FYI

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Leap-year coincidence? I think not

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 02/4/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

The Associated Press archives U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (CP)

FRANKLIN Delano Roosevelt was the longest serving president in United States history. He was in office so long -- a total of 4,422 days, from March 1933 to April 1945 -- that Americans started to worry they were creating a monarchy and passed a constitutional amendment limiting any future president to two terms in office, plus whatever scraps might be inherited from a predecessor who was forced out of office early by death or disgrace.

The president who served the shortest term in office was William Henry Harrison, who lasted 31 days in office, or one month, if you prefer, before he shirked his duties and died in 1841.

What these two men have in common -- aside from holding the opposite ends of the presidential term -- is that both were elected in leap years -- 1840 and 1932. One might attribute this to a bizarre coincidence or even some sort of metaphysical doom, but don't send your script for the film The Leap-Year Curse off to Hollywood just yet.

It may be a curse, it may be a doom; worst of all, it may be pure coincidence and the gods are throwing dice, gambling on American politics and, as a consequence, the fate of the world.But the fact is that since 1804, every American president has been elected in a leap year.

Leap years occur every four years, as do presidential elections. Leap years are considered bad luck by some people, as are American elections by a large minority of voters on the losing side. Leap years are, traditionally, although this seems a little old-fashioned now, the time that women can make rude propositions to men.

This leap-election year in the United States seems particularly ill-omened. The Florida Republican primary this week reduced that party's presidential nomination race. Mitt Romney stomped all over Newt Gingrich and, again according to leap-year traditions, should be the shoo-in for the nomination.

Gingrich, however, appears to be impervious to pain and vows to take the fight to future primaries even though, in another leap-year tradition, no Republican has ever won the White House without winning the Florida primary.

Whatever happens, the result will be Romney (or Gingrich; Republicans are a little loosey-goosey in leap years) and President Barack Obama, who has long since lost shine, making a rude proposition to the American people -- pick me, because I am not as bad as the other guy. Four years of the lesser evil -- that's quite the campaign slogan.

...by Tom Oleson

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 4, 2012 J12

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