had 45 presidents; eight of them died while serving. 8/45 = 18%. (Joe Biden is the 46th president, and I will include him in these calculations when he leaves office.)

Here's a list:

1 1841: William Henry Harrison. Died at 68.

2 1850: Zachary Taylor. Died at 65.

3 1865: Abraham Lincoln. Died at 56.

4 1881: James A. Garfield. Died at 49.

5 1901: William McKinley. Died at 58.

6 1923: Warren G. Harding. Died at 57.

7 1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt. Died at 63.

8 1963: John F. Kennedy. Died at 46.

(For more information on this group, click here.)

Kennedy was the youngest. Harrison was the oldest, but he also holds the record for the shortest time in office: 31 days. Average age at death for the group was 57.8.

Death in office is not a rare phenomenon. All of these presidents were succeeded by their vice presidents.

The United States has a very good succession process.

My conclusion is that we should elect the best candidate available, and not worry about when he or she is going to die.

See also Is Biden Our Konrad Adenauer?