One thing that I could have done without in all this are the little bits of re-creations. They don't have sound and get maybe just a few seconds apiece. A lot of them are so quick as to be almost subliminal, gone before you would become conscious of the artifice — which is good. There was a somewhat distracting and obnoxious bit with an actor playing as Chester Arthur as a window shopping dandy.

One really useful visual point that they actually could have done more with is the use of vintage editorial cartoons, such as this depiction of Arthur as a "great machine trick." This gives a pretty good idea of the natural viewpoint that many contemporaries would have had.

Chet Arthur had a particularly interesting entry for being one of the less regarded presidents. In his background, he came up as tax collector of the New York Port Authority (a really important post in the pre-income tax era) with sponsorship of the particularly egregious New York patronage machine. President Hayes had made a big point of removing him from the job in a highly public attempt at civil service reform. The really interesting thing about that is that when he ascended to the presidency after Garfield's assassination, Arthur became the one who actually passed major civil service reform, even at the expense of his long friendship with Senator Conkling. His own party wouldn't nominate him to run for his own term after that, but note also that he set about a very desperately needed upgrade of the navy — which apparently had less than a half dozen ships that were really top flight. Seems like actually pretty fair accomplishment for a less than one term president.

Another tack that could be seen as distracting or illuminating (somewhat mixed results there) is the occasional invocation in narrative and video of modern issues seen as reflecting similar types of issues. Thus, the machine hack Arthur from the old school reforming civil service gets cut with images of the stalwart anti-Commie President Nixon going to China.