Presidents who have visited Idaho and the rise of ‘Imperial’ leadership in America
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IDAHO FALLS – Idaho has become one of the fastest-growing and least regulated states since its creation 132 years ago.
Its abundance of national parks and historical sites also make it a popular place for people to visit, including U.S. leaders. Former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, visited Yellowstone National Park in 2019.
Idaho had been a territory for nearly 30 years when President Benjamin Harrison officially made it the nation’s 43rd state on July 3, 1890. KTVB reports he later paid a visit to the Gem State and planted a tree at the Statehouse in Boise.
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“Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft also visited Idaho while in office, and planted trees near Harrison’s tree,” says KTVB.
Then in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson visited the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho. Since then, every sitting president has visited Idaho at least once while in office — except one.
Cormac O’Brien, author of “Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents,” tells EastIdahoNews.com it was Donald Trump who broke that streak. He’d never set foot in Idaho when he left office in January 2021.
“In Trump’s calculation, he thought he didn’t have to (visit Idaho) during his presidency because so much of what was important to Trump was his popularity and image. He, or his staff, felt he wasn’t going to lose anything by not going,” O’Brien says. “I think he would’ve gone if he felt his numbers slipping in Idaho.”
But America’s 45th president did meet with Idaho Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin in November at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. He officially endorsed McGeachin for Governor five days later.
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President Joe Biden visited Idaho in September in an effort to survey wildfire damage in the west. That trip was Biden’s second visit to the Gem State, according to KTVB. His other visit to Idaho happened in 2009 as vice president when he attended the Special Olympics Winter Games.
RELATED | President Biden to visit Boise on Monday during his Western trip. Here’s why
‘Ordinary and weird just like the rest of us’
O’Brien’s book highlights the “strange stories and shocking trivia from inside the White House,” providing readers “hundreds of little-known, politically incorrect, and downright wacko facts” about America’s Commanders-in-chief.
His book was originally published in 2004 but is updated every time a new president takes office. In researching for the book, O’Brien says it’s been interesting and ironic to learn how much the American people “rely on very ordinary people to be our head of state.”
“They bring with them all these foibles and baggage, sometimes violent pasts,” says O’Brien. “What I love is that these guys are ordinary and weird just like the rest of us and yet they’re elevated to the highest office in the land, the most powerful position in the world, despite all those things.”
O’Brien says the way Americans view the presidency has evolved over the years. William McKinley, whom O’Brien considers to be the most underrated president, established what O’Brien terms “the beginnings of the American empire.” At that time, America went to war with Spain after a mysterious explosion of the U.S.S. Main in the Havana harbor in Cuba.
This conflict, now known as the Spanish-American War, resulted in the U.S. acquiring Cuba, the Philippines and other territories in the western Pacific and Latin America.
McKinley’s role in leading the charge in this conflict established what O’Brien describes as an “Imperial Presidency.”
“Instead of just the Chief Executive who is the guy who sits in the White House and signs bills and has generals answer to him, now he’s the face of the nation, and in many ways, the most important of the three branches of government. He’s out front and he’s leading affairs in a way that would’ve been uncomfortable to the founders,” O’Brien explains.
As a result, O’Brien says McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, had more executive power than any previous president.
Presidential campaigns are another way the office of the President has evolved over the years. What once was considered a dignified office not to be flaunted on the public stage to earn votes now has a ubiquitous public presence, he says.
O’Brien spoke with EastIdahoNews.com about his book, who he feels are the best and worst presidents in history and how he feels about Joe Biden’s performance as America’s 46th Chief Executive. Listen to the entire conversation in the video player above.