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April 13 - April 22, 2018
more naked (he exercised, swam, and took walks in the nude, and called the art of having sex outside “in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero” a distinctly “Yankee invention”).
Also he kept an alligator as a pet, right in the White House.
One duel in particular stands out among all the rest. In 1806, Andrew Jackson engaged Charles Dickinson in a duel over gambling debts. Though Dickinson was widely known as a good shot, Jackson allowed him to fire first. It would be irresponsible of me not to repeat that: in a duel with pistols, Jackson politely volunteered to be shot first. Dickinson fired, nailed Jackson almost in the heart, and started to reload. Before he could finish, Jackson shot him dead. The man plays “Punch for Punch” with bullets.
Between his dueling and his military career, Jackson had been shot so many times that scholars say he “rattled like a bag of marbles” when he walked, as a result of all of the never-removed bullets taking up residence in his body.
I should be clear, Martin Van Buren didn’t want to be a good president, he just wanted to be president, and enjoy himself while doing it. He wanted the attention, he wanted the power, he wanted the status, and that was it. There was only one issue about which he was passionate, and that was his stance on slavery (pro!). In his inaugural address, Van Buren said, “I must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia,” an appropriate prelude to the presidency of shittiness that
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President Martin Van Buren. Sounds like a president I know!
Van Buren lived lavishly and was spending all of this money, by the way, during the Panic of 1837, the most devastating economic collapse in American history (until the Great Depression almost one hundred years
ever. His critics dubbed him “Martin Van Ruin,” which I bring up only to let everyone reading this know that I intend to use that as my own nickname, should I ever decide to enter professional wrestling.
Van Buren didn’t care that everyone was trashing his name or that the country was falling apart on his watch, because he didn’t have strong opinions. He avoided controversial subjects and, whenever he was asked his opinion on literally anything, he would dress up his answer in so much vague language and doubletalk that no one ever knew where he stood on any issue.
MVB. Another , very familiar attitude!
Van Buren, rightly and obviously, did not win a second term. He tried running twice more as a third-party candidate when his own Democratic Party refused to nominate him,
MVB. Good to know!
In your fight with Van Buren, I’d strongly recommend guarding your genitals, as he will likely fight dirty. That said, he never played sports, never hunted, never served in the military, and never did anything that didn’t directly contribute to his fancy, party-throwing lifestyle, so you’ve likely got an advantage over him in the general fitness department. Blacken his eyes, head-butt him, and sock him in the kidneys a few times—and look out for that left hook.
Whig leader Henry Clay expected Tyler to work closely with the Whigs (as Harrison would have done), but even that felt too much like manipulation to Tyler. Tyler vetoed most of Clay’s proposed legislation, hurting the Whig agenda and also running counter to how the Whigs believed a president should behave (their idea of the presidency involved vetoing as a rarity, and Tyler was immediately pretty veto-crazy). One by one, everyone in Tyler’s cabinet resigned out of protest, because he refused to listen to anyone who he thought was trying to influence or control him (which, according to Tyler,
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Another Trump!
Oh, right, the slavery thing, that’s important. Lest you think that Tyler’s rebellious streak was all fun, you should know that being a rebel also meant rebelling against the Union. Yes, when Tyler left office, he joined the Confederacy and turned on the nation over which he used to preside. He was considered a traitor, and was the only former president whose death wasn’t officially announced or memorialized by the White House.
Despite this ambitious plan, a combination of Polk’s passion and intensity helped him pull it off. He accomplished all of his goals, including giving us Texas, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Washington. He also got us California, first by trying to buy it, but when Mexico said “Uh, we’re not actually selling,” he just straight up took it from them in the Mexican-American War (a domestic war successfully taken care of in one term and wasn’t even on his list).
I’m saying that physically, he had a disease called Marfan syndrome. People who suffer from Marfan syndrome generally grow taller than your average person and have longer limbs that, typically, are fairly weak. Lincoln refused to accept the “weak” part of his condition and strengthened his arms through years of farmwork (he built his first log cabin when he was goddamn seven),
Oh, right, the drinking. Nothing could stop Grant from drinking, not an important battle, and not even the soldier that Grant personally hired to stop him from drinking too much.
If towering over someone wasn’t demeaning enough, he’d also make people watch him poop. If you needed to go over important business with the president, he’d listen for a bit and, every once in a while, have you follow him into the bathroom and plead your case while he nonchalantly pooped. If there’s a more efficient demonstration of power, I’ve certainly never heard it (unless, of course, the president ever thought to combine the Johnson Treatment with the ol’ Watch Me Poop technique).
