Just below the trestle of the commuter railway that passes through my village is a large sign which displays public notices – local concerts, fundraisers, school tax voting date, etc.  The sign is centrally located and doubtless many residents pass by each day.  When there’s no event to publicize, village officials often post a message that reads “Keep the Village Clean”.  It is innocuous enough and no one to my knowledge has ever taken issue with it.  But I wondered the other day why “clean” instead of perhaps “green, or “serene” or “safe” or “moving ahead.”

What does “clean” mean?  There’s much history here.  Back in the late 19^th Century, before the germ theory was accepted to explain the origin of disease, the United States went on a cleanliness binge.  Disease, experts declared, originated from “bad air”, i.e., the effluvia that were emitted by mounds of dirt and garbage, an unfortunate feature of the urban environment.  Clean these up and you defeat disease.  Thus, across the land officials organized systematic garbage collections, watered down the streets in summer, picked up animal waste and dead carcasses, disposed of garbage away from population centers and cleaned up the water consumed by the public.  And it worked.  The incidence of disease declined significantly even before we began regular inoculation campaigns.

If history is any guide, and occasionally it is, Barack Obama should have lost the presidential election last year.  But, then history would have had him losing back in 2008 as well.  Why is that?  It’s because of his first name.  With few exceptions, men who enter the White House have have had very ordinary, exceptionally common first names.  (Maybe it has something to do with the fact that our first president was named George.  Washington, as every schoolboy or girl knows, established many precedents.)  Barack, why that’s off the charts.  How in the world he defeated a John in 2008 is by that measure altogether astounding.  Now, Willard is not all that common, and Mitt – that would be a first.  But all that suggests is that it should have been a close election (and explain why a Donald, John, Rick, Michelle, Herman, Ron and another Rick were encouraged to enter the race, and why a Newton never had a chance).

By and large, the oddly named presidential candidates fared poorly at election time.  DeWitt (Clinton) was defeated in 1812, while James (Monroe) easily bested Rufus (King) in 1816.  It could be that DeWitt and Rufus were not all that uncommon back then, but still what could be more unexceptional than the first names of our early presidents – George, John, Thomas, James, John and Andrew.  Allow me then to continue.

It’s true that in 1850 a Millard (Fillmore) ascended to the presidency, but that shouldn’t count.  He did so only because President Zachary Taylor died after only sixteen months in office.  In 1852, Winfield (Scott) lost to a Franklin (Pierce) and sixteen years later Horatio (Seymour) was defeated by a Ulysses.  Aha, you say.  Was Ulysses all that common?  Perhaps not, but for defeating the Confederacy and saving the Union, let’s allow some leeway here.  (Actually, his given name was Hiram Ulysses, but he eventually assumed the name of Ulysses S. Grant – U.S. Grant – when a Congressman nominating him to West Point mistakenly listed it that way.)  You might want to pause in 1876 and ask how a Rutherford (Hayes) bested a Samuel (Tilden), but it was a disputed election that resulted in a somewhat sordid deal in which Rutherford ended up in the White House.  Four years later yet another Winfield (Hancock) lost, not unexpectedly to a James (Garfield).