Hottest Heads of State
Page 21
NOTE: As you’ll learn in a few pages, George H. W. Bush had a son who was also named George Bush, who also became president. It’s easy to get them mixed up! So, since George H. W. Bush was one of only three U.S. presidents to be knighted, we’ll refer to him as “Sir George of Kennebunkport” from now on.
Here’s a Tip
For all of you kids out there deciding how to celebrate your 18th birthday, do what George H.W. Bush did: JOIN THE NAVY! Either that, or go buy some cigarettes. Then celebrate having legally bought cigarettes by enlisting in the navy!
Why You’ll Love Him
Sir George was flying a bombing mission against a Japanese radio station when his plane was struck by antiaircraft fire and engulfed in flames. But he waited to bail out until he had completed his mission and bombed the radio station. Even then, the future politician hated the media!
Oh, sorry, did we say “plane”? We meant “Barbara II.” Sir George named his WWII fighter planes “Barbara I,” “Barbara II,” and “Barbara III.” Was there sexy Barbara Bush pin-up art on the sides of these planes? Tragically, there was not. Unless you think the word “Barbara” is inherently sexy all by itself.
(NOTE: Pause here and recall that Barbara was, at this point, a college freshman, and reflect on your college boyfriends and the many ways they disappointed you.)
Not only a great boyfriend and husband, Sir George gives wise fatherly advice. For instance, when asked why he didn’t depose Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, he said it would have “incurred incalculable human and political costs…. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.” Listen to your dad, kids.
If you think you’re in love with George H.W. Bush now, wait until we tell you about the time he shaved his head in solidarity with the son of one of his Secret Service agents, who was undergoing chemotherapy. OK, now we’ve told you about it!
Favorite Pickup Line
Bush: “Read my lips …”
You: “Oooh, well I don’t mind if I—”
Bush: “… no new taxes.”
You: “Oh.”
WHEN HE WAS YOUNG
IT’S WEIRD THAT WE SEND TEENAGERS TO FIGHT IN WARS. BUT WHAT CAN WE SAY…TEENS LOVE WAR!
A Fake Interview with George H.W. Bush
We sat down with Sir George of Kennebunkport to find out once and for all if his whole New England blue-blood schtick is for real, or if it is a cover for the fact that he is, in fact, a deep-cover communist spy.
Q: Mr. President, are you a communist spy? If you are, it’s OK! After all, the Cold War is over.
A: I was there, I know it’s over.
Q: But how do you feel about that? When the Berlin Wall fell, a reporter asked you why you didn’t seem more excited. You claimed, “I am not an emotional kind of guy.” Which is exactly what a communist spy would say, if he were secretly super sad that things weren’t going so well with communism!
A: I just didn’t think the moment called for a chest-beating display of triumphalism. Honestly, I am not a communist spy.
Q: Well then how do you explain … this photo?!
A: I was appointed by President Ford to be the chief U.S. envoy to China.
Q: Oh sure, that’s what they all say. Well, what about the date you chose to announce your first candidacy for the presidency in 1979? May 1? International Worker’s Day? You and your Moscow handlers must think we’re pretty stupid!
A: Look, I hate to sound immodest, but I used to be director of the CIA. And I can tell you from experience that if you’re trying to plant a deep-cover spy in a hostile government, you don’t have them openly celebrate one of your own holidays. It would be a little obvious.
Q: EXCEPT THAT’S EXACTLY WHY YOU WOULD DO IT! BECAUSE NO SPY WOULD EVER DO IT, SO IT’S THE PERFECT THING FOR A SPY TO DO!
A: Well, OK. But aggressively trying to root out spies is also a pretty great cover for a spy, wouldn’t you say? So how do I know you’re not a spy?
Q: … this interview is over.
Timeline: George H.W. Bush, Perfect Boyfriend
1941
Meets Barbara Pierce at age 17, at a Christmas dance.
1942-45
Helps defeat the Axis powers, with torpedoes.
1948
Graduates from Yale in two and a half years.
1948-58
Was born rich but goes ahead and makes a fortune in the oil business in his 30s.
1959
Ugh we can’t even go on, Barbara is so lucky.
Vital Stats
Looks: 6
Wait until you see him in madras shorts!
Physique: 8
He was both the captain of the Yale baseball team and a Yale cheerleader. So no matter what your taste, the answer is “George H.W. Bush.”
Charisma: 7
Bush is a personable and likable guy who makes friends easily. Which is why it must have sucked to constantly have his charisma compared to that of a Hollywood movie star like Ronald Reagan.
Picking vice presidents: 7
Yeah, you read that right — 7 out of 10 for picking Dan Quayle! If you think that’s too high, why don’t you go read a history of the vice presidents and then get back to us.
