Mark Twain was rarely impressed by politicians. He once wrote “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” He once even said that the popular Theodore Roosevelt was “the most formidable disaster that has befallen the country since the Civil War.”
There was, however, one president for whom he expressed unqualified admiration.
Was it George Washington or Abraham Lincoln?
No. It was, in fact, Chester A. Arthur, America’s 21st president. “It would be hard indeed,” said Twain, “to better President Arthur’s administration.”
Arthur’s major accomplishment – signing a major civil service reform bill, the Pendleton Act – may seem modest today. For Twain, however, Arthur’s personal integrity stood out in the Gilded Age – an era remembered for rampant corruption.
