How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country (32 page)

It was a tough call that wasn’t going to earn Ford any friends (except Nixon, which,
gross
), but making tough calls was Ford all over. Unfortunately, Ford’s decision to unconditionally pardon Nixon without even hearing what his crimes were ruined the reputation of honesty and openness he’d spent his life building (and it would eventually be the single issue that cost him reelection). Despite his integrity and impressive naval career,
that’s
what folks remember about Ford: pardoning Nixon.

That and the falling,
Lord
, the falling. Part of Ford’s reputation as a klutz was brought on by a media that turned on him post-pardon, but an even larger part of it was based on Ford being a klutz. He looked dumb, spoke slowly and awkwardly, he tripped getting out of Air Force One, and once while golfing hit a random person with his ball directly in the head (and also again while playing tennis). And while boarding a train after a campaign speech in Michigan, he bumped his head because he missed the door.

Know that, going into your fight, Ford has probably already thonked himself in the dome like a dozen times en route to the ring. Also remember, however, his time as a star football player and his athletic prowess. Your best bet is to make him think you’re an easy
opponent. Ford’s old football coaches agreed that Ford thrived in the hard games and only made mistakes in easy ones. Let him think he has the upper hand and, when he least expects it, bash him on the head and give him his third concussion of the afternoon.

If all else fails, remind him that his real name is Leslie and he used to be a male model, and then laugh at him. Laugh and laugh.

Viral pneumonia, diverticulosis, a cancerous colon tumor, and a close-range bullet all have one thing in common: none of them had anything to do with Ronald Reagan’s death, despite the fact that they were all present in his life. In fact, even though he’s the oldest man to ever hold the office of president, Reagan was also one of the fittest, and being one of the most fit on a list that includes people who juggle Indian clubs and have duels and are Roosevelts is pretty damn impressive. Being strong is one thing, but Reagan displayed a unique ability to survive the kinds of things that would crush most men. It would be mildly irresponsible to suggest a definite relationship between President Ronald Reagan and fictional superhero Wolverine (who was known for his toughness, accelerated healing ability, and metal bones), but it would be morally reprehensible to not even
mention
the similarities. I’ll just occasionally pepper in a few of the parallels in a historically responsible fashion and invite you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions.

Ronald Reagan’s focus on fitness and athleticism started early; as a teenager, he worked as a lifeguard, a job that, for some reason, involved waking up every day and chopping a three-hundred-pound block of ice down into a one-hundred-pound block of ice. It’s not clear
why
the particular camp where Reagan worked as a lifeguard required him to do that, but he did it seven days a week and, like Lincoln before him, used the repeated chopping motion to strengthen his arms. During his tenure as a lifeguard, Reagan managed to save seventy-seven lives, including one guy who Reagan rescued after another lifeguard
had already given up on the man
.

Saving lives, while undeniably Wolverine-esque, isn’t necessarily
specific
to Wolverine, as plenty of people save lives, so let’s get into that previously mentioned bullet, because that’s one of Reagan’s more Wolveriney stories. On March 30, 1981, Reagan visited the famous Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. He looked at the presidential box where Lincoln was shot and idly thought about how easily
he
could also be shot, even with all of the protection with which modern presidents walked around. He pushed this morbid thought out of his head, shook it off, and then he got shot a few minutes later. A crazy man named John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots at President Reagan on the assumption that doing so would impress actress Jodie Foster (as of this writing, it still has not). One of those bullets hit Reagan’s press secretary, one hit a Secret Service agent, one hit a local cop, two missed, and one hit Reagan, bouncing off of his seventh rib, puncturing and collapsing a lung, and landing one inch from his heart. (This seems as good a time as any to reiterate that the exploding bullet
bounced
off of Reagan’s rib, almost as if his rib bone was
too strong
to be punctured, as if it was
made of adamantium, the strongest metal known to man
. While X-rays and medical professionals have never confirmed or even suggested that the former president’s bones were made of adamantium, I, as a historian, am more responsible than science, so I will not callously rule it out as a possibility.) Reagan was then shoved roughly into the presidential limousine by a Secret Service agent but didn’t even realize he’d been shot until he started coughing up blood a few seconds later. On the way to the hospital, Reagan lost three pints of blood.

Ronald Reagan wasn’t like most men. When
Reagan
got to the hospital, there wasn’t a stretcher or wheelchair waiting (sidebar: what a bullshit hospital), so he calmly stepped out of the car and casually walked himself into the emergency room without a problem. If you get a toy race car dislodged from your nose, they make you travel around in a wheelchair in the hospital, but Reagan, carrying on an apparent tradition of presidents who like walking around after getting shot, gets to stroll in with a bullet batting around an inch from his damn heart. Reagan didn’t mention the bullet to the doctors, he just complained about experiencing a difficulty breathing, which we can go ahead and file under Most Misleading Understatement Ever.

Reagan’s wife, Nancy, met him at the hospital and asked what
had happened, to which Reagan simply replied, “I forgot to duck.” He did this—smile and crack jokes—throughout his entire stay at the hospital, exactly like a guy who
hadn’t
just been shot (or like a guy who, for argument’s sake, knew that the quick recovery time afforded to him by his superhuman accelerated-healing process would have him out of the hospital in no time). He even interrupted his own surgery to occasionally remove his oxygen mask and joke with the surgeons, saying “I hope you’re a Republican,”
after he’d lost half of his blood and they were cutting open his body to remove bullets
. Instead of resting after his successful surgery, Reagan stayed up all night entertaining the nurses with more jokes and anecdotes. Most seventy-year-olds would have died, but, according to his doctors, Reagan had the “physique of a thirty-year-old muscle builder” (which, incidentally, could also be said of hit Marvel character Wolverine, should anyone out there be considering continuing comparisons between these two iconic figures).

Twelve days after he’d been shot, President Ronald Reagan went back to work. Not only that, but he used the sympathy and support his injury brought him to push the bulk of his legislation through Congress, legislation that, had he not been playing the sympathy card, would never have made it out. Not only
that
, but he had a gym installed in the White House and gained so much muscle that he had to buy new suits. This was
after
he’d been shot. The man was seventy years old.

Reagan’s toughness, his jokes, and his easygoing nature made him one of the most relatable presidents among Americans (he carried forty-nine out of fifty states in his second election), though many of his peers and certainly leaders abroad thought the actor-turned-cowboy-president was a lot of style and very little substance. Reagan was an effective communicator, unless he was mentioning facts or statistics, which he often got wrong, inspiring idiots who believed thinking with your
gut
was more important than thinking with your brain or the assistance of facts for decades to come. Even his critics abroad, however, couldn’t pretend that Reagan wasn’t a major factor in ending the Cold War. In one of the most shining displays of presidential
badassery, Reagan thrilled the nation in 1987 when he went to Berlin, demanded an audience with the Soviet leader, and famously yelled, “Mr. Gorbachev,
suck my dick!”
Minutes later, the Berlin Wall fell, and with it, American fears of aggression from the Soviet Union.

(Real quick: one of Wolverine’s archenemies, Omega Red, was
also
a communist. Two guys. Both hated communism. That’s all.)

Reagan didn’t see any action in his military career (he mostly worked on propaganda films), and didn’t get in a lot of fights growing up, but his time spent on the football field—and the metal skeleton he may or may not have—has certainly toughened him up. I’d warn you that Reagan could probably take a good punch or two, but if you’ve read this far then you already know that the man can take a
bullet
, and I don’t want to sit here and beat a dead horse or hit you over the head with something I’ve already told you.

Ronald Reagan is Wolverine. Ronald Reagan is Wolverine. Ronald Reagan is Wolverine
.