Let us take a moment to provide some fun facts that may take your mind off the current presidential situation — with both parties.
POTUS WTF
People refer to “election fatigue” as the feeling of having been battered for so long with positive, negative, and contradictory information about one’s chosen candidate that the voter feels exhausted, demoralized, and/or itching for a fight. Well, that’s how I feel, anyway. But take heart: No matter who gets your vote in a couple of weeks, your special candidate isn’t the first to have been compared with Satan. And while 2016 has indeed been a pretty depressing election season, it’s important to remember that our presidents have been up to their one-percenter asses in intrigue throughout the history of the Republic.
> JAMES “MISS NANCY” BUCHANAN (POTUS 1857-1861 — Democrat)
Historians often count James Buchanan among our worst presidents. He’s not saddled with starting the Civil War (that was brewing for a long time) so much as he stands accused of being ineffectual in stopping it. A lifelong bachelor, our 15th president developed a strong attachment to William Rufus King, who in 1853 became vice president under Franklin Pierce. Prior to this, Buchanan and King roomed together for a decade, and Washington gossips noted how the Pennsylvanian Buchanan began to affect the Southern accent and dress of King. Former president Andrew Jackson (1829- 1837) called the pair “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy,” which is a PRETTY sick burn when you consider the times.
> GEORGE H.W. BUSH (POTUS 1989-1993 — Republican)
It’s a sad fact of celebrity that the things we regular slobs do all the time are used as fodder for comedians, TV shows, and the Internet if one is even remotely famous. While driving down the freeway last February, for example, I felt an overwhelming urge to throw up, so I pulled over on the shoulder and booted right there, in broad daylight, as hundreds of cars drove by. Is it on the Internet? Nope. But President George H.W. Bush vomited on the Japanese prime minister in 1992, inspiring not only an honest-to-God popular expression in Japan (bushusuru — “to do the Bush thing”), but also thousands of snarky jokes and YouTube views. (Go ahead — look it up. Slow down the video. You see the whole thing. And pray that if you ever do that yourself, your significant other is as awesome as Barbara Bush when it happens.)
> LYNDON B’S “JUMBO” JOHNSON (POTUS 1963-1969 — Democrat)
Despite the fact that he began the job in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and was hobbled by the Vietnam War and civil unrest by the end of his term, Texan Lyndon Johnson was by most accounts a breath of fresh air in the White House, countering Kennedy’s Yankee reservedness with an earthiness that was sometimes shocking. Notoriously, LBJ made sure to let everyone from his tailor to members of Congress know that his own member was pretty big. In fact, he named it “Jumbo,” and anyone unlucky enough to encounter him in the men’s room would be treated to the president shaking it around and demanding: “Have you ever seen anything as big as this?”
> CALVIN COOLIDGE WINS A BET (POTUS 1923-1929 — Republican)
Speaking of Yankee reservedness, there was nothing jazzy about Jazz Age president Calvin Coolidge, who was nicknamed “Silent Cal” for his lack of loquacity. Born in Vermont and elected governor of Massachusetts before becoming vice president in Warren Harding’s scandal-plagued administration, Coolidge got the top job when his boss up and died. He preferred to leave the talking to his vivacious wife, Grace, at social functions where, according to one story, a local busybody told Coolidge she’d made a bet that she could get more than three words out of him. Without looking at her, Coolidge replied: “You lose.”
> GROVER SENDS YOU OVER (POTUS 1885-1889, 1893- 1897 — Democrat)
As our relatively young country matures, it gets harder to remember interesting tidbits about the presidents in the middle, like Grover Cleveland, who was the only president to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms. He was both the 22nd and 24th president, with Benjamin Harrison serving between the two terms. Prior to his presidency, Cleveland was a true Warden of the North in that he, as Sheriff of Erie County in northwestern New York, twice executed criminals himself. Unlike Ned Stark’s character, however, Cleveland dispatched the two men by hanging them.
> TWO THINGS ABOUT MILLARD FILLMORE (POTUS 1850-1853 — Whig)
Millard Fillmore, our 13th president, is renowned for being one of our most boring. But there are a couple of things that make him more interesting: (1) He was the last Whig to be president. Since he left office in 1853, every president has been either a Democrat or a Republican. (Say what you will about the Ross Perots, John Andersons, Gary Johnsons, and Jill Steins of the world, but really? A century and a half of the same two parties?) And (2) Fillmore named his daughter after himself. “Millard” was his mother’s maiden name and, in order to pass the name along, Fillmore named his daughter Millard. History does not say if he called her “Junior.”
