Joe Biden announced his running mate today, so (barring weirdness) the teams are set and the games can begin*. I figure this is as good a Tunesday as any to break out an old presidential campaign song.
But there's one problem. As much as I'm a political junkie, I generally avoid politics on social media. It's just too much heat and not enough light. So a song from a recent campaign brings with it the risk of this post getting all politicized. With that in mind, here's "Jimmy Polk from Tennessee," which was a song from James Polk's presidential campaign. There aren't many people alive who have first-hand memories of the 1844 campaign, so maybe the passions raised by this post will be muted. One can hope.
Also, Polk's middle name made it into a Dr. Seuss book, Fox in Socks, which featured a character called a Knox. I have no idea why Dr. Seuss chose to honor President Polk in this way. He was born well after Polk died, so it's not as if they ever met. But there are certainly things that may have driven Seuss' interest in Polk:
- Both were born on the second of the month -- Dr. Seuss on March 2, 1904 and James Polk on November 2, 1795
- Seuss wrote a book called I Had Trouble in getting to Solla Salew. Polk never actually managed to get to a place called Solla Salew.
- Without Polk's expansionism, California may never have become a state. It was in the state of California that Seuss opened his first theme park, Disneyland. Oh, wait -- that was Walt Disney. Never mind.
- Polk died at age 53; Seuss at 87. These two numbers add up to 140, which has a prime factorization of 2^2×5×7. That is, there are three distinct prime factors (2, 5 and 7), with the third being the sum of the first two.
- Both men would have opposed the designated hitter rule.
See what I mean?
*Like they haven't already?
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