Hottest Heads of State

by J. D. Dobson

  Pets: 10

  Coolidge had so many bizarre pets that you can’t help but wonder if he misunderstood the nature of the president’s duties.

  *Although there is no evidence that Coolidge rode his mechanical horse while shirtless, this might be because presidential historians are selfishly keeping all of the shirtless Calvin Coolidge photos for themselves.

  WHICH PRESIDENT HAS A

  Secret Crush

  ON YOU?

  America has had a lot of presidents—more than we can even count! Or let’s just say more than we care to count. With so many presidents, at least one of them is probably harboring a secret crush on you. But how to find out which one? Just complete the quiz below using a number 2 pencil and then insert this page into a Scantron machine. Probably nothing will happen, but you never know!

  1. OMG. You opened your mailbox this morning and found a note … from a secret admirer! What does it say?

  a. “I am watching you all the time. Even right now, while you read this note. (Hi!)”

  b. “I’d like to have you over to my place for an ‘Easter Egg Roll,’ if you know what I mean. (I mean literally we would roll eggs around on the White House lawn.)”

  c. “IT IS I, GEORGE WASHINGTON. I CANNOT TELL A LIE, EVEN A LIE BY OMISSION, AND THEREFORE I MUST IDENTIFY MYSELF AND CONFESS THAT I HAVE FEELINGS FOR YOU THAT ARE ROMANTIC IN NATURE.”

  d. “I luv you so much that I would comit bigamy for you. Go ahead—ask me to comit bigamy and see what hapens. Becuz I will tell you what is going to hapen: Bigamy!”

  e. You did not receive a note that meets this description.

  2. You’re having drinks with a friend when the waiter stops by your table. “A former president asked me to deliver this drink to you,” he says with a wink. “Before you ask, I don’t know which former president because he was wearing a ski mask.” How romantic! What drink did he send you?

  a. A bottle of gin.

  b. A glass of lemonade.

  c. A glass of Mount Vernon whiskey, served on a cocktail napkin that says “THIS DRINK IS FROM ME (GEORGE WASHINGTON). I DISTILLED IT MYSELF! NO, I’M SORRY: THAT WAS A LIE. MY SLAVES DISTILLED IT FOR ME.”

  d. A glass of regular whiskey. But the stirrer is a hickory tree branch and there are leaves and clumps of dirt floating in it. So … that’s probably a clue.

  e. Nothing like this has ever happened to you.

  3. You went to the movies with Alexander Hamilton last weekend, and a certain former president is totally jealous and acting crazy! What does he do?

  a. He wiretaps Hamilton’s phone.

  b. He continues quietly being the better man.

  c. He challenges Hamilton to a dance-off.

  d. He shoots Hamilton in a duel. (It was bound to happen eventually!)

  e. Again, nothing even remotely like this happened.

  4. OMG again. Two Secret Service agents just dropped off a package at your house. You open it to find:

  a. Your diary. You were wondering where that went!

  b. A “Someone in Ohio Loves You” bumper sticker. So … that only narrows it down to eight presidents.

  c. It appears to be his teeth.

  d. Alexander Hamilton’s blood-soaked waistcoat.

  e. You did not receive a package from the Secret Service, unless they were really well-disguised as UPS guys.

  5. You just got a text message from a number you don’t recognize. It says:

  a. “What’s going on? What is this thing I am holding?”

  b. “I also do not understand what is going on! Where do I insert the paper in this miniature typewriter? I am jamming a piece of paper against it but nothing is happening!”

  c. “WHAT DEPRAVED WIZARD INVENTED THIS ENCHANTED PORCELAIN THAT ALLOWS ME TO MAKE WORDS APPEAR OUT OF NOTHING? I AM HURLING YOU INTO THE BRINY WATERS OF THE POTOMAC FROM WHENCE YOU CAME, ENCHANTED PORCELAIN! TELL YOUR MASTER I’LL SEE HIM IN HELL.”

  d. “ldzujxfo. ljrfjjtztiok tgzmksr” (NOTE: This is the letter sequence that is formed when a cell phone is being smashed with a cane.)

  e. “AT&T Free Msg: Your bill is past due. To make a payment now, reply 1 and press send. To schedule a payment for a later date, reply 2 and press send.”

