#30 Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) The Quietest Cowboy

Cal, often called Silent Cal because he never spoke, was born to middle class parents who ran a store and a farm.  While still a child, his mother died, and his upbringing was mostly left to his crazy ass grandmother who demanded perfection and locked Cal in the attic for days at time when he failed to meet her expectations.  This experience made Cal a weird guy, an unexcitable man with a serious demeanor and a bone dry sense of humor.  Like most presidents, Cal went to university and became a lawyer.  For a wife, Cal married Grace Anna Goodhue.  It was a good match.  Cal never spoke a word and she never shut up.  Grace fell in love with Cal after she peeped into his window and caught him shaving wearing nothing but long johns and a derby hat.  She thought it was hilarious, which seems an odd reason to decide to marry someone.  Grace was a teacher for the deaf and dumb, and often people would mistake Cal for one of her students.  For a wedding gift, Cal gave Grace fifty pairs of socks that needed mending.     

Despite lacking in loquaciousness, Cal could be quite an eloquent speaker when he chose to be.  This helped him when he decided to get into politics, slowly working his way up to national office.  What didn’t help him was the fact that he didn’t swing his arms when he walked.  Despite this peculiarity, he was chosen to run for Vice President in 1920 because everyone just kind of assumed that he was probably an okay guy.  Two years into Cal’s tenure as Vice President, President Winnie up and died.  Cal was off visiting the family farm at the time, so his father, who was a justice of the peace, woke up him at 2:30 AM and administered the oath of office.  Cal then went back to sleep.   

Cal carried out his presidential duties by pretending that he wasn’t president.  He avoided doing as much as possible when it came to running the country, and when people came to talk to him, he just sat silently until they felt uncomfortable and left.  For some odd reason, Cal did allow people to bring him costumes, which he would willingly put on for photographs.  These costumes included a Sioux war bonnet and a full cowboy costume, including a ten gallon hat and chaps with his name on them.  Cal kept the hat and wore it while riding a mechanical horse he had installed in his dressing room for exercise.  Once, while staying at a hotel, Cal awoke to a burglar in his room.  Instead of calling for help, Cal talked to the burglar for several hours and then loaned him 35 bucks.  In 1924, Cal was elected to be president again.  Not long after, his son died from an infected blister, an event that somehow made Cal even more silent.  It also caused him to become slightly unhinged.  Cal spent his second term playing pranks on the White House staff, throwing temper tantrums, and forcing the maid to rub Vaseline on his head while he ate breakfast.   

Cal chose not to run for president again in 1928, mostly because as he put it, he hated the job.  In retirement, he spent most of his time writing his memoirs, preparing a weekly newspaper column, and racing around in his speedboat.  In 1932, people tried to get him to run for president again, but he politely told them to fuck off.  However, they did convince him to give a speech supporting President Bertie.  The speech lasted 30 minutes.  Cal died soon after of a heart attack, probably brought on by the exertion of talking for so long. 

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Calvin_Coolidge,_Bain_bw_photo_portrait_(1).jpg

#29 Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) Possibly Your Real Great Grandfather

I want you to look at Winnie’s picture.  That is the look Winnie gave your great grandmother right before he took her to pound town.  Winnie was born into a middle class family and had an uninteresting childhood.  As an adult, he purchased and ran a local newspaper.  Soon after buying his newspaper he married Florence Mabel King.  Florence was a divorcee, Winnie’s sister’s piano teacher, and coincidentally the daughter of Winnie’s rival in the local newspaper biz, because there is no better way to get under your rival’s skin quite like copulating with his daughter.  Florence really didn’t want to marry Winnie, but he hounded her until she finally agreed just so he’d leave her alone.  Winnie enjoyed married life, mostly because it was a great way to meet women.  He slept with all of his wife’s friends, even having one affair for over a decade.  He got away with it because he was considered handsome, charming, and had unusually large feet. 

Winnie was quite content with his life of running a newspaper, screwing anything that moved, and writing erotic love letters to his various mistresses in which he nicknamed his penis Jerry, which was probably short for something.  However, his wife wanted more.  She pushed Winnie to enter politics, where he slowly worked his way up to Senator.  When the 1920 presidential election came around, his party couldn’t agree on a candidate, so they compromised by choosing Winnie, an interesting choice given that he had probably slept with all of their wives.  Winnie’s campaign largely involved openly declaring that he would make a terrible president, bribing his former mistresses so they’d keep their mouths shut, and trying to hide the fact he had recently had a love child with his good friend’s twenty-three year old daughter.  Though in his defense, the young woman had stalked him for years, so Winnie probably figured she had earned it.  Somehow, none of these shenanigans got into the papers, and Winnie was elected president.  Coincidentally, this was the first election women were allowed to vote.  

Winnie really had no interest in being president.  He spent most his time drinking whiskey (even though this was during the time of prohibition), playing poker with his ass hat friends (all of whom were given cushy government jobs), introducing the women of Washington DC to Jerry, and writing increasingly erotic love letters (the man had a talent).  Winnie himself declared several times that he was unfit to be president, but people just laughed and thought he was joking.  His wife, Florence, understandably became increasingly unhinged, got into astrology and homeopathic medicine.  Unsurprisingly, all of Winnie’s poker buddies turned out to be corrupt as hell.  When Winnie found out, he nearly choked one to death in the White House.  To show how sorry they were, these same poker buddies then went around town, roughing up Winnie’s many mistresses and burning the incriminating erotic letters he had written them.  The most amazing part of all of this was that the American public had no idea it was going on.  

Following all of these shenanigans, Florence, deciding it would be best if her husband got out of Washington DC for a bit, convinced him to take a tour of Alaska and the western U.S.  Throughout the trip, Winnie got progressively sicker, probably because he wasn’t getting any strange on the regular.  By San Francisco he was obviously having major medical problems.  However, his wife refused to let him see any doctors except for a homeopathic quack who treated Winnie by repeatedly plunging a hypodermic needle into various parts of his body.  Tiring of such bullshit, Winnie had a heart attack and died.  

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warren_G_Harding-Harris_%26_Ewing.jpg

#28 Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) An American Vegetable

Tommy, yeah that’s right, his actual name was Tommy, was born and raised in the Confederacy by a racist slave owning minister.  Not trusting the Yankee schools at the end of the Civil War, Tommy’s father decided that it was best for his young son, a sickly boy, to be homeschooled, of which the family did a bang up job, Tommy not learning to read until age ten.  Despite his beginnings as an illiterate idiot, Tommy went to university.  It was here that he changed his name to Woodrow because he thought it sounded cooler and would get him more chicks.  It was a very different time.  With his cool new name, Tommy managed to attract the attention of a young woman named Ellen Louise Axson, who gave up a promising art career to be with him.  They got engaged, but unfortunately the wedding was delayed by her father going insane and killing himself, which was hopefully unrelated to the coming nuptials.   

Tommy really enjoyed going to university.  He enjoyed it so much he stayed until he had a PhD in Political Science.  Like most people with a degree in Political Science, Tommy then got a job as a university professor.  This led to him becoming a university president, a promotion he celebrated by having a stroke and going blind in one eye.  The stroke also turned him from a pretty nice guy to an impatient and intolerant asshole.  So he pretty much had a movie villain back story at this point.  To recover from his stroke, Tommy went to Bermuda and had an affair.  For some reason, this affair convinced Tommy that since he had spent his career writing about politics, he might as well put up or shut up.  He entered politics and two years later, in 1912, got himself elected president thanks to former best friends Big Lub and Teedie splitting his opposition. 

There were two things that Tommy hated, big business and Black people.  He promoted worker rights, but also promoted racist policies that strengthened segregation.  When he wasn’t busy being a racist dick, he spent most of his time driving his car around aimlessly for no damn good reason and disappointing visitors to the White House by serving grape juice instead of wine.  It was during this time that his wife died, an event Tommy mourned by marrying a woman sixteen years his junior named Edith Galt.  In 1916, Tommy won a second term by promising to keep the U.S. out of World War I, a promise he soon after broke.  To fight the war, he created an income tax, pretty much nationalized the country’s industry, and made it illegal to bad mouth the government.  Tommy spent the remainder of his presidency going slowly insane, making irrational decisions, and throwing temper tantrums.  This behavior culminated in him having a second stroke, which left him mostly paralyzed and blind.  His wife, Edith, seizing a golden opportunity, refused to let anyone see Tommy, becoming the sole means of communication between him and the outside world.  It was at this time that Tommy mysteriously switched his stance on woman’s suffrage, which led to women getting the right to vote. 

Tommy didn’t do much after leaving the presidency, probably because he was pretty much a vegetable by that time.  He continued to mentally degrade as time went on, returning to the blithering idiot that he was when he was a child.  About his only entertainment was his wife taking him out on daily automobile rides so people could see him drooling on himself.  Soon after leaving the White House, Tommy had a third stroke, which finally did him in.  

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Woodrow_Wilson_portrait_December_2_1912_(1).jpg