How about a Moxie? There is a movement afoot to make the 'oft abused soft drink the state beverage of Maine. I have to admit, the first time I drank Moxie as a teenager, I thought it tasted awful, like a carbonated cough syrup. But now I find it rather tasty.

President Benjamin Harrison died on this day in 1901, one of Indiana's finest (here is the New York Times obituary and here is an early sound recording of Harrison himself). A good speaker, a Civil war veteran, but chilly in personality, his presidency (1889-1893) usually falls between the historical cracks as just another Gilded Age nonentity. Perhaps that is a bit unfair.

The journalist Henry L. Stoddard, writing in his 1927 memoirs, As I Knew Them, considered Harrison a great man, "intellectually" sharper than Cleveland, T.R., and Wilson. He was the ablest of them. During Harrison's one term we were at peace with the world, prosperity made new high record-marks, and a calm, reasoned policy prevailed in all matters, so far as the President's influence extended. History, like news, is made up of the unusual, and no important events of unusual character occurred during Harrison's term to bring out the sterling qualities of the man. A ringing endorsement, indeed.

Harrison's personality always seems to dominate any extended commentary; he had the reputation for being cold and aloof. Stoddard, again, considers this a shallow judgment. Earnest, thorough and prudent, he lived up to the great responsibilities of his office; he gave a conservative, constructive administration ... He was never moved to do anything for effect; he had the extreme distaste for what is called 'playing to the galleries.' A politician who refuses to do so runs terrible risks, and Harrison paid the price by having his personality made into a political issue. Restraint was natural with him; he could not honestly be effusive, and pretence he detested. What he said he meant, and what he meant he said ... He was a product of that austere period in our nation's history when it was wrong to dance, wrong to use Sunday except in religious duty, wrong to look upon life except as a serious business. His character developed in that atmosphere and it was not made less rigid by his four years in the Union army. In the end, these traits did his career in. Too many Republicans (like a young, brash T.R.) thought him the "Indiana Icicle," a cold, staring Midwestern politician without the necessary populist touch or the necessary pliability to compromise with powerful party leaders.

Concludes Stoddard, Harrison had one charactertistic that saved him many worries. He never expressed regrets for things done or settled. He would say, 'I did that with the best information and judgment I had at the time. I closed the case then and I don't want to hear anything more about it.' How refreshing today to have an ex-president "close the case" and tell the press that "I don't want to hear anything more about it."

Raise a glass tonight to President Harrison, the Hoosier President. Cheers.