BILL CLINTON
1993–2001 | Democrat
Bill Clinton was dubbed by some supporters as “The Man from Hope.” And not just because he was born in Hope, Arkansas! Clinton was able to connect with voters on an emotional, empathetic level, encouraging and inspiring them while also showing that he felt their pain. His administration oversaw one of the longest peacetime economic expansions in U.S. history, leaving the U.S. federal budget in the black for the first time in many years, and he had several international affairs victories.
But while Clinton was born in Hope, he was raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a resort town named for its hot mineral baths. He carried the spirit of hope throughout his life. But for better or worse, he also carried the spirit of hot tubs.
Favorite Pickup Line
“We have the largest watermelons in the world.”
(This is the actual thing Bill Clinton was boasting about to a group of fellow Yale law students the first time his future wife Hillary ever laid eyes on him. And it worked! Although it’s possible that bragging about agriculture production in a vaguely raunchy way only works on Ivy League women.)
WE ASKED BILL CLINTON: WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST REGRET?
“I guess it was when a former employee named Paula Jones sued me for sexual harassment. I fought the lawsuit, and gave a deposition in which I lied under oath about my relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Republicans in Congress used this to impeach me. Then, I settled with Jones for nearly $1 million. So if I was going to end up settling anyway, I wish I had done it in the first place and skipped the deposition.
Well, or not lied under oath. Or not had the affair in the first place. But once you start tugging on that thread, where does it end? On second thought, I don’t have any regrets.”
On “Switcharoo Saturdays,” Clinton and Vice President Al Gore would trade suits.
How to Win His Heart
Go to the library. Hillary met Bill by approaching him at the library. You can do this too, if you happen to see Bill Clinton at your local library taking advantage of the free wi-fi. In fact, it might work on other men, too. Just walk up to a man at the library and say, “Hi, my name is Hillary Rodham Clinton.” And don’t worry that he’ll think you’re mentally ill just because you claim your name is Hillary Rodham Clinton. If he didn’t want to meet mentally ill people, he wouldn’t be at the library.
Be a change-maker. At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Clinton described his wife as “the best darn change-maker I’ve ever met.” If you want to borrow this phrase, because you’re trying to draft the most awful wedding vows in history, go right ahead!
Be ambitious. Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t just a long-suffering wife—she is also a highly accomplished politician in her ow
n right, having served as a U.S. senator, secretary of state, and the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. Bill Clinton doesn’t really have just one “type,” but clearly one of his many types is women who share his thirst for political power. So you’re going to need to run for office. But don’t begin by running for city council or state rep, because this doesn’t show a lot of ambition. We recommend starting with president, and then working your way down.
Get close to him. The Clinton Foundation is accepting applications for internships in its New York, Boston, and Little Rock offices.
CROSSWORD PUZZLE
Bill Clinton loves doing crossword puzzles, and he also loves reminiscing about his impeachment. (OK, that second thing might not be true.) Whether you’re sitting in the doctor’s office, stuck in gridlock, or doing hard time in the hole, why not while away the hours by doing a Bill Clinton impeachment-themed crossword puzzle?
ACROSS
2. A massive, glowing sphere of gas, such as the Earth’s sun, but spelled with an extra “r”
4. Very large in size, such as a _______ right-wing conspiracy
5. To admonish sanctimoniously. Usually, but not always, a metaphor rather than a literal physical gesture
11. Would be more fun if it actually involved peaches
12. In French, affaire
14. A room where no one should have sex, and yet they do
16. Like a jury, but fancier. Or maybe bigger. Honestly we’ve never been 100% clear on this
18. We are not even going to try to define this impossibly ambiguous term. Who even knows what the meaning of this word is?
19. Like a nightstand box of tissues, but more “dressy”
DOWN
1. The only president other than Clinton to be impeached. Also, slang term for the ultimate source of most of Clinton’s troubles
3. Statistically speaking, the most likely outcome when impeaching a president
6. An explosive surge of white, frothy … river water
7. Both the process of giving sworn testimony and, coincidentally, the process of toppling a leader from power
8. Definitely not the first White House intern to have sex with the president
9. Pertaining to a place where, apparently, sexual relations cannot happen
10. Affectionate term for the employee with whom you’ve been fooling around at work
13. The last person in the world who should be moralizing about infidelity
15. As in, “During deliberations, the bailiff will provide no more than one pizza party ______”
17. A young temporary employee sometimes paid not in money, but experience. Horrible, horrible experience
ANSWERS
Sort-of Fun Facts
Bill Clinton plays the saxophone, which was invented in 1846 by a guy named Sax who also invented the “saxhorn” (!) and “saxtuba” (!!). Was the success of the saxophone over the saxtuba the point at which other timelines diverged from ours, the darkest? Yes.
Bill Clinton first became interested in the law when he was in high school and participated in a mock trial as the lawyer for the ancient Roman senator Catiline. Catiline was actually put on trial a few times … but we really hope that this was his trial for sleeping with a temple virgin.
