Now that the conservative wing of the Supreme Court has clearly demonstrated it cares not a whit for the voting rights of African Americans, it’s virtually certain that George W. Bush will be our forty-third President. How we ever got to this miserable nadir, I can’t say.What’s on my mind right now is the frightful statistic sometimes referred to as “The Zero Factor.” Since 1840, every President elected to a term in an election year ending with the number zero has died while in office. The only exception is Ronald Reagan, who just barely survived an assassination attempt.

• 1840: William Henry Harrison
  Caught pneumonia after giving the longest inauguration speech in history while standing outside in the bitter cold of January 1841. Passed away a month later.
• 1860: Abraham Lincoln
  Assassinated by John Wilkes Boothe at Ford’s Theater in 1865.
• 1880: James Garfield
  Fatally wounded in an assassination attempt by Charles Guiteau in July 1881, but suffered for eleven weeks before passing away.
• 1900: William McKinley
  Assassinated in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz.
• 1920: Warren Harding
  Died under mysterious circumstances in 1921. No autopsy of the body was allowed.
• 1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt
  Died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945.
• 1960: John F. Kennedy
  Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963.
• 1980: Ronald Reagan
  Survived an assassination attempt two months after his inauguration by John Hinckley Jr. The exception that might prove the rule.