Peter Roff sends in this most excellent trivia question and answer:

Between Teddy Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, 17 men occupied the Oval Office in the 20th Century.

Question: During this period, 1904 to 1996, were more of them elected from West of the Mississippi or East of it?

Answer: It’s a trick question.  The number is eight from the East (TR, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, FDR, Kennedy & Carter) and eight from the West (Hoover [California, not Iowa]; Truman, Eisenhower [who claimed Mamie’s home state of Colorado the first time he ran]; LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton.  Ford, the tied-breaker, was never elected president.

Poor Pat Buchanan.  Don’t show him today’s Washington Post.  According to the chart on page A11 of past results from New Hampshire primaries, George Bush got 100% of the 1992 Republican vote.  With no opposition.

That should come as news to Mr. Buchanan, who, according to the Post’s David Broder as recently as August 2007, “embarrassed” Bush with 37% of the vote to Bush’s 53%.

Bye bye Buchanan brigades — erased from history.

Sure, New Hampshire’s the big story today.  Which makes this the perfect opportunity to reflect on who might have been elected New York Senator in 1976 — Howard Cosell.  (Extreme Cosell?)

We pick up the story with the New York Observer’s Steve Kornacki writing last year about Hillary Clinton:

There’s also the power of her celebrity, which hurts her as much as it helps. In that sense, Mrs. Clinton is a latter-day Howard Cosell, whose bombastic omnipresence once rendered him—simultaneously—the most revered and reviled man in America. (Mr. Cosell actually toyed with entering politics—in 1976, when the New York Senate seat now occupied by Mrs. Clinton came open—but backed out after deciding that he’d rubbed too many people the wrong way to garner 50-percent-plus-one in an election.)

And if he were alive today, Cosell might be saying this about Barack Obama: He…may …go…all…the…way.

Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews supplies us this free content:

George MacDonald Fraser, author of the ‘Flashman’ novels of a drunken womanizing reprobate and his comic (if harrowing) adventures (mostly in Central Asia), passed away Wednesday.

In George Criles’ book, ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’, there are a couple mentions of Congressman Wilson referring to the inner circle funneling aid to the Afghans (himself, Gust & his CIA cohorts, Joanne, the weapons geek who had a nice piece on him in the Wash Post last Sunday, the Israeli -Egyptian-Pakistani crowd) as “Flashman’s Raiders.”

Also, I can’t help but think that I was not the only person in the English-speaking world who saw that wire-photo in late ‘01 of U. S. Special Operations forces operating (in local dress) with the irregular cavalry of the Northern Alliance and thought:

Flashman!

OK you video sleuths. We’re looking for footage of Charlie Wilson throwing an AK-47 into Texas’ Neches River at the end of his 1984 campaign ad. We can’t find it on YouTube. If you’ve seen it, please drop a line.

Sara Jane Moore is free …

Sara Jane Moore, the self-styled radical who earned an infamous role in the parlous politics of 1970s America by trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford in San Francisco, was paroled Monday from a Bay Area federal prison after serving more than 30 years, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons said.

… although she’s no Squeaky Fromme, who at least got on the cover of Time.

Of course, neither would-be assassin got as close to Ford with their shots as this doctor did:

Patrick Ottenhoff, my colleague here at New Media Strategies and the relentless slavedriver behind the truth-telling, freedom-loving blog The Electoral Map, uses intra-office e-mail to send this note:

I noticed your shout-out to Pearl Harbor.

In a little bit a Virginia war history, Dec 11 will mark the day when the Union torched Fredericksburg in the winter of 1862.   Two days later, they tried to take the heavily fortified heights surrounding the town and were mowed down.  One Union officer said that their assaults appeared to melt like snow hitting the ground (Union troops actually chanted “Fredericksburg” during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg when it was the Union who controlled the heights).

The date’s important because on Dec 11, 2007 the voters of Virginia’s 1st District, anchored in Fredericksburg, will elect a new congressman.  Right outside of town are symbols of Virginia new and old – Stratford Hall (Robert E. Lee’s birthplace) and Fort A.P. Hill (who was a Confederate general) and Millennial Gov. Mark Warner’s farm on the Northern Neck.

As most political junkies know by now, the Manchester Union Leader Sunday endorsed John McCain for president.

How important is the newspaper’s endorsement to determining the winner of the New Hampshire primary?

