Barack Obama (Ol’ Number 44), in a recent interview, stated that he staked his entire political career on the presidency of Millard Fillmore.  Said Obama, “If a man with a first name like ’Millard’ can get elected, so can I.”

Millard Fillmore was born in 1800 in upstate New York, which is really more west than up, but nobody seems to care.  According to noted historian Mandrake Chapman, Millard was named after either “his Great Aunt Mildred, or a duck.  Quite possibly both.”  Fillmore’s family was dirt poor, and not very good dirt at that.  Millard’s father, sick of his own failures, was determined that his children should grow up to be anything but farmers, so he had Millard apprenticed to someone who had something to do with sheep.  From there, quite naturally, Fillmore became a lawyer.  Politics were inevitable. 

Fillmore rose through the local ranks to the New York State Assembly, and from there rumbled right on into the big times, becoming a Representative and then the Vice President under Zachary Taylor, who only agreed to let Fillmore on the ticket if he would go out with his sister.  Taylor tried to renege on his deal when his sister refused to go out with Fillmore, but Fillmore insisted that he had upheld his end of the deal, regardless if they had never actually gone out.  In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court agreed.  Fillmore was given an office and told not to come out for the next four years, or the President’s death, whichever came first.  The President’s death came first.

Millard Fillmore came to office when, in the summer of 1850, in a shrewd political move that ultimately backfired, President Zachary Taylor dropped dead.  Though a slave owner himself, Taylor had been opposed to the spread of slavery.  Go figure.  So Taylor had been working toward giving new states the right to choose slavery or not.  Naturally, the Southern states stood in opposition.  After all, the right to choose went against everything that slave owners believed in.  With Taylor conveniently out of the way, Fillmore was able to push forward the Compromise of 1850, which was where the North pretty much let the South do whatever they wanted, and in exchange the South put off having the Civil War until somebody else was in office.  Preferably somebody Fillmore didn’t like.  Everybody was pleased for the most part, except maybe the blacks. But what’s the discomfort of a few blacks compared to keeping our country together? 

Perhaps Fillmore is best known for having the first bathtub installed in the White House, causing one to wonder what they did before then.  Lord knows, Fillmore’s not known for anything else.

Fillmore, as a tribute to his shrewd politics, did not get nominated in 1852, and by 1853 was drawing unemployment.  Four years later, Fillmore once again ran for president.  Having formerly belonged to the Whig Party (in fact, he is known as the last Whig President, or maybe it was the last president to wear a wig), and not being invited to either the Democrat’s or the Republican’s parties, he ran on the Know Nothing ticket.  Apparently the public took him at his word and he lost that election, too. 

Fillmore was nothing more than a political annoyance for the rest of his life, dying in 1874.  Reportedly his last dying words were, “See... I did keep the country from a civil war....”