How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country (25 page)

Harding’s strategy of presenting a sweet and unassuming front while aggressively backdooring his way into getting what he wants can be seen in everything he ever did. It was widely believed, for example, that Harding’s wife, Florence, ran the house while the timid, doting Harding trailed behind with his head lowered and his tail between his legs; yet nothing could be further from the truth. It was in 1905, right around the time Harding had successfully nailed the obedient puppy dog act, when he started nailing something else: a young Ohio woman named Carrie Phillips.

While plenty of presidents have had affairs, Harding’s is probably the sneakiest and sleaziest. Harding began his affair in the spring of ’05, while Mrs. Harding was in Columbus “undergoing treatment for a kidney ailment” and Carrie’s husband, James, a longtime friend of Harding’s, was “soothing his nerves at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.”

He had an
additional
affair years later with someone thirty years his junior, but even that not-insignificant level of sleaziness doesn’t top the original. Having an affair with your good friend’s wife while he’s in an institution and
your
wife is in a hospital ranks you somewhere between Benedict Arnold and the guy who invented
Girls Gone Wild
on the spectrum of Total Dickheads in American History.

Right before the Republican Party decided to nominate Harding for the presidency, they asked him to search his soul and come clean with any skeletons in his closet. He spent ten minutes investigating his conscience before calmly and confidently saying, “Nope. Nothing.” Minutes later, he was nominated. In 1920, we made him the twenty-ninth president of the United States. Years after his first but not before his last affair.

Notice the patterns? Harding wants you to think he’s a nice gentleman, but he’ll crush your newspaper and destroy your reputation if you stand in his way. He’ll appear to be the faithful, doting husband but cheat with the nearest available chick the second his wife has her
back turned (or, alternately, is face-up receiving risky medical treatment for her kidney infection), and will have no problem lying about it to his party when they ask if there are any skeletons in his closet. He has no morals to cling to, no honor. He’ll lie to anyone if telling the truth would interfere with his sneaky plans.

Historians like to point out that Harding as a president wasn’t corrupt, he just had the misfortune of having terrible friends, but make no mistake, there is a
reason
all of those awful people gravitated toward Harding to begin with. Evil attracts more evil. Carrie, a woman to whom Harding wrote several passionate love letters, was a
freaking Nazi sympathizer
, for Christ’s sake.

If you’re going to fight Harding, make sure you never turn your back on him. The second he looks wounded and you let your guard down, he’ll be up and throwing sand in your eyes faster than you can say “Maybe if you weren’t so busy nailing nineteen-year-olds who weren’t your wife you wouldn’t have let our country fall to shit.”

Which, admittedly, isn’t very fast considering how long that sentence is, but my point remains: Warren G. Harding sucks.

There’s no real way to sugarcoat this: John Calvin Coolidge’s biography reads like the chilling origin story of a serial killer. Even the nickname Silent Cal, assigned to the man due to his being famously shy and quiet, calls to mind visions of some creepy, looming bedside murderer. But Silent Cal grew up to be the thirtieth president of the United States, and
not
some kind of eerily quiet murderer who stalked campgrounds.

Probably
.

Like a lot of kids, Coolidge was told at an early age that he was not allowed to make mistakes. Unlike a lot of kids, he was often reminded by his parents that he was never going to be the smartest or strongest in his class, so he had better work harder than anyone so he could be the
best
. Coolidge followed his orders and worked harder than anyone and ended up really excelling in school. Is this because he was a good kid who wanted nothing more than to please his folks?
No. It’s because, on the rare occasions when he did make a mistake (say, by being late for school), he would be banished to a cold attic, empty but for cobwebs, where he would sit in the dark and wait. For
hours
.

His father, while stern and terrifying, was often away on business, so Coolidge was primarily raised by his grandmother (also stern and terrifying; she was the one who locked him in the attic). People called Coolidge “Silent Cal” because he rarely spoke, but few realize that, even into his presidency, he spoke at length to his mother. Or, rather, his
dead
mother, who passed away when he was twelve. He revealed this in letters to his father, who never responded to the admission (Coolidge’s dead mother also refused to comment).

