America’s history of colourful leaders makes Trump look positively statesmanlike

Those who think Trump is bad forget that many of his predecessors make him look like Winston Churchill.

When it comes to disputed US elections, president Rutherford Hayes (1877-81) makes Trump look like an amateur

Of course, the millions around the world who think Donald Trump is too wacky to be president conveniently forget that many of his predecessors make him look like Winston Churchill.

Take Chester A. Arthur (1881-85), who hired Louis Tiffany to redecorate the White House before he moved in. As historian Feather Foster writes: “Few people would have ever believed that Chester Alan Arthur, New York ‘spoilsman’ politician, would ever have become president of the USA. Only a few years earlier, his name had been linked to corruption at the Customs House in the Port of New York. While CAA’s personal honesty was vindicated, huge graft and malfeasance had been committed on his watch. He was summarily dismissed.”

As president, Old Chesty’s problem was a lack of cash to pay Lou so he had a yard sale. He sold 24 wagonloads of White House furniture and artefacts. These included an old pair of Abraham Lincoln’s pants (Old Chesty had 80 pairs of pants of his own), one of John Quincy Adams’s hats and just about everything else that wasn’t nailed down.

As the New Republic’s Jeet Heer helpfully points out, the problem is that every US president had and has a penis. While Trump has boasted about the size of his: “I have to say this: He hit my hands. No one has ever hit my hands. Look at those hands, are those small hands? And he referred to my hands as if, if they’re small, something else may be small. I guarantee to you there’s no problem, I guarantee!”

Harold Holt’s favourite president, Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69), put the Trumpster’s to shame. LBJ, very publicly, called his member Jumbo.

In a review of Robert Caro’s wonderful biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, Marshall Frady wrote: “If a colleague came into a Capitol bathroom as he was finishing at the urinal there, he would sometimes swing around still holding his member, which he liked to call Jumbo, hooting once, ‘Have you ever seen anything as big as this?’, and shaking it in almost a brandishing manner as he began discoursing about some pending legislation. At the same time, he would oblige aides to take dictation standing in the door of his office bathroom while he went about emptying his bowels, as if in some alpha-male ritual assertion of his primacy.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. Picture: Yoichi Okam

Naturally we have very graphic descriptions of that of Bill Clinton (1993-2001) thanks to Paula Jones’s lawyer and his behaviour before and after he took office from the allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment thanks to the four women who spoke out against him. Bill became only the second president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson in 1868. A Republican House of Representatives took the action because Clinton “wilfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning” his denial of a “sexual relationship”, “sexual affair” or “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky.

But wait there’s more!

The Woody Allen of presidents is Grover Cleveland (1885-89 and again 1893-97). Grover (real first name Steve) married Frank Clara Folsom. Frank (who went by the name Frances) was the daughter of Grover’s friend Oscar Folsom. When Oscar died, Grover was appointed administrator of his estate and became responsible for 11-year-old Frances’s upbringing. Clearly, the upbringing went well because when Frances (nee Frank) turned 21 Grover (nee Steve) had their nuptials in the Blue Room of the White House.

James Buchanan (1857-61) is well in the running for the worst president of all time, although John Tyler is a serious contender. Four things to know about JB: he’s the only president from Pennsylvania; he was the president before Abraham Lincoln; he thought slavery was fine and he was the only bachelor to be president. For 16 years Jim openly lived with the first gay vice-president, William Rufus DeVane King (serving for only 25 days before his death in 1853). Showing not much has changed, Andrew Jackson (1829-37) called them “Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy”.

Tyler (1841-45) was nicknamed “His Accidency” since he got the job when William Harrison died after serving 31 days in office. Tyler was one of eight VPs to become president on the death of his boss. He was the first of them and this caused a huge stir at the time since most thought he should be just a caretaker until a real president was elected.

Anyway, things got so bad that at one stage, a rowdy (and drunk) group of opponents armed with guns and bugles broke open the White House gates and behaved “like deranged lunatics looking for blood”. There were reports they hurled stones but it is documented they brought a large effigy of Tyler that they hung and burnt.

Then there’s Jimmy Carter (1977-81) and Ronald Reagan (1981-89), who both saw UFOs; and John F. Kennedy (1961-63) who told his Air Force One flight attendant he’d “like to tell the public about the alien situation, but my hands are tied”. Another president whose hands were tied was Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61), who wanted to declare war against Sciurus carolinensis — not an eastern European country but the common grey squirrel. A keen golfer, he had a putting green installed outside his office window but the pesky rodents took to hiding their nuts in the lawn. “The next time you see one of those squirrels go near my putting green, take a gun and shoot it!” Eisen­hower told his valet. Luckily White House Secret Service agents thought shooting squirrels in public view wasn’t a great look. So, the little mammals mysteriously vanished over time.

Talking of disputed elections: Rutherford Hayes (1877-81) makes Trump look like an amateur. Hayes won by one vote in the smallest electoral college vote in history. Naturally this earned him nicknames like “Rutherfraud” and “His Fraudulency”. The vote was so close congress appointed a bipartisan electoral commission with five representatives, five senators and five Supreme Court justices. Supreme Court justice David Davis dropped out because he was given a Senate seat, a Republican replaced him and the vote went on strict party lines.