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Unit 3
THE STATE
PREREADING
Answer the questions:
1. What do you know about the U.S. political system?
2. Can you give the names of several American presidents? What
are they famous for?
3. What do you think makes a good president?
TEXT 1
HAIL TO THE CHIEF
It’s President’s Day tomorrow in America. I know. I can hardly
stand the excitement either.
President’s Day is a new holiday to me. When I was growing up,
we had two presidential holidays in February — Lincoln’s Birthday
on 12 February and Washington’s Birthday on 22 February. I may not
be exactly right on those dates, or indeed even very close, because
frankly it’s been a long time since I was growing up and anyway they
weren’t very interesting holidays. You didn’t receive presents or get to
go on a picnic or anything.
The problem with birthdays, as I am sure you have noticed
yourself, is that they can fall on any
people like to have their public holidays on Mondays so that they get
a nice long weekend.
So for a while America celebrated Washington’s Birthday and
Lincoln’s Birthday on the Mondays nearest the appropriate dates.
However, this bothered some people of a particular nature, so it was
decided to have a single holiday on the third Monday of February
and call it President’s Day.
The idea now is to honor all the presidents, whether they were
good or bad, which I think is swell because it gives us an opportunity
to commemorate the more obscure or peculiar presidents — people
day of the week, whereas most
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like Grover Cleveland, who, according to legend, had the interesting
habit of relieving himself out of his office window, or Zachary
Taylor, who never voted in an election and didn’t even vote for
himself.
All things considered, America has produced quite a few great
presidents — Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin and Teddy
Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy. It has also produced
several great men who incidentally became presidents, among them
James Madison, Ulysses S. Grant and — you may be surprised to
hear me say this — Herbert Hoover.
I have a certain regard for Hoover — fondness would be much
too strong a word — because he was from Iowa, and so am I.
Besides, you have to feel a little sorry for the poor man. He was the
only person in American history for whom attaining the White
House was a bad career move. Nowadays when people think of
Hoover at all, it is as the man who gave the world the Great
Depression. Hardly anyone
remarkable, even heroic, achievements that preceded it.
Consider his CV: orphaned at eight, he put himself through
college (he was in the first graduating class from Stanford
University) and became a successful mining engineer in the western
United States. He then went off to Australia, where he more or less
started the mining industry in Western Australia — still one of the
most productive regions in the world — and eventually ended up in
London, where he became a vastly wealthy and influential pillar of
the business community.
Such was his stature that at the outbreak of the First World War
he was invited to join the British Cabinet, but declined and instead
took on the job of directing famine relief throughout Europe, which
he managed with such distinction that he is estimated to have saved
ten million lives. By the end of the war he was one of the most
admired and respected men in the world, known everywhere as the
Great Humanitarian.
Returning to America, he became a trusted adviser to Woodrow
Wilson, then served as Secretary of Commerce under Harding and
remembers the half-century of
42
Coolidge, where he oversaw a 58 percent rise in American exports
in eight years. When he ran for president in 1928, he was elected in
a record landslide.
In March 1929 he was inaugurated. Seven months later Wall
Street crashed and the economy went into freefall. Contrary to
common belief, Hoover responded at once. He spent more money
on public works and unemployment relief than all his predecessors
combined, provided $500 million in assistance to troubled banks,
even donated his own
touch and alienated the electorate by insisting repeatedly that
recovery was just around the corner. In 1932 he was defeated as
resoundingly as he had been elected four years before, and has been
remembered over since as an abject failure.
Still, at least he is remembered for something, which is more, than
can be said for many of our Chief Executives. Of the forty-one men
who have risen to the office of president, at least half served with
such lack of eminence as to be almost totally forgotten now, which I
think is deserving of the warmest approbation. To be President of the
United States and not accomplish anything is, after all, a kind of
accomplishment in itself.
By almost universal agreement, the most vague and ineffectual of
all our leaders was Millard Fillmore, who succeeded to the office in
1850 upon the death of Zachary Taylor, and spent the next three years
demonstrating how the country would have been run if they had just
propped Taylor up in a chair with cushions. However, Fillmore has
become so celebrated for his obscurity that he is no longer actually
obscure, which rather disqualifies him from serious consideration.
Far more noteworthy to my mind is the great Chester A. Arthur,
who was sworn in as President in 1881, posed for an official
photograph and then, as far as I can make out, was never heard from
again. If Arthur’s goal in life was to grow rather splendid facial hair
and leave plenty of room in the history books for the achievements of
other men, then his presidency can be ranked a sterling success.
