#33 Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) The ‘S’ Stands For Shut The Fuck Up

What can you say about Harry?  Harry thought he was the coolest guy ever, but everyone else thought he was an asshat.  He was born to middle class asshat parents who didn’t even bother to send him to school until he was eight years old, but forced him to get up at 5:00 AM every day to practice the piano.  Harry didn’t go to university.  Instead, he tried to join the Army, but was rejected because he was blind as a bat.  Harry then worked a series of clerical jobs where he was paid so little that he had to live in a hobo camp.  When World War I broke out, Harry cheated his way into the Army by memorizing all the eye charts.  The Army then put his blind ass in charge of artillery.  Harry spent most of the war showing off his wide range of hobo profanities.   

Harry was in love with his childhood friend Bess Wallace.  When he asked her to marry him, she said no, which to Harry meant, ‘pester me until I say yes’.  She finally gave in, which was lucky for Harry since it allowed him to move into his new mother-in-law’s house, which was needed given that he had recently lost all of his money in a failed haberdashery business.  Unfazed, Harry went into politics.  Being a foul mouthed hick worked amazingly well for Harry, and he won a series of elections which culminated with him becoming Vice President in 1944.  However, President Frank wasn’t a big fan of his new VP.  Consequently, the two almost never met or talked.  Harry was relegated to a role of mostly playing the piano to entertain the troops. 

The not so sudden death of President Frank elevated Harry to the presidency.  Harry, not knowing what to do, probably because he had never been briefed on anything, pretended to be Frank for the next three years.  People liked Frank, so it went over quite well.  In 1948, Harry ran for president, an election nobody thought he could win, not even his own wife.  Harry, unperturbed, rode a train around the country, cursing at people at every stop.  After winning the election, Harry decided it was time to be himself.  Unfortunately, himself turned out to be an incompetent crazy person who constantly lost his temper.  Harry spent his second term fighting communists (both real and imagined), asking his mother for advice on how to be president, and writing angry letters to newspapers who dared to suggest that his daughter’s singing was shitty.      

Nobody wanted Harry to run again in 1952, so instead he went back to his mother-in-law’s house and retired.  Harry was completely broke, having spent all of his salary on tailored suits, brightly colored shirts, and bowties.  Most of the early days of Harry’s retirement was spent taking out loans and writing his memoirs.  Embarrassed by his poverty, the U.S. government created a pension for ex-presidents.  When Medicare was created Harry was given the first card.  The free government healthcare did the trick.  Harry went into the hospital to be treated for pneumonia, where he died from all his organs simultaneously failing.   

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#32 Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) The Man Who Would Be King

Frank was born to rich bored parents who didn’t bother to get around to naming him for seven weeks.  Frank was home schooled until the age of fourteen, after which he went to the finest schools his family’s money could buy where he was at best a C student.  Growing bored with school, he dropped out of university, and, again with his family’s money, entered politics.  It was around this time that Frank took the honorable approach of marrying his fifth cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt.  Frank’s mother didn’t approve of the match and showed it by pretty much dominating every aspect of the newlyweds lives, including raising their children and overseeing their finances, even giving the couple a monthly allowance.  Frank, being a bit of a momma’s boy, just went along with it.  This lasted until his mother died in 1941.   

Frank and Eleanor’s marriage was not an easy one, even without the domineering mother-in-law aspect.  Eleanor hated sex and Frank liked it so much he did it with a lot of other women. Despite this, they still somehow managed to have several children.  Things got really rocky when Eleanor discovered Frank was in love with her secretary, a woman named Lucy Mercer.  Eleanor offered to step aside and give Frank a divorce, but his mother made them stay together, probably because the thought of not torturing Eleanor was too much for her.  Though the pair remained married, they never lived together again.  A compromise was reached.  Eleanor started hanging out with prominent lesbians and Frank’s lusts were sated by a bout of polio that paralyzed him from the waist down.  Unable to monger whores any longer, Frank threw his passions into politics and stamp collecting.  He excelled at both, collecting over a million stamps and getting himself elected president in 1932.

