Virginia spawned four of the first five US presidents. Between Reconstruction and the roaring twenties, Ohio’s executive fecundity earned it the sobriquet “Cradle of Presidents.” But the next time fate, or providence, guides you to western New York, the friendly folks at the Buffalo Presidential Center will set you straight on the most president-haunted city this side of Washington, DC.
Where better to talk about dead presidents than over beer and wings at Jim's Saloon in East Pembroke, New York, three days before Millard Fillmore’s birthday? Across the table from me is Pat Weissend, a convivial bank manager and former museum director who has visited the gravesites of all thirty-nine dead presidents and all but two of the forty-three dead vice presidents of the United States. (The hard-to-get veeps are Walter Mondale, whose ashes have yet to be interred under the cold hard Minnesota ground, and Nelson Rockefeller, whose private and inaccessible burial spot is the Holy Grail of the grave-hunting community.
From our UK edition
It’s official: the inauguration is over, the speeches have been given, and political power in the United States has been transferred to new hands. Joe Biden, a man who first entered the national spotlight in 1972 as a young senator from Delaware, is now the 46th president of the United States. Biden is the quintessential politician, someone who is an expert glad-hander and in many ways a creature of Washington. He knows how power is wielded, understands how to smooth the bloated egos of lawmakers, and is the one person his former boss, Barack Obama, felt comfortable taking the lead in negotiations with Republicans.