  ANSWER KEY

  Mostly A’s: Richard Nixon

  Richard Nixon is seriously crushing on you! This must have been what he was trying to get at in his Checkers speech.

  Mostly B’s: Rutherford B. Hayes

  If you love beards and unpretentious sobriety, then you are going to love Rutherford B. Hayes! If you only love one of those things, then you will still love Rutherford B. Hayes, just not as much.

  Mostly C’s: George Washington

  You’ve hit the Founding Fathers jackpot! George Washington has it all: He’s tall, he’s rich, and he’s aloof. He’s the Mr. Darcy of colonial America.

  Mostly D’s: Andrew Jackson

  This is one “union” you’re not going to want to “secede” from, or you’ll be left with a “trail of tears”! (Seriously though, this guy is scary.)

  Mostly E’s: Calvin Coolidge

  If you haven’t been receiving gifts and love notes from a former president, don’t feel bad. It’s only because Calvin Coolidge is really shy!

  HERBERT HOOVER

  1929–1933 | Republican

  When the stock market crashed in 1929, wouldn’t it have been nice to have a president who was great at organizing large-scale relief efforts? Who had been elected precisely for that reason? Whose nickname was literally “Master of Emergencies”? Well, the funny thing is, we did. (Even though it did not seem very funny at the time.)

  Herbert Hoover is a brilliant engineer and businessman who used his money, connections, and skill to organize massive aid efforts, first in war-torn Europe, then in flood-torn America. In the early 1920s, he probably saved millions of Russians from starving during the famine accompanying the Russian civil war. And to be clear, he did these kinds of things as a private citizen. In his free time, with his own money, as a hobby. (As opposed to your “hobby” of trying to stay caught up on flossing.)

  So, how did having a disaster management expert as president work out when the Great Depression hit? Well, there’s a clue in the fact that it’s called “the Great Depression” instead of “that one time in the 1920s when the New York Stock Exchange had a big sell-off but then everything got back to normal.”

  DOES HE KEEP HIS

  promises?

  “A chicken in every pot.”

  What Hoover didn’t tell people was that there were going to be a lot fewer pots.

  Continued prosperity.

  Hoover absolutely delivered on this promise. But like some kind of trickster genie who loves verbal ambiguity, he never told the American people how long prosperity would continue. (It continued for nine months.)

  Prohibition.

  Hoover promised that if elected, he would keep Prohibition in place. This helped him get elected because … actually, we don’t know why that would help him get elected. Sometimes we don’t understand this country at all.

  Why You’ll Love Him

  He’s rich. Hoover didn’t accept a salary as president. Although it’s possible he just wanted to be in a position to say, “Well, you get what you pay for,” in case his presidency didn’t work out. (It didn’t.)

  Hoover claimed to be the first student at Stanford, since he was the first student to spend the night in the dorms. If spending the night in a dorm room makes someone a student, then you might have been a student at a lot of different colleges without even realizing it!

  He doesn’t feel constrained by traditional ideas about romance, In fact, he proposed to his wife by telegram. For you kids reading this, “telegrams” are an ancient technology that involved sending messages where you ended each sentence with “stop.” They’re no longer used, and the modern equivalent of proposing by telegram would be proposing to someone via text. So now that’s on the table.

  WHEN HE WAS YOUNG<
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  A rare photo of Herbert Hoover slowly vanishing because he went back in time and accidentally disrupted the first time his parents met.

  FUN FACTS THAT COULD BE

  DOUBLE ENTENDRES

  • HOOVER WAS AN ACCOMPLISHED “GOLD MINER,” if you know what we mean. And as a mining engineer, he used “the froth flotation process” to solve “THE SULPHIDE PROBLEM.” If you try this at home, you’re going to want to change the sheets afterward.

  • You’re using a dental dam in the bedroom to keep things safe, right? No? Well, maybe it will feel a little more fun if you refer to it as your “HOOVER DAM.” Which you use to “light up the Las Vegas strip.” No? OK, well that’s all we’ve got.