Still, even though he lost his mother and should have been allowed some time to grieve, Coolidge continued on his quest to be the best. He just stayed focused and worked hard. Two years later, he lost his fourteen-year-old sister, Abbie. Despite that, and even though he regularly wrote letters to his father talking about how miserable and lonely he was (also unanswered), Coolidge kept on keeping on. He went on to excel in college, law school, and the office of governor of Massachusetts because, make no mistake, he would make no mistakes. He was conditioned to believe a terrifying attic was lurking behind every mistake, and he was
not
going back. So all of that stress and all of that grief and all of that tension was kept balled up inside.

Now, I don’t throw the term “Norman Batesian” around a lot, especially when talking about presidents, but a repressed childhood and long conversations with a dead mother? Silent Cal was, without question, the most Norman Batesian man who ever ran this country. First as vice president and then as president. After the corruption-filled shit-show that was the Harding administration, it was up to Coolidge to assure the people that order and integrity had been restored to the White House. He needed to convince everyone that a coolheaded and honest man was running the country, and he did.

For a little while.

Then, a few years into his presidency, Coolidge had to watch
his sixteen-year-old son, Calvin Jr., die in a freak tennis accident (he stubbed his toe playing tennis, the toe got infected, the infection killed him). This was, we can say, the final tragic straw that broke Coolidge. Tragedy and death followed him everywhere, but unlike Jackson, who ate and subsequently derived tremendous strength from death, Coolidge dwelled on it with the morbid obsession of a Zodiac Killer. He had the Secret Service regularly bring him young boys, just so he could still feel connected to his son in some way (he requested no other guests; just wave after wave of surrogate Calvin Juniors). He could only talk, think, and write about his departed son, mentioning the passing of his son to every White House guest,
as if they somehow hadn’t heard
.

Calvin Jr.’s death destroyed Coolidge and his presidency. When Junior was alive, Coolidge was the dynamic and progressive president who made demands of Congress and proudly boasted to his father that “men do what I tell them to do.” After Junior died, he was the president who rarely spoke to Congress (or anyone else), got almost nothing done, and stayed inside all day, napping.

Or, not
just
napping. Occasionally, he would take some time to be emotionally distant to his wife and flip out on his staff. This was a man, remember, who was surrounded by tragedy but kept all of his frustrations and heartbreak locked up inside, because he never wanted to let down his stern, distant father by showing that he was anything less than perfect. No one can keep that kind of rage at bay forever; Coolidge was a time bomb, tick, tick, ticking away.

Coolidge kept the White House staff, according to some employees, in a “constant state of anxiety,” and was capable of “volcanic eruptions of temper.” One White House employee said that “those who saw Coolidge in a rage were simply startled,” and that Teddy Roosevelt, “in his worst temper … was calm compared with Coolidge.” Teddy Roosevelt got his face on Mount Rushmore simply by head-butting the mountain (probably), and Coolidge at his craziest made Teddy look like a
pussycat
.

Still, Coolidge’s story isn’t
just
about horrible tragedy and premature death. He was also just really weird, in a general sort of way,
and might have been part-Tarzan. He had a pet hippo that he often visited at DC’s National Zoo and was frequently seen walking around the White House followed by wild animals, including a pet raccoon, which often would cling to his neck.

But the chief business of fighting Coolidge is
fighting
. Coolidge did not serve in the military and didn’t get into any fights as a child. He wasn’t really interested in sports, and probably the most exercise he ever got was walking around and window shopping (a favorite pastime of his). He was also sick a lot, with asthma and a chronic cough, both of which forced him to take a number of pills every day.
So, really, if you keep yourself even
slightly
active you might have an advantage. Physically.

Really, all he has on you in this fight is his severe and volcanic rage and an innate ability to control animals.