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    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Presidency
    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Presidency
    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Presidency
    Ebook532 pages5 hours

    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Presidency

    By Bathroom Readers' Institute

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Three cheers for the red, white, and bloopers . . . A US treasury of gaffes, goofs, and weird White House trivia!
     
    If they advertised the job opening for President of the United States, the ad would be pretty short. The only basic requirements are to be a natural-born American citizen and at least thirty-five years old. Now you can learn about some of the successful applicants in this special “Chief Executive” edition of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader!
     
    We’ve dug up the most compelling and confounding dirt . . . er . . . statistics on these otherwise ordinary men who achieved great power. Which ones used it wisely? Which ones squandered it? And which ones would have rather been fishing? You’ll get an up-close and personal look at each Oval Officer. From the birth of the country to modern-day yuks, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Presidency is packed with more than 300 pages of amusing anecdotes, little-known history, fun quizzes, and more! Read about . . .
     
    * Ford’s famous fall and other presidential gaffes * White House ghosts * Homer Simpson takes on the presidency * Ails of the chiefs * Was President Buchanan gay? * Chief Executive Culinary Delights * Mr. President at the bat * Prezzy lols (“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” —Abraham Lincoln) and much, much more!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9781607106913
    Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Presidency
    Author

    Bathroom Readers' Institute

    The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

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      Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Presidency - Bathroom Readers' Institute

      PREFACE

      Uncle John’s Plunges into the Presidency is about to commence, and you are cordially invited to be part of the experience!

      We at the Bathroom Readers’ Hysterical Society are thrilled to present our latest, very special creation. This in-depth look at the highest office in the United States of America is filled to the gills with all kinds of goodies for your enjoyment: fascinating facts, wit and wisdom, quips, quotes, and anecdotes all about the men who have led this country through good times and bad—the presidents.

      When approaching such a prickly political subject, it can be tough to stay the course. But we’ve kept in mind the ultimate goal here at Uncle John’s: to entertain and educate—not to editorialize. With that in mind, this tome has been written for Madison-Maulers and Gung-Ho-for-Granters alike. There’s a little something for everyone. So if your incline is to the right or the left, if you’re just firmly seated astride the fence, or even if you march to a different drummer altogether, there’s plenty for every political palate. Be sure to read all about:

      •All the President’s Gaffes

      •History’s Unluckiest President

      •Singing Assassins on Broadway

      •The True Story of Washington’s Teeth, and many more!

      Visit our website—www.bathroomreader.com—or drop us an email at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

      As always, go with the flow . . .

      —Uncle John and the BRI Staff

      p.s. Don’t forget to vote!

      WHO’S GONNA WIN?

      There are almost as many ways to predict who’s going to be

      our next president as there are ballots. What’s difficult to believe

      is that some of these ways actually work.

      Thousands of people make their livings trying to predict the outcome of presidential elections. Journalists, pollsters, lobbyists, and political scientists all have a stake in the outcome. The months leading up to an election are rife with speculation; everyone—academics and crackpots alike—pulls out their tea leaves to try to see how it will all turn out. You don’t need to get out your tarot cards, bone up on economic indicators, or count the number of letters in your candidate’s name. We’ve got the answers right here.

      IT’S THE HEIGHT, RIGHT?

      The most common belief is that the taller candidate is the guy to beat. In his 1965 book Language on Vacation, Dmitri Borgmann found that in the nineteen U.S. presidential elections between 1888 and 1960, the taller candidate won the popular vote all but once, when 6 feet 2 inch tall Franklin Roosevelt beat the taller Wendell Willkie (6 feet 2½ inches) in 1940. Psychologist John Gillis published Too Tall, Too Small in 1982 in which he claimed that the taller candidate won 80 percent of the twenty-one presidential elections from 1904 to 1984. Keep in mind that finding accurate data on the heights of the candidates, especially the losers, can be difficult; it may be best to back up your arsenal of predictive measures with a few more methods, even if in eight of the last ten elections, the taller candidate has won.

      IT’S ALL IN A NAME?

      So how does name length measure up? Borgmann also has a hypothesis about names. Between 1876 and 1960, the candidate with the most letters in his last name won the popular vote twenty out of twenty-two times. (Maybe that’s why the 2000 election was so close!) Of course don’t forget that the winner of the popular vote is sometimes trumped by the winner of the electoral college, for instance in the Tilden–Hayes contest of 1876 and the Cleveland–Harrison battle in 1888. In recent years, the longer-named candidate has won only three out of eleven contests, so this theory might need to be put to bed.

      First names play into elections too. Some observers point out that from FDR until Bill Clinton, a president with an unusual first name always followed a president with a common first name, and vice versa: Franklin, Harry, Dwight, John, Lyndon, Richard, Gerald, Jimmy, Ronald, George. But there again, the theory falls off in recent years.

      Thomas Jefferson once ate a tomato in public to prove it wasn’t poisonous.

      IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID

      More serious scholars like to crunch the numbers to make their predictions. Political scientist James Campbell demonstrates that a good way to predict our next president has been the growth rate (the percent change in the size of the economy) during April, May, and June of the election year. If the growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP, the combined value of all the spending in the country in a given year, plus the value of all exports minus the value of all imports) during this time is 2.6 percent or higher, the incumbent president or someone from his party will likely win. If the number is 1.5 percent or lower, then the incumbent party will lose. But what if the growth rate falls between these numbers? Then the future is predictably murky. Since 1952 this method has predicted the outcome in every presidential contest but one in 1968, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon, most likely because of the Vietnam War.

      GALLUPING TO THE WHITE HOUSE

      The Gallup Poll has been determining what they call the President’s Approval Rating for more than sixty years, by asking the public whether they approve or disapprove of the way the president is handling his job. Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz has found that if the president’s approval rating in mid-June of the election year is 51 percent or higher, he or his party will probably win. If his approval rating is 45 percent or lower, he or his party will probably lose. And once again anything between these numbers leaves us (surprise!) with an uncertain future. Since the mid-1950s, the Gallup approval rating has been perhaps the single greatest predictor of presidential election results, particularly in reelection years. Since 1952, the leader in the Gallup Poll taken between September 21 and 24 and between October 12 and October 16 has won every election. In the weeks between these crucial points and the November election, talking heads continue to analyze every blip in the percentage points. However, it is invariably the Gallup Poll taken on these dates that would tell them everything they need to know.

      The college with the most presidents as alumni—5—is Harvard University Its presidential alums are the two Adamses, two Roosevelts, and Kennedy.

      DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

      Maybe all the pros should just pay attention to the amateurs when it comes to predicting election winners. According to the children’s book publisher Scholastic, students from grades one through twelve have nailed the election outcomes for every presidential race for the past fifty years (except the close Kennedy–Nixon contest in 1960).

      BuyCostumes.com, a company specializing in—you guessed it—costume sales, has a unique way to soothsay. Using the sales of Halloween masks depicting the two major candidates since 1980, the company has shown that mask sales correlate with the results of each election. In 2000, sales of the George W. Bush mask outpaced Al Gore’s mask by 14 percent. In 1996 Bill Clinton’s sales led Bob Dole’s by 16 percent. So keep your eye on the men in the masks in October.

      Lastly, who knew that what happens on a football field can predict who sleeps in the White House? Our last predictive measure has been the performance of Washington, DC’s own Redskins in their last home game just prior to Election Day. For the past fifteen elections, a Redskins win at home means a win for the incumbent party and a hometown loss means a loss for the incumbent party. So if the Republicans or Democrats are betting people, they better have a serious sitdown with Redskins owner Dan Snyder and coach Joe Gibbs. It just might mean the election.

      THE RULES OF THE

      PRESIDENTIAL GAME

      If you wanna be prez, then you have to know the rules.

      WHO CAN BECOME PRESIDENT?

      Anybody can become president as long as that person is a native-born citizen of the United States, at least thirty-five years old, and has lived in the United States for at least fourteen years.

      VICE PRESIDENT?

      Because the vice president can become president at any time, the requirements for that position are the same as for becoming president: a native-born U.S. citizen, at least thirty-five years old, and fourteen years as a resident. Additionally, the Constitution requires that the vice president be from a different state than the president. This stipulation was added to keep one state from becoming too politically powerful.

      WHO MAKES UP THE PRESIDENT’S CABINET?

      The modern presidential cabinet consists of the president, vice president, and heads of the fifteen executive departments: state, treasury, justice, defense, interior, agriculture, commerce, labor, health and human services, housing and urban development, transportation, energy, education, veteran affairs, and homeland security.

      The size of the cabinet has grown over the years. George Washington, who began the practice of meeting with the top members of his administration, had a cabinet that included only the secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, the secretary of war, and the attorney general!

      THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM?

      Before 1951, there wasn’t anything on paper to limit a president’s number of terms. Most presidents limited themselves to two terms in deference to a tradition started by George Washington. When Thomas Jefferson defended the self-imposed limit at the end of his second term, the tradition was set.

      Warren G. Harding was the first presidential candidate to hire a speechwriter.

      Along the way, however a few presidents have sought to break with tradition. Ulysses S. Grant, in his retirement, hoped to be drafted for a third term in 1880, but his party looked elsewhere. Woodrow Wilson also would have accepted a third nomination had it come his way in 1920, but it did not.

      The only president to have served more than two terms was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms. Although opponents cried No Third Term when Roosevelt ran in 1940, the Democratic Party and the rest of the nation thought it best to stick with him as world war swept through Europe. Elected again, Roosevelt died soon after the start of his fourth term. After his death the Republican Party, when it returned to power in Congress, sought to prevent another president from having more than two elected terms, successive or not. It pushed the Twenty-second Amendment to ratification in 1951. Surprisingly, the president remains the only member of the federal government to have a term limit.

      NEXT IN LINE

      Not to be morbid, but the following is the order of succession if the president were to die:

      1. Vice President

      2. Speaker of the House of Representatives

      3. President Pro Tempore of the Senate (longest serving senator of the majority party)

      4. Secretary of State

      5. Secretary of the Treasury

      6. Secretary of Defense

      7. Attorney General

      8. Secretary of the Interior

      9. Secretary of Agriculture

      10. Secretary of Commerce

      11. Secretary of Labor

      12. Secretary of Health and Human Services

      13. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

      14. Secretary of Transportation

      15. Secretary of Energy

      16. Secretary of Education

      17. Secretary of Veteran Affairs

      18. Secretary of Homeland Security*

      *The secretary of homeland security may be moving on up. Legislation pending in 2004 would move the office up to eighth place, just ahead of the secretary of the interior.

      There are more threats against the First Lady than the vice president, says the Secret Service.

      NUMBER ONE:

      GEORGE WASHINGTON

      Served from 1789 to 1797

      Vital Stats: Born on February 22, 1732, in Pope’s Creek, Virginia. Died on December 14, 1799, in Mount Vernon, Virginia

      Age at Inauguration: 57

      Vice President: John Adams

      Political Affiliation: None (first term), Federalist (second term)

      Wife: Martha Dandridge Custis (married 1759)

      Kids: None to speak of. Washington was just the father of his country.

      Education: Private Tutor

      What he did before he was president: Ferry Operator; Surveyor; Tobacco Planter; Commander in Chief of the Continental Army; Delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses; President of the Constitutional Convention

      Postpresidential Occupations: Planter; Distiller

      MEMORABLE QUOTES

      The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing, a vice heretofore little known in an American army, is growing into fashion. He hopes the officers will, by example as well as influence, endeavor to check it . . . a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it.

      —General George Washington’s order from August 3, 1776

      Observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all . . . And can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

      —Washington’s advice from his Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

      Of all the presidents Warren G. Harding had the biggest feet. He wore size 14 shoes.

      AN ASSASSINATION

      OF CHARACTER

      Although Andrew Jackson suffered the nation’s first assassination

      attempt, it was an earlier assault on his honor that actually drew blood.

      The Secret Service does a fantastic job protecting the president from harm, but can they protect the chief executive from nose tweakers? A grave threat to a man’s honor in the nineteenth century, nose tweaking was a danger faced squarely by President Andrew Jackson, the first president allegedly to receive a very serious twist of the beak. Denying it until the day he died, Andrew Jackson railed against the possibility that any man had dared to touch his nose. But some say it really did happen.

      GOT YER NOSE!

      In 1833 the president was accosted by a disgruntled man named Robert Randolph. In one account, Randolph boarded a docked steamboat on which President Jackson was traveling. He made his way to Jackson’s cabin and found the president sitting behind a desk. Extending his own hand, Jackson saw Randolph begin to remove his glove. But rather than shaking the president’s hand, Randolph reached across the desk to grab Jackson’s nose, twisting it so hard that it began to bleed uncontrollably.

      Randolph didn’t have some strange nose-grabbing fetish. He did have a bone to pick with the president though, and a twisting of Jackson’s nose was sufficient vindication. Why? Well, in those days a man’s nose, being the most prominent feature of his face and always exposed to the scrutiny of others, was considered to be a solid indication of his character. Allowing any other man to touch, tweak, twist, or tickle one’s nose was a serious affront to a gent’s ego and a serious blow to his honor. Although Jackson’s nose was bloodied, the more serious injury was to his reputation. Randolph had as much as publicly called him a dirty liar with that one tweak.

      So what was Randolph so angry about? A former Naval purser, Randolph had lost his job because of Andrew Jackson, who had revoked Randolph’s commission after he had been charged with submitting false financial reports. But the roots of Randolph’s problems go further back into another Washington scandal.

      The White House requires 570 gallons of paint to cover its outside surface.

      WOMAN TROUBLES

      Long before Andrew Jackson ran for president, he and his wife had caused one of the nation’s earliest sex scandals. As a young man Jackson married Rachel Robards, a divorcée and the daughter of a tavern keeper in Nashville, Tennessee. Unfortunately Jackson married Rachel before her divorce was finalized. When the paperwork finally went through, the two were married again and life went on, but charges of Rachel’s bigamy plagued the Jacksons many times in their lives. The most notable incident occurred during Jackson’s 1828 run for the presidency when his opponents publicly scrutinized Rachel’s scandalous behavior—despite the fact that the incident had occurred almost thirty-five years before. Their efforts proved unsuccessful as Jackson won the election in a landslide. Sadly Rachel died before Jackson took office, and he blamed her death on those who slandered her name. May God Almighty forgive her murderers, as I know she forgave them. I never can, he said.

      After Jackson took office another scandal quickly arose. Secretary of War John Eaton had married the former Margaret Peggy Timberlake, a widow and daughter of a DC tavern owner. Eaton was not only Jackson’s secretary of war, but his close friend and adviser as well; Jackson had been fond of Peggy since meeting her some years before while boarding at her father’s tavern. In fact the president had encouraged their marriage. But the grandes dames of Washington society and wives of Jackson’s cabinet members did not approve of Peggy and socially shunned her. Jackson was outraged. He believed the cabinet wives’ behavior was a thinly veiled attack on his presidency, instigated by his political rivals. Perhaps of more consequence was the fact that Jackson could not help but see the matter as a replay of the assault on his own beloved wife’s honor. As a result Jackson spent his first years in office going to great lengths to defend Peggy Eaton.

      NOTORIOUS

      The Washington, DC, doyennes slighted outspoken and attractive Peggy for a number of reasons. Her status as a tavern owner’s daughter lowered her stock in their eyes. Of greater importance were the whispers that Peggy was an adulteress. Shortly before her marriage to Eaton, Peggy had been married to John Timberlake, a purser in the navy aboard the U.S.S. Constitution. Timberlake had been good friends with Eaton and had entrusted him with looking after Peggy while he was away at sea. Unfortunately Eaton looked after Peggy a little too closely and the two were soon rumored to be involved. In 1828 Timberlake died at sea, allegedly committing suicide after hearing about the affair. Eaton and Peggy married less than a year later, which did little to quiet the scandalous talk about town.

      A Real Survivor? An associate once said that if Richard Nixon ever had a heart attack that he, Richard Nixon, would rescue himself by giving himself mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

      When almost a year later an investigation of the Constitution’s accounts, which had been kept by Timberlake in his position as ship’s purser, turned up missing funds, Jackson again viewed the matter as an attempt to discredit not only Peggy’s reputation but his presidency as well. Jackson’s name became embroiled in the matter when an accusation surfaced that Timberlake had stolen the money to give his friend Eaton to save Peggy’s father’s tavern from financial ruin. Jackson was apparently able to defuse the looming scandal, as neither Timberlake nor Eaton was ever charged with any crime. But the funds were still missing. Who would take the blame? It would be Timberlake’s naval successor, none other than the future nose-tweaker Robert Randolph.

      THE FALL GUY

      Although the investigation ultimately determined that no intentional wrongdoing was involved, Randolph was nevertheless dismissed from the navy—on Jackson’s orders. Disgraced and unemployed, Randolph’s opportunity to exact justice came a little over a month later when Jackson’s steamboat docked in Randolph’s home town.

      But what actually happened to Jackson’s nose is still up for debate. Until the day he died, Jackson insisted that no man had ever touched his nose. Maybe, maybe not. But Peggy Eaton said she enjoyed teasing Jackson about the incident, just to see his vehemently overblown denial that it had ever happened.

      MR. PRESIDENT

      AT THE BAT

      May the sun never set on American baseball.—Harry S. Truman

      You don’t need to watch the Ken Burns documentary Baseball to know just how important the sport is to the United States. So it should come as no surprise that the commanders-in-chief have had a special relationship with the game too, even though the hometown team, the Washington Senators, wasn’t known for its winning records.

      THE FIRSTS

      The first president ever to attend a baseball game was Andrew Johnson, who watched the New York Mutuals defeat the Washington Nationals in 1866. The Mutuals and the Nationals were amateur clubs, as were all baseball players until the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first professional club in 1869. Johnson was also the first president to host a team at the White House, when the Brooklyn Atlantics were his guests. Hosting teams quickly became a tradition at the White House, with both Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland inviting clubs. During the ball players’ visit, President Arthur made the now-dubious statement, Good ball-players make good citizens.

      The first president to attend a professional baseball game was Benjamin Harrison, in 1892. On a June afternoon, President Harrison saw the Washington Senators do what they did best for many years in the nation’s capital—lose, this time to the Cincinnati Reds by a score of 7 to 4.

      The predictably poor performance of the hometown team didn’t dissuade future presidents from attending games, though. The last president who failed to attend a baseball game while in office was Teddy Roosevelt. He thought it was a game for mollycoddles and not physical or manly enough for his tastes. Ironically, Teddy was also the first president to receive a lifetime pass to attend all professional games.

      One of Andrew Jackson’s most famous duels began over a horse race.

      TR’s successor, William Howard Taft, began a tradition in 1910 that is still kept today. At the Senators’ opening day game at National Park, Taft was invited to throw out the first ball. Taft was a more appropriate liaison between the office of the president and baseball than Roosevelt was. He was a great lover of the game, and he had been a catcher on a sandlot team in his younger and lighter days. After the game, the Senators star pitcher, Walter Johnson, who had caught the ball that Taft threw, sent the ball to the White House to get Taft’s autograph on it.

      THE FIGUREHEADS

      An acting president’s position in baseball has been as a sort of figure head. He has no power over the functioning of the game, but by being the leader of the nation he seems to be, by extension, the leader of the national game. The ritual of the president’s throwing out the first pitch on opening day has now acquired a sense of giving approval, of authorizing the season to begin. Indeed, Franklin Roosevelt once actually did authorize the season to start when he wrote the famous green light letter during World War II.

      In January 1942, a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor and three months before the scheduled opening day, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote to Roosevelt to ask whether baseball should be suspended during the war effort. Roosevelt replied that for reasons of employment and recreation the game should continue during the war. However he did state his opinion that draftable players should go into the service. They did, leaving baseball with many very young or very old (for baseball) players, disabled players (an outfielder for the St. Louis Browns during this time, Pete Gray, had only one arm), and players who were 4-F (ineligible for military service) for other reasons, like color blindness.

      President Roosevelt also gave the green light to light at ballgames. He threw a switch at the White House on May 24, 1935, that lit a bulb at Crosley Field in Cincinnati to kick off the first night game ever.

      With the exception of the green light letter, the position of the president as the phantom head of baseball hasn’t translated into much efficacy. During the players’ strike of 1994–1995, when the World Series was canceled, President Bill Clinton ordered the players and the owners to end the strike by February 6, 1995. They didn’t, and the 1995 season started late. After he left office, former president Jimmy Carter wrote an article in USA Today urging the public and the National Baseball Hall of Fame to forgive Pete Rose for gambling and allow him to be reinstated. As of this writing, it still hasn’t happened.

      Thomas Jefferson took a cold footbath every morning for 60 years.

      THE FIELD

      A few presidents were pretty good players in their day. Dwight Eisenhower played semipro ball just before going to West Point for one season. Strangely, though, he played under a pseudonym and only revealed it after his presidency was over. He never explained why and then instructed his staff not to answer any questions about it. He only claimed that he wouldn’t go into it because it was too complicated.

      When George H. W. Bush was in college at Yale University, he was the first baseman and captain of the school’s extremely successful baseball team. Bush threw left-handed and batted right-handed, an unusual combination. Some experts said that Bush might have been a candidate for the majors (and for a slightly higher batting average) if he had batted lefty. Five of Bush’s teammates, though, were drafted by major league teams. The Yalies’ highest level of success was when they went to the College World Series in 1948, losing to the University of South ern California. Bush also met Babe Ruth when playing ball for Yale. In a public ceremony Ruth presented him with the manuscript of his autobiography.

      And, of course, President George W. Bush was the managing general partner of the Texas Rangers from 1989 to 1994. After working on his father’s 1988 presidential campaign, Bush the Younger participated in the purchase of the franchise from a family friend and fellow oilman. During the years of Bush’s tenure as the managing general partner, the team arranged to build a new stadium and laid the groundwork for their first ever play-off appearance in 1996. After a brief flirtation with becoming the commissioner of baseball, Bush resigned from his position with the Rangers when he was elected the governor of Texas.

      Email was introduced into the White House in 1992.

      THE NICKNAME GAME

      Sure, to their faces it was Mr. President,

      but behind their backs it was a whole different story

      John Adams. As vice president, Adams was obsessed with figuring out the most honorable title for his boss, President Washington. He so pestered his fellow politicians with suggestions—Your Excellency and Mr. President to name just a few—that they finally came up with one of their own. Except that it wasn’t for Washington, but for the plump Adams himself: His Rotundity.

      James Monroe. Monroe was proud of his Revolutionary past, and his closet reflected it: powdered wigs and old-fashioned britches were a must. People were so disturbed by his insistence on wearing outdated clothes that they named him the Last Cocked Hat.

      Martin Van Buren. More at ease crafting backroom deals than giving speeches in front of crowds, Van Buren rose to prominence by retooling the Democratic Party he loved into a well-oiled political machine. With a trick always up his sleeve, he quickly became known as the Little Magician. However, when a series of financial panics sent the nation into a tailspin, a disillusioned public came up with a less flattering name for their commander in chief: Martin Van Ruin.

      But before you discard Van Buren into the dustbin of presidential history, be aware that you probably use one of his nicknames all the time: He was affectionately dubbed Old Kinder hook, a reference to his hometown in New York, and during his run for office, booster organizations sprang up around the country called OK Clubs. At his rallies supporters shouted OK to voice their approval, and what had been up to then an obscure phrase from New England quickly became an ingrained part of American culture.

      James Buchanan. This anal-retentive president had to have everything just right: Buchanan promptly returned a $15,000 payment one day after noticing it was ten cents short. To be fair, he also sent three cents to a proprietor whom he had accidentally underpaid for a meal. Yet his penny-pinching was infinitely more interesting than his honesty, and Ten-Cent Jimmy was born.

      Zachary Taylor chewed tobacco and was famous for never missing a spittoon when he spat.

      Benjamin Harrison. An eloquent man on the campaign trail, Harrison wasn’t exactly the warmest guy in person. Chances are, you were in for a frosty reception running into the White House Iceberg, who was so cold, he even wrote his own children out of his will.

      Ronald Reagan. Reagan was often called the Gipper for his work in the movie Knute Rockne, All American, in which Notre Dame’s football team is inspired to win one for his terminally ill character. But people are just as likely to call him Dutch, for a slightly less inspiring reason: his alcoholic father, while observing his baby Ronald crying up a storm one day, commented, "For such a little bit of a fat Dutchman, he sure makes a hell

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