To Hail With the Chief

In honor of Presidents Day, we thought we'd share some interesting and/or lesser known facts about our Chief Executives:
--- George Washington was called, "First in War, first in Peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen", not only because he was the first to write the classic Tolstoy Novel which the latter plagiarized, but he was also the fledgling nation's first cardiac surgeon.

--- Washington originally booked only three days and two nights at Valley Forge, but the harsh winter conditions shut down all transportation out, necessitating he and his troops remaining there for weeks.

--- Thomas Jefferson's nocturnal visits to the slave quarters had Sally hemming and whoring.

--- John Adams had recurrent nightmares that someday he would be portrayed by porcine-featured actor Paul Giamatti.

---- James Madison originally penned the libretto for "Hello Dolly!"

---- Not only did Andrew Jackson come to embody the the Age of the Common Man, but was known to often take up with common women.

--- Millard Fillmore is most known, not only for the Fillmore East and West rock venues, but for asking, while signing a bill into law, "How many L's are there in Fillmore??"

--- James Polk decided to take the West away from the Mexicans because he wasn't happy with the landscaping and topiary with which they were decorating the lands. Also, he suspected one of them having an affair with his wife.

--- William Henry Harrison, during his inauguration address on a cold rainy day, kept ignoring the play-off music and spoke for three hours. As a result he came down with pneumonia and died a month later. Oddly, many continue to rank him as one of our greatest presidents. "The man left the country no worse off than when he found it!" they contend.

--- Zachary Taylor died after only one year in office, earning him respect as the second most popular president since Harrison.

--- Under the handsome and single, Franklin Pierce, the press called the White House the "Executive Bachelor Pad", and noted the frequent comings and goings of numerous First Ladies. He was lauded and respected for having called each one a cab before they left.

--- Ulysses Grant was so drunk and indifferent to the monumental corruption of his admininistration, that a formidable movement developed to declare Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy the winners of the Civil War retroactively. He was so discredited a figure by the time of his death that petition drives demanded someone else be buried in Grant's Tomb.

--- James Garfield was the second president assassinated, shot by a disappointed office seeker , whose name, history tells us, was John McCain.

--- Grover Cleveland was the only president to be elected to two, non-consecutive terms. Every schoolboy remembers his campaign slogan from the second campaign, "I'm B-A-C-K!"

--- Teddy Roosevelt was a dedicated conservationist, figuring without the land he'd have no animals to shoot. "His famous line, "Speak softly, but carry a big stick" was actually locker room advice to his buddies on the art of seduction.

--- Wlliam Howard Taft was so fat that when he died they couldn't fit his body in the Capitol Rotunda.---in fact, that was his nickname.

--- Woodrow Wilson is famous for his 14-points, which he scored in a college basketball game against Harvard.

--- Becoming a role model to Bill Clinton, William Harding may have been in the closet, but it was in the one in the Oval Offce with his mistress .

---- Calvin Coolidge didn't say much and didn't have much to say. In that regard, respectively both unlike and very like George W. Bush .

--- Herbert Hoover said "Prosperity is just around the corner ", on the eve of the Great Depression. He later revised his quote to, "Okay, check that---prosperity is just around the corner, then a 50-mile hike to the Rocky Mountains, where we will climb up and come down every one, end up in Californa and then swim to Japan".

--- Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself---and of course, the Boogey Man!"
He wisely repealed Prohibition, letting people get so hammered that they didn't notice or care that the Depression lasted 6 more years under his presidency. The people so appreciated the hootch that they elected him to the presidency four times.

--- Harry Truman inspired the cry, "Give 'em Hell, Harry", which he wasted little time in doing to the Japanese. But if you thought that was a bomb, you should have heard his daughter's piano recital.

--- If FDR had the "New Deal" and Truman had the "Fair Deal", then Dwight Eisenhower had the Fair Way---he could usually be found on any golf fairway he was close to. "They said he was "First in the rough, First in the sand trap and last in the Tin Cup at Desert Sands." Psychiatrists later treated him for his military-industrial complex.

--- John F Kennedy's administration was known popularly as "Camelot"---however, few know that it was actuually called "Came A Lot" , in reference to the president's non-stop infidelities. Marilyn Monroe sang such a hot and sultry version of the Happy Birthday song to him that secret servicemen had to wrestle Kennedy's erection to the ground.

--- Lyndon Johnson said we could have "Guns and Butter Too", an apparent Texas delicacy that never quite caught on.
His advisor at the time, Country Joe, of the Fish, warned Johnson that he "got himself in a jam way on over in Vietnam."
During one drunken moment, he held his wife Ladybird up by the ears and showed the country his dog's operation scar.

--- Perhaps one of Richard Nixon's most famous lines was 'America just can't stand Pat", while his wife was standing right there.
He committed a crime, covered it up and then tried to cover up the cover up. The man had more covers than "Proud Mary".

--- Taking office after Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford self-deprecatingly said, "I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln"--as it turned out , he wasn't even a Nash Rambler.

--- Jimmy Carter is best known for ineffectually meaning well and being attacked by a giant rabbit---which later played in one hilarious scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail.".

--- Former actor Ronald Reagan was best at hitting his marks and saying his lines flawlessly. He believed that "Government that governs hardly at all is best"---he decided to throw Americans to the tender mercies of unregulated private interests---let the citizens get "trickled down on"--- and his influence is still being felt today---Oh is it ever!!

--- Bill Clinton challenged our intellects with the semantic query as the nature of the word "is". He was famous a s amulti-tasker. He was known to talk on the phone to senators in a quest for the answer to some knotty political problems, while his intern usually was the one who wound up with the solution.

--- If Jackson embodied the Age of the Common Man, George W Bush represented the Age of the Commonplace man.

--- Barack Obama, in an off-the-record quote to a reporter as he took office and assessed the national situation said, "Man, ain't this a bitch!!"

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