History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (6 page)

The media critiques Gerald Ford’s form in the new White House pool. Portrayed as a clumsy man, Ford was actually one of the most athletic individuals ever to become president.
Gerald R. Ford Library

Kennedy was a child of the sea, and he spent long hours sailing or swimming. The latter activity offered a cardiovascular workout without straining his ailing spine, and he too kept the pool at the Executive Mansion warm. LBJ also partook of the presidential waters, often conducting meetings with political figures while he waded. Never athletic as a child, Johnson was among the least-fit presidents, and swimming was essentially the only routine exercise he did while in office. Though the former naval officer was also a fine swimmer, Richard Nixon had the FDR pool covered over to make space for the West Wing pressroom. The Fords compensated by building an in-ground pool on the South lawn.

John Quincy Adams and TR swam in the Potomac the same way JFK and LBJ swam in the White House pool—naked.

8
. MUSIC

Oddly, very few presidents were blessed by the muse Euterpe. Thomas Jefferson practiced violin up to three hours a day and played duets with fellow Virginian Patrick Henry. He collected sheet music from across the East Coast and Europe, and as with food and wine, he preferred Italian and French but could play nearly anything. While a diplomat in Paris during the summer of 1785, he broke his wrist severely (possibly from a riding accident). He never played without pain again.

John Tyler was quite proficient at the violin and preferred American folk tunes. His favorite playing partner was his wife, Julia, who occasionally accompanied him on the guitar. Their White House was more musical than most, and she started the tradition of having the Marine Band play “Hail to the Chief” at official events.
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Nearly every president owned a personal piano, save for Gerald Ford and the Bushes, but few played. Undoubtedly the most proficient among them was the humble Harry Truman, who as a youth grumbled at being forced to rise at dawn to practice for hours and traveling up to twice a week into Kansas City for professional lessons. He was partial to Beethoven, Chopin, and Mozart, and he played often while in office. For a poor speaker and plain dresser, he was far more in tune with the fine arts that the regaled Kennedy or Reagan, neither of whom cared at all for haute couture in any form.
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Many presidents took pleasure in simply listening. McKinley was fond of the opera, Taft and Wilson liked musicals, and the swarthy Harding occasionally attended a Washington burlesque show. Perhaps the least musical of all was U. S. Grant. He claimed to only know two songs. “One was Yankee Doodle,” said the general, “the other wasn’t.”
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Music may have saved the lives of John and Julia Tyler. Riding the gunship
Princeton
down the Potomac, the presidential couple went belowdecks to listen to celebratory songs, while guests above watched a large naval cannon shoot rounds. One of the firings burst the breech, killing eight onlookers, including Julia’s father.

9
. GOLF

The pinnacle pastime of the business class, golf is centuries old, but it did not catch on in the United States until the late 1800s. The first chief executive to fully embrace the game was portly William Howard Taft. He was roundly criticized for spending time on the links, yet at the same time his high profile caused a surge in the game’s popularity.

On doctor’s orders, Wilson took up golf and had a hard time liking it. He described the game as “an ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adapted to the purpose.” Even on a good day, he was unable to crack a score of one hundred. His successor shot in the nineties, but Harding preferred to be a spectator.
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Golf and Eisenhower were almost synonymous in the 1950s, a fair assessment considering he played up to 150 rounds a year. He also installed a putting green near the Rose Garden and enjoyed hitting irons shots off the White House lawn. Some of his longer hits strayed outside of the grounds. On the links, he shot in the eighties consistently.
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Despite a bad back, Kennedy played better than Ike. A former member of the Harvard team, he was amazingly strong off the tee, and he occasionally shot in the high seventies. But he knew the public-relations risk of spending long hours on the links, having witnessed the public ire waged against Eisenhower, so Jack normally played in secret.
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Barack Obama hit the links nearly one hundred times in his first three years. Nixon golfed but was a better bowler, having a lane installed in the Executive Mansion, upon which he averaged a respectable 175. Often viewed as clumsy, Gerald Ford may have been the finest athlete ever to be president. A former football MVP at Michigan, he lifted weights in the presidential study, skied, loved water sports, and played tennis, but he never quite mastered golf, playing with an eighteen handicap. A self-deprecating man, Ford was famous for saying, “I know I’m playing better golf because I’m hitting fewer spectators.”
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William Howard Taft tees one up at Hot Springs, Virginia, during his first year as president.

