James K. Polk, 11th POTUS And One of the Few To Meet All Of His Stated Goals

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THIS WONDERFUL HISTORY PIECE @ THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ON JAMES K. POLK OF TENNESSEE. Among many other things, Polk promised to be a one-term president and kept that promise too.

BY ROBERT ZAPESOCHNY  

My late friend Peter Hannaford believed, “If presidents are to be judged by their ratio of achievement to their stated goals, James Polk had a 100 percent record and, in that respect, must be seen as one of our most successful presidents.” Peter was a Republican all his life, but he was also a big fan of Democratic President James Polk (1845-1849). As a proud Californian, Peter had a library full of books on the history of his home state. He was grateful to Polk for expanding the country to include California. He was also very impressed that Polk was a politician that managed to keep all of his promises. Before Peter passed away last year (today would have been his 84th birthday), we were in the process of writing a book proposal about the history of presidential promises. We wanted to rate every president by the number of promises kept. We wrote a few sample chapters for book publishers, and Polk was the subject of the first one. President Polk made four promises and achieved all of them in a single term. In the process, Polk engineered the nation’s second largest territorial expansion after Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.... READ THE REST