From the inimitable Mark Steyn, file this away for the next time you are teaching a class on the Presidency:
It's All In The Game: Steyn's Song of the Week :: SteynOnline: "It's the only American Number One and British Number One to be written by a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a distinction neither Barack Obama nor insecure fantasy laureate Michael Mann seem likely to threaten. A song so popular, it's been in and out of the charts pretty much every few years for six decades. A song so versatile it's been recorded by Bing Crosby, Van Morrison, Dinah Shore, UB40, Liberace, Barry White, Merle Haggard, Elton John, Lawrence Welk, Donny and Marie Osmond, Louis Armstrong, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Sammy Davis Jr, Phoebe Snow, Isaac Hayes, and the Gaylads. And, although it was written by an election winner, its opening lines are ruefully philosophical for those who come up short on a Tuesday night in November:
Many a tear has to fall
But it's All
In The Game...
Indeed. The man who wrote the notes on which those words sit was Charles Gates Dawes, a one-hit composer better known as Vice-President under Calvin Coolidge. Well, okay, not exactly "better-known". Still, in the pantheon of Elbridge Gerry, John C Breckenridge, Thomas R Marshall et al, "It's All In The Game" can reasonably claim to be the most enduring vice-presidential legacy of all."
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