Many conservatives are suffering from another bout of Obama outrage because the president isn't attending former first lady Nancy Reagan's funeral Friday, but is instead sticking with his plans to visit Austin for seven hours so he can chat onstage with The Texas Tribune's Evan Smith as part of the South by Southwest Interactive festival and appear at two Democratic fundraisers.
An entry by Michael Cantrell on the Young Conservatives website is typical of the reaction some have had to the announcement that Obama will be in Austin Friday rather than at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California: "Say what you will about President Obama, but it's hard to argue with the fact he's probably the most disrespectful and classless individual to ever occupy the White House." Cantrell then goes on to repeat the debunked claim that Obama skipped Justice Antonin Scalia's Feb. 20 funeral to play golf.
That sitting presidents rarely attend the funerals of former first ladies doesn't seem to matter to the perpetually aggrieved critics of the president. Nor does it matter that Obama is following the examples set by his modern predecessors whose time in office coincides with the instant transmission of news and the arrival of air travel, or that then-President George W. Bush didn't attend fellow Texan Lady Bird Johnson's funeral in 2007 (and no one raised a fuss).
No, none of it matters. Because, you know, Obama.
Only four times has a sitting president attended funeral services for a former first lady - five if you count the eulogy Bill Clinton delivered at Jackie Kennedy's burial in 1994. If I were to ask you who was the first sitting president to attend a former first lady's funeral, and whose funeral did he attend, you'd never guess the answer. It's a guaranteed trivia stumper. So, because I sort of did just ask the question, go ahead, take a guess. I'll wait.
Give up? The answer is Zachary Taylor, who attended Dolley Madison's funeral in 1849 and gave us the term "first lady" in his eulogy - or so the story goes; there's no written evidence of it. Madison is an American icon. She's more famous than Taylor, who's one of those presidents you never think about until you hear his name and are reminded he was president. Two hundred years after she lived in the White House, Dolley Madison remains belle of the first lady ball. Who wouldn't have gone to her funeral?
No one, because it seems everyone who was someone in 1849 went. From the spring 2001 issue of the James Madison University Magazine:
Dolley Madison fell ill in July 1849. She lingered for five days, and died on Thursday evening, July 12. She was 81 years old and had known every president from George Washington to Zachary Taylor. Her funeral oration on July 17 was a state occasion, attended by the president, cabinet officers, diplomatic corps, members of the House and Senate, Supreme Court justices, officers of the army and navy, the mayor and city leaders, and "citizens and strangers." As the Washington newspaper, The Daily Intelligencer, noted: "All of our country and thousands in other lands will need no language of Eulogy to inspire a deep and sincere regret when they learn the demise of one who touched all hearts by her goodness and won the admiration of all by the charms of dignity and grace."
