Today is Benjamin Franklin’s birthday.

Franklin was one of the founding fathers of the United States. He sat on the Continental Congress that approved the Declaration of Independence. He was a delegate at the Constitutional Convention that wrote the U.S. Constitution. He made a fortune as a businessman, and became one of the greatest scientists of his day. He was a prolific inventor, a successful diplomat, an early abolitionist, a philanthropist and a public-spirited citizen who formed the first public library and the first fire department in America — and we’re scarcely scratching the surface.

If he were still alive, he would be 300 years old today.

I don’t think he would have thought much of George W. Bush’s contention that the president can pick and choose the laws he will obey in time of war. I don’t think he would have kept quiet about it, either. You can bet that Karl Rove and company would work day and night to “Swift Boat” Ben Franklin.

He was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706, the 10th son of a soap- and candle-maker. Starting at age 12, he worked five years as an apprentice at his brother James’s newspaper, the New England Courant, establishing himself as a prankster and satirist, and, not for the last time, as “a little obnoxious to the governing party.”

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Franklin’s greatest public triumph was probably as a diplomat, persuading France to aid the colonies in their fight against the British. But he needed no revolution to be a revolutionary, for he changed the world by living in it. “The things which hurt, instruct,” he observed.

Middle-aged eyesight led him to design a single, all-purpose set of glasses -- bifocals. A struggle to raise money for a public hospital led to a plan by which private contributions would be equaled by government funds, the “matching grant” formula in use to this day.

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“His demonstration that lightning was not supernatural had huge impact,” says Dudley Herschbach, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. “Since lightning had long been considered a prerogative of the Almighty, Franklin was attacked for presumption, vigorously but in vain.”

Pat Robertson and the Intelligent Design crowd would feel right at home attacking Ben Franklin.

Herschbach, a Harvard University professor who has lectured frequently on Franklin, says: “Franklin’s scientific curiosity extended far beyond his adventures with electricity. He made important discoveries and observations concerning the motion of storms, heat conduction, the path of the Gulf Stream, bioluminescence, the spreading of oil films, and also advanced prescient ideas about conservation of matter and the wave nature of light.”

I wonder how Franklin would respond to the Bush Administration’s steady dismissal of global warming? If he dared to say a critical word, we can be sure they would dismiss him as a dangerous crank.

Franklin now seems the safest of the founders to celebrate, but when he died, in 1790, he was mistrusted by many in power as a Francophile synonymous with the excesses of the French Revolution. The Senate rejected a proposal to wear badges of mourning in his honor. A year passed before an official eulogy was delivered…

And I thought Americans hated France only because they were right about Iraq when George W. Bush was wrong.

Nasty characters in politics are nothing new. You can bet that if Ben Franklin were targeted by a Pat Robertson or a Karl Rove, he would know how to fight back.

We don’t get many leaders like that nowadays.

Happy birthday, Ben.

Last night the History Channel ran a long show on Abraham Lincoln, and these comments by Matthew Pinsker, author of Lincoln’s Sanctuary, sort of leaped out at me:

He gains a measure of empathy for people who lose loved ones. You know, this is a president who sends young boys to die in a war, and understands what that means to a family: death and tragedy. And it makes him a far more sympathetic figure as a leader, because I think the general public, through a variety of images and stories and decisions he made, realized that he was a kind of empathetic figure, in a way that they were not used to in the White House. And so it separates him from other people. It’s why he gained this image as Father Abraham.

He’s riding out the the Soldiers’ Home one afternoon in the summer of ’62, and he comes across a train of ambulance wagons that are carrying back bodies of wounded soldiers from the Peninsula Campaign, which was one of the pivotal turning points in the history of the war. And it was a brutal campaign with terrible loss of life and devastation to the Union forces.

Now, the president eagerly went up to them and was anxious to converse with them about the real conditions of affairs. That he reached out to them, risking whatever criticism or complaints they would have, in order to make contact, to talk to them. And some people who aren’t as empathetic don’t want to be exposed to angry widows or disgruntled wounded soldiers or others. Lincoln’s the opposite. And for me that defines his greatness.

Mediocre presidents hide from bad news. Great presidents reach out for it.

Personally, I think Pinsker gives George W. Bush way too much credit, calling him “mediocre.” Mediocrity is beyond this president’s reach.