Gerald Ford: President when I was born, which is something not many people can say because he stepped up to replace the scandalized Nixon but was not reelected, via being a doofus. At least, that’s what I gather from Chevy Chase Saturday Night Live sketches I’ve seen on YouTube.

Jimmy Carter: President when I was in diapers. Kind of got screwed by having to deal with a lousy economy and a hostage crisis, but maybe was also kind of wishy-washy. Might have made a better preacher than a president, but at least the Nobel Prize has made him a late-in-life badass.

Ronald Reagan: President when I was in grade school. He was the first president I was ever consciously aware of, but at first I thought he was a big joke because (a) his name was kind of like Ronald McDonald’s, but siller because of the alliteration and (b) all the cable TV shows I watched made fun of him all the time. I remember him coming on TV to announce the 1986 attack against Libya, and I was sure they were going to re-draft my dad into the Navy and that my mom would have to start keeping food-ration coupons instead of rebate coupons.

George H.W. Bush: President when I was in high school. I woke up the morning he invaded Iraq, and “The Weight” by the Band was playing on the radio, and I felt like everything was suddenly very meaningful and profound. Having been brainwashed by my fundamentalist Catholic high school, I voted for Bush’s reelection in the school straw poll, and my dad declared that he’d failed as a father.

Bill Clinton: President when I was in college. This may not seem like a big deal now that we have a president who might actually be able to name multiple hip-hop artists, but when Clinton went on Arsenio Hall to play saxophone with the band, it was so cool that you wanted to cry at the notion that this guy might actually be President of the United States. Then the whole Lewinsky thing happened, and you wanted to cry again for a very different reason. All in all, though, even at the worst times, I felt pretty good that Clinton was president.

George W. Bush: President when I was in grad school, when it felt like America basically broke. The 2000 election was so crazy that you could kind of rationalize the Bush Administration as a big oops, but then came 2004. I was an RA at a Harvard dorm, and we organized a viewing party for the election results; by midnight, the dorm’s common room looked like the Western Front, with bodies lying all over looking defeated. At one point I tried to make small talk with a woman who waved me away, choking back tears. No one could believe that America actually chose to have that guy back for another four years. WTF, USA.

Barack Obama: President now. I was at a Bob Dylan show at the University of Minnesota on election night 2008, and Obama’s election was so exciting that even the famously distant Dylan felt inspired to say something only half-intelligible but unmistakably enthusiastic about the event. Outside, afterwards, campus was partying like the Iron Curtain had just fallen. Four years later, he’s done some great stuff (health care reform, making the world not hate us any more, having a wife who plays tug-of-war with Jimmy Fallon to raise awareness about physical fitness) and has been disappointing in other ways, but he hasn’t gone senile, accepted blow jobs from any interns, invaded any countries, or appointed any Supreme Court justices who think that women’s rights aren’t in the Constitution—so overall, I think it’s safe to call him the best president of my life so far.

Happy Presidents’ Day from Jay Gabler and the entire Tangential Administration