How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country (30 page)

Pull just about any president out of a hat and you’ll hear the same story: “I had no ambition to be the president of the United States, but God [or ‘the people’] seemed to
want
me to be president; I humbly accept God’s plan and I am hereby announcing my candidacy for the presidency.” Washington created the mold by being the farmer who reluctantly became a soldier who reluctantly became a commander who reluctantly became the politician, and every president since has followed in his faux-humble footsteps.

Except Lyndon Johnson.

Johnson always wanted to be the president. In
grade school
Johnson was telling his classmates that he was going to be the president one day, and as he grew up he never stopped saying “I want to be the president.” He just altered it and started saying, “I want to be
the best
president.” It takes an impossibly giant ego to look at the office of the
presidency, in all of its enormities and with all of its responsibilities, and think, “I could do that.” Johnson looked at his heroes like FDR and thought, “I could do that
better
.”

This was because LBJ is the only president who was acutely aware of how
fucking cool
it was to be president. He knew that it was an important job, and one to be taken seriously, and yada yada yada, but he also knew that it was pretty damn badass. Johnson was addressing some troops in Vietnam and, after his speech, right when he was about to make his exit in a military helicopter, one of the members of his staff asked which helicopter was his and he replied, “Son,
all
these helicopters are mine.” Those are the words of a man who thinks he’s above the law, the words of a man who knows he’s entitled to one “freebie kill” as president and isn’t afraid to use it on you.

It wasn’t
just
the coolness that attracted Johnson; mostly, it was the power, and to Johnson, power was
everything
.

Everything Johnson did as president was about demonstrating this power. Whenever he wanted something from a senator or visiting diplomat, he would employ what came to be known as the “Johnson Treatment.” Utilizing his impressive 6′3″ frame, Johnson would get in someone’s face and
loom
, right over them, looking down at them and presenting a physical reminder that his literal and figurative status dwarfed theirs. He would badger and yell and spit and mock, all while being just a few inches away from someone’s face. It was about intimidation; everyone was powerless against the Johnson Treatment.

If towering over someone wasn’t demeaning enough, he’d also make people watch him poop. If you needed to go over important business with the president, he’d listen for a bit and, every once in a while, have you follow him into the bathroom and plead your case while he nonchalantly pooped. If there’s a more efficient demonstration of power, I’ve certainly never heard it (unless, of course, the president ever thought to combine the Johnson Treatment with the ol’ Watch Me Poop technique).

There’s even an old White House legend that says LBJ once peed on a member of the Secret Service. On.
On!
According to the rumors, Johnson was standing next to an agent at some function
when he noticed that he was mostly blocked from the public view. So, using the Secret Service agent as both shield and urinal, he pulled out his … johnson, and started peeing, right on the agent’s leg. The agent protested and Johnson said, “That’s all right, son. It’s my prerogative.” And how could you argue with that? If anyone is legally allowed to pee on another person, it would have to be the president.

Finally, it would be irresponsible of me as a student of both History and Doing It to not bring up the pimping.

My God, the pimping
.

Like Kennedy before him, Johnson saw the presidency as a noble and sacred calling that would render pimping easy (despite the fact
that the field was widely believed by most leading pimp scientists to be decidedly “not easy”). Johnson liked having sex, was proud of the amount he’d had, and would get furious when White House staffers would talk about Kennedy’s near-legendary skills as a cocksman. He would often say that he’d bed “more women accidentally than Kennedy ever did on purpose.” It’s unclear how exactly one would accidentally have sex with multiple women, but if Johnson says he did it, then he did.

Johnson could often be found hitting on other women right in front of his wife, and if you think
that’s
the most outrageous display of his sexual appetite, you haven’t read the next sentence yet. Lyndon Johnson, as president, would take his dick out and shake it at people. Sometimes he was trying to impress people, and sometimes he would do it if one of his staffers dared challenge him. He’d be confronted with a problem and then out came the dick (he called it “Jumbo,” because when you’re the president, that’s the kind of thing you’re allowed to do). Before you could say “Hey, put that away, we’re in the middle of a staff meeting and yes I regret using the word ‘staff,’ ” he would wave Jumbo around and ask you if you’d “ever seen anything as big as this?” (That’ll probably happen when he fights you.) According to biographer Robert Dallek, at one point during his presidency, Johnson met with a reporter who repeatedly asked him why American troops were in Vietnam. Frustrated, Johnson unzipped his pants, pulled out his “substantial organ,” and shouted, “This is why!” The craziest part of this story, which itself is nothing but pure, poop-eating crazy, is that it
worked
. That answer
satisfied
the reporter, like “Oh, yeah, when you put it that way,
sure
. Of
course
we’re in Vietnam—look at that dick. We should be in
all countries
. I’d be starting a war on Space if I had a dick like yours. Come on, now.”