Also admirable in their way were Rutherford B.
President from 1877 to 1881 and whose principal devotions in life
salary to charity. But he lacked the common
Hayes, who was
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were the advocacy of ‘hard money’ and the repeal of the BlandAllison Act, both of which were so pointless and abstruse that no
one can remember now what they were, and Franklin Pierce,
whose term of office from 1853 to 1857 was an interlude of
indistinction between two longer periods of anonymity. He spent
virtually the whole of his incumbency hopelessly intoxicated,
prompting the affectionate slogan ‘Franklin Pierce, the Hero of
Many a Well-Fought Bottle.’
My favorites, however, are the two Presidents Harrison. The
first was William Henry Harrison, who heroically refused to don
an overcoat for his inaugural ceremony in 1841, contracted
pneumonia and with engaging swiftness expired. He was president
for just thirty days, nearly all of it spent unconscious. Forty years
later his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, was elected president, and
succeeded in the challenging ambition of achieving as little in four
years as his grandfather had in a month.
As far as I am concerned, all these men deserve public holidays
of their own. So you may imagine my dismay at news that moves
are afoot in Congress to abolish President’s Day and return to
observing Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays separately, on
the grounds that Lincoln and Washington were truly great men
and, moreover, didn’t pee out of the window. Can you believe
that? Some people have no sense of history.
CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS
Look up the following entries in the Dictionary of U. S. Life and
Culture (Жизнь и культура США: Лингвострановедческий
словарь) or other dictionaries and encyclopedias:
Arthur, Chester A.
challenge
Chief Executive
Cleveland, Grover
college
community
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Congress
Coolidge, Calvin
CV
Fillmore, Millard
Grant, Ulysses S.
Great Depression
Hail to the Chief
Harding, Warren G.
Harrison, Benjamin
Harrison, William Henry
Hayes,
Hoover, Herbert
inaugural
inauguration
Iowa
Jefferson, Thomas
Kennedy, John F.
Lincoln, Abraham
long weekend
Madison, James
Pierce, Franklin
President’s Day
public holiday
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Secretary of Commerce
Stanford University
Taylor, Zachary
Wall Street
Washington
White House
Wilson, Woodrow
Rutherford B.
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COMPREHENTION CHECK
Answer the following questions:
1. When do Americans celebrate President’s Day? Is it a working
day or a day off?
2. What contributions did Abraham Lincoln and George
Washington make to the U.S. history?
3. Why did Americans make up their minds to have a single
holiday instead of celebrating Lincoln’s and Washington’s
birthdays separately?
4. Why does the author consider Herbert Hoover to be a great
man?
5. How do you understand the author’s comments on Millard
Fillmore?
6. Why does the author call
sterling success”?
7. What is Franklin Pierce famous for?
8. Why are two Presidents Harrison the author’s ‘beloved’ ones?
9. What is the author’s suggestion about President’s Day?
10. How do you understand the title of the story?
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
Chester A.
Arthur’s presidency “a
regard n
no regard for my feelings!
to show regard
care for somebody or something:
people’s property.
fond
animals.
fondly
fondness n
orphan n — 1. a child who has lost both parents through death.
— respect, esteem: I hold him in high/low regard. You have
— [formal] to have attention to or thought and
to show little regard for other
adj of —
1. having a liking or affection for:
2. loving; affectionate, tender, gentle:
adv — in a loving way: She greeted him fondly.
— great liking or affection.
He is fond of
a fond farewell.
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to orphan v — [usu. passive] to cause to be an orphan: She was
orphaned when she was only six.
college n — 1. a degree-granting instruction of higher learning. 2. a
constituent unit of a university. 3. an institution for specialized
instruction:
persons with certain powers and rights:
class n — 1. a social stratum whose members share the same social
position:
studying together with a teacher:
group of students who will finish studying in a particular year:
the class of 2007.
students are taught:
of persons or things according to their quality, level of
performance, etc.:
dress and behavior:
classy adj — fashionable and of high class: This is one of the
classiest restaurants in Paris.
a barber college.
middle class; working class.
4. a period of time during which pupils or
When does the next class begin?
a top-class team.
This girl has real class.
4. an organized association of
a class of 25 children.
6. [informal] elegance, as in
the electoral college.
2. a group of students
3.
