How would you feel, if a web page on your “impact and legacy” read something like this: “Coffee-table history books depict [your name here] as a lightweight puppet of political party bosses. S/he is often viewed as little more than a ‘human iceberg’ who sleepwalked through [insert your job here]. We are told that while s/he could sway a crowd of 30,000 with powerful speeches, s/he could not talk for two minutes in a room of five people. Because of his/her lack of personal passion and the failure of anything truly eventful,…s/he has been assigned to the rankings of mediocrity. S/e has been remembered as an average [fill in job here], not among the best but certainly not among the worst.”

That was the performance evaluation that historian Albert B. Spetter, gave to Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States in his article about Harrison on the website of the Miller Center, an entity at the University of Virginia that studies former presidents.

Harrison – who died on March 13, 1901 and is featured on today’s #stampoftheday – may be best known for a few oddities, such as:

* He’s the only person elected president whose grandfather (William Henry Harrison) also was president.

* He’s the only person elected president who then lost his reelection bid to the president he defeated (Grover Cleveland), a fact that has befuddled those who try to count the nation’s president (technically Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th president);

* He was the first president who clearly lost the popular vote but clearly won the electoral college;

* His narrow victory led Republicans in Congress to admit four states to the union (North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Montana) because they believed that since those states were likely to lean Republican, admitting them to the union would give Republicans a structural advantage in presidential elections and in fights for control of the US Senate;

* He is the last (of five) presidents to have a beard while in office. (The other four were Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James Garfield);

* Despite his mediocre reputation, Harrison has appeared on seven different stamps, more than most other late 19th century presidents after Grant. Illustratively, Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland appeared on only two stamps and Chester A. Arthur appeared on one. James Garfield, who was killed while in office, appeared on nine stamps but William McKinley, who also was assassinated, appeared only twice.

Four of the stamps featuring Harrison – those issued in 1902, 1926, 1938, and 1959 – are, collectively, today’s #stampoftheday. (He also was pictured on stamps issued in 1931, 1986, and 2003).

I’m not sure why Harrison was such a popular subject. The 13-cent, 1902 stamp could well have been spurred by his death a year earlier. However, as The New York Times noted in an article about the 1902 series – which included the first portrait stamp picturing a woman (Martha Washington) – “there will be practically no demand for [the 13-cent Harrison stamp] for domestic use, but for foreign use there is a place for it. Thirteen cents is the cost of sending a registered letter weighing not more than a half-ounce to any country within the Postal Union.”

I have no idea why Harrison was portrayed on a 13-cent stamp issued 1926 and reissued in 1931.

The 24-cent, 1938 stamp portraying Harrison was part of a series of stamps picturing all former presidents who were deceased (George Washington to Calvin Coolidge). Harrison was initially slotted to be on a 30-cent stamp was shifted to a 24-cent stamp, as part of a series of moves that led U.S. Rep Bruce Barton, a New York Republican, to charge that Postmaster General James Farley, a leading Democrat, had “pushed every Republican into a spot where he will be seen by as few people as possible.” Post Office officials disputed this claim, contending that the 24-cent stamp was needed for registered air mail that required a return receipt.

And there’s no obvious reason why Harrison emerged from the depths of obscurity to be portrayed on a 12-cent stamp issued in 1959 that was part of a “Liberty” series of stamps issued between 1954 and 1965. With the exception of Harrison, these mainly featured more well-known people and places. The five other presidents in the series, for example, were Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Monroe, and Teddy Roosevelt-all figures generally more highly regarded that bearded Ben Harrison. (It appears that Woodrow Wilson was going to be in the series but, for some reason, was dropped.) The Liberty series also “honored” six other well-known notable figures: General John Pershing (who commanded US forces in World War I), John Jay (a founding father from New York), Paul Revere, Robert E. Lee (!), John Marshall, Susan B. Anthony, Patrick Henry, and Alexander Hamilton. As they might have sung on Sesame Street, “11 of these things belong together…”

To be fair, Harrison’s reputation has improved somewhat, according to Spetter, who wrote: “Harrison is now credited with having done more to move the nation along the path to world empire than any previous President, serving as a model for the young Theodore Roosevelt to admire and emulate. His commercial reciprocity treaties, support for the annexation of Hawaii, establishment of the first American protectorate in Samoa, and push for a trans-isthmus canal in Central America set the agenda for the next thirty years of American foreign policy.”

But, Spetter added, “where he is found lacking by historians has less to do with his personality and style than with his blindness to a domestic reality that simply overwhelmed him, along with every other political leader of the times: His misguided support for” for high tariffs and loose monetary policy (in the form of support for silver to back US currency as well as gold) “may have contributed greatly to the economic collapse of 1893-the greatest depression in American history up to that time.”

Moreover, Spetter noted, Harrison “seemed insensitive and unaware of the massive industrial changes that had overtaken America; of the poverty [in American cities]…of the depths of economic hardship affecting the nation’s farmers as they fell down the economic ladder to tenancy; and of the industrial crisis that began to topple railroads, banks, and business corporations like dominoes within days of his retirement from office.”

Those are no small oversights. Or, as I often say, “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, don’t be a “human iceberg,” don’t be “insensitive or unaware” of major changes around you, fight for justice, and work for peace.