Speaking of things Presidential, I heard something about our 11th President James Polk the other day. Sirius radio channel POTUS does a this-day-in-history feature and on 2 November they noted that it was the birthday of James Polk in 1795. The announcer went on to say that Polk, while only serving one term as President, accomplished four big things. However, the announcer summed up that Polk must have worked himself to death because he died just 3 months after leaving the Presidency when he was only 53 years old.
A few minutes later in the broadcast, Paul Ryan becoming Speaker of the House was being discussed. It was noted that while Ryan has Presidential aspirations, the Speaker’s job is not always a good stepping stone for that position. In fact, only once in our history has a Speaker ever gone onto to be elected President – James Polk. (Even then Polk was no longer Speaker but was serving as Governor of Tennessee when he was elected President (click here.))
Ok, so having heard two Polk references in the space of five minutes, I figured I should learn more about this guy.
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| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Polk |
As the POTUS dj mentioned above however, Polk died shortly after leaving office:
Only know of one Polk-related song but it’s a good one: