Oval Office Oddities

by Bill Fawcett

  “The Magician” referred to his ability to get men elected, including Andrew Jackson. “Little Van” was also respectful, as he was physically small. His enemies often called him “Martin Van Ruin.”

  W. H. Harrison: He was the “Tippecanoe” of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

  This referred to a famous battle against Indians he won as commander. Those less friendly referred to him as “Old Granny.”

  Tyler: “And Tyler too.”

  He was the first vice president to succeed to the presidency when Harrison died very early in his term. Opponents, some of whom rejected the concept that the vice president should even replace a lost president for the rest of his term (the law was vague, succession laws really weren’t fixed for almost another century) called him “His Accidency.”

  Polk: “Young Hickory”

  He was really best known for his mullet hair style.

  Taylor: “Old Rough and Ready”

  Referring to his military career.

  Fillmore: Another “His Accidency,” for the same unfriendly reasons.

  Pierce: “Old Hickory of the Granite Hills”

  Everyone wanted to be thought of as being like Andy Jackson; none were. A Northerner with Southern sympathies, Pierce managed to antagonize just about everyone.

  Buchanan: “Ten Cent Jimmy,” “Old Buck”

  A successful trial lawyer and a totally ineffective president, there is a good chance most of what he was called in Washington can’t be printed here. The Ten Cents refers to a vote-buying scandal. They were cheaper in those days.

  Lincoln: “Honest Abe”

  Well, sort of. He was a consummate politician as well as statesman. Also “The Great Emancipator.” Confederates often likened him to an ape during the war.

  A. Johnson: “King Andy,” “Sir Veto”

  He was as unpopular as these sound.

  Grant: “Useless Grant,” “The Hero of Appomattox”

  “Useless Grant” to his enemies, “The Hero of Appomattox” to his many supporters. During the war he was “Unconditional Surrender” Grant due to a typo in a newspaper headline.

  Hayes: “Rutherfraud Hayes,” “His Fraudulency”

  He actually lost the popular vote by over 250,000 votes and his enemies never let anyone forget it. Hmmm, sounds familiar….

  Garfield: “The Preacher”

  Deeply religious and a minister, he often did preach on Sundays while president. Popular, his lingering death after being shot made him the “Martyr President.”

  Arthur: “Elegant Arthur”

  This referred to the fact that Chester A. Arthur was a clothes horse and took great efforts to dress fashionably. His elegant lifestyle also earned him the sobriquet “Prince Arthur.”

  Cleveland: “His Obstinacy,” “Buffalo Hangman”

  Cleveland is our only president who personally hanged a man.

  B. Harrison: “Little Ben,” “The White House Iceberg”

  This guy was cold and not very personable. He even cut his children out of his will. After four years of him, the nation went back and elected Grover Cleveland to be president again.

  McKinley: His supporters called him the “Idol of Ohio,” where they loved him and had elected him to several offices; his enemies normally used “Wobbly Willy.”

  T. Roosevelt: “Hero of San Juan Hill,” “The Bull Moose,” but most people just affectionately called him “TR.”

  Taft: “Big Bill”

  What else can you say about a three-hundred-plus pound president?

  Wilson: “The Schoolmaster”

  This was more a reference to his style than his background as the former president of Princeton University.

  Harding: “Wobbly Warren”

  He was personable, pleasant, popular, and endearing. The “Wobbly” refers to the fact that Harding was also way above his Peter Principle position and was often taken advantage of by less-than-well-meaning politicians and outright scoundrels.

  Coolidge: “Silent Cal”

  He rarely spoke and did so in concise terms. At one time, a guest at the White House came upon the notoriously reticent president and announced that he had a bet that he could get Calvin Coolidge to say more than two words. The president answered simply “You lose” and walked away.

  Hoover: “The Great Engineer”

  Before he was elected president, Herbert Hoover was a very successful engineer and businessman. He had built up a personal fortune of over a million dollars by age forty. That would be fourteen million today. This was admired in good time. When the Great Depression hit, the shantytowns were called Hoovervilles and he, for some very good reasons, got much of the blame for the economic collapse. After that, few cared how good an engineer he was.

  F. D. Roosevelt: “FDR,” “The New Dealer”

  The New Deal was the name given the series of economic policies Roosevelt introduced to end the Depression.

  Truman: “Give ’em Hell Harry,” the “Haberdasher”

  The first referred to his tendency to use profanity. Until Nixon, he held the potty mouth presidential record.

  Eisenhower: “Ike”

  When you command the armies in Europe and win, “Ike” is all you need.

  Kennedy: “JFK,” “Jack”

  Not imaginative names, but people related to him personally and that is what “Jack” showed.

  L. B. Johnson: “LBJ,” “Big Daddy”

  People did not relate to LBJ personally; by the end, few even liked him.

  Nixon: “Tricky Dick”

  With that nickname, you can’t say we weren’t warned. The nickname came from his very dubious, but successful, campaign practices while running for Congress in California.

