(from a friend:)
Three word presidencies...
So, I got bored and, after someone (jokingly, I think) suggested it to me, I decided to sum up each of the American presidencies in three words. I tried not to skew too much one way or the other politically, but I have bias, and sometimes I know it shows. And Taft was really difficult, without somehow making fat jokes or figuring out how to sum up that he was the only president to serve in all three branches of the federal government in only three words. So, yes, I probably missed a lot of relevant information, but three words, people. Here it is:
- George Washington: America’s brand new!
- John Adams: Federalist; fought France.
- Thomas Jefferson: Louisiana Purchase; Monticello.
- James Madison: War of 1812.
- James Monroe: Monroe Doctrine; Missouri.
- John Quincy Adams: Diplomat; first “junior.”
- Andrew Jackson: Old Hickory; nullification.
- Martin Van Buren: Trail of Tears.
- William Henry Harrison: Shortest. Presidency. Ever.
- John Tyler: Declared himself President.
- James K. Polk: Got shit done.
- Zachary Taylor: Died in office.
- Millard Fillmore: Cabinet all quit.
- Franklin Pierce: Screwed shit up.
- James Buchanan: Dred Scott; secession.
- Abraham Lincoln: Emancipation Proclamation; assassinated.
- Andrew Johnson: First President impeached.
- Ulysses S. Grant: Reconstruction, nepotism, scandals.
- Rutherford B. Hayes: Great Railroad Strike.
- James Garfield: 200 days, assassinated.
- Chester A. Arthur: Strengthened the Navy.
- Grover Cleveland: First, government reform.
- Benjamin Harrison: Grover Cleveland’s placeholder.
- Grover Cleveland: Second, tariff and gold.
- William McKinley: Spanish-American War.
- Theodore Roosevelt: “Softly; big stick.”
- William Howard Taft: Reclusive trust-buster.
- Woodrow Wilson: World War I.
- Warren G. Harding: Really pretty awful.
- Calvin Coolidge: “Silent”; laissez-faire.
- Herbert Hoover: Crash! Great Depression.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt: World War II.
- Harry S. Truman: “Buck stops here.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower: Cold War; Asia
- John F. Kennedy: Cuba, integration, Zapruder.
- Lyndon B. Johnson: Great Society; Vietnam.
- Richard M. Nixon: “Not a crook”
- Gerald Ford: Accession, pardon, Vietnam.
- James (Jimmy) Carter: Better after presidency.
- Ronald Reagan: Reaganomics, Cold War.
- George H. W. Bush: USSR, Gulf, recession.
- William J. Clinton: Jazz, Whitewater, BJs.
- George W. Bush: Dumb and dangerous.
- Barack Obama: Not over yet.