Speaking of high school, Bill Clinton went to Hot Springs High School. If you ever stop procrastinating and finally write that screenplay for a mid-1980s teen sex romp, this is what you should name the high school.
After his presidency, Bill Clinton became very rich, in part by giving paid speeches for an average fee of $200K. It’s hard to imagine any speech being worth $200K, unless it is titled “I Have Traveled Here from the Future, and I Have Stock Tips.”*
Bill Clinton supported and signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Unfortunately for his marriage, this was not a bill to assign the president a 24/7 chaperone.
Bill Clinton served an unprecedented five terms as governor of Arkansas. Political analysts on both sides of the aisle agree that this is a lot of time to spend in Little Rock.
*Here are our stock tips, for free: Sell all your stocks. Buy canned food, iodine tablets, and edged weapons.
TRUE FACTS THAT COULD ALSO BE
DOUBLE ENTENDRES
• Clinton earned well-deserved acclaim for “TAPPING A LOT OF WOMEN FOR HIS CABINET.”
• Early in his career, Clinton argued against rigid, binary party identification, instead self-identifying with a more fluid “THIRD WAY.”
• Clinton’s policy on discussing marital status when he’s out at the clubs is the same as his policy on gays in the military: “DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL.”
LOVE STORY
After they graduated from law school, Bill took his girlfriend Hillary Rodham on vacation to Europe and proposed to her at sunset on the shores of Ennerdale Water in northern England.
That was possibly the most romantic sentence in this book. And yet Hillary said no! He proposed a few more times (hopefully not on that same vacation), but she continued to rebuff him.
She eventually relented a few months later, when he picked her up from the airport in Little Rock and said something along the lines of, “Hey, remember that house you said looked nice a few weeks ago? Well I bought it, so now you have to marry me.” The moral of the story is that if you’re going to eventually marry Bill Clinton anyway, you might as well say yes when he proposes to you lakeside rather than in the car driving back from the airport in Arkansas. (Unless you’re holding out for a house in Arkansas.)
Vital Stats
Looks: 8
What you need to do is imagine seeing Bill Clinton for the very first time, before you’ve heard anything about cigars and blue dresses and so forth. See, he looks pretty handsome! Try to remember this lesson the next time you’re swooning over a handsome stranger.
Physique: 5
Bill Clinton loves golf and jogging. But he also loves hamburgers and fries. One thing about Bill Clinton is that he has a lot of love to go around.
Charisma: 9
Bill Clinton is extremely sociable. As president he would often call people in the middle of the night, just to chat. So if your phone rings in the middle of the night, answer it, because it might be Bill Clinton! Also, the call might be coming from your basement, because he also likes to break into people’s basements (maybe).
Knows how to use drugs: 2
By his own admission, Bill Clinton didn’t inhale when he tried smoking marijuana. It’s surprising that this kind of incompetence didn’t sink his election bid, but you have to remember that independent candidate Ross Perot siphoned off a lot of Republican votes.
Are you
BILL CLINTON?
Like many presidents, Bill Clinton sometimes reads books. That means it’s technically possible that Bill Clinton is reading THIS book, right now. And hey—YOU are ALSO reading this book right now. Does that mean that you are former president Bill Clinton? Maybe! There’s only one way to find out for sure.
Does it feel like you are staring into a tiny mirror right now?
GEORGE W. BUSH
2001–2009 | Republican
If your goal was to finish this book, we have good news:
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Ha ha! Just kidding. But you’re getting close! Just a few more “surges” of reading effort, and you can finally put this horrible experience behind you.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about the 43rd president, George W. Bush. George W. Bush is seen by many as a plainspoken, no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip Texas cowboy. And indeed, he had a pretty stereotypical Texas cowboy background: Born in Connecticut, summered in Maine, head cheerleader at Phillips Andover, graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School.
But while in the hearts of most Texas cowboys is a lonesome wolf’s howl, or the endless wind scouring the prairie, or a nice, meaty cow, in Bush’s heart lies ambition. Ambition to rise above his station as “son of a U.S. president,” and become “U.S. president,” so that for the rest of h
is life he could lord it over his brother Jeb at Thanksgiving.
But his elevation to the White House brought a dilemma the likes of which America hadn’t faced since the earliest days of the Republic. Not “Is torturing people bad, or does it depend on the circumstances?” but rather “How are we going to distinguish between two presidents with the same name?”
People came up with a lot of dumb solutions, and in this book we’ll use one of those dumb solutions, which is to call George W. Bush, the 43rd president, “43.” But in the spirit of having powerful families exercise dynastic control of government, we’ll use Roman numerals and call him George XLIII.
When George W. Bush was facing rising anger around the world, he should have just airdropped millions of copies of this photo of himself as a baby. What a cute baby!
Why You’ll Love Him
He wrote a biography of his father. If our son wrote a biography of us, it would mainly address how we don’t let him watch enough TV and make him wear pants in public. This is also the general thrust of George XLIII’s A Portrait of My Father.