STUPID NEA CHAIR TRICKS

Rocco Landesman, Chair, National Endowment of the Arts - This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.

Ike, Powerline Blog - Lincoln never wrote a book, although I believe he did compile the texts of his 1858 debates with Douglas for publication in book form. And Landesman misses a few presidential authors since Theodore Roosevelt.

Woodrow Wilson wrote several influential books as a Princeton professor. Herbert Hoover wrote books including, I am reliably advised, a classic book on fishing. Richard Nixon wrote books before and after his presidency. And even Bill Clinton wrote his apologia pro vita sua.

Landesman leaves JFK unmentioned by name. JFK was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage in 1957. My guess is that JFK and Obama share the attribute of authorship in roughly equal measure.

K Lo, National Review - Many historians believe the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant sit at the top of the presidential literature pile. Mark Twain - presumably a better literary critic than Rocco Landesman - was a huge admirer.

Dreams from my Father, words from Bill Ayers?