As president, Frank fought the Great Depression using what he himself called policies similar to the economic reforms of fascist Italy.  In 1936, he easily won re-election thanks to a campaign of union thugs and threats that everyone would lose their government sponsored jobs if they voted for the other guy.  This strategy worked again in the election of 1940 and again in the election of 1944.  World War II basically allowed Frank to nationalize everything.  Despite being extremely busy, Frank always took time to keep up on his favorite hobbies; collecting stamps, watching Mae West movies, having the IRS and FBI investigate his enemies, snorting cocaine for a “sinus condition”, and ordering his bodyguards to beat the shit out of anyone who tried to take photos of him in his wheelchair.  Frank also arrested all of the Japanese people in the country, pretended that the holocaust wasn’t happening, tried to add seats to the Supreme Court so they’d quit declaring his policies unconstitutional, and ordered the White House servants to segregate themselves by race.  

Despite his health starting to fail early in his third term, Frank was pretty much convinced he should be president forever.  As he got sicker, he asked Eleanor to move back in with him, a request which she flatly refused.  Instead, Frank’s daughter, always one to stir the pot, hooked her father back up with his old mistress, Lucy Mercer, who soon after convinced Frank to get his portrait painted, which is never a good sign that people think you’ll get better.  Right in the middle of sitting for his portrait, Frank complained of a terrible headache, slumped over, and died of a stroke.  Not long after his death, an amendment was added to the constitution limiting how many times a person could be president. 

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#31 Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) America’s Rich Uncle

Bertie had a tough luck childhood.  By the time he was nine years old both his parents were dead.  Luckily for him, various family members took him in, by which we mean they used him for veritable slave labor, working his ass off, and then shipping him on to the next relative.  This practice ended when he was shipped across the country to his uncle, a man who apparently couldn’t afford the train ticket to send him back.  Bertie’s uncle, a man with an endless supply of stumps on his farm, decided that Bertie would be better off removing said stumps than going to school.  Luckily, Bertie apparently didn’t sleep, attending night school for his education.  Deciding that his life could be better, for some unknown reason, Bertie decided to go to university.  This dream was nearly dashed when he failed his entry exams, but he was still allowed in because the examiner found him so gosh darn charming.  History does not record exactly what that means. 

Bertie graduated with a degree in geology and soon after took a job at a mine in Australia.  Here, he started some Mad Max shite, manipulating the other employees to oust his boss because that’s how business works in Australia.  For this, his company gave him a promotion and sent him to China.  To celebrate, Bertie sent a telegram to his college girlfriend, Lou Henry, asking her to marry him, a proposal method she was apparently totally cool with.  Bertie was damn good at mining, so good that he became a millionaire by age 40.  Growing bored with turning rocks into a shit ton of money, Bertie shifted gears and started several relief charities for war torn Europe.  This led to him getting appointed to several government positions, which in turn led to literally everyone wanting him to be president.  Bertie happily obliged and won the election in 1928.

Who would have thought that it probably wouldn’t be that good of an idea to make some random rich guy with zero political experience president?  Soon after being elected, the country fell into the Great Depression.  Bertie responded by doing nothing and using the Army to attack veterans who dared to ask for their government pensions.  While the world went to hell, Bertie hosted extravagant seven course meals at the White House (which always included sweet potatoes with marshmallows), traded sexy banter with his wife in Chinese, and played Hooverball (a game he made up involving people throwing a medicine ball at each other).  A bit of an elitist, Bertie insisted that all the White House servants be the same height and that they never be seen.  When he walked into a room the servants had to hurriedly hide in closets or around corners, hoping they didn’t accidentally step on one of two alligators Bertie let roam freely in the White House.  During his presidency Bertie did get hundreds of towns named after him.  Unfortunately, they were all shantytowns.  Surprisingly, he did not win re-election in 1932.  

Following his presidency, Bertie spent most of his time fly fishing, writing books, and writing books about fly fishing.  He and his wife would go on long aimless drives to the middle of nowhere, which seems gutsy considering how many people disliked him.  Bertie also worked with several aid charities, bad mouthed President Frank every chance he got, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, and held the record for the largest bonefish ever caught in Florida.  At age 90, doctors removed a tumor from Bertie’s intestine.  They must have done a bang up job, because not long after, he died from internal bleeding in his gut. 

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