Still, it wasn’t all poop shows and dick waving in the Johnson administration. This chapter is called “Johnson: The Puppet Master” because Johnson knew how to take control. He took control of the presidency after the shocking death of JFK, and he took control of all of his opponents. He kept dossiers on every single person in the Senate. He knew what they wanted, knew what they liked, and
he knew their weaknesses. One biography states that he would “get up every day and learn what their fears, their desires, their wishes, their wants were and he could then manipulate, dominate, persuade and cajole them.” If he was dealing with a particularly short senator, he’d grab them by the lapels and lift them straight into the air. He was like a big, presidential bully, cornering members of the Senate and leaning over them while they backpedaled helplessly, badgering them until they submitted to his demands. “Stop hitting yourself,” he probably said to one or two uppity senators, whilst whipping them with his own penis.

If Jackson’s presidential cocktail was heavy on the passion, and Arthur’s was heavy on the ambition, then Johnson’s was heavy on the ego, and
that’s
going to be the key to winning this fight. He’s not just going to want to beat you, he’s going to want to
dominate
you and show off in some kind of primal display of alpha male strength. Never give him the satisfaction on which he thrives. When he looms over you, spit right in his face. When he tries to make you watch him poop, say, “No
thank you
.” When he pulls out his dick,
laugh at it
and say, “Boy, that’s the sorriest piece of presidential genitalia since Grant.” Sure, this will make him very mad (and he
was
a big athletic guy), but it will also make him
sloppy
. Get in his head by repeatedly reminding him that he’s not the greatest president of all time (he’ll
hate
that), and you just might have a shot.

Richard His-Mom’s-Maiden-Name Nixon will forever go down as one of the worst presidents of all time, and that is a fact. History will never vindicate his actions. He’ll be associated with sliminess and an inflated sense of jowly entitlement for the rest of human existence. His pathetic slovenliness and hilarious sweatiness in the first televised debates are the reasons every presidential campaign today has a budget for a wardrobe and makeup specialist.

His hideousness invented a job
.

Before all that, Nixon was practically born to be horrible. He was sick his entire life and never well liked, and psychoanalysts who have looked into Nixon have described him as “lonely, hypersensitive, narcissistic, suspicious and secretive,” and a man who “lied to gain love, to shore up his grandiose fantasies, to bolster his ever-wavering sense of identity. He lied in attack, hoping to win.” The fact that we
made him president is one of the most frightening things in history, but we can rest assured that
he
made that happen, and that sin wasn’t on us (more on this later!).

Nixon had two nicknames his whole life: “Gloomy Gus” (given to him in college, because of his constant seriousness) and “Tricky Dick” (as president, because of his trickiness, and the fact that he was a dick). Three, if you count “Slimeballs McShithead,” the nickname that this book coined for him, just now (because he left a trail of sweat-slime in his wake, and because “McShithead” is a funny word). He served in the navy but saw no actual combat, hated sports, never exercised, and was once called a “no-good lying bastard” by Harry Truman. Every fact in this paragraph is unrelated; I just wanted to Rolodex a bunch of awful Nixon things.

One of the most unfortunate things about Nixon from a critical perspective is that he
did
do a few good things while in office. He extended America’s reach all the way to the moon, and even though we can’t do anything with it and never hang out there, it’s important to know that it’s ours and no one else is allowed to touch it. Nixon got us out of Vietnam and was the first American president to visit China. There. I promised the publisher I’d spend at least a hundred words saying vaguely nice things about Nixon, just to make sure the book doesn’t come off as too biased, and now that I’ve done that, we can move on to our regularly scheduled programming.

Did you know that President McShithead plotted to kill someone while in office? True story. It wasn’t a horrible dictator he plotted to kill, like a good president would, but a
journalist
, like a horrible dictator would. Jack Anderson was an okay journalist who chased Nixon throughout his entire career. Anderson believed Nixon was corrupt and dedicated his life to exposing that corruption, and it drove Nixon
crazy
, because Anderson was pesky and manipulative, and
totally right
. Several confidential tapes reveal Nixon and his attorney general obsessing over Anderson, and figuring out if they were going to discredit him or kill him (John Mitchell wanted to hang Anderson, which prompted Nixon to say, “Goddamn it, yes … we’ve got to do something with this son of a bitch”). Nixon and his team also
contemplated murdering Anderson by either hiding poison in his medicine cabinet or smearing a lethal dose of LSD on his steering wheel. Two things: 1) Nixon, please,
stop taping your freaking schemes, you idiot
; and 2) “Lethal dose”? You think you can kill someone with LSD? Man, you never even
tried
to understand the hippies, Nixon.