Here’s a recent history:

1972 — endorsed John Ashbrook (did not win the NH primary)

1976 — endorsed Ronald Reagan (did not win the NH primary)

1980 — endorsed Ronald Reagan (won the NH primary)

1988 — endorsed Pete DuPont (did not win the NH primary)

1992 — endorsed Pat Buchanan (did not win the NH primary)

1996 — endorsed Pat Buchanan (won the NH primary)

2000 — endorsed Steve Forbes (did not win the NH primary — John McCain did)

Extreme Mortman’s intrepid real estate reporter was recently dispatched into the field to cover the open house of 4308 Forest Lane, also known as Richard Nixon’s home during the second term of his Veep days, located in Washington’s Wesley Heights neighborhood.  Our faithful man in the field files this report:

These days you don’t have to leave your desktop to tour real estate, of course.  See the virtual tour here.

But, alas, to appreciate this 8-bedroom home — listed at $4.5 million by Long & Foster’s superb agent Meg Crowley — requires a site visit.  And don’t forget the digital camera.

It’s the perfect home for anyone with seven children, essentially.  Or a need for a putting green in the backyard and a 15-minute commute to K Street.

My earnest recommendation: Buy this house.

And when you do, make certain to demand that the photograph in the gold frame of the master bedroom conveys with the title.  It’s a piece of history that should remain with the house forever.

So, what do you do when you’ve got your two kids in the backseat of the car for an afternoon of ‘forced family fun’ with a site visit of an open house of Dick Nixon’s former home? (Actual quote: ‘Aw, c’mon Dad, do we really have to do this?’)

Of course, you turn it up a couple notches and force them to also go see eight other former residences of future Presidents in DC’s upper NW neighborhoods. (Actual quote: “Yes, you do. And since you’re complaining about it, we’ll go see a couple other Presidents’ homes too.”)

Richard Nixon former residences:
4903 Forest Lane, NW, Washington, DC  (1957-1961)
4801 Tilden Street, NW, Washington, DC (1951-1957) The Broadmoor Hotel, 3601 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC (1947)

George W. Bush former residences:
4429 Lowell Street, NW
4910 Hillbrook Lane, NW
5161 Palisades NW
4400 block of Cathedral Avenue NW

LBJ former residence: 4040 52nd Street, NW

All told, it’s about a 45-minute tour by car (thank you MapQuest!).  And, just like the forced family fun of our youth, you get to go get ice cream afterwards.”

Sources & Links:

1) Box 1 Folder 28: Committee on Building Lands–correspondence and meeting minutes, 01/26/1957; Text on folder “Approval of sale of residence of late Homer Stille Cummings at 4308 Forest Lane, N.W., at a price of $75,000.00 net. Executors to be so advised.”

2) The Bushes also lived on the 4400 block of Cathedral Avenue and the 4400 block of Lowell Street, according to information supplied by the Bush Presidential Library.

They then moved to a €œwonderful new,four-story house not far from Sibley Memorial Hospital on the 5100 block of Palisade Lane in the neighborhood of Kent, just a few blocks from Spring Valley.

The house was on Hillbrook Lane. Barbara Bush described it as a really old house.

3) 4429 Lowell Street NW

4) 1968 George H.W. Bush Christmas card for sale on eBay: 4910 Hillbrook Lane, NW

5) 1969 George H.W. Bush Christmas card for sale on eBay: 5161 Palisades Lane, NW

6) LBJ: 4040 52nd Street, NW

Assuming that Michael Mukasey will be the next U.S. Attorney General, Extreme Mortman went to our resident team of diverse experts with this question: Will Mukasey be America’s highest ranking Orthodox Jewish cabinet official ever?

The happy news: Yes.  Presuming that none of these gentlemen were or are Orthodox, regardless of cabinet rank:

• Michael Chertoff (Bush’s homeland security secretary)
• Nicholas Katzenbach (Johnson’s Attorney General)
• Edward Levi (Ford’s Attorney General)
• Henry Kissinger (Nixon’s secretary of state)
• Henry Morgenthau (Roosevelt’s treasury secretary)
• Bob Rubin (Clinton’s treasury secretary)
• Mike Blumenthal (Carter’s treasury secretary)
• Arthur Goldberg (Kennedy’s labor secretary)
• Dan Glickman (Clinton’s agriculture secretary)

There are a few others.  But Mukasey stands alone.  Unless you include Judah Benjamin.  He got the Triple Crown: Attorney General, War Secretary, and Secretary of State.  For the Confederacy.