AmE
a
5. a division
famine n — extreme and general scarcity of food:
during famines every year.
distinct
to estimate v — 1. to form an approximate judgment regarding the
adj — 1. (from) clearly different or separate: Those two
approaches are quite distinct (from each other). 2. clearly heard,
seen, felt, understood, etc.; noticeable: a distinct smell of grass.
distinctly adv — clearly: I distinctly remember seeing him in
Prague.
distinction n — 1. (between) clear difference:
distinction between these groups. There’s a rather fine
distinction between these notions.
unusually good:
honor, fame, or excellence:
that have ever been given to military men. She got a distinction
in her history exam.
worth, amount, size, etc.:
an artist of real distinction.
Water famine.
2. the quality of being
These are the highest distinctions
We have to estimate the price for the
Many people die
I don’t see any
3. a special mark of
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contract.
should arrive at 5 PM.
2. to form an opinion of; judge:
I estimate that we
predecessor n
else:
The new department chair is much more experienced than
his predecessor.
charity n — 1. generosity towards the needy:
man some clothes out of charity.
charity performance organized to raise money for famine relief.
3. a charitable fund or institution:
national charity.
to dispense/distribute/give charity (to somebody) — to give out
money, food, etc. to people.
to ask/beg/plead for charity — to ask somebody for something
esp. in an anxious way because you need and want it very much:
New York is full of homeless people begging in the streets.
to accomplish v
conclusion:
months.
accomplishment n — 1. the act of accomplishing 2. something
accomplished; achievement:
what an accomplishment!
sing well is one of Cindy’s many accomplishments.
—
a person who held a position before someone
Mary gave a homeless
2. a charitable act or work:
The Red Cross is an inter-
— to succeed in doing,
Bill accomplished a great deal in the last several
I’ve just passed my first exam
3. a social grace or skill:
to bring to a successful
Being able to
a
—
obscure
Governer’s speech was full of obscure political statements.
famous; unknown:
noteworthy
remark.
admirable
you’ve done an admirable job.
adj —
adj —
adj —
1. hard to see or understand, not clear:
an obscure figure.
deserving attention, notable:
worthy of admiration, very good:
This is a noteworthy
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The
2. not
I must admit
to intoxicate v —
crime.
intoxicated by her success.
2. to elate; exhilarate:
1. to make drunk:
Driving while intoxicated is a
After the concert she felt
to donate
year Dr. Smith donated $2000 for charity.
WORD COMBINATIONS AND PHRASES
to run for president —
президентских выборах
to swear
вступлении в должность
ASSIGNMENTS
I. Translate into Russian, paying attention to the active
vocabulary:
v — to contribute or give, esp. for a good purpose: Last
выставлять свою кандидатуру на
(swore, sworn)
somebody in — приводить к присяге при
1. His hard work won him the regard of his colleagues.
2. He graduated with the class of 1997.
3. He ought to have more regard for his health.
4. How many classes do you have every day?
5. ale and middle-class. Most company bosses are white, m
6. Famine struck several provinces.
7. What time is the end of the class?
8. The builder estimates the cost of repairing the ro
of at $600.
9. We had accomplished our journey just on time.
10. They were a very badly behaved class — the teachers were
terrified of them.
11. I would estimate the size of the garden at 1.000 square feet.
12. If we all work together, I think we’ll acco
mplish our goal.
13. Pine trees belong to the evergreen class.
14. We started a campaign for famine relief in Ethiopia.
15. Trish is an exce
accomplishments.
llent cook, it’s one of her numerous
49
16. He first ran for president in 1968.
17. It used to be accepted that people would marry into their own
class.
18. He was sworn in as president.
19. The children were begging
0. Real class your sister is.
2
for food.
II. Paraphrase using the active vocabulary:
1. We brought our plan to a successful conclusion and were very
proud of it.
2. He devoted his whole life to generosity towards the poor.
3. A famous painter contributed his masterpieces to the local
museum.
4. I have never thought highly of Ann. She is not my type.
5. Many young people her behavior. show respect for stylish
6. A shot of liquor made him exhilarated and led to a car crash.
The judge has formed an opinion about the contest and praised7.
it highly.
8. A general scarcity of food was noticed in a disastrous area.
9. The report about water pollution is worthy of attention.
10. My neighbor has affection for pets.
11. He pronounces these two words without any difference.
III. Underline the words and expressions from the active
vocabulary and explain their meanings:
1. Many charities send money to help the victims of famine.
2. He is held in high regard in the company.
3. Social services should pay more regard to the needs of inner-
city areas.
4. Her dedication to her work was admirable.
5. The view was obscured by fog.
6. ers did not use the distinction between art and Philosoph
science.
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