  Ford: “Jerry”

  Carter: “Jimmy”

  Reagan: “Dutch,” his boyhood nickname; “The Gipper,” from his movie part of that name; “The Great Communicator”

  Ronald Reagan was better able to use his skills to rally the masses than almost any other president in the nation’s history. His popularity is reflected in the fact that he is the first modern president with non-derogatory, real nicknames.

  G. H. W. Bush: “Poppy,” a rarely used family name.

  Clinton: “Bubba,” “Slick Willy,” the “Comeback Kid”

  He had nicknames, but not positive ones except maybe “Comeback Kid,” a tribute to his political talents.

  G. W. Bush: “W,” “Dubya,” “Junior”

  11

  BODY POLITIC

  Everyone is interested in the president’s health. It now appears that most of the time we knew very little about any problems a president might have had. Today, with modern media, we can all take an interest in the president’s health, something that once was only the concern of the vice president and the First Lady. So let’s take a look at the presidents, short, tall, wild, and wounded.

  IN SHAPE

  President John Quincy Adams was a health nut. If ever there was a man for whom health clubs would have been nirvana, he was it. The sixth president believed that ice cold baths made his system stronger. After his bath, he would scrub himself with a horsehair brush. We use horsehair brushes to scrape rust off metal. Even while president, he would walk up to six miles each day. For a long time, like Monroe, he would swim nude, but once John Quincy Adams discovered how much harder swimming fully dressed was, he changed to doing that. All this exercise may have been good for this president’s health, but getting to it nearly killed him. While rowing across the Potomac River to his chosen swimming spot, John Quincy Adams and a servant were caught in a sudden storm. The river was wide and churned by the weather. The light canoe they were in sank and both men barely made it ashore.

  DUCK!

  Future President James Monroe was wounded in the Battle of Trenton, a victory which likely saved the American Revolution. Of all the presidents who served in the armed services, only four—James Monroe, Rutherford B. Hayes, Jack Kennedy, and George H. W. Bush—were wounded while servin
g. James Monroe fought in several battles, some under the Marquis de Lafayette, during the American Revolution. He carried a bullet from that war in his shoulder for the rest of his life.

  LONGEVITY

  The average person in 1800 lived to about the age of fifty. Thomas Jefferson added another three decades to this total. He by no means took it easy and was known to work very long hours all his life. It appears that the secret of living to an old age for Thomas Jefferson was cold foot baths. He plunged his feet into cold water every morning for almost sixty years and to this attributed his longevity. There has to be an easier way.

  THE COST

  Since James Polk was the youngest president at the time that he took office in 1845, you would have thought his youthful vigor would protect him from the physical price most presidents pay due to stress and long hours. But even at forty-nine, President Polk managed to put in so much time and work such long days, often eighteen to twenty hours, that the cost to his health was obvious even before the end of his term. You could even say that he worked himself to death. Only a few months after leaving office, former President Polk developed an intestinal ailment. Normally, the problem would not have been fatal, but the relatively young man’s system was still so worn down that he died from it.

  POLITICAL FIRST

  Before the election of William Henry Harrison, actually campaigning to get elected when running for a major office, particularly president, was just not done. Andrew Jackson’s mechanisms aside, you let others speak for you and get the vote out while the candidate appeared to the public to be “standing,” not running, for office. Under the tutelage of Henry Clay, this changed and Harrison was the first man to actively campaign to be elected president. That this worked was evident, since he won and became the ninth president in 1841. Harrison also died from illness only a month after taking office. Still, his success meant that every candidate since has “run” for the presidency. So while you wonder who to blame for the interminable commercials on every TV channel, at least some your anger should be addressed to William Henry Harrison and Henry Clay’s Whig Party for starting the entire months-long campaign circus.

  BAD CHOICE OF WORDS

  The speech William Henry Harrison gave at his inaugural had many of the right words—just too many of them. The newly elected president gave the longest address ever, lasting an hour and three-quarters. Also, to prove how robust he was, or some such macho silliness, the new president shunned the warm and sensible garb that everyone else wore and chose not to wear a coat or gloves. Within a few days, he was ill and his system weakened. He seemed to recover, but never really did. A few weeks later, Harrison was unable to attend a cabinet meeting; he was suffering from chills and other symptoms. He was then subjected to the “medicine” of his era which consisted of treatments that would get you imprisoned if you used them today. His weakened body succumbed to illness and abuse on April 4, 1841. The nation avidly followed the news of his illness and mourned his loss.

  PAYING THE PRICE

  Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, was known for his robust health and energy while leading troops. But by the time he was in his second term as president, the hard living, many wounds, and bad habits had taken their toll. Today, the news media covers every aspect of the president’s health, whether it’s a small clot or an irregular heartbeat. But the list of illnesses Jackson suffered from was never publicly known. These included aches from numerous wounds, persistent headaches (some speculate he had frontal lobe damage), regularly occurring diarrhea, coughing spells that brought up quantities of material from his lungs, extremities swollen so badly he could not walk, and finally, rotting teeth. To keep going in spite of all these problems, the old general regularly imbibed alcoholic “tonics,” along with smoking constantly. But Old Hickory really was that tough, he lived nine years after serving two terms as president, dying at the age of seventy-eight.

