Welcome to Oval Office Chronicles
The What
TL;DR: Each month, I’m going to blog about a President.
I know TL;DRs are supposed to be at the end but… yeah. In a nutshell, that’s what I’m about to do.
I’m going to try to post on the last Saturday of each month, but show me grace if I get a bit off track. It’s hard out here for a pimp. Life be lifeing. Depression is real. We out here. And all that other jazz.
Welcome to Oval Office Chronicles.
The Why
I love to read.
I always have.
From the classic Little Golden Books — The Poky Little Puppy, The Shy Little Kitten — to being a proud member of The Babysitter’s Club, receiving four books a month that I stacked neatly in the dresser drawers of a tiny bureau that doubled as my nightstand. That system worked… until it didn’t.
I graduated out of YA books pretty quickly. I distinctly remember one Christmas in middle school when my mom got me two HUGE books in the same year:
- one containing the complete works of Shakespeare
(I recently bought a new version because that old one was TIRED) - and another containing the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe
(still have this one, thank you)
I was ecstatic.
After unwrapping his huge stereo (baller, because it actually played CDs), my high-school–aged brother exasperatedly announced that I was the biggest nerd he’d ever met.
For me, reading has never really been about escaping reality. It’s more like portkeys in Harry Potter — transporting me into different lives, different worlds, different possibilities. Books play like movies in my head. Which is probably why I’ve been disappointed by every movie adaptation of books I’ve loved. Them people never look like who I perfectly cast in my head.
I love to learn.
And I loved school. I know. This is not helping me beat my brother’s allegation.
I loved (and love) learning new things even when I had absolutely no plans to ever use that information again. If you’re familiar with the CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder), this blog is basically Exhibit A for how accurate that assessment is.
My top three strengths:
Context
People exceptionally talented in the Context theme enjoy thinking about the past. They understand the present by researching its history.
Input
People exceptionally talented in the Input theme have a need to collect and archive. Information. Ideas. Artifacts. Side notes.
Analytical
People exceptionally talented in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They think about all the factors that affect a situation.
Read me for filth.
I’m nosey as hell.
My Instagram feed would say this is just my Gemini showing. And to be clear: I don’t want to be in the drama. I just want to be drama-adjacent, with first-hand information.
This is one of the main reasons I ended up in a data-related field. Data is information. Whether it’s quantitative, qualitative, a story, a testimony, or even a well-placed side eye — it all tells us something. From those pieces, people build stories. About themselves. About others. About the world. And if you have a bit of power, stories that create and justify actions.
After years of watching harmful policies and decisions get made based on incorrect stories about who I was as a young Black, queer woman, I wanted to be closer to the source.
- Who all is telling the story?
- Where they get that data from?
- How do I get my hands on that same data to spin my own yarns?
- How do I get in the room where it happens so my yarns can influence decisions? 1That last metaphor got away from me a bit. I’m a crocheter. I got excited about yarn. It happens.
I love data. (Yes, this connects.)
Okay — I know this is technically cheating. These reasons are not mutually exclusive and this definitely connects to the previous section. As a survey designer, I know better. But it’s my blog, and I do what I want.
So much of what we “know” about presidents comes from textbooks, dusty paintings, stately statues, and Hamilton. And besides Hamilton, most of that knowledge is filtered through the lens of old white men (no offense). 2See what I did there? How I said “The Room Where It Happens” and then mentioned Hamilton?!
Not to mention: it’s DRY.
We usually meet these men as 50+-year-old, powdered-wig-adjacent statesmen. But we know better. They were young once. They were ambitious. Probably messy. Politicians today are duplicitous — why would politicians of the past be any different?
They were human.
I don’t believe anyone is all good or all bad. I want to know about as many sides of these men as possible and make my own determinations — not as saints, not as villains, not as marble statues — but as complicated, deeply human men whose decisions still shape our lives today, including the lives of people they were never really thinking about when they made those decisions.
Because here’s the thing:
History is not objective.
Just like data isn’t neutral, history isn’t either. It’s interpreted, framed, emphasized, minimized, and sometimes flat-out ignored — often through the worldview of white men who had the power to write it down first.
As a Black woman, I grew up learning some history. Mostly the version that assured me certain presidents were “great,” “complicated,” or “a product of their time,” without ever fully grappling with who paid the price for that greatness.
And while people of color and women often study our own histories (as we should), the truth is: presidents affect everyone. Their policies didn’t stop at the edges of whiteness or maleness, even if their concern often did.
So instead of taking anyone else’s word for it, I decided to go look for myself.3Okay technically, I’m still taking someone’s word for it because I’m not using primary sources, but you know what I mean!
Why Presidents?
I don’t have to tell you that it’s really real out here. But I don’t think we’re living in unprecedented times. As someone close to me recently said:
“This is not new history. What it is, is our turn.”
Everything comes from somewhere. Seeds were planted long before we arrived, roots grew quietly underground, and now we’re living with the fruit. I want to know about those seeds.
And the presidents — flawed, influential, inconsistent — feel like as good a place as any to start.
Plus, I like systems.
The How
Each month, I’ll take on one president, starting at the beginning and moving chronologically.
Yes. All of them. Pray for me.
For each president, I will:
- Read one biography
- Listen to two podcast episodes
- Fall down at least one unnecessary Wikipedia rabbit hole
- Come away with thoughts, questions, and probably a few strong opinions
I’ll talk about what interested me, what surprised me, what feels relevant to the now, and — if I can — relate what I’ve learned to that president’s astrological sign.
How I’ll Be Ranking Presidents (Because Of Course I Am)
Every president will get ranked in three categories:
Fave Ranking
Purely subjective. Expect strong opinions, long explanations, and justifications that make perfect sense to me.
Presidential Ranking
Did they actually deliver on why people elected them?
A.K.A. did they walk it like they talked it4I know this is lame because it’s already been used by a politician AND I don’t even know this Migos song. But I couldn’t resist. — not whether history later decided to be kind to them, but whether they did what they said they were going to do.
Impact Ranking
How big was their footprint? Based on the present, what’s their legacy looking like? Did they change the country structurally, culturally, or politically — for better or worse? Who looms large, and who’s so obscure they could be a Jeopardy! question?
These rankings will shift as we go, because growth is real and hindsight is undefeated.
Let’s Talk About Sources
I believe how we learn something matters just as much as what we learn.
📚 Biographies
Each president gets one biography, chosen based on:
- how well-known the president is
- what biographies are accessible (length matters, I have a life)
- who wrote it
If I can find a biography written by:
- a woman, or
- a person of color
…I will choose that one every time.
For lesser-known presidents, I may even dip into children’s books — not because I’m unserious, but because clarity is underrated and elitism is boring.
🎧 Podcasts
I’ll listen to two podcast episodes per president, usually from:
- Presidential by The Washington Post
- American Elections: Wicked Game by Airship
What You Can Expect Going Forward
You can expect:
- nuance without pretending neutrality
- critique without cruelty (most of the time)
- humor, because if we can’t laugh at history, it will absolutely laugh at us
I will change my mind. I will contradict myself. I will be wrong sometimes.
But we all gone learn today.
And that’s the point.
So if you’re interested in presidents as people, the seeds of today’s fruits, and/or just my random ramblings — leggo.
First stop: George Washington.
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