  • If you’re romantically involved with someone who is old enough to say “Hoovering” instead of “vacuuming,” you can probably make some kind of dirty joke to them about Hoovering. “SHALL I HOOVER UNDER THE CUSHIONS?” “YOU LOOK A LITTLE DUSTY, I’D LIKE TO HOOVER YOU OFF.” Or something like that. We’ll let you figure out the details. (Note: Hoover vacuums had nothing to do with President Hoover except that the president of the Hoover Company was also named Herbert Hoover. Apparently Herbert Hoover used to be a pretty popular name! Can you guess why it no longer is?)

  IS YOUR SOUL DIRTY AND/OR DO YOU NEED TO HAVE SOME FUN? HERBERT HOOVER HAS YOU COVERED, IN THE FORM OF A BOOK.

  How to Win His Heart

  We’re just going to tell you right at the outset that you are not cool enough to win Herbert Hoover’s heart. Hoover’s wife, Lou, is a fearless, globe-trotting adventurer. It was basically like if Indiana Jones became the First Lady. (Which, incidentally, was the alternate ending on the 1984 BetaMax director’s cut edition of Raiders of the Lost Ark.) Here are just a few of the things that make her so awesome and that make you look so boring by comparison.

  Polyglotism. Lou Hoover spoke eight languages, including Mandarin. And that’s not even counting the sign language she invented so she wouldn’t have to address her servants directly.

  Death-defiance. When Lou and Herbert were besieged in China during the Boxer Rebellion (yes), she insisted on delivering tea to the front lines (yes) on her bicycle (yes) and had one of the tires shot out (yes).

  She went to Stanford. We’re throwing this one in there to underscore that you’re probably not even good enough to get into Stanford, let alone good enough to learn eight languages or bike-courier tea through a war zone. Sorry, no Herbert Hoover for you! You won’t be “moving to Hooverville,” so to speak.

  WE ASKED … WHAT WAS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT?

  It was when I said, ‘We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land,’ and then the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. But what people didn’t realize is that I meant the final triumph will happen like a thousand years from now, and so every day, we’re nearer to it. Even in the time it took you to read this, we got a little closer. It’s too bad you won’t be around to see it!

  “Oh wait! I just remembered that in 1938, I said ‘I do not believe a widespread war is at all possible in the near future,’ and then WWII began the next year. Ha, ha! I guess I’m not very good at predicting things!”

  Sort-of Fun Fact

  When he was head of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I, Hoover invented “Meatless Mondays” as a way to make sure troops had enough meat. He also invented “Wheatless Wednesdays” to make sure they had enough bread. And he promoted the slogan “When in doubt, eat potatoes,” because he apparently didn’t want the troops to have enough potatoes. Those poor troops!

  Vital Stats

  Looks: 5

  Hoover looks exactly like Orson Welles. And, as everyone knows, Orson Welles is a solid 5 out of 10.

  Physique: 4

  On the one hand, President Hoover played sports with his staff every morning. On the other hand, the sport was “Hooverball.” (If you’re wondering what Hooverball is, you’ll find out when you get hit in the face by a six-pound medicine ball tossed over a volleyball net by a sweaty White House staffer.)

  Charisma: 3

  Hoover was quoted as saying, “If a man has not made a million dollars by the time he is forty, he is not worth much.” This works not only as a condescending sneer from the president who presided over the 1929 stock market crash, but also as a birthday greeting for your friends, parents, children, etc.

  Getting assassinated: 0

  Argentine anarchists tried to assassinate Hoover while he was crossing the Andes from Chile. But they were foiled when his wife, Lou, rappelled through the train window and killed them all with throwing knives. Just kidding! They were foiled by the police. (Maybe with throwing knives—we don’t know a lot about police procedure in early 20th-century Chile.)

  FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

  1933–1945 | Democrat

  Are you ready to learn all about FDR? If so, you should go read one of the many fascinating biographies of him. FDR’s presidential terms were among the most action-packed in American history, and he had four of them. That’s a lot of history! We’re not going to have room here to cover things like his pre-presidential political career, or the New Deal. That’s because we need room to address whether or not he used the navy to ferry his dog around, and whether or not he was good in bed.

