Rowntree Winston - How to fight presidents: defending yourself against the badasses who ran this country

Copyright 2014 by Daniel OBrien

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-385-34757-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-385-34758-7

Illustrations by Winston Rowntree
Cover design by Michael Nagin
Cover photography by Michael S. Heath

v3.1

This book is dedicated to my father,
who is more badass than any of the presidents in this book,
and my mother, who is smarter and sweeter.
For Tommy and David.
And for Elise.

CONTENTS

It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get where we are today, but we have just begun.

BARACK OBAMA (a president)

I look out at all of the fresh young faces in this classroom and I can think of one thing to say: not one of you is ever going to grow up to be the president of the United States.

That was the very first thing my American Government professor said on the very first day of class in my freshman year at Rowan University. He didnt say it to get a laugh, and in fact glared at anyone who so much as smirked. I know, because I smirked, and I was wearing pajama pants at the time, and that was another thing he hated (I maintained that I was honoring the spirit of the class by declaring very comfortable independence from my constricting oppressors [buttons and zippers], but he refused to be swayed). He went on to say that he had worked long enough at this university that he was technically un-fireable, and since absolutely nothing could touch his job security, being well-liked was not important to him. His stated goal was not to teach us about American Government (a fools errand, he called it), nor was it to prepare us for a life in government (Get over yourself). His only ambition was to spend the next semester getting us mentally equipped enough to properly read the newspaper, but honestly I dont even think most of you could handle that. Especially not you, in the pajama pants, in public, during the day, goddammit come on, are those womens pants? You are a boy.

Out of every crotchety insult he delivered in his opening lecture (and every crotchety insult he would aim at me throughout the semester, including use of the persistent nickname PJ Pete, a frankly unfair label for someone who wore pajamas one time and was, in fact, named Daniel), the only thing that really stuck with me was his first accusation: that I would never be president.

I never wanted to be president, but when that constantly angry professor told me I couldnteven if I wanted tosomething inside of me was triggered and I thought, Oh yeah? Ill show you. Im going to be president. Im going to be president all over this country, and theres not a damn thing you can do about it.

See, I have a deep-seated problem with authority that has instilled in me a drive to immediately do whatever it is a powerful person says I cant do. I also have an even deeper-seated desire to be a giant nerd, so this particular act of rebellion took the form of me going to the university library to read absolutely everything I could about presidents. When trying to get back at a teacher, some students will key a car or throw toilet paper at a house. I attacked books with a similar amount of gusto and, no, I didnt think there was anything weird about this (and, no, I didnt get invited to a lot of parties).

I consumed everything I could. Biographies, autobiographies. The journal of John Quincy Adams. The financial records of George Washington. The private letters of Warren G. Harding. Pictures of JFK in a swimsuit. All of it. I was trying to crack a code. I was looking for similarities between not just our greatest presidents, but all of our presidents. At the time, only forty-two guys in history had ever taken the job. There must have been some trait they all shared, some common bond, some characteristic that linked every president across two hundred and some-odd years. Something I could study, master, and apply to myself so that I too could one day be president. Not to help the country in any way, just so I could shove it in my professors face and then quickly resign. It turns out there was one thing I learned in my exhaustive study of all things presidential:

Youd have to be crazy to want this job.

I dont mean to be casual about that; I mean that the desire to be the president is a currently undiagnosed but very specific form of insanity. Only a person with an unfathomably huge ego and an off-the-charts level of blind self-confidence and an insatiable hunger for control could look at America, in all of her enormity, with all of her complexity, with all of her beauty and flaws and strength and power, and say, Yeah. I should be in charge of that. Only a lunatic would look at a job where you get slandered and scrutinized and attacked by the media and sometimes even assassinated and say, Sign me up! Only a lunatic.

I learned that my professor was right. I didnt have the specific version of crazy required to be the president. But I also learned that presidents, with all of their madness and passion and recklessness and acts of desperation in their relentless quest to become Americas king, were interesting and wild and freaking badass. They had balls, and their balls had balls. They were tough.

I was so fascinated with the nutcases we made president that I never stopped reading about them, even after that American Government class ended, but my studies took on a different tone. Knowing that I didnt have what it took to be president, I started thinking about what it would take to defeat a president, mentally or physically, via psychological warfare or the warfare kind of warfare. I looked at the club of presidents and put a spin on the old adage: If you cant join them, beat them.

Thats what youre reading right now. The most interesting, exciting, bizarre, or otherwise badass facts about every great psychopath who has ever stood on top of Mount America and declared himself its protector, and how you might be able to use these facts to your advantage, should you happen to, I dont know, travel back in time to find yourself face to face with a president you angered somehow. Ill never be president, but I can certainly beat James Buchanan in a fight, and, in the end, isnt that what American Government is really all about?

(Im genuinely asking. I didnt exactly ace that class.)