Presidents’ Day was originally established in 1885 to honor George Washington, elected as the nation’s first President in 1789.
According to Wikipedia.org, it became popularly known as Presidents’ Day after it was co-joined with Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971 to enable more three-day weekends for the U.S. workforce.
The City of Arnold is no stranger to visits by the U.S. Secret Service, traffic blocked by political motorcades and national media coverage of top-ranked politicians. In fact, Arnold has been a hot spot for political visits by a few recent presidential candidates, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.
Here’s a summary of visits to Arnold by Presidents and Vice Presidents in the past 20 years:
Bill Clinton
On July 17, 1993, President Bill Clinton with Vice President Al Gore and other members of Clinton’s cabinet met with governors of flood-damaged Midwestern states to promise that his administration would continue to support them when the water receded. The meeting occurred at Arnold’s Fox High School at a “flood summit” that President Clinton and Vice President Gore hosted that morning after touring Arnold and metro St. Louis via helicopter to view the colossal flooding.
“We are here to deal with basically two giant issues,” Clinton said as he opened the conference. “One is, what are we going to do right now, while everybody is up to their ears in alligators? And the second is, how are we going to keep this effort going over the long run … so that we can see these areas through to full recovery?”
According to FEMA, more than a thousand levees in the Midwest failed or were overtopped as 1993 flooding exceeded “worst-case” design specifications. At 600 monitoring points in the Midwest, rivers were above flood stage during this event.
At his meeting with Arnold officials, cabinet staff, and the governors, President Clinton promised federal troops, short-term financial aid, and less government red tape immediately to help the area recover from the devastating flood waters.
While in Arnold, he announced that he was seeking $2.5 billion in disaster aid from Congress, an amount that he said unfortunately could not cover all damages and losses resulting from the monster flood. However, after seeing the destruction by air and hearing what officials in Arnold had to say, President Clinton approached Congress for more disaster funds, and on August 13 he signed into law $5.7 billion in emergency aid for the region.
Joe Biden
On October 30, 2008, just five days before the Presidential election that year, Delaware Senator Joe Biden settled a noisy crowd in the Fox High School gymnasium by offering encouraging words to the enthusiastic assembly. Before Biden arrived, Fox High’s Warriors Marching Band, in bright red and white uniforms, revved up the crowd as scores of Chrysler employees from United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 110 took the stage to stand in front of a giant American flag hanging on the wall.
The event was clearly a campaign visit to support the Obama-Biden political ticket in the upcoming election. Campaign signs raised by supporters read “Show-Me the Change,” “MO for Joe,” and “Yes We Can.” A group of voters held up square signs spelling out M-I-S-S-O-U-R-I.
“We’re back in the Show-Me state and you’re going to make us show you!” Biden proclaimed as he reached the podium. “You’re a state that wants to know!”
With that in mind, Biden proceeded to explain his and Obama’s plans for affordable, available health care for every American and their mission to end the war in Iraq using a timeline. He discussed their desire to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. He said that Obama had two major goals in running for office: To reclaim middle class America and reclaim America’s respect in the world.
On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, junior Senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, senior Senator from Delaware, won the national election.
Barack Obama
President Barack Obama visited Arnold for a town hall meeting on April 29, 2009 to celebrate his 100th day in office. In the audience-packed event at Fox High School gymnasium, Obama spoke about the U.S. economy, national defense, and education before taking questions from the crowd.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, when Obama began speaking, he gave himself a grade of Satisfactory – with room for improvement. “On my 100th day in office,” he said, “I’ve come back to report to you, the American people, that we have begun to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. We’ve begun the work to remake America.”
As accomplishments of his first few months in office, Obama pointed to passing an economic recovery bill to clear away the “wreckage” of the recession; writing a new budget blueprint; working to open credit markets; and helping struggling homeowners stay financially intact. He said all that progress was good, but he emphasized that those achievements were just a prelude to what he believed needed doing.
“I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made, but I’m not satisfied,” Obama said. “I’m confident in the future, but I’m not content with the present.”
“The hundredth day might be a good time to reflect on where we are, but it’s more important to where we’re going that we focus on the future,” Obama said, “because we can’t rest until our economy is growing and we’ve built that new foundation for our prosperity.”
The economic recovery bill Obama talked about was a stimulus package enacted by the U.S. Congress that Obama signed into law in February 2009 to retard negative impacts of the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
Joe Biden’s Second Visit
A delegation of voters from Arnold attended Vice President Biden’s second visit to this area to show their support in downtown St. Louis soon after he had won primaries in 11 states in 2020. The visit was March 9, 2020, one day before the Show-Me State’s March 10 Democratic primary election.
Biden encouraged the audience of thousands to get out the vote, and he highlighted his record as vice president in the Obama administration. He said, “I seek the office of President of the United States to restore the soul of America…To rebuild the backbone of the nation — the middle class. To make America respected around the world again and to unite us here at home.
“It is the honor of my lifetime that so many millions of Americans have voted for this vision. Now the work of making this vision real is the task before us.
“It’s time to put away harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again. To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.”
The next day, with Missouri hailed as a determining factor in the presidential campaign, Biden won the Missouri Democratic primary and got one step closer to the White House.
On Wednesday, January 20, 2021, Biden was inaugurated as President, and Kamala Harris as Vice President, of the United States.
Article by Jeff Dunlap for the City of Arnold