White House Confidential Quotes

“In his early days of politics, he joined the Ku Klux Klan in Jackson County, Missouri, because he knew he couldn’t win the judge’s seat he was running for without their support; a year after he was elected, he resigned his membership and got his ten-dollar membership fee back.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“William Henry Harrison promised voters that if elected he wouldn’t run for another term. How prophetic—he died thirty-one days after taking office.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Robert Lincoln is the only man in the history of the United States known to have witnessed the assassinations of three different presidents—his father, Abraham Lincoln; James Garfield; and William McKinley. After he saw anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoot McKinley, Robert Lincoln vowed he would never again appear in public with an incumbent president.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“His Just Reward Isn’t it an amazing coincidence that
FDR was the chairman of the
March of Dimes and also happens
to be pictured on the dime? No coincidence at all, as it turns out.
In fact, after FDR died in 1945,
Congress voted to commemorate
the work he did on behalf of the
March of Dimes by putting his
profile on the coin.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“There’s more!! In addition to your $400,000/year salary, you also get: • A no-questions-asked $50,000 expense account—in other words, you’re not required to provide receipts to get reimbursed. But if you don’t spend it all, you have to give what’s left back to the Treasury Department every year. • To live rent-free in a nice big house that includes a bowling alley, putting green, jogging track, billiard room, tennis courts, swimming pool, and movie theater (with various contacts in Hollywood providing all first-run movies for free). • Five full-time chefs who are standing by to prepare the food you paid for (see above). A nice, secluded, 180-acre vacation home in Maryland called Camp David that includes numerous cabins for the president and guests, a heated pool, tennis, horseshoes, bowling, a three-hole golf course, an archery range, and a trout stream. • The presidential version of “public” transportation: limos, helicopters, and your own personal jets. • Up to one million dollars you can spend every year for “unanticipated needs,” in case you ever go over budget somewhere else.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Here Are the Perks of Being President: • You don’t ever have to make your own bed. • You don’t ever have to cook your own breakfast (although that was something Gerald Ford liked to do anyway). • You don’t ever have to do your own laundry or take your own clothes to the dry cleaner (but you do have to pay for the dry cleaning yourself; you will be billed for it at the beginning of each month). But Wait! There’s More!! The following free perks also come with the job: • Ballpoint pens • Personalized stationary • High-speed Internet access • Toothbrush cups emblazoned with the presidential seal Nightly turn-down service Breath mints”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“LBJ JOB: He worked on a road gang after high school. Later, he put himself through college by working as the college janitor and picking up trash on campus.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Thomas Jefferson JOB: Given a choice, he once said, he would have rather been a gardener than president. He imported plants from other countries to study them, and while conventional wisdom of the time said tomatoes were poisonous, he grew and ate them for dinner. He was also an inventor and was responsible for the development of the dumbwaiter, the lazy Susan, an automatic closing door the design of which is still—fundamentally—in use on buses today, the revolving chair, the folding chair, and a machine that enabled him to make a duplicate copy of a letter as he wrote it. He was also an inventive chef and created both Baked Alaska and Chicken à la King (which George Washington loved!).”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“The three presidents who made the biggest stink about government corruption were probably Buchanan, Grant, and Truman. Ironically, they also had three of the most corrupt administrations in history.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“On an almost consistent basis over time, those presidents who campaigned the longest and hardest to end corruption in government had the most corrupt administrations.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Presidents are sometimes like boogers … get one on your finger (or in the White House) and it can be hard to shake it (or him) loose.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Led by Clay in 1834, the Senate for the first time in history voted to censure the President of the United States, charging Andrew Jackson with “dictatorial and unconstitutional behavior.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“John Quincy Adams is the only president ever to be elected to the US House of Representatives after his service in the White House.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Do you want to throw this guy out because he’s not the guy you voted for, or do you want to throw him out because he’s done something seriously wrong?”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Because a rumor floating
around during the mid-1800s said
that President Martin Van Buren
was in fact the illegitimate son of former
Vice President (and traitor and
murderer, but we’ll get to
that later) Aaron Burr.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“History is rarely entertaining for those who are deceived or wronged or maligned or misled or screwed in the course of the history-making process. For”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“President of the United States. What a rotten job. You’re the guy or gal who’s always to blame. The economy. Foreign policy. Drugs in the schools. Crime on the streets … It’s all your fault.”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History

“Why do you come and ask me, the leader of the Western world, a chicken-shit question like that?” —LBJ, in response to a reporter’s question he obviously deemed trivial”
― Gregg Stebben, White House Confidential: The Little Book of Weird Presidential History