I hope your taste of Spring lasted longer than mine did, haijin! Many of you found a way to acknowledge a taste of it! Congratulations to last week’s contributors!

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Onward

This Monday, the United States again celebrates President’s Day. While the day specifically acknowledges the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, it is a good day to reflect on other Presidents as well as the office itself.

The Office of the President was born in controversy. It reaked of Monarchy to the revolutionary generation of Americans that had successfully thrown off British rule. The anti-federalists that opposed ratification of the US Constitution feared that a strong executive could strip liberties from citizens of the young republic as easily as the King had deprived his colonial subjects of their rights.

The administrations of many, if not all, Presidents have also been steeped in controversy.

Nevertheless, strong executive leadership–checked by a representative legislature and an independent Judiciary–has helped preserve the United States through some of the nation’s most turbulent times. Washington established a firm foundation for the country. Jefferson doubled the new nation’s side with the real estate deal of the century. Lincoln preserved a divided United States through his inspired leadership during the Civil War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt mitigated the imact of the Great Depression with his New Deal policies. Ronald Reagan facilitated the end of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.

All did so without becoming dictators unaccountable to the people.

This week, write the haikai poem of your choice (haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka, haiga, renga, etc.) that alludes to Presidents. It can be a specific president or presidents (good or ill), of the office itself.

As always:

Here’s how the challenge works:

1. write the haikai poem of your choice.
2. post the link of your post to Mister Linky.
3. pingback by posting the link to the challenge on your site.
4. read and comment on other contributors’ posts.

Good Hunting, haijin! Happy President’s day!