RutherfordGate: Historian Responds to President Obama’s Hayes Slur

New York News and Features ^ | 3/15/2012 | Dan Amira

[blueyon]

It's not unusual for President Obama to criticize his Republican predecessors from time to time, but this morning, he targeted his scorn not at George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, but ... Rutherford B. Hayes. As Politico reported:

Speaking about the need to develop new sources of American energy in Largo, Md., Obama used our 19th president as a failure of forward-thinking leadership.

"One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: 'It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'" Obama said. "That's why he's not on Mt. Rushmore."

[blueyon]

LOL...Mr I have been to all 57 states does it again.

[ClearCase_guy]

Obama is still mad that Hayes ended Reconstruction.

[mathluv]

I guess it is expecting too much for the o to know WHY anyone is on Mt. R.

[tet68]

He didn’t say any thing about shovel ready
Reconstruction jobs?

[Nachum]

The list, Ping

Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list

http://www.nachumlist.com/

[hometoroost]

In fairness to Obama, his staff found it on a European website. So, when the quote when from English to Austrian and back to English it got garbled.

[Izzy Dunne]

From the POTUS files:

Rutherford B. Hayes Points of Interest:

• Hayes' father died a few months before he was born.
• Of the five presidents who served in the Civil War, Hayes was the only one to be wounded.
• Arriving in San Francisco on September 8, 1880, Hayes became the first president to visit the West Coast while in office.
• Hayes was the first president to graduate from law school.
• Mrs. Hayes was known as "Lemonade Lucy" because she refused to serve alcohol in the White House.
• Lucy Hayes was the first First Lady to have graduated from college.
• He won the presidency by only one electorial vote.
• He signed the act that permitted women to plead before the Supreme Court.
• The first White House telephone was installed, by Alexander Graham Bell himself, during the Hayes administration.
• The first Easter egg roll on the White House lawn was conducted by Hayes and his wife.

[Freddd]

It doesn’t really matter though. Obama took those young minds and warped em. Now they believe him. It has nothing to do with facts or truth.

[WPaCon]

I’m somewhat surprised he knows who Rutherford B. Hayes is.

[Izzy Dunne]

Like Everything else he says, IT'S A LIE

From the Washington Times:

New York Magazine contacted the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio to get the real story about President Hayes:

Nan Card, the Curator of Manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama's ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.

"I've heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from," Card said of Hayes's alleged phone remark, "but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it's out there." Wait, so Hayes didn't even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? "No, no," Card confirmed.

She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes's delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, "a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, "looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, 'That is wonderful.'"

[PapaBear3625]

I’m somewhat surprised he knows who Rutherford B. Hayes is.

He probably didn't. He just had a speechwriter who did.

[hometoroost]

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.

Ronald Reagan

[illiac]

Well, zero will never be on Mt. Rushmore, either....

[Jack Burton007]

So 100 years from now, future presidents and public figures will be quoting Obama for the stupid things he said during his public life.

I hope he understands that misquotes will be part of it.

But to really grasp what Obama is as a President, all the stupid things he’s said and done will be on record.

This guy is the 1/2 black Joe Biden.

[Vigilanteman]

Biden is at least good for comic relief. ObaMao is an evil, power mad narcissist with incurable delusions of grandeur.

[wideminded]

"a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips

How could they tell?

[SoFloFreeper]

Obama isn't qualified to mow the grass around Rutherford B. Hayes' gravesite.

[SoFloFreeper]

Sarah Palin was right about Paul Revere, and Obama is ignorant when it comes to Presidential history!

And that is the fact, Jack.

[SoFloFreeper]

I would love for them to carve a figure of Obama at the base of Mt Rushmore shining the shoes of the presidents who are there honorably.

That would be a very bad move, as Obama isn't qualified for that job.