Presidents According to Mo Rocca

Television humorist Mo Rocca has decided to give us a more macabre view of the presidents. He takes us around in “Arrive” magazine to a trip of presidential tombs. He has gone on the road to see some of their final resting places, and so he goes first to Tennessee, the home of three presidents including James K. Polk, Andrew Jackson, and Andrew Johnson to visit the Polk’s resting place in Music City. James K. Polk, one of my favorites, was a highly effective one-term president who stole a part of Mexico, captured California and parts of Oregon, and never collected a pension

He floats up to Old North Cemetery in Concern, N.H., where the best looking of our presents is buried. He was Franklin Pierce, a pro-slavery Northerner who was called a doughface by his opponents. In those days, they look politics seriously.

In Ohio, Mo visited the beautiful classical structure that houses the remains of Warren Harding. As one waitress, a graduate of Harding High School, puts it, “We all know he was bad president, but he’s the most famous person to come out of here.” Makes sense.

Mo drops off in the D.C. area. At the Arlington National Century is buried our heftiest president, William Taft, and in the beautiful Washington National Cathedral is the final retime place of Wood row Wilson, the son of a minister and a minister type preaching president in his own right. Lower in Orange County is the home of James Madison, Montpelier, which houses the shortest president we had at 5’ 4”. He was also the father of the Constitution and married Dolley.

And lastly, he goes to Menads, N.Y., the site of Albany Rural Cemetery where Chester A. Arthur is buried. You can get there up via the Amtrak Hudson line to Albany.

That is it -- no Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt. We know about them anyhow.