> ROOSEVELT DIED WITH HIS GOOMAH IN THE ROOM (POTUS 1933-1945 — Democrat)
Franklin Roosevelt (the only president to be elected to four terms, and the one who led us out of the Great Depression with a slew of social programs that, if he were running today, would brand him a goddamn Communist) had a mistress that his wife, the long-suffering Eleanor, knew about. While working as the First Lady’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer and Roosevelt began an affair in 1916 — at least partially egged on by Eleanor’s own cousin (who certainly knew how to throw a sister under the bus). Eleanor discovered the affair and FDR vowed to end it, lest his dignified family be shamed. But the two continued to see each other over the years, in meetings arranged by the Roosevelts’ daughter, Anna. While sitting for a portrait commissioned by Mercer in the Georgia retreat of Warm Springs in 1945, Roosevelt said, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head,” and collapsed of a stroke. He died two hours later.
> LIFE AND DEATH BUDDIES (Founding Fathers POTUS Pals)
For every Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr there’s a John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The second and third presidents, respectively, Adams (1797-1801) and Jefferson (1801-1809) started out as bitter rivals (Jefferson once called Adams a “hermaphrodite”), but in the struggle and toil of crafting a nation out of nothing, they became great friends, writing lengthy and often contentious letters to one another long after they’d left office. Jefferson and Adams both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the United States. Not knowing Jefferson had died several hours earlier, Adams on his deathbed uttered some version of: “At least Jefferson yet survives!”
> WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON (POTUS 1841 — Whig)
Our ninth president was 68 years old when he took office on March 4, 1841 (Inauguration Day was moved to January in 1937), and it was said that because William Henry Harrison wanted to prove his vitality, he purposefully rode a horse in the rain and delivered a two-hour speech, hatless and coatless, on a cold Washington morning. But that isn’t what killed him 30 days later. No, the White House was fairly close to a dumping ground for raw sewage (imagine!), and the new president came down with enteric fever — or typhus — about nine days before he died. So somewhere between the three inaugural balls he attended and the day-to-day business of running the country, W. H. Harrison ingested something contaminated with fecal matter and died of it. His was the shortest presidency in history, and he was the first president to die in office. And of poo, his Vice President, John Tyler, succeeded him.
> JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WAS A MURDEROUS PIMP (POTUS 1825-1829 — Republican)
It was once thought that 2008 was the most vicious political campaign in history, but it was a walk in the park compared to this year, right? [All this before anyone had witnessed the 2024 campaign debate between President Biden and candidate Trump. -Ed.]
Nevertheless, there has never been a “Golden Age” of American politics the way there has been for, say, porn, and we close this history lesson with a stern warning that words can hurt. The brutal 1828 campaign between President John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) got so personal that Jackson believed it killed his wife, Rachel, who was accused of bigamy for courting Jackson while she was still technically married to another man. Jackson’s surrogates then accused Quincy Adams of pimping out his maid to a Russian czar while he was ambassador there. But the former charge stuck, and when Rachel suddenly died following her husband’s election, Jackson blamed it on the strain Quincy Adams and his supporters put on her and never forgave him. So, does #crookedhillary measure up to Miss Nancy? And does Trump’s mouth diarrhea hold his own against puking on the Prime Minister of Japan? Ultimately, the candidates’ fates rest in your capable hands. But find comfort knowing that the road to the White House was paved with shitbaggery and buffoonery long before this race.
Ah, the perilous POTUS path. … As introduced, this little bit of American history first published in our magazine during the original Donald Trump & MAGA vs Everybody Else election in 2016. While we have no interest in offering yet another media opinion or what should or should not be “proper” in any situation, let alone who “should” win where and what they should do afterwards,, this author will share a bit of personal experience: Simply ask anyone who has ever lived on a farm, and they will confirm a simple fact: You can find no way to clean a swamp that will not get mud all over you, and it will smell pretty darned foul in the process. … You could, of course, do lots of independent research starting here or even here.