  Pop QUIZ

  Some people claim that FDR knew about the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in advance but let it happen anyway because he wanted an excuse to drag America into war. That sounds pretty crazy … but could it be true?

  Answer: No.

  It’s going to be disappointing when FDR invites you to join him for a FIRESIDE CHAT, and it turns out to be about ECONOMIC RECOVERY. And also he’s just talking to you over the radio. And also it’s the GREAT DEPRESSION, so you weren’t able to afford any wood for a fire. And also you live in a box.

  Did you know:

  “FDR” ARE JUST HIS INITIALS?

  People assume that FDR is like KFC —an acronym that doesn’t actually stand for anything other than subrational emotional engagement with a brand. But FDR does stand for something! Let’s dig deeper.

  THE “F” STANDS FOR FRANKLIN. This would be a good title for an FDR biography. If you’re consulting this book while doing research for your own FDR biography, feel free to use The “F” Stands for Franklin as your title.

  THE “D” STANDS FOR DELANO, after his grandfather Warren Delano, Jr., a wealthy opium trader. Even if your grandfather wasn’t an opium trader, this is a great explanation to give for your middle name. “Oh, the M? It stands for Marie. I’m named after my grandfather Marie, the opium trader.”

  THE “R” STANDS FOR ROOSEVELT. Roosevelt means “field of roses” in Dutch (a language) and is pronounced “rose-e-velt.” Unless you’re FDR, and you decide to pronounce it like “ruse-e-velt.” Arbitrarily changing the pronunciation of your own name is not a power the Founders intended for the president. But if we limited presidents to only what the Founders intended, they wouldn’t have much to do.

  WHEN HE WAS YOUNG

  Go ahead. Admit it. You want this man to “electrify your Tennessee Valley.”

  SCANDAL!

  FDR was deeply devoted to his Scottish Terrier, Fala. And while he was running for a fourth term in 1944, Republicans spread the false rumor that he had sent a navy battleship, at great cost, to pick up Fala in Alaska.

  FDR should have said, “I pulled us out of the Great Depression, and I’m about to win WWII. I could use a battleship to raze Anchorage to the ground and still get reelected, so good luck with this dog angle, nerds.”

  But at the time, he was taking political advice from noted wimp and Herbert Hoover lookalike Orson Welles, who advised him to respond with humor. So FDR said, “I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them!” This line had his audience rolling in the aisles, because amid the blood and chaos of the 1940s, it didn’t take much.

  Sort-of F
un Facts

  FDR met Grover Cleveland as a five-year-old, and Cleveland told him, “I have one wish for you, little man: that you will never be President of the United States.” Cleveland said that to all the kids he met, because he hoped to crack the secret of immortality and rule from the White House forever.

  FDR got arrested four times in a single day—once for picking cherries, once for trespassing at a rail yard, once for riding his bike into town at night, and once for (accidentally) killing a goose. Of course, this was in 1890s Imperial Germany, where it was pretty easy to get arrested. Later, FDR got revenge by conquering Germany.

  FDR got Prohibition repealed in his first year as president. The Great Depression had started four years earlier, and it seemed cruel to force Americans to endure any more of it sober.

  After the U.S. entered WWII, the government rounded up tens of thousands of people of Japanese descent and put them in internment camps, but very few people of German or Italian descent, even though there were a lot more of them in America. Why this discrepancy? Who knows! (Well, actually, we think we know. This fact isn’t all that fun after all!)

  Here’s a Tip

  If you learn one thing from FDR, it should be “Never go to Canada.” Although he claimed to love America, at age 39 FDR went on vacation to Canada. While there he developed polio and became paralyzed from the waist down. Now, we haven’t checked to see what percentage of American visitors to Canada develop polio … but why risk it?

  Roosevelt spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, and he went to great pains to hide this fact from the public, probably because he didn’t want them to find out he had vacationed in Canada. And when we say “great pains,” we mean it literally. With both legs in heavy steel braces to keep them locked straight, he trained himself to walk for short distances by swiveling his hips and torso. This allowed him to appear onstage at the 1928 and 1932 Democratic conventions, “walking,” to undermine the (accurate) rumor that he was paralyzed.