  BIG TIME

  The president is said to be most powerful individual in the world; one of them was a big man by any definition. William Howard Taft. The twenty-seventh President stood about six feet tall and weighed in at a hefty three hundred forty pounds. Once when he wired to Elihu Root that he had just taken a twenty-five-mile horseback ride, the secretary of state wired back only the query “How is the horse?” Strangely, Taft never really wanted to be president and wasn’t very happy with the job. Later, when appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he publicly declared with glee, “In my present life I don’t remember that I ever was president.”

  PLEASE BE SEATED

  When the very large William Taft was offered the “Chair of Law” at Yale he did not take it. When asked why, he replied that “a Sofa of Law” would have fit someone his size better.

  SMALL TIME

  With all the comments about Napoleon complexes and the image of the bantyweight, Ross Perot, it is surprising that there have really been very few short and small presidents. Without question, the shortest president was James Madison. Never healthy, he had to quit Princeton due to major health problems and was never really that fit. As a result, when not being president of the United States, Madison lived with his father most of his life and rarely engaged in any activity that earned him an income, except when elected. The fourth president was five foot four inches and weighed less than a hundred pounds. Despite his small stature and sickly nature, James Madison lived to the age of eighty-five. He was, incidentally, two inches shorter than another famously short person of his day—Napoleon Bonaparte.

  SLOW STARTER

  Though he grew into one of the most macho presidents and generals the nation ever had, Andrew Jackson got off to a physically tough start as he was known for drooling and slobbering into his teen years.

  STARTING POSITION

  Until the last century it was much more common to be born at home than in a hospital. From what records can be found, it is likely that no president was born in a hospital until Jimmy Carter was delivered at Wise Hospital in his later famous hometown of Plains, Georgia.

  GREEN ROOM

  One of the delights of the White House in the dark first years of the American Civil War was the presence of Willie Lincoln. The happy child brought a smile and solace to the beleaguered president during the war’s darkest days. Young Willie was popular with the staff and enjoyed playing in the various rooms of the executive mansion. He was also popular with the troops and accompanied his father to many military reviews. In 1862, Willie was stricken by smallpox and died at the age of eleven. Abraham Lincoln, upon his death, observed, “My poor boy. He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!” All Washington mourned. The scene was described by Elizabeth Keckley, family friend and seamstress: “The funeral was very touching. Of the entertainments in the East Room, the boy had been a most life-giving variation…. He was his father’s favorite. They were intimates—often seen hand in hand. And there sat the man, with a burden on the brain at which the world marvels—bent now with the load both at heart and brain—staggering under a blow like the taking from him of his child.” The young boy’s body lay in state in the Green Room and hundreds passed by. From that time on President Lincoln could never again bring himself to even walk into the Green Room.

  WWAD NEXT?

  Until the stress of his presidency and the Civil War seriously degraded Abraham Lincoln’s health, he was known for his robust constitution and athletic ability. Having been raised doing physical labor, the president was actually quite strong. Perhaps the best indication of just how personally tough Lincoln was is shown by his almost-legendary skill as a wrestler. Now, wresting in Illinois was not exactly the polite Greco-Roman competition you see in the Olympics. Illinois was on the western edge of “civilization” in Lincoln’s time and a rough place. Wrestling there was a much more of a wide-open brawl that would quickly determine who was the toughest, fastest, and strongest. While a shopkeeper, before running for o
ffice, Lincoln ran afoul of a gang of toughs. This was hardly unusual, since the frontier towns attracted a rougher sort of man. He determined the best way to deal with them was to challenge their leader to a wrestling match. It is not even a sure thing that Lincoln won, but it can be certain he impressed the gang. From that time on they became Abe’s biggest fans. The whole gang would make a point of showing up for all of Lincoln’s rallies, and pity the poor heckler once they caught him.

  SEEING THE ELEPHANT

  While he was president during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln actually witnessed shots fired in anger during the entire war only once. This happened when he was at Fort Stevens in 1864. The fort is about seven miles from Washington and was attacked by rebel forces. He was recorded as standing on the walls “impassive” until a Union officer was killed only a few feet away. Only after Major General Horatio Wright literally tugged at Lincoln’s sleeve did he move to a safer spot.

  SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING

  With all the rumors, and facts, regarding U. S. Grant’s problems with alcohol, it wasn’t the booze or even the stress of the presidency that got him. The habit that did do him in was smoking. You never saw General or President Grant without a cigar while he was awake. He chain-smoked cigars whenever he could afford them. This habit was well-known even by those who never were close enough to notice the strong tobacco odor that lingered on his clothes and anywhere he had resided. When the war was looking bad for the Union, General Grant won a major victory by taking Fort Donelson. This did wonders for the nation’s morale, not to mention Lincoln’s. Grateful Union citizens from all over the country responded by sending General Grant somewhere in the range of ten thousand boxes of cigars. There is no record of his giving most of these cigars away. Ulysses Grant died from a form of cancer of the throat that we know today can be directly attributed to tobacco use.