Both of the Bushes were avid golfers, and they came from a long line of club men. George Herbert Walker, George H. W. Bush’s grandfather, was president of the U.S. Golf Association.

10
. TENNIS

In the spring of 1903, when her husband was away on a tour of the western states, Edith Roosevelt had a surprise waiting for Teddy on his return—the first tennis court at the White House. Originally it stood next to the W
EST
W
ING
. It was later moved to a more secluded spot just a few yards west of the grand fountain on the South lawn. Teddy found time to work and play by doing both simultaneously, and his cadre of players were sometimes called the “Tennis Cabinet.”
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Wilson didn’t care for the game, but his family did, a fate shared by Coolidge and Truman. All three men were rather pathetic at sports, but they married excellent athletes and enjoyed watching their family compete. Wilson’s daughters played the occasional singles match, and Harding’s wife, Florence, initiated an all-women tournament at the executive complex. The Coolidge sons John and Cal Jr. were exceptionally active, partaking of the presidential court on numerous occasions. In the summer of 1924, they played each other on a particularly hot day, and sixteen-year-old Cal Jr. thought nothing of it when his foot blistered. A week later, the abrasion turned septic, and he died of blood poisoning. His father fell into a deep depression, often sleeping twelve hours a day.

The next active players were Carter and Ford, followed by tennis fanatic George H. W. Bush. To avoid public scrutiny, Bush would usually play at a private club in Washington, but he often invited professional players to hit a few on the White House court. Among Bush’s oldest partners was his secretary of state, James Baker III—the two had met in 1959 when they were paired for a doubles match at the Houston Country Club. Bill Clinton dabbled in the game. He also jogged and swam in an attempt to keep his weight down—to little avail.

Edith’s gift to Teddy was the first White House tennis court, which was right outside the original West Wing. Standing guard in the background is the Old Executive Office Building.

Calvin Coolidge’s secretary of war was Dwight Davis. In his youth, Davis was a superb tennis player and a founder of the International Lawn Tennis Challenge. After his death in 1945, his tennis tournament was named in his honor—the Davis Cup.

Contrary to popular belief, the Founding Fathers as a whole were neither devoutly religious nor agnostic. The architects of the Republic were nearly as pluralistic as their four million constituents, from New England Puritans to Maryland Catholics, from rustic revivalists to urbane skeptics.

In 1776, only one out of six Americans belonged to a particular church, and many viewed providence with a sense of wonderment rather than doctrinal certainty. But when it came time to form a more perfect union, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia agreed that if they were to save both church and state, separation was absolutely mandatory. The United States, with its multitude of denominations, would never stay united under the guise of a national religion. In order to survive, the government had to rule through the consent of the people, not through the assumption of divine right.
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True to their word, the Founding Fathers protected faith as personal property. Nowhere in the Constitution was there an overt reference to God. Article 6 forbade any religious test for public office. In 1791, the very first sentence of the First Amendment read, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Normally reserved in his language, President Washington was adamant when he told a citizen, “No one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny.”
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So it was written for generations. U. S. Grant proclaimed, “Not one dollar…shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian schools.” His successor Rutherford Hayes considered proposing a constitutional amendment to that effect. Theodore Roosevelt thought it sacrilegious to have “In God We Trust” on coins, a phrase adopted during the turmoil of the Civil War, and he lobbied for its removal. His protégé William Taft refused to discuss religion at all in the 1908 election.
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